This week in TV Guide: September 3, 1955

Long before Star Trek was a twinkle in the sky, or in the eye of anyone with the possible exception of Gene Roddenberry, there was a letter-writing campaign in support of a show that was scheduled to go off the air. It was a show praised for its "honest and appealing" portrayals, for stories that weren't afraid to break the mould of prevailing fare, for its likeable characters. It had a loyal and devoted following of viewers, but not, unfortunately, enough to warrant the sponsor's interest in a second season. And when news of its cancellation was made public, the network was inundated with complaints from literally "thousands of irate viewers." In the face of such a public outcry, the show was revived, on a different network and with a different sponsor, for another season. Welcome to the world of Father Knows Best.

It may be hard to believe that such a fate once awaited a series that has since gone on to attain iconic status within the classic TV world, but when Father aired on CBS during the 1954-55 season, it averaged a 20.5 rating, as opposed to the show whose timeslot it will be assuming this season, NBC's My Little Margie, which came in at 27.3. The new sponsor, unnamed in the article but in reality the Scott Paper Company, is said to have been aware that it was trading a more popular show for a less popular one, but was heavily influenced by the viewer response, as well as a feeling that CBS had scheduled the program in a bad timeslot.

  Jane Wyatt and Robert Young read some letters

And what were some of those letters? A Cincinnati housewife wrote, "If the sponsors cannot tell when they have a good show, why should I believe they know what they are talking about when it comes to their products?" Zing! From a woman in Chicago: "Perhaps you do not realize the pleasure this intriguing show brings to people who remember their own youthful family life with nostalgia. Please keep it." And this from John Crosby, one of the nation's preeminent television critics: "Unless somebody does something about it. Father Knows Best will be dropped off the air . . . This would be a crying scandal because Father Knows Best is one of the most honest and appealing and thoroughly delightful situation comedies on TV."  

Well, a lot of someones did do something about it, which led in turn to someone else, a sponsor, doing something else about it, and as a result, this counter-cultural program is returning for a second season. Wait; what's that about counter-cultural? Well, ask star Robert Young what makes Father different from other family sitcoms: "We didn’t want a father who was always blowing his top, or a mother who dominated her husband, or kids who were so smart that they made their folks look like morons. And we particularly didn’t want Pop to fall off a ladder or down a flight of stairs every week. How many fathers do you know—living, I mean—who could stand that, week after week?" It's an attitude echoed by the many viewers who saw the show as "one of TV’s few situation comedies that don’t cast Pop as a dim-wit.," that "represents American family life as it really is and not as some TV scriptwriter thinks it is—or should be." It's fashionable to look at the sitcoms of the 1950s and '60s and scoff at them as portraying families that were too good to be true, living in an America that never was. Perhaps they'd feel differently if they looked back at those very families that watched Father Knows Best, recognized in it the world they lived in, and thought it was a show worth saving.

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On the cover this week is 29-year-old comedian Johnny Carson, seen with Jody, the first of his four wives. He's called the "young man with a grin," and undoubtedly, he's hoping that his career will have more longevity than his marriages. And interestingly, the comedian to whom he draws the most comparisons is George Gobel, for more reasons than the fact that Carson is the first comedian since Gobel to host his variety show from Hollywood. "We’re both low-pressure; we both underplay. Gobel is the hottest thing in the field right now, so naturally, anyone coming along with even an approximation of his style is going to be compared to him." 

One of Johnny's greatest champions has been Jack Benny, who was impressed with Carson from the first moment that Johnny firmly stepped into the spotlight to substitute for an ailing Red Skelton. ("All the way into the studio,” Carson says, “I kept trying to remember sure-fire gags. It was all so fast, I really didn’t have time to get into a nervous tizzy.") After the show, Benny insisted to anyone who would listen to him that "The kid is great," and urged CBS to find a format for him. "No wonder they can’t sell him," Benny complained, "he’s too good, too intelligent—they’re all looking for pie throwers." Finally, the network, with two sponsors in hand, launched Carson with his own variety show on June 30. 

The keys to Carson's future success seem clearly seen in retrospect. The unidentified author of the profile cites Carson's flair for "the quieter kind of comedy," and describes him as "both a listener and a worker," two of the characteristics that would serve Carson so well later on when hosting The Tonight Show. "Besides shouldering the burden of being a young comedian tossed into the network whirlpool, he plays an important part in the writing and casting of the show, chores which are generally full-time jobs in themselves." He uses wife Jody on the show on "an irregularly regular basis" (much like his marital history); she was, in fact, the only female member of the cast with any staying power until singer Jill Corey was booked for an eight-week run. 

Hosting his own variety show from Hollywood is a long way from Nebraska, where Carson was born and raised. After moving to Hollywood in 1950, he spent a year as a staff announcer at KNXT, the CBS affiliate, and hosted a local show, Carson's Cellar, which was "reasonably successful." He moved from there to a summer show, Earn Your Vacation, and started writing monologues for Red Skelton. When Skelton was injured during a rehearsal (smacking his head against a non-breakaway wall an hour before airtime for his live show), he "hollered for Carson, and Carson came running." Although The Johnny Carson Show lasts only one season, it's enough to attract the attention of ABC, which makes him the host of Who Do You Trust?, with sidekick Ed McMahon. It's there that Johnny really displays the quick wit and interview skills that will put him in such good standing when NBC calls for Tonight. And the rest—well, you know how that goes.

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It's always nice to read about the stars before they became stars, isn't it? Likewise, it's fun to capture iconic programs, like Father Knows Best, before they became legends. Let's see what we can run across in this week's batch.

On Saturday night, The Jimmy Durante Show (8:30 p.m. CT, NBC) presents what could be called an ironic storyline: Jimmy, having discovered that the bank is about to repossess his nightclub because he's behind on the payments, "acquires the answers to be used on a quiz show and contrives to be a contestant in order to raise some money." They're not suggesting, by any chance, that those quiz shows might be rigged, are they? How else would he get the answers ahead of time?

Miss America 1955, Lee Ann Meriwether relinquishes her crown next Saturday, but in the meantime, she's been preparing for life after the beauty-contest circuit. Last December, she made her TV acting debut on the anthology series TV Playhouse, and this Sunday she stars on that series' "The Miss America Story" (8:00 p.m., NBC). It's neither biographical nor a documentary, just a drama about "the experiences of a beauty-contest winner" being portrayed by a fledgling actress who just happens to be the reigning Miss America. During the past year, Meriwether has earned $60,000 from TV commercials and providing commentary on fashion shows, and she plans to continue her career in television after she's no longer "Miss America." "Dave Garroway has been dangling a Today job in front of her," which she thinks would be great, "But golly, how would I get my Master's degree?" She must figure it out, because she goes on to that two-year stint as one of the Today Girls, followed by an acting career that lasts until 2000 and includes, well, just about everything. A worthy Miss America indeed.

On Monday, which also happens to be Labor Day, former president Harry Truman addresses the AFL-CIO Labor Day celebration at Cadillac Square in Detroit. (1:00 p.m., CBS and NBC). It's also nearing the end of Arthur Godfrey's summer vacation; in the meantime, Peter Lind Hayes fills for Godfrey on Arthur Godfrey Time (9:30 a.m., CBS), while Jack Paar pinch-hits for the Old Redhead on Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts (7:30 p.m., CBS). Garry Moore also has the day off, with Walter O'Keefe filling in on The Garry Moore Show (9:00 a.m., CBS), and Ernie Kovacs begins his second week substituting for Steve Allen on The Tonight Show (11;00 p.m., NBC). Tony Martin has no such luck; his evening Tony Martin Show returns for another season (6:30 p.m., NBC), taking up the first 15 minutes of the half-hour block that includes NBC's evening news. 

Tuesday leads off with The World at Home (9:45 a.m., NBC), with Arlene Francis and Hugh Downs interviewing the most decorated soldier of World War II, actor Audie Murphy.* In prinetime, it's the debut of television's first "adult" Western, The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp (7:30 p.m., ABC), starring Hugh O'Brian as the legendary lawman. In one of the early examples of linear storytelling on television, the series opens with "Mr. Earp Becomes a Marshal," as Earp launches his storied career by becoming marshal in Ellsworth, Kansas. 

*The program, which airs for 15 minutes prior to the start of Arlene's Home series, has some interesting guests this week; on Wednesday, it's NAACP attorney Thurgood Marshall, who was the attorney in the Brown v. Board case that ended school segregation, and would go on to become a justice of the Supreme Court.

Wednesday's Disneyland (6:30 p.m., ABC) takes a trip to Tomorrowland, where Wernher von Braun is one of the scientists discussing the challenges ahead for putting a "Man in Space," and what man's first spaceflight will look like. That's followed by Pall Mall Playhouse (7:30 p.m., ABC), with John Newland—whom we'll know better from hosting One Step Beyond—starring as a tenderfoot finding out that life in the West isn't what he expected. And at 8:30 p.m., I've Got a Secret (CBS) gives us a second look this week at Audie Murphy, who has a secret for the panel. Don McNeill sits in for Garry Moore, who returns to IGAS as well as his own show next week. 

Thursday afternoon's Early Show presents "Tomorrow's Man" (4:00 p.m., CBS), with Pat O'Brien as a football coach* who must decide whether to win a game, or teach his son (John Derek) a lesson. I've got an idea: why not teach him how to win? Problem solved! Later, it's a rare comedy on Climax! (7:30 p.m., CBS), but for good reason: the star of "Public Pigeon No. 1" is Red Skelton, who plays a sucker hired by conmen to sell stock in a phony uranium company. That's followed at 8:30 p.m. by Four Star Playhouse, and this week the star is Charles Boyer as a mysterious stranger who arrives at the front door of a young woman whose husband has just escaped from prison; Beverly Garland co-stars. 

*Not Knute Rockne, presumably.

On Friday the dramatic anthology series Star Stage premieres with "The Toy Lady" (8:30 p.m., NBC), starring Silvia Sidney and Lorne Greene (I wonder whatever happened to him?). Later, on Edward R. Murrow's Person to Person, Ed's guests are Ethel Merman, appearing with her husband and two children from their home in Denver. Later on, it's the deferred premiere on WTMJ of Science Fiction Theater (10:30 p.m.). The syndicated series actually debuted in April, but it's debuting here as part of WTMJ's fall schedule. (And by the way, it's actually spelled Theatre.

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Curious as to what's popular on TV in Chicagoland? Well, wonder no more; American Research Bureau, which used to provide the ratings for the networks, is out with their Top Ten list for July, and, to nobody's surprise, The $64,000 Question sits on top of the heap, well ahead of Ed Sullivan's Toast of the Town. CBS and NBC dominate the ratings, with ABC's U.S. Steel Hour the highest-rated show on the lowest-rated network. 

The $64,000 Question is also the nation's number one show, based on the Trendex ratings, followed by I've Got a Secret, Toast of the Town, Two for the Money, and G.E. Theater. By the way, according to the Teletype, Toast of the Town has a change upcoming; starting with the new season, it will henceforth be called The Ed Sullivan Show. Elsewhere, if you're wondering why Audie Murphy's been so active on TV this week, it's probably because he's promoting his new movie, To Hell and Back. And Jim Backus is on the lookout for one of those sound-proof booths like the kind you see on Question, "For my mother-in-law."

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Tom D'Andrea and Hal March: discharged

This week, Bob Stahl reviews a sitcom I hadn't previously been aware of (not that there aren't a lot of those), The Soldiers, starring Tom D'Andrea and Hal March. In much the same way as Saturday Night Live spun off long-running skits like "Wayne's World" and "The Coneheads" into big-screen movies, The Soldiers is a spin-off from a routine that D'Andrea and March used to do on The Colgate Comedy Hour. And just to show you that tart commentary didn't begin with our hero, Cleveland Amory, this is how Stahl describes the transition to television: "Apparently encouraged by an overwhelming lack of critical acclaim, they have expanded the idea into a half-hour series that NBC gambled on this summer as a Saturday night replacement." 

The pair play peacetime GI sad-sacks who are perpetually getting into trouble with the brass, as well as anyone else who comes near. As Stahl points out, there's nothing inherently wrong with Army comedy; "No Time for Sergeants," with Andy Griffith, was a big hit on Broadway, television, and the movies; and Phil Silvers will do pretty well, starting this fall, with Bilko. However, that's where the comparison ends, as "D’Andrea and March play such stupid dolts that there’s little humor left." Well, not everyone gets everything right; although the series bites the dust after just ten episodes, Tom D'Andrea will continue with his movie and television career, while Hal March will make an honest living as host of The $64,000 Question.

Stahl's second review is of another summer replacement series, Windows, a half-hour anthology that subs for Person to Person. The premise involves the camera peering through a window, setting the stage for the story of the people seen through that window. This is another of those series with which I wasn't previously familiar, and it gives off more than a little bit of the Twilight Zone vibe, beginning with the initial episode, in which all the children of a neighborhood disappear at the same time. That one, according to Stahl, came up a cropper after a terrific premise, but a later story "of a girl locked in an apartment from which there was no escape, this being her estranged husband’s way of driving her out of her mind," hit the sweet spot. It also took a crack at a pair of Ray Bradbury stories, "The World Out There" and "Arcade." It was, Stahl says, "an excellent example of how TV can dress up an otherwise routine series of dramatic shows with a single gimmick."

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MST3K alert: Jungle Goddess (1948) Two pilots go into the depths of the African jungle to search for a missing heiress. George Reeves, Ralph Byrd, Wanda McKay. (Wednesday, midnight, WNBQ in Chicago) Even the Man of Steel can't save this one, in which two ugly Americans travel to darkest Africa with the motto, "If it moves, shoot it." It's saved on MST3K, however (if that's the word), by part one of the Bela Lugosi serial, "The Phantom Creeps." TV

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This week in TV Guide: April 24, 1971

If you're like me, you probably gave up watching the news years ago. I mean, I already take medication to keep from getting depressed; the last thing I need is to go out there and intentionally find something that makes me even more depressed. But, you say, what if there was a happy news program out there, one that made you smile even through the worst of the news? Well, if that's what you're looking for, than New York's WABC has the answer.

Don't believe me? Here's a letter from a couple in White Plains, New York: "Here we are watching our favorite comedy program: Eyewitness News really knows how to make the news bearable. We're crying on the inside and laughing on the outside. Right on!" It's not, as Richard K. Doan points out, that the station ignores the bad news; they still cover "the rape, riot and revolution" of the day. They take what they do seriously; it's how they do it that brings smiles to viewers. Eyewitness News co-anchors Roger Grimsby and Bill Beutel lead the way; one night, Grimsby, having reported that striking cab drivers believed he had treated the news of their strike "too lightly," dryly remarked, "I'm not going to step off the curb when I hail a cab." And then there was the time when reporter Melba Tolliver signed off from a story from McSorley's Bar, as the camera panned to an outside view of a painting of "a voluptuous nude hanging on the wall." Cracked Beutel, "Didn't look much like Melba." And then there was the time that sports reporter Howard Cosell was introduced as the president of the Howard Cosell Fan Club.

Granted, from our perspective it may be pretty easy to keep a straight face in response to this banter, but there's no question that this does signal a shift from the traditional stern-faced, all-business news anchors we all know and love. As Doan points out, while there's no shortage of bad news on Eyewitness News, the fact of the matter is that most of the news is not about the war, inflation, drugs, hippies, and other ulcer-inducing stories; instead, the station bears down on "old-fashioned" bad news: robberies, muggings, stabbings, fires, and the like. It's tabloid news for a tabloid city, and it's helped catapult WABC into first place in New York City's ratings race. And the newscasters at Channel 7 are just one happy family, engaging in harmless kidding around between themselves. 

And that might be another reason why we don't see anything so remarkable in this today: we're used to it. Probably every news market in America runs commercials showing their personalities parading around the city in staged group shots, while they act like the best of workplace friends in front of the camera. At least in Minneapolis-St. Paul, where I grew up, the news, weather, and sports anchors didn't even share the same desk until the late 1960s; typically, when the news finished there'd be a commercial break, after which you'd return to see the sports anchor occupying the desk, and likewise with the weather. In most of our 1960s TV Guides, the three segments of the broadcast are listed as three separate programs. If this was your typical view of the news, even the concept of having everyone together would be a development; the byplay between them would add to the family atmosphere. 

But is this jocularity good for the news? Not everyone likes this approach; Time called the Eyewitness News crew "a happy-go-lucky bunch of banana men," and Marvin Kitman of Newsday described the broadcast as having "the flavor of a cocktail party a stranger has just wandered into. It is not good journalism." On the other hand, Kitman also suggested they should probably "win a prize for honesty," and Columbia University's William Wood suggested that this approach was a vast improvement over "the funeral, almost pompous" way people were accustomed to receiving the news. WABC's general manager, Kenneth MacQueen, isn't complaining about the station's increase in revenues, and defends the approach: "I don't think 'happy news' describes it. It's just humanistic," and Richard O'Leary, president of ABC's O&O stations, has expanded the approach to its stations in Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. "People want somebody to reassure them," O'Leary says in explanation of the format's success, "so they can take their fingernails out of their palms and go to sleep at night." 

Naturally, success breeds imitation, and it won't be long before some form of this, whatever you want to call it, is the rule rather than the exception for local news. I'd go so far as to suggest that this is just the way news is nowadays everywhere, including networks and cablecasts. I'm not against it in principle; what I think we need more of in the industry today is actual journalistic reporting by people with at least a modicum of talent, and comedy is no replacement for gravitas. Just give me the damn news, and once you've established that you can handle it, then if you want to kid around a bit, you can. But remember, this isn't an evening at the improv. People didn't watch Cronkite because he acted like their best friend or empathized with them; they watched him because they trusted him. That's what we need more of today.

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From 1963 to 1976, TV Guide's weekly reviews were written by the witty and acerbic Cleveland Amory. Whenever they appear, we'll look at Cleve's latest take on the shows of the era. 

If you were left in any doubt as to what Cleveland Amory thinks of CBS's daytime drama Love is a Many Splendored Thing, then his conclusion should remove any question. To the tune of the song of the same name: 

     Once on a high and windy hill

     In the morning mist

     Two lovers kissed

     And the plot stood still

Well, I suppose you could say that about any soap opera, but it seems particularly appropriate in this case, for as Cleve says, nothing ever really happens on this show. "One day, for example, there was some really wild action—a phone call. Of course it didn't happen right away. Nothing ever happens right away on a show like this." He goes on to recount how they talked about the call on Monday. On Tuesday, they discussed the arguments for and against making the call. He skipped Wednesday, but he didn't miss anything, for on Thursday they finally made the call. And on Friday, they talked about why they made it. Fortunately, the weekend came along, and a break from watching. Which was a good thing, because "There is no man living who could do it every day. It is, for a mere male, too emotionally exciting."

Lest you think this is the only thing from which this show suffers, there's more. The series, Amory says, takes place around a hospital and a research foundation. "Which, we guess, is supposed to give it all a kind of nobility. One thing is certain—the characters don't. They are as shoddy a bunch as you would care to come across in this show or the next." There's so much misery, deceit, infertility, infidelity, and other things that it should be called a mope opera. And what else can one do should you find yourself in a situation like this but talk about. And talk. "All the characters, apparently on the theory they are just on radio, do nothing but talk." And, of course, fall in and out of that splendored thing called love. What amazes me is that Love is a Many Splendored Thing had already been on the air for four years at this point, and it has another couple to go before it's done. But if you're anything like Cleveland Amory, you're probably already done much sooner than that.

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After something like that, you have to admit, what's called for is something to cleanse the palette. To accomplish this goal, we turn to Dick Hobson's look at the success of The Beverly Hillbillies, and the man behind it all, Paul Henning. 

We've written admiringly about Hillbillies before in this space, particularly Malcolm Muggeridge's insightful article about what the series really represents ("an innocence which triumphantly survives the possession of riches."), but I didn't realize until this moment that it has also played a role in "sanitizing sociocultural stereotypes." Yet, according to Al Simon, Columbia University English major turned situation-comedy entrepreneur, that's just what the show has accomplished. "Before The Beverly Hillbillies went on the air nine years ago, the word 'hillbillies' brought to mind the picture of dirty, unkempt people wearing long beards, inhabiting dilapidated shacks with outhosues out back. As a result of our show, the word has a new meaning all over America. Now, it denotes charming, delightful, wonderful, clean, wholesome people." 

All this is something of a mystery to Henning, who was merely looking to produce a show that made people laugh. According to his colleague and collaborator, Dick Wesson, "Paul writes the show to be thigh-slapping funny. So many half-hour shows have those little warm moments of domestic heart-tug and homespun sentimentality. Paul doesn't do that. He writes the how to make you laugh, to really get to your belly." 

One proof of the show's success is a $15 million suit filed by a CBS cameraman who claimed that Hillbillies pirated the concept of his presentation for a show, "Country Cousin," featuring a rustic farmer who visits his city-slicker New York relatives. The trial ended in a hung jury, and a new trial has been ordered, but the experience shook Henning up. "It was like walking down the street with your 4-year-old child by the hand and a stranger comes along and says, 'Hey, that's my child!' " Indeed, Hillbillies is Henning's baby through and through: parts of Granny's character come from his mother, while Elly May was based on daughter Linda. Henning himself has written or co-written 247 of thr 274 episodes made to date. And Henning supervises "every detail of production down to the last titter and snort on the laugh track." 

Henning with Granny (Irene Ryan)

It only took five weeks for Hillbillies to reach #1 in the ratings, and the list of shows who've tried and failed to go against it is an impressive one: The Perry Como Show, Going My Way, Ben Casey, Espionage, Shindig, Gidget, Blue Light, and The Second Hundred Years. It's given credit for saving The Dick Van Dyke Show from cancelation; during its second season, Van Dyke was moved to a time slot immediately following Hillbillies and "inherited enough of an audience to prosper." 

This shouldn't have been a surprise to anyone familiar with Henning's track record in sitcoms; prior to Hillbillies, he'd had a five-season success with The Bob Cummings Show. He's what is known as a "pressure writer," with the deadline bringing out the best in him. He also suffers through every line. "You apply yourself and work hard," he says. "It's simply a weekly grind." He derives great pleasure from Hillbillies, especially when he and Hobson put things in the script that they know won't get past the censors, such as a reducing farm with the motto "Leave your fat behind in Phoenix." The censor, surprisingly, didn't have a problem with that joke other than a request to change the locale to avoid sounding like a commercial for the Elizabeth Arden reducing farm in Phoenix. Even so, they didn't use the joke. "We never had any intention of using it because it just might have offended somebody. We're not writing deathless prose. It's just a line. It's something you grind out like sausage." Although, as Hobson concludes, "no sausage machine takes home $45,000 a week."

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Repeats are plentiful this week; we're advised that some of these episodes are among the best of the season, and we're in no position to disagree. We get started. however, with a first-run special debuting Saturday morning, NBC Children's Theatre's "The Sounds of Children" (9:00 a.m.), which was taped last December at the White House Conference on Children. The hour-long special is performed entirely by children, and includes song, dance, and musical performances, hosted by the Ritts Puppets, and featuring an appearance by First Daughter Julie Nixon Eisenhower. Finishing off Saturday morning, Dick Clark returns to Philadelphia for an American Bandstand reunion with some of the show's former dancers; Chuck Berry is among the musical guests (Noon, ABC).

Sunday features reruns of the full-hour Honeymooners episodes from The Jackie Gleason Show (9:00 p.m., CBS), and this week sees Ralph (Gleason) obsessed with entering contests after his in-laws won a free trip around the world. That's up against a "Lawyers" segment of The Bold Ones (9:00 p.m., NBC) that sees Walt Nichols (Burl Ives) defending a Vietnam vet-turned-hippie who's accused of having killed his best friend.

Plimpton and The Duke

On Monday, George Plimpton—"America's professional amateur," as he's billed—makes his movie debut in "Plimpton! Shoot-Out at Rio Lobo" (8:00 p.m., ABC), a behind-the-scenes look at his experience playing a crooked deputy in the John Wayne movie Rio Lobo. Plimpton is probably most famous for Paper Lion, his exploits in a training camp with the Detroit Lions, but he did a series of specials like this one, and they're all pretty entertaining, although none of them compare to seeing him try to impersonate a professional quarterback. If you like George here, you'll probably want to switch over to Book Beat (9:00 p.m., PBS), where he discusses his book American Journey—The Times of Robert Kennedy with host Bob Cromie. But that's only if you've already seen the original run of tonight's Carol Burnett Show (9:00 p.m., CBS), with Carol and her special guest, Rita Hayworth. 

Tuesday gives us a couple of reruns worth watching; unfortunately, they're on at the same time, so hopefully you saw one of them previously. The aforementioned Beverly Hillbillies run into con man Shifty Shafer, played by Phil Silvers, in tonight's episode from Washington, D.C. (6:30 p.m., CBS), while Peter Ustinov stars in Hallmark Hall of Fame's "A Storm in Summer" (6:30 p.m., NBC), written by Rod Serling, and co-starring Ivan Dixon's son N'Gai as an urban youth spending his summer in upstate New York. Both Ustinov and Serling won Emmys.

Wednesday's episode of The Men From Shiloh, which you and I know and love as The Virginian (6:30 p.m., NBC), features James Drury's Virginian, accused of murder, in a hunt for the real killer. The real attraction here is the guest cast, which is exceptional even for a 90-minute series: Joseph Cotten, Brandon deWilde, Monte Markham, Sallie Shockley, Anne Francis, Rod Cameron, Agnes Moorehead, Neville Brand, and John Smith. As if that isn't enough star wattage, hang around for Kraft Music Hall (8:00 p.m., NBC), with host Alan King, who's joined by guests Lena Horne, Charles Nelson Reilly, and Stiller and Meara. 

Thursday is a night for variety shows, with Flip Wilson leading things off at 6:30 p.m. (NBC), featuring Roger Miller, the Temptations, Lily Tomlin, and Redd Foxx. At 7:00 p.m., it's The Jim Nabors Hour (CBS), with guest Barbara McNair in a spoof of Cinderella that sees Jim playing a traveling shoe salesman who's mistaken for Prince Charming. And to round out the evening, it's The Dean Martin Show (9:00 p.m., NBC), with guests Engelbert Humperdinck, Dom DeLuise, Jackie Vernon, and Pat Crowley. For variety of a different sort, the late movie tonight is the controversial Lolita (10:30 p.m., KTVI), with James Mason, Shelley Winters, and Sue Lyon.

You'll have to stay up late for Friday's best, but it'll be worth it: a rerun of Dick Cavett's 90-minute interview with Fred Astaire (12:15 a.m., ABC). The show includes clips from some of Astaire's most famous movies, Fred discussing his dancing partners, and the highlight, in which Dick cajoles Fred into doing a little dancing right there. I've long complained about the quality of today's late night shows, but I don't think anyone will disagree with me that there's nobody in television today who'd be capable of doing 90 minutes with a single guest; Cavett was terrific at it.

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Since we began with a story from Richard K. Doan, we'll conclude with The Doan Report, and it was probably inevitable that the ratings race would get to the point where programs were in trouble before they even debuted. Programming consultant Herb Jacobs, looking at factors from star appeal to scheduling, is predicting that Shirley's World, starring Shirley MacLaine in a sitcom about a globetrotting photographer, and The Man and the City, with Anthony Quinn as a big-city mayor, will both bomb, while The Funny Side and The Chicago Teddy Bears are a "disaster area." As it happens, he's right about all four of them; what he gets wrong are the shows he predicts as hits, including Sandy Duncan's Funny Face, James Garner's Nichols, and Jimmy Stewart's Family Plan, which actually aired as The Jimmy Stewart Show; none of them see the promise of a second season, although in the case of Funny Face it was due mostly to Duncan's surgery for a brain tumor. Now, if they could only get to the point where some of these shows are cancelled before anyone even thinks of them. . . TV  

This week in TV Guide: March 19, 1966

WeIn some casting news, the Teletype reports that Stefanie Powers will be replacing Mary Ann Mobley in the upcoming The Girl From U.N.C.L.E.; Mobley played April Dancer in the back-door pilot that aired on The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (Mobley's co-star in the pilot, Norman Fell, will also be replaced in the role of Mark Slate with Noel Harrison.) And with that, we're into this week's cover story by Leslie Raddatz, and the beginning of the closest thing we've ever had here to a theme issue. You'll see what I mean as we go through the issue; just look for the bold-face names.

 "Nothing quite like The Man from U.N.C.L.E. has ever happened to television," he says, "not only in program content, which has spawned a host of imitators, but in the fact that U.N.C.L.E. almost didn’t make it at all." The show faltered at the outset, which producer Norman Felton says is because it took viewers a while to catch on to the show's blend of conventional adventure richly invested with humor, and it almost got the axe in January. But now, in its second (and best) season, it's become a phenomenon, garnering fan letters from people around the country "who had nothing much in common except they were U.N.C.L.E. nuts," including one from a CBS producer who told Felton that his four children had become "wild Man from U.N.C.L.E. addicts" who beg me continually, constantly, to get them U.N.C.L.E. cards, THRUSH cards, photos of Robt. Vaughn, the blond kid (Illya?), ete. Do you have kits available for fellow producers who must nightly compete with your superheroes or be branded weaklings in the eyes of their offspring?"

Felton, who sends out between 50 and 60 thousand U.N.C.L.E. cards every month in response to the same number of letters from fans, had a previous reputation for serious, prestige drama, with a portfolio including Studio One, Robert Montgomery Presents, The U.S. Stell Hour, Mr. Novak, and The Eleventh Hour; he says that he's delighted with the success of U.N.C.L.E., but admits "I would rather have one Novak on the air than six U.N.C.L.E.'s." The idea for the show came three years ago, when Felton decided he wanted to do a series that was "just fun," and thus came the concept of a show featuring "a mysterious man who would become involved with ordinary people in adventures with humorous overtones." He held back on the more humorous episodes at first, given that NBC had bought U.N.C.L.E. as a straight adventure series, and there are still viewers who look at it that way, "which is all right with us." 

Of David McCallum, Felton says, "I never had any idea he would become the hit he has. His part in the pilot film was only a few lines, and he was just one of many actors we considered. We picked him because he looked different." But the blond, 32-year-old Scot has, indeed, become the breakout star of the show, a man who embraces the mystery of his character in his personal life as well. "He has little of the actor’s vanity, pretension or self-delusion," and in a recent appearance of the network's Hullabaloo, he was never once referred to by his own name, but that of his character, an idea that came from him. He's uncomfortable with the attention from fan magazines, especially when they call him "cute" ("That’s an American word I hate. A litter of mongrel puppies is cute."), and he refuses any photo layouts including his wife Jill Ireland and their three sons. 

Considering that Robert Vaughn was supposed to be the Man from U.N.C.L.E., he'd seem to have every right to resent having to share the spotlight with McCallum, but such is not the case. "When it was pointed out that many actors would be unhappy in such a situation, Vaughn said, 'Maybe a lot of actors aren’t as secure as I am.' " Unlike McCallum, he's enjoying fame and its fringe benefits; "I'm surprised at the reaction—I never anticipated anything like this," he says, but he was always confident the show would be a hit. "I thought so from the beginning and told everybody so. Of course, I began looking red in the face that first January when they were going to cancel us." During the summer hiatus, he played "Hamlet" gratis at the Pasadena Playhouse, and continues to work at USC on his Ph.D. in the philosophy of communications.

Throughout the article, Raddatz scatters examples of letters the show's fans have written. (Letters—you remember what those were, don't you?) In one of them, a West Coast college student writes, "I feel that your program offers an escape from our problems. The cast has its problems, but they’re mostly of a child’s dream world of spies and counterspies." A student at the Bronx High School of Science wonders if there's anyone working for the show that they can talk to about patenting some of their own gadgets. And a couple traveling in the same plan as Robert Vaughn took a moment to scribble a note on the back of an air sickness bag and have the stewardess hand it to him: "May I invade your privacy to say thanks for being so gracious in giving your autograph the other night. It will be the most exciting thing we are taking back to our 18-year-old daughter." Perhaps that's what television needed, in 1966. Perhaps that's what we need more of today.

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During the 60s, the Ed Sullivan Show and The Hollywood Palace were the premiere variety shows on television. Whenever they appear in TV Guide together, we'll match them up and see who has the best lineup..

Sullivan: Scheduled guests: singers Abbe Lane and Brenda Lee; ventriloquist Senor Wences; singer Jimmy Roselli; comedienne Jean Carroll; dancer Peter Gennaro; the rock ‘n’ rolling Young Rascals; and English comics Des O'Connor and Jack Douglas. (The actual guests included Walter Cronkite, the cast from "Wait A Minim" (South African dancers); The Magid Triplets, tap dancers; and The Olympiades, body builders. Jimmy Roselli did not appear.) 

Palace: Host Robert Goulet, star of Blue Light, introduces singer-dancer Chita Rivera; singer Nancy Sinatra; comic Jan Murray; the Muppets, puppets; comedy pantomimist Cully Richards; and the Nerveless Nocks, Sway-pole acrobats.  

Robert Goulet takes a break from his dramatic, non-singing role in the World War II spy series Blue Light to return to his strong suit, music. I've always liked him, especially his penchant for self-effacing humor (remember Bob Goulet's Cajun Christmas from the movie Scrooged, or his appearances on ESPN commercials as "Mr. G"?) Throw in Jan Murray, Chita Rivera, and the Muppets, and that's good enough to overcome a strong lineup from Ed. Once again, Mr. G delivers the goods, and a win for Palace.

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From 1963 to 1976, TV Guide's weekly reviews were written by the witty and acerbic Cleveland Amory. Whenever they appear, we'll look at Cleve's latest take on the shows of the era. 

By now, regular readers are pretty familiar with the debacle that was The Sammy Davis Jr. Show, which was covered here and here. Cleveland Amory is certainly aware of it; as this review went to press, NBC has already announced the show's cancellation. And while that's understandable, it's also unfortunate, because after a rough start that you'd never wish on your worst network enemy, The Sammy Davis Jr. Show has not only become good, it's started to fulfill its potential to become something approaching the BIGGEST THING EVER.

The problems with the show went beyond those we read about, especially the bizarre conflict that forced Davis to be absent from his own show for the episodes immediately following the premiere (which was, itself, a lame affair with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor). Building an hour-long show around one of the most dynamic performers in the business was, it seemed, a good idea at the time. To hear NBC talk about it, it would be, as Cleve suggested a moment ago, the BIGGEST SHOW EVER. But these kinds of things never pan out, primarly because (1) no one star can be that much bigger than everyone else (as Jerry Lewis, Frank Sinatra, and Judy Garland discovered with their own series; (2) nobody can be interesting enough to dominate a solid hour every single week (see, again, the examples in (1)); and (3) not every star can also produce a show. Add to that a subsequent lineup of guests from Milton Berle, to Frank Sinatra Jr. ("who is a poised and charming young man but no threat even to Sammy, let alone Sinatra Sr, as a singer."), and a group called "The Copasetics" ("about whom you couldn’t tell whether they were meant to be just funny or good. If the former, they weren’t funny enough—if the latter, they were too funny.") In this sense, the show was set up to fail. 

And that, Amory, is unfortunate, because "the plain fact is, though there were many things wrong with this show, there are many more things right with it—and it is getting better every week." He cites a recent dance routine that Davis did to Robert Preston's voiceover of "Trouble," or the "127th Street" number from Golden Boy that he did with Johnny Brown. In those cases, we got to see Sammy as he truly is, "as he should have been from the beginning—Mr. Wonderful." Unfortunate, indeed.

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In Henry Harding's For the Record, the A.C. Nielsen Company now admits that 55 of its sample homes were involved in a plot to increase the ratings of an unnamed show which aired on February 18. The plot involved questionnaries that had been mailed to Nielsen sample homes in "the populous 'east-central area' of the nation. The questionnaire asked for comments on certain commercials that would air on a particular show. "If the commercials were watched, the ratings of that show, of course, would go up." The company is not naming any suspects yet, but believe they're "reasonably well-directed," according to one of their lawyers. They also admit confusion as to how anyone could get ahold of the confidential list of Nielsen homes. It's all, they said, very mysterious.

Of course, you have to know that this wouldn't be good enough for me, and thanks to the internet, I can share with you the rest of the story. The suspect in question was Richard Sparger, a former reporter and former state legislature in Oklahoma, who'd once publicly claimed that he "could make a hit of a show that was a failure." The show in question was CBS's special, An Evening with Carol Channing.* Sparger had mailed the questionnaires, along with $3, to the 58 households, asking questions about the commercials that would appear on the Channing special. If viewers completed and returned the questionnaire, they'd receive another $5. Nielsen filed suit against Sparger for $1,500,000, charging "impairment of confidence in the accuracy of the measurement service and the security of the sample." He was also accused of having used privileged information gathered when he was serving as a congressional investigator of the ratings industry in 1963.

*One of the special's guests: David McCallum.

But the plot thickens. It turns out that Sparger had exchanged at least 40 phone calls with one Charles F. Lowe, who just happens to be the husband, manager, and occasional producer for—wait for it—Carol Channing. This little fact was uncovered by private detectives hired by Nielsen (why didn't we ever see a story like this on Mannix?) who also found out that a teller at Oklahoma City's Liberty National Bank had cashed a $4,000 check from Lowe to Sparger, and that, just before Nielsen filed suit against Sparger, he had called Lowe, saying "something like 'Santa Claus will take care of you' " for "clamming up" with investigators.

It didn't help that Lowe had previously denied having done business with Sparger; he also claimed that it was "ridiculous and incredible to believe that Carol Channing should need any help" in the ratings, and that even if he did have anything to do with such a plot, it was also ridiculous (although apparently not incredible) for him to have made the payoff by check. Sparger and Lowe turned down a plea deal from Nielsen that would have involved the company dropping the charges in return for Sparger admitting his guilt and Lowe paying $100 grand to offset the legal expenses; Sparger countered that Nielsen was harrassing his friends and neighbors, had forced the phone company to give them his private number, and was threatening to including his wife and a friend in the indictment 

In the end, Nielsen dropped the suit against Sparger in September after he conceded having approached Lowe with the idea, and admitted that he'd attempted the activity "for purposes of obtaining financial enrichment," that being including the results in a planned book entitled How to Rig the Ratings for Fun and Profit. (He also revealed that he had gotten the names by finding out the identities of contractors who serviced the meters placed on television sets, then following them as they called on the sample homes.) And people continued to suspect the ratings anyway.

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Here's a small item that would have been guaranteed to make readers feel just a little older: after eight seasons and 275 episodes, Donna Reed is saying goodbye to her eponymous sitcom, and even though she'd vowed she wouldn't cry when things had wrapped up, the moment got the better of her. Her husband, producer Tony Owen; Screen Gems VP Steve Blauner; and cast and crew gathered to pay tribute to Donna and wish she and Tony the best in the future. Her plans? "Oh, rest, travel—fun, fun, fun!" (Although I don't think her plans included a trip to Dallas.)

I include this because The Donna Reed Show, along with Ozzie & Harriet, are among the handful of shows to span two distinct cultural periods, starting in the black-and-white nuclear family era (that some say never really existed), and ending at the dawn of the technicolor times (although her show never made the transition to color) of assassinations, Vietnam, civil rights, sex and drugs, and just about everything else anthetical to what The Donna Reed Show epitomized. Ah, the times, they were a changin', weren't they?

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Basketball is the lead story on Saturday, with Texas Western taking on Kentucky for the 1966 NCAA Championship, live from College Park, Maryland. (7:00 p.m. PT, syndicated; the full game is available here.) It's one of the most significant games ever played in college basketball, as Texas Western becomes the first team ever to win the championship with an all-black starting lineup, defeating top-ranked (and all-white) Kentucky 72-65.* Kentucky's presence in the final makes the moment even more significant; their legendary head coach, Adolph Rupp, was also a staunch segregationist who resisted efforts by the university's president to integrate the team; Kentucky wouldn't dress a black player until 1970. Don Haskins, the coach at Texas Western (today called the University of Texas at El Paso), didn't care what color his players were as long as they could play; his assistant coach said "he'd have played five kids from Mars if they were his best five players." He was immensely proud of his players, and took personal offense at any racial attacks on them; of Rupp, he would say, "I had been listening to all this damn crap out of him, and it's a wonder I didn't say something to him about it. But I didn't." I think it's safe to say that sports has never been the same since.

*It was, in fact, the first time any major American sports championship had ever been contested between a team with an all-black starting lineup and a team that was all-white.  

Zero Mostel, whom we'll see again later in the week, stars in Sunday's Play of the Week presentation of "Waiting for Godot." (8:30 p.m., KVIE). Burgess Meredith and Kurt Kasznar co-star in this production, which originally aired in 1961, and which many consider to be the definitive version of Samuel Beckett's Theatre of the Absurd play. And you know what: you can see it here and decide for yourself. Considering television's spotty history of preserving its own history, I'm always excited to find out that a broadcast like this actually survives. In fact, though, there are several such examples in the shows that follow.

The classic medical series Ben Casey wraps up its five-season run on Monday. (10:00 p.m., ABC) A couple of notes on this episode: first, as you might know, Ben Casey was produced by Bing Crosby Productions, and—perhaps coincidentally—one of the night's guest stars is none other than Kathryn Crosby, playing a patient showing symptoms of brain damage. Second is that of the show taking over in this time slot next week: The Avengers, "a British comedy-adventure series." Also on Monday is the movie The Young Philadelphians (11:30 p.m., KXTV), a mediocre courtroom drama starring Paul Newman and Barbara Rush. I mention this because it also features our future man from U.N.C.L.E., Robert Vaughn, who steals the movie as an alcoholic murder defendant, for which he earns a well-deserved Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

Tuesday night features Carol + 2 (8:30 p.m., CBS), one of Carol Burnett's periodic specials prior to her epononymous variety show (which starts in 1967); the "plus 2" are the aforementioned Zero Mostel and one of Carol's champions, Lucille Ball. (See part 1 here; links to the rest.) I don't remember that show, but I do remember the show that followed it later, a CBS News Special called "One of Our H-Bombs Is Missing" (10:00 p.m.), a report on the area in Spain where a B-52 crashed in January, and the U.S. Navy's search for the missing bomb. I wasn't yet six years old when this aired, and I have no particular idea as to why it would have interested me, other than that that I was interested in war stories, and I might have vaguely connected this somehow with the space program. It didn't scare me, I do know that. (The bomb was evenutally recovered in the Mediterranean in April.)

On Wednesday, Julie Andrews stars in a repeat of her special from last November, with special guests Gene Kelly and the New Christy Minstrels, and you can see it here. (9:00 p.m., NBC) After that, you can choose between a Something Special episode with Julie London and her husband, Bobby Troup, the Hi-Lo's, and bandleader Jerry Fielding (10:00 p.m., KXTV in Sacramento); or ABC's excellent documentary series Saga of Western Man presents "Beethoven: Ordeal and Triumph" (10:00 p.m.), written and narrated by John Secondari, with the voice of Beethoven provided by our other man from U.N.C.L.E., David McCallum. And just wait, it keeps geting better!

For Thursday, Burgess Meredith, whom we saw with Zero Mostel on "Waiting for Godot," is back in the conclusion of a Batman adventure that started last night. (7:30 p.m. both nights, ABC) This time, the Penguin insists that he's gone straight, and to prove it, he has his henchmen staging crimes so he can break them up. Will the frequently-gullible citizens of Gotham fall for this obvious scam? Sometimes, it seems as though they just don't deserve the Caped Crusaders. Later, Dean Martin hosts a stellar lineup of guests (10:00 p.m., NBC), including Imogene Coca, Jane Morgan, the Supremes, Jackie Mason, Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, and the tap dancing Step Brothers. (Here's a clip from Dean and the Supremes.) I think he's giving both Ed and the Palace a run for their money here.

There couldn't be any other choice for Friday than The Man from U.N.C.L.E. itself now, could there? (10:00 p.m., NBC) Tonight, it's "The Round-Table Affair," in which our heroes try to save the Duchy of Ingolstein from Prince Frederick, who's allowing the country to become a home to the Mafia. Valora Noland is the Grand Duchess, whom Solo tries to enlist; Reginald Gardiner is the Prince; and in a wonderful bit of casting, Bruce Gordon is Lucho Nostra, the head criminal.

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Agnes Scott College is a small, all-women's liberal arts college in Decatur, Georgia, and on Sunday afternoon, March 6, 1966, they scored what Slate called "The Greatest Upset in Quiz Show History" when they defeated Princeton University in, literally, the last second to win what was probably the most famous episode ever of G-E College Bowl. Television being what it is, College Bowl was running on a two-week delay on KVIE, the NBC affiliate in Sacramento, where it was shown at at 2:00 p.m. on Sunday, March 20. Regional issues of TV Guide being what they are, you could flip ahead a couple of pages to 5:30 p.m., where the NBC affiliates in San Francisco were showing today's College Bowl match between Parsons College, Fairfield, Iowa, and "the winner of last week’s match between Marietta (Ohio) College and Agnes Scott College, Decatur, Ga."—meaning, of course, that Agnes Scott would be defeating Princeton. So much for suspense, I guess, although I'd like to think that by this time, anyone living in Sacramento who really wanted to watch College Bowl would know by now not to get too many pages ahead.

*Agnes Scott's victory was a big-enough detail that it actually made The New York Times the next day.

But even though it's old news by this time, I wanted to mention this, not only because it's one of the great stories in TV history, but because it also provides a nice little bookend to that Texas Western story above. Agnes Scott, like Texas Western, was a little-known school taking on a prestigeous opponent that considered itself a class above the rest; carrying the analogy a step further, Princeton was, in 1966, still an all-male institution, and one couldn't miss noticing the similarities between the two schools, Princeton and Kentucky, neither one appearing to have yet adapted to the changing times. There had been David vs. Goliath upsets on College Bowl in the past, but none, before or after, seemed to capture the imagination of people quite the way this one did. Reading the Slate story, you'll be charmed, I think by the accounts of the four women competing for Agnes Scott, particularly the remarkable story of Karen Gearreald, Agnes Scott's first blind student, and her recounting of how the winning answer came to her in a millisecond.

There's one other similarity between that College Bowl broadcast and the NCAA Championship: the broadcasts of both still exist, and you can see that College Bowl broadcast here and find out how many answers you can come up with? I wonder how well the current Jeopardy champions would do?

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MST3K alert: Teenage Cave Man (1958). A young cave dweller in a primitive society questions the laws that govern his people. Robert Vaughn, Leslie Bradley, Darrah Marshall. (Saturday, 1:20 a.m., as part of KGO's All-Night Movie) Well, what would you expect after a cover story on The Man from U.N.C.L.E., a Teletype item on The Girl from U.N.C.L.E., The Young Philadelphians, and Beethoven? Sure, Robert Vaughn considers it the worst movie ever made, but that didn't stop him from cashing the check, right? And anyway, it made him the man for MST3K, and who could ask for anything more? TV  

Around the dial

Now that's my kind of car!

We lead off the week at Comfort TV, where David reviews the TV career of the late Tony Roberts, who first came to my attention as one-half of the legal series Rosetti and Ryan, co-starring with Squire Fridell; I was a captive viewer from back in the days of the one-station in the World's Worst Town™. 

RealWeegieMidget is back on the TV-movie circuit with the 1984 teleflick Obsessive Love, which stars Yvette Mimieux and Simon MacCorkindale and carries with it more than a whiff of Fatal Attraction. It's part of the "So Bad It's Good" Blogathon, which perhaps tells you all you need to know. 

At bare•bones e-zine, Jack's Hitchcock Project continues apace with the seventh-season story "The Children of Alda Nuova," Robert Wallsten's adaptation of his own short story, with Jack Carson starring as a criminal who makes a wrong turn into a wrong town.

Let's continue with crime, as John wraps up his "Private Detective Season" at Cult TV Blog with 1967's The Big M, with all the requisite sleaze that P.I.s thrive on. John also looks at some additional series, including the very good Philip Marlowe, Private Eye, with Powers Boothe.

At The Saturday Evening Post, Bob Sassone's "News of the Week" includes two pertinent questions about the TV ratings system: is it accurate, and does it even matter? Read the story, and stick around for this year's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nominees.

Travalanche has an excellent look back at the ubiquitqious John Charles Daly, urbane moderator of What's My Line?, anchor of ABC's evening news program, and one of my absolute favorite television persons ever. I may be coming up on 65, but I still say that I want to be like him when I grow up.

It's only tangentially related to classic TV, but unless you've been under a rock for the last couple of years, you know about the disintegration of cable television. Variety has an in-depth look at the future of Comcast, including USA Network (which produced many an original show in the day), and what it may bode for the industry as a whole.

Speaking of, it looks as if the long relationship between ESPN and Major League Baseball is over at the end of the upcoming season. Did MLB undervalue its product? And what could this mean for a new television partner? Sports Media Watch has all the details, including what happens to ESPN.

Wrapping things up with The View from the Junkyard, Roger continues his episode-by-episode review of The New Avengers, with "The Tale of the Big Why," an example of how the series handles comedy with a deft touch—unlike, perhaps, the original. TV