This week in TV Guide: January 24, 1959

Based on the composition of this week's cover, which features a picture of Red Skelton with one of his clown paintings, accompanied by the caption "What Good Are Television Critics?" one might assume that it's Red himself asking the question. Well, he's not—we'll get to that story later. In fact, Dwight Whitney's cover story asks a much different question: "What Makes a Clown?" And the answer can be a disconcerting one. 

The story plays off the death last year of Skelton's nine-year-old son Richard from leukemia, and posits that tragedy helps define a clown, in the same sense that Janus has both a laughing and crying face. Whitney looks to past stars who've blended comedy and tragedy in their work, stars such as Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Ramu, Emmett Kelly, and others. In looking at Skelton's recurring characters, such as Freddie the Freeloader, Whitney often finds that same mix; as Freddie is about to sink his teeth into a shiny red apple given him by a sympathetic restaurant owner, a policeman raps him across the knuckles with his nightstick. Defeat plucked from the jaws of victory, leaving Freddie, in Whitney's words, "bereft of everything except the look of inexorable sadness that seemed to embody all the frustrations of humankind." 

It's not a theory to which Skelton subscribes. "Malarky!" Red replies (or something like that; I'm betting that he didn't use quite that tame a word). "My comedy has nothing to do with tragedy. I couldn't tell you why people laugh at me." Whitney wonders, though, for Skelton is more than familiar with the school of hard knocks, and that has helped to make him "one of television's most enduring comics." Skelton's father died before Red's birth left the family penniless and forcing the youngster to sell newspapers and work as a street singer at the age of eight. When he was ten, Skelton left home to join a traveling medicine show, and from there moved to burlesque and vaudeville, eventually arriving on Broadway. He started on radio in 1937, graduating to host his own show the next year; by 1940, he'd become a movie star, and moved to television in 1951, where he would remain until 1971. 

So people do, indeed, laugh at him. His work has never been favored by highbrows or critics, but even when his bits were corny or even bombed, there was always a "brilliant flash of humor when it was least expected," an ability to reach out and stir the emotion in others. "I guess I've just been lucky," Skelton says. "I like people. I know they come to see me for fun. So I give them as much of it as I possibly can." He has, by any definition, been a success. In addition to his television show, he does countless personal appearances; he lives on an estate in Bel Air with his wife and daughter and a staggering number of pets; and in his spare time, he paints clown pictures (such as that one on the cover), and estimates he's done at least 500 over the years. 

But Whitney's story keeps coming back to tragedy, albeit sensitively. And despite Skelton's denials, there is a moment when he lets the mask slip. "I don't mind talking about it," he says of his son's death. "Everybody's had tragedy. Tragedy is embarrassment—because your house burned down and you were powerless to do anything about it." He continued working even in the wake of Richard's death. "People ask, 'How could you keep on telling jokes?' Sure, I told jokes. And if the little guy were here I'd tell the same jokes." And he's not the only one to have suffered. "How about the parents during the war who sweated out that telegram from the War Department?"  And then, after a pause, he adds, "Except my kid had no gun to defend himself with." There was only one time it got to him, when a little boy in a red sweater came to visit. "Gauguin [his pet macaw] set up an awful fuss. We couldn't figure it. Then it hit me. Richard used to wear a red sweater. I cried."

Red Skelton had a reputation for being difficult to work with, a suggestion that all is not rosy behind the crowd-pleasing clown's face, but for this article, at least, Skelton is all-too human.

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One of Ed Sullivan's first great on-air challenges came from Steve Allen, who left Tonight to take over an NBC variety show which, at the beginning, aired opposite Ed. It didn't run as long as Ed's, of course, but then Allen said his goal was never to conquer Ed, but to coexist with him, which he did for three seasons. Let's see who gets the best of the contest this week.

Sullivan: Ed's guests are actress-singer Eartha Kitt, star of the movie Anna Lucasta, actor Charlton Heston, comedians Wayne and Shuster, songstress Georgia Gibbs, English ventriloquist Arthur Worsley and French dancer Noelle Adam. (It looks as if this was, indeed, the lineup for the week.)

Allen: Steve's guests are actor Lee Marvin, star of TV's M-Squad, musical-comedy star Dolores Gray, comedian Johnny Carson and actor-singer James Darren. 

I like both shows: Ed loved Wayne and Shuster; they appeared on his show more times (67) than any other act. Throw in Charlton Heston and Eartha Kitt, and most weeks this would be a winning lineup. On the other hand, Steverino has Lee Marvin, Johnny Carson, and James Darren. That's a tough call, but on the basis of getting a chance to see Carson before he truly became Carson, I'm giving a slight nod to Allen this week.

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And now that article on critics. "What good are television critics?" The answer, it seems all depends on who you ask. Oliver Treyz, president of ABC, says that critics "certainly affect our over-all thinking," while C. Terence Clyne, vice president of the McCann-Erickson ad agency, counters that critics' importance are "limited to the board of directors of the sponsor and his ad agency."*

*Remember that, in the 1950s, sponsors were still prime movers and shakers when it came to setting the schedule, and even a relatively successful series could be doomed if a sponsor were to withdraw.

Critics themselves are divided on the subject. According to Jack Gould, the well-known—and, dare I say it, influential—critic for The New York Times, "our influence is vastly overrated. We generate interest more than influence." His counterpart at The New York Herald Tribune, the equally well-known (and influential) John Crosby, says that he and other critics receive plenty of mail from their readers, telling them that "we persuade or dissuade them from watching a certain show." A recent poll shows that 54 percent of viewers have, at one time or another, made their viewing choices based on a review.

One thing that everyone agrees on, though, is that critics perform a vital function. David Susskind feels it is the critic who holds producers' feet to the fire, forcing them to offer better quality programming. "Without the critic, I believe we would have more mediocrity than we now have."

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Well, it's a Leonard Bernstein double bill this weekend! Lenny leads off with one of his Young People's Concerts on Saturday (noon ET, CBS), in the episode "What Is Classical Music?" The ad promises "an exciting opportunity" to learn the answer to that question. He follows this up on Sunday, leading his New York Philharmonic in a program called "Jazz in Classical Music," which shows " how composers have consciously or unconsciously employed jazz elements" in their classical pieces.

And the ad was right: these shows are exciting. Bernstein, whatever his faults and flaws—and he had many, both professionally and personally—was a wonderful teacher, able to infuse his programs with an enthusiasm that couldn't help but be infectious, allowing him to communicate his knowledge to both children and adults in a way that was both entertaining and accessible. I wasn't yet alive when his Young People's broadcasts started, but he did them throughout the 1960s, and when I was old enough, I watched them; even though I might not always have understood everything, I know he had a lot to do with creating my love of classical music. 

Could anyone today do what Bernstein did back then? If there's anyone out there who could, I suspect it would be Gustavo Dudamel, the dynamic conductor who assumes the leadership of the New York Philharmonic this September. He's not the musicologist that Bernstein was, nor is he as sophisticated a speaker as Lenny, but he might be the only one who could talk PBS into broadcasting that kind of show. Since most schools, for many reasons, no longer have music appreciation, it may be the last best hope for transmitting to future generations a love of classical music.

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What else is on this week? There's a nice play on words on Saturday evening, as Steve McQueen stars in Wanted—Dead or Alive (8:30 p.m., CBS), followed by the Western Black Saddle (9:00 p.m., NBC), starring Peter Breck, and this week featuring a character named "McQueen."  Nice, hmm? And all day, WHDH in Boston presents the second annual March of Dimes Auction, starting at 2:00 p.m. and running until 4:30, then returning intermittently throughout the night until the station signs off.  All the goods are donated by local merchants, and the phones are being handled by "models and Channel 5 staffers." The show is described as a fundraiser "for the benefit of polio victims," of which there are still many. It's true, however, that with the advent of the Salk and Sabin vaccines, polio is not the horrifying plague that it has been for so many generations. And this ad perhaps indicates that knowledge, as the organization begins to transition from polio research to that of other illnesses, finally settling on birth defects. It's a reminder, as if we didn't need one this week, that science indeed plays a major role in the culture of the late 1950s.

Sunday is filled with star turns from beginning to end. In addition to Bernstein, Sullivan, and Allen, Ernie Kovacs is Jack Benny's guest on The Jack Benny Program (7:30 p.m., CBS), including an absurd skit about the prison of 1970.  is Bette Davis makes a rare television series appearance on Alfred Hitchcock Presents (9:30 p.m., CBS), in the story "Out There—Darkness," a nasty little piece about a haughty woman getting on the wrong side of an elevator operator. 

Following the Soviet launch of Sputnik in 1957, there were growing fears that the Soviet success was based on a "science gap" between the United States and the Soviets, and that the gap was getting wider. The nation responded with a renewed emphasis on teaching science, and evidence of that can be seen on TV screens everywhere. Continental Classroom (Monday through Friday, 6:30 a.m., NBC), has an entire week of science classes, including Monday's "Electromagnetic Waves," and on Monday night  our favorite scientist, Dr. Linguistics (aka Dr. Frank Baxter) is back with another installment in the Bell Laboratories Science Series, "The Alphabet Conspiracy." (7:30 p.m., NBC),

Trust me: don't take that trip!

Tuesday, it's the second episode of Alcoa Presents, which most of us know better as One Step Beyond, and "The Night of April 14" (10:00 p.m., ABC), an episode centering on various premonitions of the Titanic disaster, including the main story of a woman who dreams that she drowns in the ocean. Her nightmare seems fanciful, as she lives many miles from the ocean, but then she finds that for her honeymoon, her fiancé has booked them passage on the liner's maiden voyage.

On Wednesday, the DuPont Show of the Month (9:30 p.m., CBS) presents "a play no man should miss!" so I'd better spend a moment on it. It's Sir James Barrie's drama "What Every Woman Knows," starring Siobhan McKenna, James Donald, and Cyril Cusick, in the story of a poor but ambitious young man who's offered a proposition by three wealthy brothers: they will finance his education if, at the end of five years, he marries their sister Maggie. Oh, and just what is it that every woman knows? It is that she is "the invisible power responsible for the successes of the men in her life."

It's not My Three Sons on Thursday, but "his four sons," the man in question being Bing Crosby, and his four sons Gary, Lindsay, Dennis, and Philip, and all four of them appear tonight on The Pat Boone Chevy Show (9:00 p.m., ABC). Later, Playhouse 90 (9:30 p.m., CBS) presents Reginald Rose's play "A Quiet Game of Cards," telling the story of five wealthy and powerful men who decide that their weekly poker game has become too dull, and the only way to liven it up is to play for "the highest stakes possible." 

Friday, Disneyland presents what one would have to think is a highly fictionalized biography of composer Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky (8:00 p.m., ABC), starring The Incredible Shrinking Man's Grant Williams as the tortured composer, and Hogan's Heroes's Leon Askin as Tchaikovsky's mentor, composer Anton Rubinstein. On Person to Person (10:30 p.m., CBS), Ed Murrow's guests are sports columnist Red Smith and actress Dagmar, appearing with her husband, comedian Danny Dayton.

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MST3K alert: Project Moonbase (1953) An American Space Force rocket makes a flight to the moon. Dona Martell, Hayden Rorke. (Wednesday, 11:05 p.m., WMUR in Manchester) All you need to know about this week's movie is that it features a female astronaut named Col. Briteis, pronounced bright-eyes, and that she had been selected to make the first orbital flight around Earth because she would weigh less than a man. Kevin Murphy sums it up for everyone at MST3K when he says, "The best thing I can say about it is that it was very very short." TV

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A change of pace: the Red Skelton Christmas Show, 1968

I've said this before, and I'll say it again: if you don't try to understand the context in which a classic television program was originally shown, you're losing at least half of its meaning. It's like overcooking vegetables—when you do that, you lose the nutrients, and wind up with something that's soggy, limp, less than what it should have been. Case in point: the Red Skelton Christmas show of 1968.

The Red Skelton Hour aired at 8:30 p.m. Eastern time on Tuesday nights, and in 1968, Tuesday fell on Christmas Eve. It was, in fact, quite an evening if you happened to be watching television; at 9:30 p.m., Red was followed by the famous Apollo 8 broadcast, in which the three astronauts read the Creation story from the Book of Genesis as they orbited the moon. It had been a somber year, if anyone needed reminding: a year of war, assassinations, and riots, and this was reflected in the theme of that year's Christmas show. 

Red's annual Christmas shows were something of a departure from the format of his regular weekly episodes, and including a long set piece running for at least half the episode: "Freddie and the Yuletide Doll," in which Freddie the Freeloader dances with a rag doll (Cara Williams) who comes to life; "The Christmas Spirit," a full-length skit featuring Freddie and Greer Garson putting on a show to benefit orphans; "The Christmas Urchin," in which Freddie and a friendly beat officer (Howard Keel) help a young girl and her widowed mother; and so on. 

The 1968 edition was no exception; in fact, Red functions more as a special guest star on his own show, with the de facto hosting duties taken over by U.S. Senator Everett Dirksen, who had also appeared on Skelton's show the previous year. Dirksen, seated in a wingback chair on a set that included a fireplace and Christmas tree, introduced Red's Silent Spot (repeated from the previous year) and a performance by ballet dancer Jillana, and recited Clement Clark Moore's poem "A Visit from St. Nicholas," before providing the narration for the night's centerpiece: "A Christmas Story—1777." 

As Dirksen reflects on the warmth of Christmases spent with friends and loved ones, he reminds viewers that "there are those whose duties take them away from the glow of the hearth and set them down in strange places where Christmas is sadly just another day." Such a place is Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, the winter headquarters of General George Washington and his Continental Army. The weather is cold, bleak, and cruel, with little for the soldiers to eat or drink, and as many of them die from cold and starvation as from the bullets of British soldiers. What follows is their story, written by Red Skelton, "a story about some brave men whose sacrifices so many years ago enables us to enjoy this holiday tonight."

Skelton is "Patrick," one of the sentries standing guard; he mans his post, even though he knows that the real enemies—the cold, the hunger—are already inside the camp. In the last month, 2,500 men have died "without costing the British one bullet." Money for the war is going to the wrong people, who "get rich on our debts." His spirits are briefly lifted when he receives a Christmas gift from his loving wife: a warm muffler, knitted in blue so he won't be mistaken for a redcoat. Too often, though, the humor in the camp is cynical, the laughter that which is "born of sadness." 

One of the soldiers brings news from Philadelphia, where food is plentiful and people live as if this "wasn't their war." When Patrick asks if they know about the conditions under which the troops are living, he is told that they are, but "the war is not popular with everybody. . .There are young men on the streets who make speeches of protest." 

"If those agitators put self before freedon, before liberty," another soldier replies, "let them come on this battle line. Let both sides fire at them." 

Patrick wonders: "Why does a man who speaks as a traitor believe that the other side will trust him?"

"So it is our lot to do the fighting," the first soldier replies, "even for those who in their fight undermine us. Perhaps we who fight will appreciate liberty a little more." 

But what is liberty? Says Patrick, "Liberty is tomorrow."

Comes Christmas Eve, and Dirksen describes the scene: "The eyes of men half alive blur with tears. The night is bitter cold, but that isn't what makes men cry. Men make men cry. Leaders of men cry, too. The spirit of Liberty makes men cry. The real heroes are dead, but those who still live are learning to be heroes. But do they live, or are they ghosts of the dead?" There is no water to be had other than that in the frozen stream; Patrick becomes so desperate from thirst that when he sees another soldier holding a canteen to his lips, he offers to exchange the muffler his wife made for him in return for just a couple of sips, but the soldier shakes his head, and Patrick runs away in shame and despair. In fact, the canteen is empty, the soldier merely miming the act of drinking: his own thirst had driven him nearly mad.

Remembering that it is Christmas Eve, and determined that they should not forget the night, Patrick sneaks out of the tent and returns with a small evergreen to serve as a Christmas tree for the other soldiers, to remind them of what this night means. "You should see them. There's light in their eyes for the first time. He then lights a candle and attaches it to a branch. I feel rejoicing; my heart overflows with gratitude and hope." For them, the little tree "beholds His divine grace." One soldier, young enough that he should be "at a Christmas dance, not walking around barefooted through the ice and snow, leaving his blood to feed the spring flowers," gazes lovingly at the tree before dying. "At least he saw the tree of the Christ Child before he walked into the valley of death." Patrick take off his muffler and wraps it around the dead boy. Even though there is no church, no altar, the camp is still alive with the spirit of Christmas.

It's an inspiring ending to a somber, stark story, but it might leave some contemporary viewers nonplussed. For instance, we're not accustomed to seeing Skelton in a straight dramatic role, with only flashes of humor. And there's nothing particularly Christmassy about Valley Forge in 1777 other than the time of year. We might wonder—where's the holly and mistletoe? Where are the soldiers singing carols? We don't even have the satisfaction of Washington's dramatic crossing of the Delaware on Christmas, 1776. Instead, we see men enduring incredible hardships; even nature seems to be against them. We know that victory eventually comes to Washington and his army, but we wonder how many of these men will live to see it. It's certainly not the stuff that Hallmark movies are made of.

But that's probably not how it would have been taken back in 1968. Viewed through the prism of the time, it's impossible not to see "A Christmas Story—1777" as an allegory on the Vietnam War. Instead of the bitter cold of Valley Forge in 1777, substitute the heat and humidity of the Southeast Asia jungle in 1968. The colonials are betrayed not by the loyalists and apathetic of Philadelphia, but by "Hanoi Jane" and the others accused of providing aid and comfort to the Viet Cong. The one constant through it all is the American soldier fighting and dying, and wondering if anyone out there cares. 

Is "A Christmas Story—1777" an antiwar story? It presents war in all its horror, stripped of its glory and nobility, reducing it to a desperate quest for survival. And yet, despite everything, the men know why they are there and what they are fighting for; it is what keeps them there, through it all, so that even though some will desert, many of them keep coming back. It's no secret that both Dirksen and Skelton were strong supporters of Vietnam*, and some might think that makes them, in part, responsible for the suffering and death that followed. Does this negate the power of what we see here? I don't think so; it doesn't seek to deny the horrors of war, and whatever one might have thought of Vietnam, either then or now, they way they were treated by many Americans after the war remains shameful. 

*Three weeks later, on the January 14, 1969 show (just before Richard Nixon's inauguration), Skelton would do his well-known and dramatic rendition of "The Pledge of Allegiance." 

Seen in context, Red Skelton's 1968 Christmas show takes on a different dimension, one that's perhaps more dramatic, more meaningful, even (for some) more controversial. In the end, I don't think it matters whether or not you agree with the message; what is important is that knowing the context enriches both the program itself, and the way in which we experience it. It also proves, once again, that there's more to "mere television" than one might think. TV  

This week in TV Guide: August 28, 1954

This week's "As We See It," the editorial that often leads off TV Guide, focuses on college football on television—or the lack of it, as the case may be. From the outset, the rights to televise the college game—which, in 1954, is much bigger than its professional counterpart—have been controlled by the NCAA. According to the terms of the current contract, one game will be shown each week, on a national network. "No college eleven will be seen on the air more than once, no matter how much viewer interest there may be in top teams in various parts of the country." This, in contrast to the NFL, which plans as many as five regional games a week, plus one game broadcast nationally.*

*Keep in mind that in 1954 there were only 12 teams in the NFL, meaning a maximum of six games per week.  

The NCAA's professed concern has always been that TV games are bad for ticket sales, especially those of smaller schools. After all, who wants to see Slippery Rock take on Potsdam State when you can watch Notre Dame and Oklahoma from the comfort of your living room? And yet, point out the editors, pro football attendance was up five percent last season despite the increase in televised games. (To be fair, the college bosses were also concerned about the possibility of a team (read: Notre Dame) signing a contract to broadcast all their games nationally, giving them even more of an unfair recruiting advantage than they already had.) The answer, according to the editorial, is for "the big colleges, which can get offers to televise their football games, [declare] their independence from NCAA, an organization run by small colleges determined to keep the big boys off television."

Well, it only took 30 years, but eventually the wishes of the editors came true. In NCAA v. Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma, the Supreme Court ruled, by a 7-2 vote*. that the NCAA's television plan violated the Sherman and Clayton Antitrust Acts. That opened the door to virtually unlimited college football on TV; the first Saturday of 2021 will see 57 games on television, not including additional TV games on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Sunday, and Labor Day. (And yes, Notre Dame did sign a contract to have at least all their home games on national TV.) All of the big conferences have their own network television contracts; for that matter, most of them have their own networks, and the result has been a series of monetary machinations which have resulted in the big schools becoming even bigger, while realignment has created megaconferences, ended traditional rivalries, and turning college football into one of the biggest of big businesses. 

As for TV Guide's note that "college football attendance is declining steadily" without TV, we now have all the televised games that anyone could ask for—and attendance declines steadily. We've also gotten a national championship game, for which many fans clamored for decades, which has turned out to be dominated by a very, very few teams; the cream of the cream of the cream, so to speak.* It is difficult to say with honesty that anyone is happy with the current situation, except for those with all the money.

*I wrote about all of this here; it provides a much more detailed background, and also serves to prove that some issues never go away. 

Could all this have been forecast by the editors? It would be unfair to insist that they should have known, and yet we all know that the love of money is the root of all evil, that absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely, and that the Golden Rule really means, "whoever has the gold rules." And in looking back at this all, we also ought to remember to be careful what we wish for.

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As it happens, in 1954 NBC lost the NCAA contract for college football to ABC, and with NFL games divided between DuMont and ABC, the Peacock needed something to put on the air. I'm not sure anyone ever coined the phrase "Go North, Young Man," but that's just what the network did, and the result is the debut of the Canadian Football League, Saturday at 12:45 p.m. CT., with a game between the Ottawa Rough Riders and Toronto Argonauts, live from Varsity Stadium in Toronto. 

Those of you whose readership goes back a few years know my affinaty for Canadian football (if not, you can read about it here and here). It really is a different game from the American version, so much so that an insert in this week's Close Up goes through some of the fundamental differences. 

At this point in history, the CFL is actually pretty competitive with the NFL when it comes to salaries, and many black players find the country more welcoming than their own (some would eventually settle down in Canada and become Canadian citizens), so it's not as if NBC is showing a minor-league brand of football. Nonetheless, next season NBC regains the college football contract, and aside from several years when the Grey Cup championship was carried by Wide World of Sports, the CFL remains off American television until 1982, when NBC brings it back for three weeks as an experiment during the NFL players' strike. 

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That fetching young woman with the come-hither look on the cover is Roxanne, "decorative aid" to Bud Collier, host of CBS's Beat the Clock, the show that's home to outrageous stunts each week. (Example: drop two toupees, suspended by strings, into a stovepipe hat open at the top and worn by one of the contestants, without using your hands.) The show's stunts are thought up by "two professional pranksters"—I had no idea such people existed outside the White House—"who furnish 20 ideas a week." Jean Hollander, the show's co-producer, says their funniest stunt was when "Mother and children bandaged Daddy right up to his eyes, leaving him just room to brfeathe. Then everyone squirted Daddy with cream." Remember, when television was new, people would watch anything just because of the novelty.

Yup, Roxanne was a real doll.

Roxanne's real name is Dolores Rosedale, born in Minneapolis in 1928. (The Rosedale Center mall in Roseville, Minnesota was not named after her, but maybe it should have been.) She was well-known enough that a plastic "Roxanne Doll" hit the market in 1953; it was 18-inches tall with moveable legs a red camera, and had a tag with the Beat the Clock logo and Roxanne would give it to the children of contestants. She'll leave the program later in 1954, a few months before giving birth; she was still alive as of a few years ago, living in Minneapolis.

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It's pretty close to the start of the fall season, close enough that we've got some new series getting a head start. One which you might have seen in the classic TV DVD bins is Hey Mulligan, Mickey Rooney's "new family comedy series." (Saturday, 7:00 p.m., NBC) Mickey plays a page at an unnamed "West Coast broadcasting company," who, of course, really wants to be an actor. (Wait until he gets there, though, then he'll really want to direct.) This is not to be confused with the movie Mickey (9:30 p.m., WTMJ), in which "A pretty fifteen-year-tomboy finds fun in a small town." (Unless, I suppose, she finds it with Mickey Rooney.) And at 10:00 p.m. on WNBQ, it's Champagne For Caesar, one of the great satires on television, with Ronald Coleman as a polymath contestant trying to prove the banality of TV quiz shows, Celeste Holm as the femme fatale, Vincent Price as the show's sponsor, and Art Linkletter as the smarmy emcee.

On Sunday, Mel Allen narrates filmed highlights of the championship game in the Little League World Series (12:00 p.m., WBBM). If you'd like a little more extensive baseball action, feel free to tune in to WGN at 1:30, where the Cubs take on the Pittsburgh Pirates in a doubleheader at Wrigley Field. The news program You Are There returns for its third season as host Walter Cronkite looks at "The Treason of Aaron Burr." (5:00 p.m., CBS) And on Toast of the Town (7:00 p.m., CBS) Eddie Fisher guest hosts for Ed Sullivan and does some singing of his own.

Monday night, and I'm wondering if this might have wound up being carried by more than one network, President Eisenhower is scheduled to make a major policy address at the American Legion Convention in Washington, D.C. (8:00 p.m., ABC) The speech covers the president's signing of the Atomic Energy Act, which created the Atomic Energy Commission as part of increased support for a civilian nuclear industry. 

On Tuesday, we see more shows returning for the new season, starting with a couple of music programs hoping to strike the right notes in the 15-minute timeshare with the evening network news; at 6:30 p.m. on NBC, it's the debut of the smooth baritone Vaughn Monroe and his epononymous varieth show; at 6:45 p.m. Jo Stafford returns for her second season on CBS. At 8:00 p.m., it's the return of the half-hour anthology series Fireside Theater, followed at 8:30 by the new season of Armstrong Circle Theater, both on NBC. And at 9:30 p.m. on CBS, it's the fourth season of See It Now, as Edward R. Murrow returns from a trip to Southeast Asia, "so vital to Western defense."

Ed Wynn is Red Skelton's special guest on Wednesday (7:00 p.m., CBS), and while Red may be an institution, he hasn't quite found the rhythm since moving from NBC o CBS; he didn't make a dent against Milton Berle when he was on Tuesday's, and CBS has been using him in Arthur Godfrey's Wednesday slot during the summer, expanding the show from a half-hour to 60 minutes. However, according to this week's unbylined review, Red is "buckling under the weight." While he's one of the best clowns in show business, his characters are getting a bit stale, and "Red has become too much of a free-wheeler, ad-libbing in a manner that's often unfunny and sometimes in deplorable taste." Poor Red; his show only has another 17 seasons to run.

Thursday looks like a night for stars, begining with Four Star Playhouse (7:30 p.m., CBS); one of those four stars, Charles Boyer, haedlines "The Bad Streak," about a young man seeking revenge on his father. Virginia Grey is the mother who brought her son up to hate; the cast includes Horace McMahon, who later stars in Naked City. Transitioning from a future police show to a present one, Dragnet (8:00 p.m., NBC) sees Friday going undercover to infiltrate a blackmail ring. On Ford Theatre* (8:30 p.m., NBC), Ronald Reagan and Teresa Wright are a couple considering adoption, and Lee Aaker (Rin Tin Tin) is, of course, a young boy. And on Kraft Theatre (8:30 p.m, ABC), Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright George Kelly is one of the stars; he wrote tonight's episode, "Philip Goes Forth," possibly an autobiographical story of a young man going to New York to bcome a great playwright. Philip's played by Roddy McDowall.

*Footnote: in October, Ford Theatre will become the first network television series to be filmed regularly in color.

The much-loved sitcom Mama, based on the book, stageplay and movie I Remember Mama, returns for its seventh season (Friday, 7:00 p.m., CBS), with Peggy Wood as Mama, and the young Dick Van Patten as one of the children. And Edward R. Murrow is back with the second season of his second series, Person to Person (9:30 p.m., CBS). 

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It's always fun to see an alum of these old issues make good, and this week's starlet, young June Lockhart (the "Encyclopedia with Curves," for reasons you'll find out), is just such an example. For the last couple of years, she's been a panelist on the quiz show Who Said That?, about which she says, "I can name evry member of almost every cabinet, including the Secretary of the Interior in Wilson's administration. This is the sort of thing most girls can get along without." 

June's no stranger to the spotlight, coming as she does from an acting family; her parents are actors Gene and Kathleen Lockhart, and you may recall that they played Mr. and Mrs. Cratchit in the 1938 version of A Christmas Carol, in which June also appeared as one of the Cratchit children.* June appeared on Who Said That? for 2½ years, matching wits with such luminaries as John Cameron Swayze, commentator H.V. Kaltenborn, columnists Bob Considine and Earl Wilson. No wonder she found herself reading seven daily newspapers and five weekly news and picture magazines, cramming for each show. "I found writing down quotes helped me to remember them," she says. She finally left the show last year, just before giving birth to her daughter, Anne Kathleen.  

*Gene also plays the judge in Miracle on 34th Street and the banker in Going My Way, meaning you see him a lot around Christmastime.

The history of Who Said That? is an interesting one, by the way. It began on NBC radio in 1947 before becoming one of the early shows to transition to television, in December 1948. The object was for a celebrity panel to identify the newsmaker responsible for a quote appearing in recent news reports. The show's first emcee was CBS newsman Robert Trout, and the last, in 1955, was What's My Line? host John Charles Daly. Some of the other panelists who made regular appearances on the show were Boris Karloff, Morey Amsterdam, and Bennet Cerf. 

Besides quiz shows, she's also done some acting on Braodway and in summer stock, and she's currently under contract to NBC. She also says she's "scouting around for another panel show." She never gets one, at least as a regular, but her career speaks for itself: Lassie, Lost in Space, Petticoat Junction, General Hospital, hostess on the Miss USA and Miss Universe Pageants, the Tournament of Roses Parade, and CBS's Thanksgiving Day parades, and countless television and movie appearances. 

When she debuted on Broadway, one of the critics wrote that "June Lockhart has burst on Broadway with the suddenness of an unpredicted comet." A comet that never did die out. TV  

Around the dial

Tis the season for pumpkins and presidents, and at Comfort TV David talks about an episode that has both of them: 1968's "Secret Ballot" from That Girl, which portrays the excitement of casting one's first vote for president without having to broadcast a political message to the viewers. Radical.

Detouring into old-time radio for a moment, at A Shroud of Thougths, Terence offers a fine collection of classic Halloween-themed episodes, from Jack Benny and Fibber McGee to the Mercury Theatre's immortal presentation of "War of the Worlds." 

The Avengers has nothing to do with Halloween, or politicians, or anything else this week, other than fun. It's what John at Cult TV Blog calls the encapsulation of everything Avengers: "What the Butler Saw," from 1966. Sounds like just what we need right now.

At The Hits Just Keep on Comin', jb revisits some late-60s episodes from The Red Skelton Hour, courtesy of Amazon Prime (well, actually there isn't anything particularly courteous about it since we pay for the service, but I digress), and gives us a look behind the scenes at the famed comedian's style.

If you're looking for some podcast goodness, head on over to the Eventually Supertrain site, where Dan has some goodies for you: a Christmas (!) episode of Rockin' All Week With You with Christmas TV expert extraordinare Joanna Wilson, and the latest Eventually Supertrain. 

Finally, an email from Bill, one of our loyal readers, with a question about the March 20, 1960 episode of The Ed Sullivan Show, featuring acts from the International Circus show. Bill has ◀ an illustration by George Wachsteter promoting the issue; it has Ed and the two famous circus clowns, Emmett Kelly and Lindon. The illustration doesn't appear in the March 19, 1960 TV Guide, although Wachsteter's illustrations frequently appeared in the magazine. Wachsteter's work also appeared in the newspaper supplement Pictorial and TView magazine, but he hasn't found this illustration. Anyone heard of this magazine before? (I hadn't.) 

I'm grateful to Bill—for his readership, naturally, but also for writing and introducing me to more swell TV stuff. And does anyone (like Mike Doran) have any clues as to where the illustration might have appeared? TV  

This week in TV Guide: August 20, 1966

This week's cover boy is the seemingly-ageless Red Skelton, who - like all of us, I suppose - eternally fights against the fear that "this time he will not be funny."

Dwight Whitney visits him in Vegas, where he's doing his stand-up routine in the Copa Room of the Sands Hotel. He's eating raw tomatoes and Red Hots, the only two things his stomach can keep down. And despite all his fame, his 43 years in the business, his long-running radio and TV shows and movies and all the rest, he still worries. When his old friend Ed Wynn had died, he'd described what it was like when the jokes bombed, when the act met the deafening silence: it is "the loneliness of a lover saying goodby, a prelude to death. The tears in the eyes dry to a dull glisten. Every nerve reaches out. There is no medication to relieve the pain, no understanding to wrap the wound in. He stands there and bleeds..." It is from this meditation that Whitney derives the title of the article, "A clown is a warrior who fights gloom."

Whitney shares the nuances of Skelton's act, how his job is to break down the resistance of the man in the audience who thinks he isn't funny anymore, the farmer from Des Moines who doesn't like comedians but comes because his wife drags him along, the person who sits there with folded arms and dares Red to make him laugh. By the end, of course, he is laughing; they're all laughing, and after it's all over, Skelton sits in his dressing room, his tuxedo drenched by perspiration. For this, Red Skelton is paid $35,000 per week; he owns two Rolls and has a couple of mansions, one of them in Palm Springs with 27 rooms. He has, says Whitney, "lost more millions than most millionaires ever see." He's in his 16th season on television. And yet, after the high of the performance has worn off, the worries will return.

He is a complex man, Red Skelton is. A learned man who reads books on philosophy and religion and has a massive collection of antique Bibles; a composer, painter, writer, and photographer; a comedian, an actor, a mime; a clown who is a warrior when the laughs won't come. He drops the gentle religion jokes he told the night before, although they got big laughs. Too big, Red says: "I have to solve the idea behind the laughter. What's behind it I don't like. I am not the type to tell religious jokes."

Despite all his worries, though, the laughs still come every night. That doesn't mean he won't keep worrying, though; that's the lot of a warrior, a samurai - one of the Japanese symbols that frequent hs paintings. If it seems as if all the worry is ridiculous, maybe he things so as well. "I'm nuts and I know it," he laughs, genuinely. "But as long as I make them laugh, they ain't going to lock me up."

◊ ◊ ◊

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: Ed's guests are singers Gordon and Sheila MacRae, the McGuire Sisters and the Serendipity Singers; bandleader Harry James; comics Henny Youngman, John Byner, and Jean Caroll; the rock 'n' rolling Black Sheep; and puppet Topo Gigio.

Palace: Singer Tony Martin and his wife, dancer Cyd Charisse, introduce actor Cesar Romero; singer Vikki Carr; the comedy team of Rowan and Martin; comedian Norm Crosby; juggler Bobby Winters; and the acrobatic Suns Family.

Both of this week's shows are reruns, and good ones. The McGuire Sisters sing with Harry James and his band, and the rest of the cast are strong as well. On the other hand, Tony Martin and Cyd Charisse ain't bad either, and Cesar Romero probably comes close to stealing the show as always. They say that a tie is like kissing your sister, but I don't think there's any shame for either show this week. The verdict: Push.

◊ ◊ ◊
There's an interesting mix of sports in store for the week, and not just because of the time of the year. On NBC, the baseball Game of the Week pits two of the teams that dominate the National League in the 1960s, the St. Louis Cardinals and Los Angeles Dodgers, from Dodger Stadium (4:00 p.m. ET), a game that the Cards will win 3-2 in 13 innings. The Dodgers won last season's World Series, while the Cardinals will be next season's champions. As for this year, the Dodgers take the pennant before being swept in the Series by the Baltimore Orioles.

Meanwhile, over on WNBF in Binghamton, (4:30 p.m.) it's the Traverse Stakes, one of the bigger post-Triple Crown horse races, contested at Saratoga in New York. And at 9:30 p.m. on WKBW, it's AFL preseason football, with the defending champion Buffalo Bills taking on the Oilers in Houston. People getting that game are deprived of Saturday's Hollywood Palace - maybe they'll get to see it later in the week. The NFL follows suit with its own preseason - excuse me, that's exhibition game - on Friday night (9:30 p.m, CBS) as the Baltimore Colts and Cleveland Browns, two of the teams challenging the Green Bay Packers for the title (and ultimately losing), face each other in Cleveland.

Never mind the preseason, though - who cares about that when you can watch games that count? Thanks to CFTO, the CTV affiliate in Toronto, that's what we get on Wednesday night at 8:00 p.m., when the Hamilton Tiger-Cats visit the Montreal Alouettes in week 4 of the Canadian Football League season. Montreal wins the game 16-8, and both the Ticats and Als will make the playoffs, but they'll both finish behind the Ottawa Rough Riders, who will go to the Grey Cup championship, where they lose to the Saskatchewan Roughriders 29-14. (And yes, there are two teams in a nine-team league with more or less the same nicknames. It's Canada - what else can I say?)

◊ ◊ ◊
Henry Harding's "For the Record" at the front of the programming section - it's the precursor to "The Doan Report" has some television news for us, and in this case we literally mean television. NBC reports that as of July 1, one out of every eight households now has color television. That adds up to 6,780,000 households, out of a total TV-owning number of 53,800,000 - or double the number of color TVs from a year ago.

Batman is in its ascendancy right now; in fact, it might well be at the zenith of its popularity, and the Rev. Robert E. Terwilliger, an Episcopal minister in New York, says that it's a "much-needed and almost religious outlet." He doesn't want to make too fine a point of what's still a "passing fad," but he explains that "Batman is the savior who comes in from above to rescue the victims of malignant power with absolute goodness. He is called into situations the police can't handle with a special cultic or prayer device called the Batphone. His miracles are the kind modern man likes most - not supernatural but scientific." I guess I'd never thought of the TV series that way, though you could make a case for the Dark Knight version of Christopher Nolan's movies. In that case, there are several areas in which we could use a Batman right now...

The TV Teletype reports that Frank Sinatra's second "Man and His Music" special will be seen December 7 on CBS. Close - they got the date right, but the network is NBC, as was the case with the first special last year. Also, a couple of newcomers are headed for Petticoat Junction this fall: we read about Gordon and Sheila MacRae earlier, and their daughter, Meredith, will be taking over as the new Billie Jo, while Mike Minor, son of My Three Sons executive producer Don Fedderson, will be Betty Jo's future love interest (although it doesn't say that here; we just know better).

◊ ◊ ◊
A couple of highlights from this week's programming.

Johnny Carson's on vacation this week, so Hugh Downs, the announcer on Jack Paar's Tonight, is guest host for the week. This, in addition to hosting The Today Show and Concentration. Let's hear it for Hugh Downs, the hardest-working man in show business!

On Thursday, NBC preempts its entire prime-time lineup for a 3½ White Paper examination of "Organized Crime in America," hosted by Frank McGee. The program looks at everything from the colorful history of the mob to the different ways in which organized crime has infiltrated cities and towns across America, in everything from gambling to drugs to the rackets. No Eliot Ness, but it sounds interesting nonetheless. It will be awarded one of the 1966 Peabodys.

◊ ◊ ◊

Finally, the blurb on the cover about testing TV shows on human guinea pigs. It's not quwite as sensationalist as it sounds; what the writers, Joseph Finnigan and Ron Smith, are really talking about are what we'd know today as focus groups. People are invited to take part in an evening of screening prospective television programs, during which they're instructed to use electronic dials to indicate their reactions, and then fill out a questionnaire - or two, or three.

ASI, the company in charge of conducting the research, claims such pretesting, as they call it, has really paid off - the company predicted failure for two series that were nevertheless aired, The Richard Boone Show and The Famous Adventures of Mr. Magoo - and the shows indeed bombed. They also take credit for what they term "improvements" in various shows, from recasting in Hazel to redoing the intro for I Dream of Jeannie.

Their record isn't spotless, however, not by a long shot. They also predicted failure for I Spy and Batman, and said that The Man from U.N.C.L.E.'s David McCallum would have no appeal for viewers. William Dozier, executive producer of Batman, says he didn't buy the research when it gave Batman low returns, just as he didn't buy it when it gave another of his series, Bewitched, the highest rating ever. "The trouble," he says, "is that too many people substitute pretesting for their own judgment."

That's kind of the problem in a nutshell with real life today, or at least one of them, isn't it? We're constantly told not to rely on our own intuition, our gut sense of things, but instead to depend on the findings of "experts" and "consultants" who have far more knowledge of the situation. This kind of thing happens from grade school all the way until you retire, and you get it from teachers, doctors, lawyers, government officials, business executives, political pollsters and pundits - just about anyone that matters, or at least anyone who has some say over how you do things. It begs the question - how's that been working out for them, lately? TV  

This week in TV Guide: January 24, 1959

This week it's the first of several issues coming to us from New England.  I'm a bit familiar with the area myself, having lived in Maine for four years, so I recognize a few of these stations.  And while we'll see some differences in programming, for the most part television is television, no matter where it comes from.

***

And we'll lead off with our cover story, looking at the great Red Skelton. You might think he's the one asking "What Good Are Television Critics?" but he's not - we'll get to that later.  In fact, the bulk of this article asks a different question - "What Makes a Clown?" - and plays this off against the death last year of his nine-year-old son Richard from leukemia.  Does tragedy help define a clown - you know, in the same way that Janus has the laughing and crying face?  "Malarky!" Red replies (or something like that; I'm betting that he didn't use quite that tame a word); "My comedy has nothing to do with tragedy.  I couldn't tell you why people laugh at me."

But laugh at him they do.  Skelton started on radio in 1937, graduating to host his own show the next year, and moved to television in 1951, where he will stay until 1971.  He's made movies, done countless personal appearances, and lives on an estate with his wife and daughter and a staggering number of pets.  In his spare time he paints clown pictures (such as the one on the cover), and estimates he's done at least 500.

But Dwight Whitney's story keeps coming back to tragedy, albeit sensitively, and though Skelton denies it, there is a moment when he lets the mask slip.  Everyone undergoes tragedy, he says, everyone suffers.  "How about the parents during the war who sweated out that telegram from the War Department?"  And then, after a pause, he adds, "Except my kid had no gun to defend himself with."

Red Skelton has a reputation for being difficult to work with, a suggestion that all is not rosy behind the crowd-pleasing clown's face, but for this article, at least, Skelton is all-too human.

***

It's a Leonard Bernstein doubleheader this week!  I assumed that Sunday afternoon's concert on CBS, in which Bernstein leads his New York Philharmonic in a program called "Jazz in Classical Music," must have been one of his renowned "Young People's Concerts."  After all, it has all the trademarks of one of Bernstein's programs, "showing how composers have consciously or unconsciously employed jazz elements" in their classical pieces.

But no - flipping the pages to the front of the programming section, there Bernstein is again, with a Saturday noon offering, on CBS that is one of the Young People's Concerts.  The ad promises "an exciting opportunity to learn 'What Does Classical Music Mean?'"  And it was exciting.  Bernstein, whatever his faults and flaws - and he had many, both professionally and personally - was a wonderful teacher, not only able to transmit knowledge to both children and adults in an understandable manner, but to infuse it with his own personal enthusiasm and excitement.  I wasn't yet alive when his Young People's broadcasts started, but Bernstein did them throughout the '60s, and many of them (along with his broadcasts for Omnibus) survive on DVD.  Here's part one of the broadcast in question:


To this day I may not always get everything he's teaching, but I know he had a lot to do with building a love of classical music in me.  Could anyone today do what Bernstein did back then?  My wife suggested Michael Tilson Thomas, the conductor for the San Francisco Philharmonic, who succeeded Bernstein in the original broadcasts.  He's done some very good classical music programs for PBS in the last few years, but could he transmit Bernstein's excitement to young people?  If there's anyone out there who could, I suspect it would be Gustavo Dudamel, the dynamic conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.  I wish he'd try it, he might be the only one who could talk a network into broadcasting that kind of show.  Since most schools, for whatever reason, no longer have music appreciation, a show like this may be the last best hope for transmitting to future generations a love of classical music.

ALL: HADLEY TV GUIDE COLLECTION

***

Also on Saturday night, WBZ carries Archbishop Fulton Sheen's religious program Life is Worth Living.  Sheen is one of the most famous religious apologists of the time, a popular and widely loved spokesman for the Christian faith.  His gentle, witty manner has won many converts among both celebrities and ordinary folk, and his long-running program, seen first on DuMont, then ABC, and by 1959 in syndication, has won Emmy awards and drawn audiences of as many as 10 million viewers.  Here's the program that was broadcast that Saturday on WBZ, with Sheen discussing the topic of courtship:


This of course begs the same question: could anyone do this today?  Granted there are any number of religious networks on cable today, including the Catholic network EWTN, which broadcasts Sheen's program.  But could a mainstream network do it?  You've got to be kidding, right?  These are the people who won't even use the word "Christmas" anymore.  But even if there was such an opportunity, who would take advantage of it?  With Billy Graham having retired, is there anyone that the public would trust, anyone who could escape the suspicions generated by sex and financial scandals?  I know a few who would be great at it, but they lack the high profile to be able to do it.  No, I think not - and in this case, the churches have often been their own worst enemies.

***

There are other programs like these this week - The Voice of Firestone, for example, which airs on ABC Monday nights and this week features a quintet of stars from the Metropolitan Opera; and a host of religious programs on Sunday morning, including highlights of the installation of the new Protestant Episcopal Bishop, shown on WHDH in Boston.

And those aren't the only kinds of programs you don't see on mainstream television anymore.  For instance, science.

The United States has been in something of a tizzy about a "science gap" since the Soviet launch of Sputnik in 1957.  Amid growing fears that the U.S. is falling farther and father behind, the nation launches a renewed emphasis on teaching science*, and evidence of that can be seen on TV screens everywhere.

*No pun intended.

On NBC Monday night, our favorite scientist, Dr. Linguistics (aka Dr. Frank Baxter) is back with another installment in the Bell Laboratories Science Series, "The Alphabet Conspiracy."


Continental Classroom, which airs Monday through Friday morning at 6:30am ET on Portland's WCSH, is chock-full of science programming - "Electromagnetic Waves" on Monday, "Vacuum Tubes" on Tuesday, "Experiment on Vacuum Tubes" on Wednesday, "Oscillators and Amplifiers" on Thursday, and "Transistors" to end the week.  WGBH, Boston's legendary public broadcasting channel, carries Grade 6 Science on Monday morning and has Science in Sight on Monday evening, and WPRO in Providence has Space and Science Saturday afternoon, And then, of course, there's the grandfather of them all, NBC's Watch Mr. Wizard, with Don Herbert.  Oh, and don't forget programs such as G-E College Bowl, which made knowledge admirable, if not sexy.

Does any of this help close the gap?  I don't know.  We do know that the United States will catch and pass the Soviets, landing a man on the moon a little over ten years from now.  It is a great victory for American engineering and one of the great scientific achievements of all time.  Now, over 40 years since that first moon landing, there's a cable channel devoted to science, But you might need that microscope to find any scientific programming on mainstream television.

***

"What good are television critics?" is the question posed on this week's cover.  And the answer?  It depends on who you ask.  Oliver Treyz, president of ABC, says they "Certainly affect our over-all thinking," which C. Terence Clyne, vice president of the McCann-Erickson ad agency, counters that critics' importance are "limited to the board of directors of the sponsor and his ad agency."*

*Remember that at this time, sponsors were still prime movers and shakers when it came to the television schedule, and a sponsor could doom a series if it withdrew sponsorship.

Critics are themselves divided on the subject - the famed New York Times critic Jack Gould things "our influence is vastly overrated.  We generate interest more than influence," while his counterpart at the Herald Tribune, John Crosby, says that he and other critics get plenty of mail from their readers telling that that "we persuade or dissuade them from watching a certain show."  A recent poll shows that 54% of viewers have, at one time or another, made their viewing choices based on a review.

One thing that everyone seems to agree on, though, is that critics perform a vital function.  David Susskind feels it is the critic who holds producers' feet to the fire, forcing him to offer better quality programming.  "Without the critic, I believe we would have more mediocrity than we now have."

***

Last week I wrote about the March of Dimes, which updated the progress of their annual campaign with a local television program.  This week, we're reminded again of how big the March of Dimes was with WHDH's March of Dimes Auction.  The show kicks off at 2pm and runs until 4:30, returning intermittently throughout the night until the station signs off.  All the goods are donated by local merchants, and the phones are being handled by "models and Channel 5 staffers."  It reminds me of the old Action Auction fundraiser on Minneapolis' PBS station, Channel 2 - although that was used to raise money for the station itself.

The show is described as a fundraiser "for the benefit of polio victims," of which there are still many.  It's true, however, that with the advent of the Salk and Sabin vaccines, polio is not the horrifying plague that it has been for so many generations.  And this ad perhaps indicates that knowledge, as the organization begins to transition from polio research to that of other illnesses, finally settling on birth defects.  I love the tag line at the end of this ad: "Toward Greater Victories".  It's a reminder that the March of Dimes helped fund the discoveries that helped stamp out polio, and a sign that the same kind of scientific progress can be made toward other diseases.  And a reminder, as if we didn't need one this week, that science indeed plays a major role in the culture of the late 1950s. TV