Welcome to May, my favorite month of the year outside of the holiday months in fall and winter. Amidst the up-and-down weather so many parts of the country have had, we have a freeze warning here in Indiana. So let's see if we can find something to warm us up.
At Comfort TV, David explores "the psychology behind classic TV viewing," based on a YouTube video that attempts to explain what kind of personality types prefer watching shows they've seen 50 times rather than watch something new.
John's review of The Omega Factor at Cult TV Blog continues with episode two, "Visitations," as the death of Crane's wife continues to provide mystery, as well as the role played by Department 7.
Mr. T returns to the boxing ring in this week's A-Team episode, "Champ!" which is the subject of Roger's review at The View from the Junkyard. The Team aims at a group of corrupt operators, and all I can say is that I'm shocked that there is corruption in boxing.
Mary Beth Hurt, who did much work in both television and the movies, died last month at the age of 78, and at A Shroud of Thoughts, Terence looks back on her long and successful career.
I've never been part of the cult of Joss Whedon; I enjoyed Firefly enough, but I wouldn't say that it's anything remarkable. (I'll pause here while you cast aspersions at me.) At Cult TV Lounge, Maddie looks at Whedon's follow-up, the cyberpunk series Dollhouse. TV
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We start off the new year by looking back 50 years, to 1975, as David continues his Comfort TV voyage through television of the 1970s andTuesday nights in 1975. It's the beginning of ABC's dominance in the ratings, and with shows like Happy Days and Welcome Back Kotter, it's not hard to see why. But don't ignore Police Story and Good Times.
The "Ann Way Season" continues at Cult TV Blog, and this week, John looks at The Dick Emery Show, which ran on British TV from 1963 to 1981, and Ann's appearance in the episode "The Daily Grind." If you like Benny Hill, it sounds as if Dick Emery might be your kind of show.
Cult TV Lounge returns to the world of TV tie-in novels, in this case Michael Avallone's novel The Blazing Affair, based on The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. It tells a tale of baddies trying to revive the Third Reich, and has a somewhat more serious tone than the TV series itself.
At Drunk TV, Jason reviews the 2020 telemovie A Ring for Christmas, one of those wretched Christmas movies that pollute our TV screens; this one presents one of those absurd plots that, taken in limited doses, can make for good fun. Not for me, perhaps, but not everyone's like me!
The View from the Junkyard wrapped up The Avengers a while ago, but not to fear: they've moved on to The New Avengers! Its first episode, "The Eagle's Nest," introduces Steed's new sidekicks, and it's a nice continuation in tone from the old series.
Travalanche celebrates "Science Fiction Day" (January 2) with a look at TV's kid-oriented sci-fi shows of the late '40s and early '50s. As was the case with TV Westerns, the sci-fi genre would eventually become more adult-oriented, but here are eight that are still fun.
At A Shroud of Thoughts, Terence pays tribute to the late Linda Lavin, who died last week at 87. Although she's most-known for her starring role in Alice, she had a long career on Broadway and television, and Terence looks at some of the many highlights.
Cliff Norton was one of those character actors you might not recognize by name, but you may recall him when you see one of his many TV appearances. Those Were the Days gives us a capsule look at some of his roles, on shows from The Dick Van Dyke Show to Green Acres.
There was something magic about doing live television, and at The Lucky Strike Papers, Andrew gives us an excerpt from a 1963 essay in which Norman Mailer writes about how the end of live TV meant the loss of a particular connection with viewers. Something to think about. TV
It could be said that the history of Mission: Impossible falls into three distinct eras: the first, which covers only the inaugural season and features Steven Hill as M;I leader Dan Briggs; the second, which began with Hill's replacement by Peter Graves as Jim Phelps; and the third, which is marked by the departures of Martin Landau and Barbara Bain, rendering the remainder of the series, to a large degree, forgettable. This week, we get a look behind the scenes at what instigated the show's fall from the summit.
It involves, as is so often the case, a behind-the-scenes power struggle at Paramount, where the series is produced. The heavy, according to Richard Warren Lewis in his 10-page article (expect this to be a dramatically condensed version), is Douglas Cramer, vice president in charge of production at Paramount. He's been charged with reducing the costs of producing Mission: Impossible, which is a very successful, but also a very expensive, program; each episode costs Paramount more than $225,000, while the network pays the studio little more than $170,000 (plus a "small sum" of foreign sales) to air it. Cramer (whom Lewis describes as "sipping a Bloody Mary in a studio office he had decorated with Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg abstracts," ordered creator and executive producer Bruce Geller to reduce what he called the series' "alarming" expenses, both in front of and behind the cameras. Geller, furious about what he took to be "insinuations and implications that he had operated in bad faith," voiced his own objections about Cramer's meddling.
While this was going on, Cramer was inspecting the various assets of the program with an eye to what brought M:I the greatest value. His conclusion was that "the audience buys the show itself, rather than those who populate it," with the exception of Peter Graves, who was seen as the glue that held the entire show together. The study also suggested that it would be possible to find a substitute for Martin Landau, whom Lewis characterizes as "undoubtedly one of the most charismatic performers on television," but who also came at a high price ($6,500 per episode, residuals amounting to 75 percent of his full salary, and an additional $60,000 "to be used by him personally for developing properties"), and had a unique year-to-year contract, rather than the standard five-year contract. Geller accuses Cramer of looking for an excuse to get rid of Landau; "Right from the beginning, he did not want Marty back. I don’t know why."
Paramount and Landeau came to loggerheads on negotiating a contract for the fourth season; Paramount offered to bring him back as a guest star for half of the season's episodes, which Landau's representative, Ed Hookstratten, rejected out of hand. Michael Dann, vice president of programming at CBS, pleaded with Paramount to do whatever it took to bring Landau back, but he was, according to Lewis, "dealing from less than a powerful position," as existing contracts prevented the network from exercising creative control over the show or its cast. "That [expletive] Doug Cramer is crazy," he complained. "The real truth of the matter is that he wants to show he’s bigger than anybody involved in the show. He wants control. The loss of Landau is a great tragedy. CBS is terribly upset.'
Meanwhile, Landau's wife and co-star Barbara Bain, a multiple Emmy winner for the show, was experiencing contract difficulties of her own. Paramount had yet to pick up her option for the fourth year of her five-year contract, and when she was notified to report to the studio on Monday for wardrobe-and-makeup discussions, she refused, telling the studio that Monday was her maid's day off, and Tuesday she was scheduled to do promos for the American Cancer Society and the Heart Association. She asked for permission to report on Wednesday, but heard nothing back from the studio. Instead, Cramer moved to charge her with breach of contract and sought to replace her with Dina Merrill. Bain filed a countersuit alleging not just breach of contract but defamation of character. Geller fumed, and didn't recast the part at all.
So at this point, Cramer has succeeded in reducing costs, and imposing a lower budget on the show, not to mention putting some of his own people on the production staff. Geller, angered by Cramer's moves and resentful of Cramer's people, says, "Mr. Cramer has provided an aura under which it is very difficult to operate. The crew doesn’t feel that. this is a happy place to work. Nor do they feel that management has a high opinion of them. I’m terribly upset. People are depressed, irritated, unhappy—almost despairing. | have a hit show, a hit operation and a flop management." CBS is furious; Dann says that "Cramer has jeopardized the show in the most serious way possible. He has interfered creatively, telling them how to do the show. This is from a man who has never produced a show." Bain says she doesn't know what is going on, and Landau, working on a movie in Sicily, comments only on the camaraderie shared by the old cast.
Cramer vows that the viewer "will see a show in no way different from what he has seen in the past," and predicts that Nimoy will be "superb" in the role. Neither prediction is accurate; Nimoy, frustrated by a lack of depth to his character, will leave after the show's fifth season. Lesley Ann Warren is brought in for the fifth season, but never hits it off, and leaves at the same time as Nimoy; Peter Lupus is reported to be replaced by Sam Elliott, who appears in several episodes, but an outpouring of viewer support forces Lupus to be brought back. While the series itself will survive until the end of its seventh season, it never attains the heights and panache of those first three seasons. Cramer leaves Paramount in 1971 to form his own production company, and later joins forces with Aaron Spelling. After all, you know what they say about people failing upwards.
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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: Tentatively scheduled: Cyd Charisse, comics Bill Dana and Joan Rivers, Spanish singer Raphael, Australian songstress Lana Cantrell, jazz trumpeter Don Ellis and his band, puppet Topo Gigio, and Tanya the Elephant.
Palace: Diana Ross and the Supremes (Cindy Birdsong and Mary Wilson) do a return engagement as Palace hosts, Guests: Sammy Davis Jr., Laugh-In’s Alan Sues, ventriloquist Willie Tyler and the Jackson Five (aged 7-16), Diana’s proteges.
From an entertainment standpoint, this week's winner depends largely on your taste in entertainment. From a historical perspective, however, I think it's fairly easy to see who comes out on top. With Diana and the Supremes, Sammy Davis Jr., and the Jackson Five, the Palace not only has a talent edge, but when you include Willie Tyler (and, undoubtedly, Lester), it's an example of a mainstream network variety show with an almost entirely black lineup. My, how the times have changed. This week, Palace takes the crown.
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Throughout the 60s and early 70s, TV Guide's weekly reviews were written by the witty and acerbic Cleveland Amory. Whenever we get the chance, we'll look at Cleve's latest take on the shows of the era.
When CBS's sitcom The Governor and J.J. premiered, William Drinkwater (Dan Dailey) was introduced merely as the governor of a quiet Midwestern state. That didn't prevent speculation as to which state he was supposed to be from, especially as the series was in the habit of introducing real-life state governors playing themselves in cameo roles. (According to the Teletype, Florida's Claude Kirk has just been signed as the fifth governor to do so.) One leading theory was that the state in question was Minnesota, a state which was highly regarded at the time and hadn't yet fallen into the cesspool of crime and homelessness. We never did find out just what state the Guv was from, but that doesn't stop Cleveland Amory from giving a qualified thumbs-up to this series.
Given the dismal state of sitcoms in 1969, Cleve says, "this show is probably as good a comedy half-hour as you're likely to get. It is fast-paced, reasonably funny and even, for this type of program, relatively sophisticated. But beyond that we will not go." It's wildly implausible (if you believe these characters, then this show "is after your bedtime and you should not be watching it"), and there hasn't really been a good TV show about politics since Slattery's People. The plots, so far, have featured such dilemmas as the widowed governor's daughter, J.J. (Julie Sommars), discovering that the chairs put out for her appearance at the opening of the art museum are covered with the same material as her dress. Come to think of it, if that was the worst we had to anticipate from our politicians, things really were better back then.
Nevertheless, as Amory pointed out at the beginning, there are bright spots. "Dan Dailey is very good as Ronald Reagan and Julie Sommars makes an excellent Julie Nixon." James Callahan, as the governor's press secretary, is good as well, and the dialogue is generally fun, if not always funny. Speaking from the perspective of a former Minnesotan, however, I can promise you that Dan Dailey as governor would be at least twice as good as the current incumbent—and Dailey has been dead for 45 years. That's politics for you.
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The new television season may only be a month old, but of course it's never too early to start worrying (or celebrating) about ratings, and with the first report in, there's room for both—sometimes with the same show! Take Get Smart, which during the off-season was cancelled by NBC and picked up by CBS. It finished 66th for the week, and that's bad news. But, it got better ratings that the shows it was up against, Let's Make a Deal on ABC and High Chaparral on NBC, and that's good news. And, CBS boss Mike Dann gloats, wait until next month when the Smarts have triplets. "The ratings should leap up," he tells Richard K. Doan in this week's Doan Report, "and Get Smart could have a five- or six-year run!" Or more likely seven months, to be precise: the show's final episode airs on May 15, 1970.
Last summer's success, Hee Haw, is said to be on the sidelines warming up to replace the weakest of the network's new shows: Medical Center. Guess again; Medical Center winds up not only surviving the year, but becoming one of the longest-running medical shows on television, running for seven successful seasons,* while Hee Haw instead replaces The Leslie Uggams Show. Other shows in trouble: The Good Guys (also on CBS), The Music Scene, The New People, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (another import from NBC), Land of the Giants, and It Takes a Thief on ABC; and The Andy Williams Show on NBC (suffering from being up against The Jackie Gleason Show). Of those shows, only Andy lives to see another season.
*Tied with Marcus Welby, M.D., which also ran for seven seasons, beginning and ending in the same seasons as Medical Center.
As for the hits, the aforementioned Marcus Welby debuted in the top ten, as did The Bill Cosby Show. Welby stays there for awhile, as we know, while Cos continues through next season—but he'll be back.
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A note at the beginning of the program section warns us that if the World Series is still going, games six and seven will pre-empt regular programming. That's not a problem, since the New York Mets completed perhaps the greatest story in baseball history by defeating the Baltimore Orioles on Thursday to win the Series a mere seven years after setting baseball's all-time record for losses in one season. That doesn't mean the week's without history, though.
To put things in context, remember that in the 1960s and 1970s, the NBA Game of the Week didn't start until January (after football season), so for a network to televise a game in October, it has to be a special occasion. And this Saturday is one of those occasions, as Wide World of Sports presents the regular season debut of the Milwaukee Bucks' Lew Alcindor, one of the most heralded rookies to ever enter the NBA. (11:00 a.m. PT, ABC) Alcindor, who played three seasons with UCLA, was twice named Player of the Year, set a college record for field goal percentage, and won three national championships. The Bucks had earned the first pick in the draft by finishing with the NBA's worst record in their inaugural season. They won 27 games that first year; with Alcindor in the lineup, they would win 56 games and finish in second place; in their third season they won the NBA championship, and Alcindor was named MVP. Alcindor, who will change his name to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar the year after that title victory, will retire in 1989 as the NBA's all-time leading scorer, with six MVP awards, six NBA championships, 19 selections as a league All-Star, and a memorable role in Airplane.
There's one more sports story, of a sort: on Sunday, NBC presents a repeat of the 1968 TV movie Heidi. (7:00 p.m.) It's been almost a year since the memorable 1968 Heidi Game, in which the network cut away from a New York Jets-Oakland Raiders game that was running late in order to show the start of Heidi, only to have the Raiders come from behind with two touchdowns in the final minute to defeat the Jets. Thus, this note:
For the record, the Oakland Raiders are once again involved in the late contest, this time hosting the Buffalo Bills in a game that would have kicked off at 4:00 p.m. Eastern time. The Raiders come out on top, 50-21, and I can guarantee the situation with Heidi did not repeat itself.
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Kraft Suspense Theatre had a nice two-year run on NBC from 1963 to 1965, but while the series consistently featured well-known performers and decent scripts, few of the episodes really made an impression, either in first-run or syndication. Saturday's episode (11:30 p.m., Channel 4), however, is an exception: it's "Rapture at 240," the pilot for Run for Your Life, with Ben Gazzara as attorney Paul Bryan, who learns that he has only a year or two to live. It's an interesting concept, yet another variation on The Fugitive, but the problem with turning it into a series was that it was self-limiting: two years at the most, according to his doctor. And while series have always played fast and loose with the passage of time (Combat!, Hogan's Heroes, and M*A*S*H all ran far longer than their respective wars, for example), Gazzara himself thought the show lost credibility when it returned for a third season. Maybe they could have given him a brain tumor or something instead, one of those deals where it could burst in ten minutes or ten years, or go away completely. I'm probably overthinking it.
Frank Sinatra Jr. gets to follow in his famous father's footsteps on Sunday, as the 25-yera-old singer gets his first network special, filmed in and around Las Vegas. (9:00 p.m., CBS) Joining the junior Sinatra in "With Family and Friends" are Jack Benny, Sammy Davis Jr., Nancy Sinatra, the Doodletown Pipers, Arte Johnson, Jack E. Leonard, and the Air Force Thunderbirds precision flying team. Oh, and a duet with dad.
I mention this because in order to catch Frank Jr., you'll have to pass up ABC's Sunday Night Movie, Stagecoach (9:00 p.m.), a remake of the John Ford classic that, according to Judith Crist, "embodies all that has gone wrong with movies in the past 30 years—unspectacular spectacle, violence for its own de-luxe-color bloody sake, dialogue riddled by maudlin sociology and five-cent psychiatry and inept performances by ersatz stars." Included in the cast are Ann-Margret, Alex Cord, Red Buttons, Mike Connors, Bing Crosby, Bob Cummings, Van Heflin, Slim Pickens, Stefanie Powers, and Keenan Wynn. And still the movie doesn't work.
Nineteen sixty-nine marks the 100th anniversary of college football, commemorated in a CBS special, "100 Years Old and Still Kicking," hosted by Charles Kuralt. (Tuesday, 10:00 p.m.) Kuralt looks back at the game's history dating back to a painting of the first college game, played between Princeton and Rutgers, and film by Thomas Edison at the turn of the century. There are also clips of great stars, including Jim Thorpe, Red Grange, Knute Rockne, Glenn Davis, and Doc Blanchard; scenes from movies showing the game's role in pop culture; and how television has helped the game boom. Oh, and since CBS only shows a couple of college bowl games each season, there's also a segment on the professional game, including the Super Bowl. I'd think Kuralt would be just about right hosting a program like this.
Speaking, as we were, of Get Smart, Friday night's episode is well worth a look, as Broderick Crawford guest stars in "Treasure of C. Errol Madre" (7:30 p.m., CBS), a wild takeoff on The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, with Don Adams as Smart as Humphrey Bogart. We're told that the script, by Chris Hayward and Bob DeVinney, is loyal to the movie, which I assume means there are no stinkin' badges. It makes a good warmup for a Gene Barry episode of Name of the Game (8:30 p.m., NBC) with Darren McGavin as one of Barry's reporters, searching for a missing scientist (James Whitmore) suspected of defecting to Cuba. Not interested? Then stick with CBS and the movie The Last Challenge, a Western with a terrific cast, including Glenn Ford, Angie Dickinson, Chad Everett, Gary Merrill, and Jack Elam. Unlike that other Western on Sunday, Judith Crist says this "unpretentious stock story" glows.
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No MST3K update this week, but a couple of Japanese sci-fi flicks that should have been on: first, Battle in Outer Space, from 1960, with Rye Ikebe, Kyoko Anzai, and Leonard Stanford (!). (Monday, 6:30 p.m., KTXL) "Catastrophes sweep the globe, and earth’s scientists conclude that beings from another planet are attacking." Makes sense to me; what else could it be? Then, there's the 1959 movie The H-Man, starring Yumi Shirakawa and Kenji Sahara. (Wednesday, 6:30 p.m., KTXL) "H-bomb tests create beings, made of water, that subsist on humans." Those would have worked, don't you think? TV
The great David McCallum died this week, aged 90. Although he had a long and successful run on the show NCIS, for many, he'll always be remembered as Illya Kuryakin on The Man From U.N.C.L.E., the man given the seemingly impossible task of humanizing Robert Vaughn—and succeeding. He was, indeed, "ultra-cool," as Terence says in this fond appreciationof his career at A Shroud of Thoughts.
In the "same church, different pew" category, we skip to Cult TV Lounge and the much-maligned The Girl From U.N.C.L.E., starring Stefanie Powers and Noel Harrison. In truth, the series had enough highlights that it wasn't a total waste, but it unfortunately arrived on the scene when its partner series was at its nadir, and the franchise build experiment ended after one season.
From spies to cowboys—at Television's New Frontier: the 1960s, we arrive at Gunsmoke in 1962, a year which sees the Western continue to evolve in a one-hour format, adds Burt Reynolds to the cast, and introduces another character that wouldn't become a regular for another year: Festus Haggen, played by Ken Curtis.
From the definitive Western, we go to the definitive animated space opera, as Mike continues his look at the animated Star Trek with the episode "One of Our Planets is Missing" at The View from the Junkyard. I always did enjoy how it displays such continuity with the original series, and Mike rightly sees it as a continuation of TOS.
I write often about how prominent movies were during the fundamental days of classic television, and what would those days be without the science fiction and fantasy classics helmed by George Pal? Martin Grams reviews a new biography of Pal, George Pal: Man of Tomorrow, writen by Justin Humphreys; if you're a fan of his work, this book is for you.
At Drunk TV, Paul explores the third season of Dennis the Menace, which includes the sudden death of Joseph Kearns, the actor who played Mr. Wilson. What did it mean for the series to lose a character so important to the story? And how does Gale Gordon fare as Mr. Wilson's brother, in what looks to be a test for his future role as Lucille Ball's exasperated foil? Read all about it.
We've spent today mostly in the 1960s, so let's skip ahead a few years, as David continues his Comfort TV journey through 1970s TV with a stop at Saturday nights, 1972. It wasn't always sports and reruns on Saturday, as we see from a list that includes classics such as All in the Family, Mary Tyler Moore, Bob Newhart, Mission: Impossible (all on CBS!), plus Emergency! and The Streets of San Francisco.
Cult TV Blog keeps us in the 1970s, as John kicks off his look at the decade with the corporate-intrigue drama The Organization, and while you probably haven't heard of it, it was winner of the Writers' Guild of Great Britain Award for Best Television Drama Series in 1973. And by the way, John has a new address for the blog; be sure to make a note of it.
Finally, an interesting piece at the religion site Aleteia on how G.K. Chesterton explains why "prestige television" is boring. Agree or disagree, there are some provocative points to consider here, and some that you've read in comments here in the past. We know that not all classic TV is classic, but today's writers could do a lot worse that to look to the past to see what works. TV
Mitchell here, with the first of what I hope will be several guest articles from faithful reader Stephen Taylor, who has some ideas about his favorite TV shows—and, in this case, one that isn't. Thanks for a great piece, Stephen—looking forward to more!
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Well, I had to quit watching Lost In Space.
It’s unclear to me why I bought LIS in the first place. I have only vague memories of it from
childhood; we just didn’t watch it at our house. I was familiar with the basic concept. The
Robinson family, on board an interstellar spacecraft fleeing an overcrowded Earth circa 1997, is
thrown off course by the added weight of a saboteur from a competing power; it’s never made
clear just which power that might be. And it was never important. What was important was that
the competing power didn’t perform psychological assessments on their deep-cover operatives,
and they ended up with Dr. Zachary Smith, a craven coward and all-around incompetent. His
extra weight and the sabotage of The Robot meant that the spaceship, the Jupiter II, was sent
light-years off course; they crash landed on a miserable little armpit of a planet called Priplanus.
The series details their efforts to survive on Priplanus and then to leave and find a way back to
Earth.
Irwin Allen had good intentions, I think. He invested a fair amount of money into sets and things
like The Robot, whose original duties included sampling the air on new planets, and the Chariot,
a tracked vehicle that allowed exploration of the surrounding area on Priplanus. There was
some actual science at the beginning, and Allen tried to keep the scripts focused on the
Robinson family and their efforts to survive.
That didn’t work out. He hadn’t counted on an absolute ham of an actor named Jonathan
Harris, who played Dr. Smith. He was only supposed to be on for a few episodes, but Harris was
having too much fun with the part, and audiences responded well. Dr. Smith was cowardly, lazy
and unctuous by turns, and sometimes all three at the same time. He wanted to get back to
Earth, and was perfectly willing to leave the Robinsons behind if that’s what it took to make that
happen. He was, in short, a very widely drawn villain. The audience responded positively to Dr. Smith, so Irwin Allen began to allow him to modify his lines for greater effect. Harris ran with
this, and his portrayal of Dr. Smith, along with the other breakout character, The Robot, soon led
the series to become "The Dr. Smith and Robot Show."
Irwin Allen allowed the series to become centered around Dr. Smith and The Robot because it
drove ratings, and the show soon began to become more cartoonish. In the beginning The
Robot was driven solely by his programming, but he slowly became able to initiate conversation,
take action without adhering to programming and to act on his own initiative. The Robot was an
early example of what we might call artificial intelligence. I found Dr. Smith to be perpetually
annoying; his mannerisms grated on me, but having The Robot engage in dialogue with Dr. Smith was a great idea and a huge success. The Robot began to make fun of Smith, and in
one episode the dialogue between the two made me laugh out loud. The two were excellent
together. That they were so good together, however, meant that there was no room for the rest
of the Robinson Family. Not that the audience was missing much; the rest of the family were
simply cardboard cutouts designed to act as a background for Dr. Smith and his attempts to get
back to Earth. It’s a shame, really, because there were many other things that could have been
done to keep the series serious, more or less. It was never going to be Star Trek, but it
could’ve been far better.
"Danger, Will Robinson!"
I only watched the first season in its entirety, but there was never any mention of the relationship
between Major West (Mark Godard) and Judy Robinson (Marta Kristen). There should have
been, because it might have set up some tension between stalwart John Robinson and the
notoriously quick-tempered Major West. (There is no other word in the English language that
better describes Guy Williams than stalwart). Was there marital tension between John and
Maureen Robinson? There should have been; their living situation was precarious, and John
tended to leave Maureen out of the decision making. There never was. In fact, none of the
children added much to the show, with the one exception being Will Robinson (Billy Mumy). He
was extremely precocious, yet still a child in every other way. He was willful and made a bad
habit of disobeying his father, he was extremely impetuous,, and had an absolute weakness for
allowing Dr. Smith to talk him into his schemes. Yet when the chips were down, he showed great
courage and a knack for improvisation. A example of this was in one of the better episodes of
the first season titled "There Were Giants In The Earth"; Will saved John Robinson and Major
West from being consumed by a 60-foot Cyclops by climbing up a rocky outcrop and zapping
the Cyclops with a laser rifle. Quite a kid. Will was a driver in many of the first season plots,
and could have been used a little more effectively. He wasn’t.
And what about Dr. Smith? Instead of allowing his character to overwhelm the show, his
character could have been written as a genuine villain, but one who grudgingly develops some
respect and even affection for the Robinson family. I could envision an episode where he
conspires with the Alien of the Week to harm the Robinson family in some way, but then joins
forces with the Robinsons to defeat the alien, thus revealing that he had a heart after all, and
could possibly be redeemed at some point down the road. There would have been tension
between John Robinson and this Dr. Smith, and it would’ve helped the show.
The scripts as written never gave the characters a chance to act, although acting at a
professional level was always going to be beyond Marta Kristen’s abilities, and Mark Goddard
wasn’t any more talented than she was. And if the word “stalwart” described Guy Williams, then
the word for June Lockhart was "maternal." She made a career out of playing someone else’s
mother. She was good at it, but LIS could have allowed her to stretch her wings a bit. It never
did.
The show began the slide into camp before the first season even ended, and never made any
attempt to recover. At which point I gave up. I thought I might be able to stick it out until the
infamous episode where Stanley Adams turns everyone into a vegetable, but I couldn’t finish my
journey through some of the most relentlessly bad science fiction I’ve ever seen.
I'm beginning to get the feeling that the obituaries for our classic stars are simply being continued from one week to the next. At Comfort TV, David thinks back on the life and times of Betty White and why we loved her,
At A Shroud of Thoughts, it's Terence's tribute to the one and only Dobie Gillis, Dwayne Hickman, who died at the start of the week. Let's not forget that he was also a regular on Love That Bob, as well as an executive for CBS, and director of numerous TV shows. He never stopped acting, either. Inner Toob has a tribute to him as well.
Terence also remembers the great Sidney Poitier, who died late last week, as doesThe Last Drive In. Poitier was a man and an actor of great dignity—not the kind that one finds often in the business any more.
On a lighter note, Silver Scenes brings back memories of the early '70s Saturday morning scene with this piece on Josie and the Pussycats, Hanna-Barbera's version of the Archies; unlike that cartoon, Josie and the Pussycats was a real band as well, with one Cheryl Ladd as a member. How much more real can it get?
At Garroway at Large, Jodie shares images from the 1987 prime-time special Today at 35. What a titanic list of talent—and television history—on that show (I hadn't realized how many of them outlived Dave Garroway.) To think it's been 35 years since then.
Over at The Horn Section, Hal as a link to his recent appearance with Dan Schneider (whom I've appeared with a couple of times myself) on his "Why This TV Series Is Great" series. The show in question: F Troop, of course!
At bare-bones e-zine, Wiliam D. Gordon's "The Dark Pool" becomes Jack's latest entry in The Hitchcock Project. It's an unsettling, chilling story with Lois Nettleton, Anthony George, and Madlyn Rhue.
And finally, Cult TV Blog returns to American television and The X-Files with "Rm9sbG93ZXJz" (pronounced "Followers," of course), which itself is a sequel of sorts to the first season episode "Ghost in the Machine," and a prescient episode indeed. Is this our brave new world? TV
Ah, now here's an interesting one to start off the week: the first of two stories by John Cheever to be adapted for Alfred Hitchcock Presents. It's the sixth-season episode "The Five-Forty-Eight," and naturally it's the topic of Jack's latest at bare-bones e-zine.
I thought this was a very timely piece, a reminder of what the world was like in 1970 - Comfort TV reviews the Adam-12 episode "Elegy for a Pig," David's latest entry in a series he calls "The Unshakeables." It never hurts to put the times in historical perspective.
The great Harlan Ellison died yesterday (Thursday) at the age of 84; remembered, of course, for the Star Trek episode "City on the Edge of Forever," though I remember him as well for his comment that Doctor Who was the greatest sci-fi TV series ever. The Twilight Zone Vortex gives us another chance to remember him; Jordan's latest look at the Twilight Zone Magazinefeatures the December 1981 edition, including an interview with Ellison on "The Art of Making Waves."
Every time I check out Made for TV Mayhem, I read about something else the fantastic Amanda is up to - books, liner notes, commentary tracks. You really know how to hurt a guy. Read the latest, very cool, developments here, and then take some time to look over the blog and find out the rest of the amazing story.
I'm always in the mood for the British perspective on things, and I think John makes some very perceptive comments at Cult TV Blog on The X-Files episode "Never Again."I like how he looks seriously at both the overt and underlying themes, as he's done throughout his series on the show.
Care to escape the bad news that seems to surround us? Take a few minutes to look at this terrific piece at The Federalist on the Mister Rogers documentary Won't You Be My Neighbor? What a remarkable, remarkable man Fred Rogers was - and is, really, because as long as videos of his show still exist, and stories are told of his interactions with people, there will always be a part of him with us.
I would be remiss if I didn't stop off at Television's New Frontier: the 1960s, not just because it's always interesting, but because this week the topic is one of my favorite cartoons of all time, 1961's Top Cat, with a cast comprised of memorable voice talents.
Martin Grams has a very nice remembrance of Clint Walker, the gentle giant who was the star of the WB western series Cheyenne, and so many more things. Martin shares his own encounter with Walker, as well as a wonderful story about the time when...
At Garroway at Large, Jodie (can't wait to see you at MANC!) takes some time for part one of a well-deserved appreciation of Jack Lescoulie, the brilliant number two on Today. As she points out, he's all but forgotten today, but at one time was a very common sight on our television screens.
Well, there's not much suspense about this week's big story, is there? As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, the flight of Apollo 11 is one of the most highly anticipated events in world history, the culmination of one of mankind's greatest achievements. What might be just as incredible, though, is the idea that the world will see man's most famous footstep live from the moon. Live! I like to think that had TV been around when Columbus sailed for America, or Peary set off for the North Pole, or Lindbergh took off for Paris, things would have been much the same.
(What's really interesting about all this is that movie portrayals of men landing on the moon - or other planets - seldom ever take TV coverage of the event into consideration. The landing usually takes place in a vacuum of awareness, and what communication there is with earth scientists is done via radio. Even in those situations where cameras cover the launch, they're never factored in to the landing. The idea that the same advanced technology that propelled astronauts to the moon could also allow TV signals to reach from the moon to the earth seems never to have occurred to filmmakers. Either that, or they figured that for security reasons, the public wouldn't be informed of the trip's success until it had already been accomplished.)
"The Epic Journey of Apollo 11," as it was billed on CBS, began with the launch on Wednesday, July 16, and reaches its climax on Sunday afternoon with the moon landing. The moon walk itself is originally scheduled for 2:00 a.m. ET Monday morning, and I remember having been prepared to stay up as long as necessary to see the actual walk. Fortunately, NASA made the decision to move the time of the walk to earlier in the evening; as I recall, they cancelled the sleep period the astronauts were supposed to have, figuring they'd be too keyed up to sleep, although I doubt it hurt that this meant the walk would now appear in prime time.
The coverage provided by the three networks reflects the recognition that this is not just a newsworthy event but a moment of great cultural importance the world over, and it's reflected in the coverage provided by the three networks. Granted, saturation coverage of a spaceflight (TV Guide estimates 31 continuous hours from Sunday through early Monday evening) means you're going to have lots of dead air time; even so, there's a measure of reflection contained in these plans, and I wonder if we'd see the same thing today. According to TV Guide, here's what the networks have in store:
ABC: Frank Reynolds and Jules Bergman are the anchors, along with Apollo 8 astronaut Frank Borman, physicist Robert Jastrow, and possibly an interview with a Soviet cosmonaut, Steve Allen does a medley of songs spotlighting the moon in popular culture, Duke Ellington performs a concerto and James Dickey recites a poem, both in honor of the landing, and Rod Serling moderates a panel of science-fiction writers (including Isaac Asimov) discussing "Where do we go from here?" There's also a video essay on space travel as portrayed in the movies, with Peter Jennings and Richard Schickel.
CBS: Walter Cronkite anchors with Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo astronaut Wally Schirra. Cronkite interviews former President Lyndon Johnson, an early champion of the space program, and 2001 author Arthur C. Clarke. Bob Hope does a monologue (strange that he isn't on NBC), and there are appearances by Orson Welles (because of War of the Worlds), Buster Crabbe (played Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon in the movies), Keir Dullea (2001), and satirist Stan Freberg, with his space puppet Orville. A special-effects device called HAL 10,000 will use nine projectors to portray space travel.
NBC: Chet Huntley, David Brinkley, and Frank McGee anchor the coverage with Gemini IX astronauts Gene Cernan and Tom Stafford. Guests include Nobel Prize chemist Harold Urey, and expert on the origins of the solar system. NBC also plans to have cameras on hand in Denver and Atlanta as telescopes attempt to pick up images of the Apollo spacecraft as it orbits the moon.
Fascinating, isn't it? Reminds me a bit of the coverage we saw during the Bicentennial and the countdown to January 1, 2000. It transcends mere news reporting to celebrate a singular moment in time - a philosophical news story, if you will. I don't mean to suggest that Neil Armstrong's famous first step isn't a historic event in and of itself; it is, and I don't think that anything television has broadcast since (not even the destruction of the World Trade Center) can really compare to it. But it's clear from the coverage that this is about much, much more than that. It's not only the event of an era, but the end of one as well. No longer will the quest to walk on the moon be the stuff of fantasy and imagination. Future flights can be measured in terms of newsworthiness and scientific progress, but the flight of Apollo 11 is different.
You'll recall that President Kennedy's charge to NASA was to land a man on the moon and return him safely to earth, so the coverage isn't really complete until Thursday, July 24 when the command module Columbia splashes down safely. The three astronauts are taken into an isolation unit on the aircraft carrier Hornet, and congratulated by President Nixon. Later, they'll be feted in ticker tape parades throughout the country and the world. For people who lived through it, there was nothing like it, and there hasn't been since then. There was much promise that this was the end of one era but the beginning of another; of course, we know today that this was about as good as it got, at least for manned exploration, although the unmanned robots have produced truly glorious results. It's missing something, though - the human element. And when man lands on Mars - not if, but when - perhaps that will be the next great journey. By then, maybe technology will be such that we'll feel like we're standing on the surface of the Red Planet with them.
Here's the opening to CBS's coverage of the Apollo 11 flight.
And here's Duke Ellington performing "Moon Maiden," his composition in honor of the moon landing, commissioned by ABC News and performed during their Sunday coverage, next to the giant lunar module mock-up on ABC's Space Headquarters set in New York.
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No Sullivan vs. The Palace this week; Hollywood Palace is on its summer hiatus, replaced by The Johnny Cash Show, with guests Ed Ames, the Monkees, Roy Clark*, and Joni Mitchell, and Sullivan (a rerun with Arthur Godfrey; Caterina Valente; the Young Americans; Blood, Sweat and Tears; Rodney Dangerfield; and some jugglers and acrobats) would have been preempted by CBS's moon coverage anyway. There's always next time.
*Who's billed as a "comic guitarist", which I think really sells short his excellent playing.
Compared to the moon mission, of course, everything else takes a back seat, but there is other programming. On Saturday night, CBS telecasts the Miss Universe pageant live from Miami Beach (10:00 ET); what do you want to bet the orchestra plays "Fly Me to the Moon" at least once?* Sunday morning at 10:00 a.m. CBS presents a special program looking at the religious ramifications of the Apollo 11 flight. Major League Baseball's All-Star Game is scheduled for Tuesday night at Robert F. Kennedy Stadium in Washington, D.C. (NBC, 7:00 p.m.) Nobody tells the weatherman, though; a tremendous rainstorm roars through the Capital City, flooding the dugouts and forcing postponement of the game until Wednesday afternoon. To date, it marks the last time the All-Star game was rained out, and the last time it was played in the afternoon. And Thursday Tom Jones swings on ABC (9:00 p.m.) with Lynn Redgrave, Sergio Mendes and Brasil '66, the Bee Gees, Lulu, and Tim Conway.
*The winner, by the way, is Miss Philippines, Gloria Diaz.
And in future news, it's all good for Joey Bishop - "his show has been renewed well into 1971" by ABC - which will come as a shock to Dick Cavett, whose show replaces Bishop's on December 29 of this year. Seems that TV Guide's source jumped the gun, and Bishop and the network never did agree on that contract. You can read about the spectacular last night of Bishop's late-night show at the end of this article.
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Since New York City has always been the happening place, let's take a look at some of the week's programming on the local stations and see what the Big Apple has to offer.
In honor of the moon flight, we'll look first at the weekend's sci-fi movies, starting with dueling spider movies on Saturday afternoon! WABC has The Spider at 2:00 p.m., while WOR counters with Sombra, the Spider Woman. I think I'll take a pass on those. Saturday night WNEW shows The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, one of those monster-thawed-from-ice-by-atomic-blast movies. The Astounding She-Monster terrorizes the public early Sunday morning on WNHC in New Hampshire, and giant man-eating crabs wreak havoc in the Caribbean in Port Sinister on WABC's late movie. Sunday evening doesn't look any better for Ray Milland than Markham did last week; this time he directs and stars in Panic in Year Zero, about the aftermath of a nuclear attack. It's scheduled for 11:30 p.m. Sunday on WABC, so expect it to be bumped by the moon walk.
Did you know Allen Ludden once had his own talk show? I didn't either, until I saw the listing for his daily program, Allen Ludden's Gallery, on WNEW as well as WTIC in Hartford. It's 90 minutes, as most talkers were back then, and Ludden seems to have had no problem attracting stars; his guests on Monday's WNEW airing are Hugh O'Brien, Chita Rivera, Scoey Mitchell, the Back Porch Majority singing group, and a profile of Kirk Douglas by Rona Barrett.
Joan Rivers is also on the air with her show, or That Show, if you want to be precise, mornings at 9:30 on WNBC and 11:30 on New Haven's own WNHC; her Monday guests (on WNBC) include Phyllis Newman and cooking expert Marcia Morton. And then there's Cesar Romero, whose Cesar's World is on WTIC Tuesday evening at 7:00 p.m.; this week, Cesar tours Leticia, Colombia.
And then there are the ubiquitous ads for WABC's Eyewitness News, featuring their very own "Eyewitnesses": Dell Wade, Melba Tolliver, Milton Lewis, Robert Lape, and "Anchorman" Roger Grimsby, "the man the other Eyewitnesses tell their stories to." If I'm not mistaken, they had another eyewitness around that time, a sports guy named Cosell.
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Finally, before I overstay my welcome for the week, we'll end with something appropriate: a pair of topical movies courtesy of WPIX.
At 2:30 p.m. Saturday afternoon it's the 1950 classic Destination Moon, about the first trip to the lunar surface, starring John Archer, Warner Anderson, and Tom Powers. It won an Oscar for special effects. At 10:00 a.m. Monday, PIX has the 1961 Italian flick The Day the Sky Exploded; "When a manned missile to the moon explodes, asteroids are thrown out of their orbits and sent hurtling toward the earth." Our survival is up to Paul Hubschmid. (Good thing they didn't show that last week.)
This week gets off to a flying start with Comfort TV's look back at the TV career of Veronica Cartwright, from Leave it to Beaver to The X-Files.
A trio of episode reviews is next: "Dear Uncle George" is the episode du jour as bare-bones e-zine continues its study of James Bridges' output on The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, The Twilight Zone Vortex takes a closer look at the TZ comedy-western "Showdown with Rance McGrew," and The Horn Section delights with "Pawn Ticket for Murder" on Get Christie Love!
Back when we lived in Maine, we picked up a number of those albums featuring TV theme songs - a great way to spend the evening with friends. Classic Film and TV Cafe tests your knowledge of these themes with a great video quiz.
Care for some holiday viewing? Christmas TV History keeps the season alive with a review of Family Matters Christmas, while Once Upon a Screen spends Valentine's Day with Jack Benny.
Finally in this somewhat abbreviated edition, a shout-out to Andy Stark's new website on Chet Allen, who played the title role in the historic first broadcast of Amahl and the Night Visitors. Regular readers know my affinity for that opera, and I'm always delighted to share a website that not only gives us more information on it, but also gives us a closer look at television from that era. Do Andy - and yourself - a favor by visiting the site and spiking his hits. He'll appreciate it - and so will you. TV
It's doubtful even a Coke could bring the world together today.
On September 30, 1963, ABC debuted an episode of The Outer Limits entitled "The Architects of Fear," starring Robert Culp. The story concerns "a group of scientists who try and instigate world peace by creating an imaginary alien threat, which they hope Mankind will unify against." Culp plays one of the scientists, who, by drawing the short straw, agrees to undergo injections and operations that will transform him into a grotesque alien creature. (I suppose now they'd just contact George Lucas and have him whip up an intelligent alien, but that's beside the point.)
Robert Culp, transforming to an alien.
Coming at a time just two months before the assassination of John F. Kennedy, a time when cold war tensions were running high, when the struggle for civil rights was bursting into flames, there was every reason to be pessimistic about the future, and to see the need for drastic action. Of course, as usually happens in stories like this, things go awry; the spaceship, which is supposed to land outside the UN building, instead goes off course, and Culp winds up being fatally shot by farmers wife. There are several effective, not to mention disturbing, scenes in the show, including the physical and mental transformation of Culp into the alien, and a powerful final scene - a brief reunion between the dying scientist/alien and his wife, one that demonstrates that love has a power that can transcend even death.
Once upon a time the Mad Men of the early '70s told us that buying and sharing a Coke could "teach the world to sing in perfect harmony." Today, it seems as if this country has reached a point where serious people ask if the various rifts now existing can ever be overcome, if there is anything that can transcend the bitterness and hatred that appears to have split us along almost every fault line one can imagine - religious, political, ideological, racial, socio-economic, sexual, what have you. (Have I left anything out?)* We seem to be operating with no common definitions, no agreed-upon standards, not only disagreeing about the nature of good and evil but whether or not they even exist, and having contempt for those who disagree. At a time like this, considering the events of the last week or so, it seems like a good occasion to take a brief, unscientific look at how television has answered this question.
*Even Coca-Cola and other soft drinks are divisive nowdays, thanks to the desire of the health police to cure Americans of their obesity.
I use the term "unscientific" advisedly, because in fact the main instigators in such scenarios are often scientists, who fall into two main categories: the benign scientists, who react in a way similar to what we see in this episode, by creating a man-made threat which they hope will bring the world together, usually against the threat of nuclear war between the superpowers. The other scenario we see often casts the scientists as less benign, as elitists who feel their superior knowledge and ability entitles them to make unilateral decisions in the name of "peace," decisions which often involve breaking a few eggs, so to speak, in the service of a greater good.
You can see these scenarios play out usually in science fiction, in various TV series such as Doctor Who and Star Trek, or on shows like MST3K in which the cheesier sci-fi movies on the subject can be seen. What runs through both of these versions is this: the elitist scientists know best, certainly better than the population at large, and their machinations usually fail. When you do see people come together to fight a common threat, it's usually in a situation such as The War of the Worlds, where there actually is a threat to the world from an outside force. Even here though, the scientists - in this case Gene Barry - are reduced to "praying for a miracle" rather than using their own knowledge to exploit the situation. The lesson here is that if we want to take our cue on how to overcome our national divide from television, we're in big trouble.
I'm being partly facetious here, but it does bring up the question as to what precisely would bring people together, whether even a common threat would be perceived as such, or - in the immortal words of The Simpsons newscaster Kent Brockman - a sizable number would welcome their new insect overlords. Probably a good number would see them as an improvement over what we have today.
If this is true, if there is no assassination or tragedy or threat that would bring most people together - and off the top of my head, I can't think of one - then it portends dire consequences for the nation. It means we'd probably be looking at a scenario similar to that portrayed in the TV series Revolution, that of the country splitting into several separate and distinct nations.
This is the outcome I personally think is more likely than the others, but the process through which this is achieved is by no means guaranteed to be a peaceful one. We might well be looking at North and South: Book 4, for all any of us know.
The point to all this is not to put this blog in the position of taking sides, or to have its readers take sides. It's merely to look back at the - what? Naivety? - of those scientists in September 1963. Yes, their concerns were primarily international rather than just about the United States, but today we'd see the idea that the world, or the country, could actually be unified by a common threat as laughable, Utopian, far-fetched. And, perhaps in a way, charming. Would that it were that easy - of all the differences that TV has shown between then and now, this one might be the most stark.
Perhaps The War of the Worlds had it right, that praying for a miracle is all that is left. You probably couldn't show that on TV, though.
