This week in TV Guide: February 18, 1967

What better way to start the week than by spending a day with Dean Martin? That's what Leslie Raddatz is here to tell us!

Fortunately for us, the day happens to be a sunny Sunday in Southern California, the one day a week that Deano spends on his television show. (When you're the highest-paid entertainer on television, as Martin is reported to be, you get little perks like working one day a week.) However, don't think that the day begins and ends at the studio. By 11:00 on this Sunday morning, Martin has already been up for more than four hours, had breakfast, and played nine holes of golf at the Bel-Air Country Club.*

*Don't think that Martin is averse to work, though; this year he will do 30 episodes of the show, plus a pair of engagements in Las Vegas, and still find time to shoot four movies.  

He spends the first couple of hours at the studio running through his musical numbers with music director Les Brown and his orchestra, and now he's watching the run-through of the show on his dressing room monitor, with stand-ins substituting for him in the comedy routines he'll be doing with Marty Allen and Steve Rossi, and Eddie Foy Jr.; Martin works best when he's spontaneous, and often he'll rehearse only his own lines, to keep his reactions fresh. After returning to the set to rehearse a song with Leslie Uggams and his weekly schtick sitting on the piano with Ken Lane, he's back in the dressing room, nursing a Scotch. Someone "close to the show" confides to Raddatz that Martin sips pretty steadily throughout the day, but he's never drunk: "How could a drunk get up at 6 o'clock in the morning, play nine holes of golf and then spend the rest of the day working on a show he’s never even seen before, with music cues, tricky arrangements and all the rest of it?"

Next, we see Martin waiting for a doctor to give him a shot; he's still dealing with the aftereffects of a cold and laryngitis, which has forced some of the guests from previous shows to come in today to do "pickups," accounting for the longer day. (While he complains that "I could have been sleeping," a friend says that Dean is generally an "early-to-bed, early-to-rise guy" who's always up by six, and seldom goes to parties.) Once the doctor has done his duty, Martin is joined by three of his children, and they watch a tape of last week's show. He's not one of those who avoid watching themselves, but he also doesn't study his past performances; he watches purely for entertainment. 

The actual taping of the show begins around 8:00 p.m., when he appears on stage to help warm-up the audience. He generally returns to his dressing room when other performers are on, but he's always watching them on the monitor. Other times, while technical adjustments are being made or sets are changing, he's joking with the audience. And now he actually starts to perform; as another friend says, "In the rehearsal, he just reads the jokes—he doesn’t do them." Radditz notes that some of those jokes, "which he read perfectly at rehearsal, he now pretends he can’t make out and squints at the cards. The audience roars."

By 11:00, the show is done, the pickups concluded, and Martin heads for an Italian restaurant with Mort Viner, his agent and old friend. Often, they'll play some pool afterward, on the table in Deano's house, while he winds down. Not tonight, however; it is now after midnight, and as Raddatz says, "it has been a long day." And, in all likelihood when the show is finally aired, a good one.

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

Sullivan: Scheduled guests: Joe E. Lewis; Pearl Bailey; Pat Boone; Met coloratura soprano Gianna D’Angelo; comedian Jackie Mason; the Four Tops; saxophonist Boots Randolph; and the Martys, a teeterboard balancing act. (According to the episode guide, Morey Amsterdam was an additional guest, and Jackie Mason and Gianna D'Angelo did not appear.)

Palace: Host Bing Crosby presents Ella Fitzgerald; Phil Harris and Alice Faye (Mrs. Harris); comedian Dom De Luise; the Nitwits, English music-hall clowns; the acrobatic Medini Brothers; and Hendra and Ullett, an English comedy duo. 

I've always leaned toward Palace when Bing Crosby hosts, and this week is no exception. Besides a Bing and Ella duet, Phil Harris and Alice Faye are always entertaining, and Dom De Luise can be very funny. Over on Sullivan, Morey Amsterdam is a fine substitute for Jackie Mason, and the music lineup is varied enough for everyone. When the shows line up this well, there's no other alternative than to declare the week a Push. 

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

Cleveland Amory invades the world of science fiction this week, with ABC's new series The Invaders, and the question is whether or not we can stand more than one invasion. 

It's difficult to tell whether Amory has a real feel for sci-fi or not; he treats the program as something of a joke, an "Us vs. Them" scenario in which Earth is threatened by aliens who look just like Us, talk just like Us, act just like Us. Only one man stands between Us and Them, and that one man is David Vincent, played by Roy Thinnes, which means we're in a fair amount of trouble. You see, Vincent isn't a scientist or military man or anything like that; he's just an architect, which means he's not necessarily a credible authority when it comes to convincing the authorities that the Earth is under attack. And then there's the fact that so many of those authorities are either in the power of Them, or actually are Them. And just to complicate things, "you can’t tell whether one of Them is one of Them or just in the power of Them unless they get headaches and take pills and things; and, even after you do get it all straight, our guess is you’re not even going to trust the commercials."

Cleve's favorite episode so far featured Suzanne Pleshette as a stripper who decides to help Vincent, even though it turns out that she's one of Them too. When Vincent discovers this, he asks, quite sensibly, why he should trust her. "All right,” she says, “I’m an alien. But I am to Them too. Ever since I was little I had this difference. My father had it too." What that difference is, Amory doesn't say, probably so the suspense isn't ruined. The Invaders is a Quinn Martin show, like The Fugitive, which means that Vincent will come under attack each week, will be threatened with capture by the aliens each week, will try (and fail) to convince others of the threat each week, and will escape at the end of the episode to fight another day, or at least another week. See the problem? Amory compares the series, somewhat unflatteringly, to War of the Worlds, and the panic the radio version supposedly started in New Jersey, site of the Martian invasion. What does this have to do with anything? Well, he concludes, The Invaders is "a great show for the kids, but for the rest of you, our advice is to join New Jersey and take to the hills."

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Unlike Leslie Raddatz's day in the life story about Dean Martin, Dwight Whitney's look at the post-Ben Casey career of Vince Edwards isn't nearly as flattering, or as satisfying. To begin with, Whitney interjects himself directly into the story, and while this may be a favored style of the day, it's a technique I've never been particularly fond of. I suppose it's unavoidable in this case; Whitney has known, and written about, Edwards for several years, and that gives him an insight into "Vince Baby," as Whitney refers to him, that others might lack. And don't get me started on "Vince Baby" in the first place; it appears in the title of the article ("Vince Baby Plays It Cool"), and it's how Whitney refers to Edwards throughout the article. A little of that goes a very long way. 

Perhaps to compensate for this, Whitney doesn't shy away from Edwards's less attractive qualities. Given what we've read about Edwards in the past, this may have been unavoidable. He's always been portrayed as intense, scowling, difficult to work with. He insists he's changed; "In the early years I was a little hostile, but you grow out of that and realize that everybody’s got a job to do." But it doesn't take long for Whitney to see Vince's "old fierce, scowling self." We learn, for example, that Vince Baby has it set to make it big time in motion pictures. He's signed a "dream" contract with Columbia for two movies, with script and director approval, star billing above the title, snd a minimum budget for each of nearly two million. So far, though, nothing has come of it, and Vince thinks he knows why. "What TV actors have really broken through? Not very many. Know why? It’s pure snobbery. The men who run this town are sitting on a bonanza and they don’t know it! They’re fools. Otherwise they’d be breaking the doors down trying to get TV stars. But, oh, no, they’d rather import something with an accent that covers a multitude of bad acting." 

Whitney acknowledges the difficulties of making the big transition from television to movies, and says"those who did make it—McQueen, Garner, Van Dyke, Marvin—were not exactly Cary Grant. Superstar he would be." In case you're not sure, that would be Oscar nominee Steve McQueen, Oscar nominee James Garner, Oscar winner Lee Marvin, and Dick Van Dyke, who was in the Oscar-winning Mary Poppins. Maybe they're not Cary Grant; nobody else was or is. However, considering that three of these men were considered among the coolest stars ever, and the fourth one of the most beloved, I think Whitney was a little off the mark in this comment. Perhaps he was too focused on his snark to notice. 

But back to Vince Baby. He's done all the right things that a star should do: he's been seen in the right places, with the right people; he's looking at buying a house in the right neighborhood (Bel Air); he gets his hair done with the right stylist (Jay Sebring); and he got a new press agent, a new girlfriend, and a more swinging lifestyle. He turned down plenty of offers for "schlock" movies and television series (including a detective series written by Blake Edwards and produced by Aaron Spelling that came with a two-season guarantee), and made a strong pitch for roles in movies such as King Rat ("it went to George Segal. George Segal!!?), The Chase (Robert Redford got the part), and In Cold Blood and Funny Girl, but missed out both times. 

Still, life is not bad for Vince Baby: he's been accepted by the jet set for doing all those right things, and he remains confident that what he wants will come, if he's patient. "I won't settle for second best," he tells Whitney. "You need a little mozel [luck]. You pray a little. You build excitement with activity.

Night clubs! Records! Publicity! Keep yourself hot. Go. Go. Go. And wait for your best shot..."

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We don't have anything from Vince Baby on this week's hits, but that doesn't mean we're without choices. 

You may or may not remember that the success of Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol spawned a spin-off series, The Famous Adventures of Mr. Magoo, which put our near-sighted hero into various roles from classic literature. A number of those episodes were turned into movies, such as Mr. Magoo in the King's Service (Saturday, 9:00 a.m. PT, KCRA), made up of adaptations of The Three Musketeers, Cyrano de Bergerac, and King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. 

Jack Benny and George Burns guest star on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour (Sunday, 9:00 p.m., CBS), and the two oldtimers wonder if they need to create new images for themselves in order to capture the "younger generation." My suspicion is that they're probably still funnier than the Brothers just the way they are. In this week's Doan Report, by the way, Richard K. Doan reports that the latest addition to the CBS lineup is running neck-and-neck with perennial champion Bonanza. For the Tiffany Network, the "all-but-unbelievable" news comes after years of struggling to offer competition for the Cartwrights, with everyone from Judy Garland to Julie Newmar swinging and missing. Might the Smothers Brothers be the ones to finally break NBC's stranglehold on the timeslot? Stay tuned.

Also on Sunday, N.E.T. Opera presents Jack Beeson's 1965 modern opera "Lizzie Borden" (8:00 p.m., NET), a retelling of the legendary (and alleged) axe murderer that focuses on Borden's possible motives. It's a fascinating couple of hours (we've got it on DVD), performed by members of the New York City Center Opera Company, conducted by Anton Coppola, Franis Ford Coppola's uncle. 

If you remember the premise of Run for Your Life, you may also remember that Paul Bryan, the doomed lawyer played by Ben Gazzara, comments that he hasn't had a vacation since law school; thus, with only a couple of years to live, he's decided to cram all the living he can into those years. Sensible, but I've always wondered how it is that he's got so much experience at these various activities if he's never taken any time off. Case in point: this week's episode (Monday, 10:00 p.m., NBC), in which Paul finds himself in Czechoslovakia to compete in an important road race—and, by the way, to help a scientist defect to the West. Amazing how he could find the time to become a competitive auto racer while spending all his time in court, not to mention becoming a spy at the same time. Sounds to me as if he's already crammed a lot of living into his life.

Andy Griffith branches out from Mayberry to try his hand at a variety hour (Tuesday, 8:30 p.m., CBS), with his guests Don Knotts, Tennessee Ernie Ford, the Back Porch Majority folk group, singer Maggie Peterson and the Bruce Davis Quintet. Included during the hour is one of Andy's famous monologues, this one on "a successful small-town boy named William Shakespeare." Also on Tuesday is a rare television appearance by singer Peggy Lee in The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. (7:30 p.m., NBC), in an even-more-absurd-than-usual tale about a three-woman race to gain a mineral that can turn laser light into a death ray. If you're interested in movies, there's the Oscar-winning The War of the Worlds (9:00 p.m., NBC) in its color television premiere, and Patterns (11:00 p.m., KTVU), Rod Serling's adaptation of his own television play that helped launch his illustrious career.

Perry Como celebrates Washington's Birthday with a Kraft Music Hall special (Wednesday, 9:00 p.m., NBC) that features the comedy team of Burns and Schreiber, and singer Frances Langford. I notice that Perry's singing "Lazy River"; I wonder if it's the  thrillerPotomac River, which Washington supposedly threw a coin over (it was actually the Rappahannock), or the Delaware River, which Washington and his troops crossed on Christmas night, 1776? Or am I just reading things into it? That's followed by an intriguing I Spy (10:00 p.m., NBC), featuring Boris Karloff as a scientist whom Kelly and Scott hope to convert to supporting the United States. No word as to whether or not this is the same scientist who defected in Run for Your Life. 

Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic take center stage on Thursday with a Young People's Concert salute to the late American composer Charles Ives. (7:30 p.m., CBS) Appropriately enough, two of the Ives pieces performed tonight are "Lincoln, the Great Commoner" and "Washington's Birthday." Later, on Star Trek (8:30 p.m., NBC), Kirk and Company come up against a planet engaged in computer-controlled warfare with a rival planet; casualties are determined by the computer, with the "victims" ordered to report to human disintegration chambers. If this sounds slightly familiar to you, this is one of the stories I wrote about in Darkness in Primetime. And on ABC Stage 67 (10:00 p.m., ABC), Maurice Chevalier and Diahann Carroll team up for an hour of music from France, Broadway, the movies, and popular music.

Movies score big again on Friday, with Breakfast at Tiffany's (9:00 p.m., CBS), starring Audrey Hepburn and George Peppard, and Oscar-winning music from Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer. That competes against a completely different movie, Roman Polanski's feature film debut, the disturbing 1962 thriller Knife in the Water (9:30 p.m., NET); meanwhile, on N.E.T. Playhouse (9:00 p.m., KQED), singer-actress Lotte Lenya (whom you might remember as one of the heavies in the Bond film From Russia with Love, as well as being in the lyric to Louis Armstrong's rendition of "Mack the Knife") offers a tribute to her late husband, composer Kurt Weill, who wrote "Mack." And speaking of songwriting, ABC's in the game with the music documentary Songmakers (10:00 p.m., ABC), featuring a look at today's biggest stars, including the Mamas and the Papas, Dionne Warwick, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, Judy Collins, Burt Bacharach, the Byrds, Henry Mancini and others.

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MST3K alert: Gorgo (English; 1961) It might not have been a good idea to bring that live prehistoric monster to London— it has a parent that’s coming after it. Bill Travers, William Sylvester. (Saturday, 1:00 p.m., KTVU in Oakland) Leonard Maltin's memorable cameo as himself, trying to come up with the world's worst movie in order to torture Mike and the Bots, is one of the great bits in the show's history. Asked if this movie was going to "hurt" them, he replies, "Well, that's a matter of opinion, Mike. Now I actually like Gorgo, but when we reviewed it for my number one best-selling Movie and Video Guide, it put two of my assistant editors into intensive care. So who knows?" Need we say more? TV

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This week in TV Guide: April 19, 1969

You may recall the sensation that was The Beatles: Get Back, the eight-hour documentary directed by Peter Jackson that ran on Disney+ over three consecutive nights beginning on Thanksgiving Day, 2021. It seemed, at least to this non-Beatles fan, that everyone was either watching it, talking about it, or both; it aired to great reviews and great ratings. In addition, a feature film was made of the famous rooftop concert that features in the documentary.

I bring all this up because in this week's TV Guide, we have a pictorial featuring the Fab Four, performing on that rooftop, as part of Michael Lindsay-Hogg's documentary Let It Be, being made in support of the album of the same name. "The reason for making an album is obvious. The reason for filming the session is to let the world—all over which the Beatles hope to sell the documentary in a few months— know just how the Beatles go about their work." And part of that work is the recording session on the roof of the Apple Corps building, located in London's Savile Row. Needless to say, the impromptu session attracted quite a number of passersby, who proceeded to gather on the streets and sidewalks below, prompting calls from neighboring shops to the Metropolitan Police demanding that they "quell the noise." But, as TV Guide notes, "Even bobbies couldn't do that."  

The original documentary came out in 1970, by which time it served as something of an epitaph for the group, which was in the process of a highly publicized breakup. As was noted at the time, a good portion of Jackson's documentary was comprised of footage shot by Lindsay-Hogg, which Jackson proceeded to restore and enhance; Jackson himself referred to it as "a documentary about a documentary," a supplement to, rather than a replacement of, the original. It also presented a revisionist account of the making of the Let It Be album, presenting a far more upbeat atmosphere than had been previously thought.

As you know, we're always searching for relevancy here at It's About TV!, and it seems to me that nothing could be more relevant that a pictorial in support of a documentary that would come out the following year and then would be reprised more than fifty years later to become another TV sensation. Who knew?

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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: Ed's scheduled guests: Norm Crosby; Ken Berry of Mayberry R.F.D.; dancer Peter Gennaro; comic Pat Cooper; and singers Julie Budd, Grace Markay, and the Chambers Brothers.

Palace: Host Steve Lawrence presents Phyllis Diller, Broadway songstress Florence Henderson and Bill Dana (as skydiving instructor Jose Jimenez). Also: the singing Fuller Brothers; ventriloquist Russ Lewis; the Rhodins, aerialists; and Pat Anthony’s wild-animal act. 

To be perfectly honest, neither lineup overwhelms this week, but since I copped out with a push last week, I'm forced to make a choice, so let's bear down and get to it. I've always enjoyed Steve Lawrence, a versatile performer, and although it isn't fashionable anymore, Bill Dana's Jose Jiminez act was very funny. And who can really vote against Mrs. Brady? I liked Norm Crosby on Palace last week, so I have to like him on Sullivan this week, but while there's nothing wrong with Ed's show, I'll give the nod to Palace this week.

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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. 

That Show isn't, as you might think, one of those epaulets that people use when they're talking about something they might have found slightly distasteful, as in, "Did you see that show last night?" It is, in fact, the title of Joan Rivers' new talk show, syndicated five-times-a-week to stations around the country, and as Cleveland Amory says, it really is different from the run-of-the-mill talkfest. For one thing, Rivers attempts to engage her audience during her opening monologue. It might be a little too much for some viewers, with Rivers "[j]umping and bouncing around, weaving, waving, punching and gyrating," and trying (sometimes successfully, sometimes not) to provoke a reaction. In one show, she emerged to great applause from the audience, except for one man who stubbornly refused to clap. Rivers, who honed her talent on the nightclub circuit, naturally picked him out; "You have guts, mister," she said.

Rivers really works the audience, "and make no mistake— she works hard." When a joke fails to get a response she doubles down, building on it until something happens. After a string of cracks about her supposed lack of talent at housekeeping failed to elicit much reaction, she finally got some applause for proclaiming that she had a nice, clean garden. "'Now, you're applauding,' she said, smiling. "I like your applause, you know. I’m a mother—and a working mother."

Perhaps the most novel aspect of That Show—and it is novel—is how Rivers mixes her guests, matching the typical talk show celebrity with a non-celebrity who has an unusual or interesting job or hobby, "which becomes the basis for a discussion with both Miss Rivers and the celebrity. Most of the time the celebrity has only two choices—either play second fiddle or just burn." The match-ups are meant to be incongruous, or at least humorous; one show, for example, paired an etiquette writer and former middleweight boxing champion Rocky Graziano; another featured a psychotherapist who'd authored a book on marital fights, along with James Earl Jones, star of The Great White Hope. Naturally, Rivers and Jones staged a pretend fight for the doctor to critique, at one point moaning, "Where did we lose the magic?" I've never been a fan of Rivers, though I didn't have the animosity toward her that some did, and I have a feeling I'd have asked the same question about That Show.

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Some interesting specials highlight the best of the week, starting on Sunday night with the 23rd presentation of the Tony Awards (10:00 p.m., CBS), hosted by Diahann Carroll and Alan King. It's hard to know how relevant the Tonys have ever been to the public at large; I know that Broadway is a tourist trap, and people planning a trip to the city may depend on the Tonys to give them some idea of what's hot, but I can't help thinking that in 1969, Broadway was much more relevant to the entertainment industry, considering how many stars had roots in the legitimate theater. Just look at some of this year's nominees: Art Carney, James Earl Jones, Brenda Vaccaro, Charlotte Rae, Herschel Bernardi, Jack Cassidy, Angela Lansbury, Joel Grey, Jerry Orbach, and Donald Pleasence. Nowadays, when a big name appears on stage, it's seen as a bid to attract a mainstream audience; back then, it was called making a living.

Monday features an uninterrupted evening of specials, ranging from animation to concerts to dramatic poetry readings, starting with the Babar the Elephant (7:30 p.m., NBC), narrated and voiced charmingly by Peter Ustinov, and based on the first three Babar books. That's followed by the latest Singer Presents musical special starring Don Ho (previous specials have included the legendary Elvis comeback, Sinatra's "A Man and His Music," and Tony Bennett); the theme is "Hawaii-HO!" (I wonder where they got that idea, hmm?), with Don leading viewers on a musical tour of Hawaii (8:00 p.m., NBC; no video, but you can listen to the soundtrack here.) Speaking of Sinatra, you can see him in a repeat of Francis Albert Sinatra Does His Thing (9:00 p.m., CBS), in which Frank is joined by Diahann Carroll and the 5th Dimension for music that's "swinging, soul, spiritual and psychedilic." Sinatra was famous for an aversion to doing multiple takes, and tonight's program is the dress rehearsal tape—Sinatra liked it and decided not to do a final taping. The poetry comes from Spoon River (10:00 p.m., CBS), a one-hour adaptation of Edger Lee Masters' free-verse Spoon River Anthology. Charles Aidman, who stars along with Jason Robards, Joyce Van Patten, and Jennifer West, wrote and directs the play, which he adapted from his own 1963 Broadway version; Hal Lynch and Naomi Caryl Hirshhorn perform the folk songs that accompany Masters' poems. I'm not sure I can imagine anything like this on American television today, not even on PBS.

Things turn more serious on Tuesday's NBC White Paper "Ordeal of the American City" (7:30 p.m.), a 90-minute look at "how urban ills are reflected on campus," with a focus on student unrest, teacher strikes, minority-group protests, and international conflicts. If this sounds a lot like what's going on in the world of education today, I suspect it's no coincidence; this should have been called "a look at how urban ills are caused and exacerbated by what's taught on campus." 

On Wednesday, Barry Sullivan and E.G. Marshall star in "This Town Will Never Be the Same," the latest presentation of Prudential's On Stage series of dramatic stories relating to today's issues (9:00 p.m., NBC). Sullivan plays a newspaper editor facing a dual crisis: his paper is on the verge of collapse, and his son has been implicated as a drug dealer. Vincent Gardenia and Roy Scheider headline a distinguished supporting cast.

Thursday, NBC's acclaimed Project 20 series turns its eye on the father of the country in "Meet George Washington" (7:30 p.m.), the story of "the best-known unknown in our history." In Susan Ludel's background article on the show, producer/director Donald Hyatt explains why Washington should be relevant to the "Now" generation, young people more interested in "new" revolutionaries than old ones: "Most people don't know what George Washington stood for; they don’t know why he was great. People are vague about the principles of the American Revolution, and many of them are unclear about the basic ideas behind the Declaration of Independence. Americans today are." (He could be talking about millennials, couldn't he?) He rejects the idea that history has no bearing on our lives today, and says that "knowledge of the past is a prerequisite to dealing successfully with the present"; "It is ideas that make history and that make the present intelligible. It is from ideas that all movements spring. To say that history doesn’t matter is to say that ideas don’t matter. But they do." Perhaps someone should dust this program off and show it today.

Finally, The Wild Wild West isn't a special, but Friday's episode is special in a way, with Pat Paulson making a surprisingly effective dramatic acting debut as a greenhorn agent assigned to assist West in "The Night of the Camera" (7:30 p.m., CBS). Incidentally, this episode is notable in that Ross Martin's character, Aretemus Gordon, does not appear; Martin suffered a heart attack in August 1968, necessitating guest appearances by several actors filling in for him during his absence. Martin's place in this story is taken by none other than Charles Aidman, who appeared in four episodes; other actors included William Schallert and Alan Hale, Jr. (who is also quite effective, by the way; showing some acting chops he didn't get to display in Gilligan's Island.

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You'll notice I didn't mention Saturday up there, but that doesn't mean I've forgotten it completely—otherwise, we wouldn't have that groovy illustration of him on this week's cover. (And by the way, that just doesn't seem right, does it? A psychedelic Lawrence Welk? You'd have had an easier time selling me the idea of Ronald Reagan as the Democratic nominee for president.) But if you're looking for an entertainer trying to successfully bridge the Generation Gap, who better to turn to than the maestro?

"I think young," Welk tells a somewhat apprehensive Digby Diehl. "I listen to KHJ [a middle-of-the-road rock station in Los Angeles], to the Top 40, in my car and at home, and so I know what goes on. If I hear a song I like, my associates and I analyze it and perhaps try it out at the Hollywood Palladium before considering it for the show." Welk explains the need for a careful, cautious approach; "We've had the mothers and fathers so long, we don’t want to do anything to displease them. We want them to depend upon the fact that we’re not going to use any swear words or do anything that would be inappropriate, in the moral sense, to carry into the home. If there’s a double meaning, we don’t play it on television." He freely admits he doesn't understand much of the new stuff; for instance, a few years back he had a hit with "Puff, the Magic Dragon," and was later horrified to discover the song's possible link to the drug culture. "One of my musicians once told me a couple of years ago, 'Lawrence, I didn’t think there were still people in the world as naïve as you!'"

He carefully considers the meaning behind the Generation Gap. "I think that there are some forces working to disturb us," he says. "If you bring me a song, and I and a group of other people can't understand it, then you're talking about something that's pretty far out. Good music, sensible music, will bring about good thoughts, good living, good common sense. Music out of this world that you can’t understand will bring about confusion." He adds, however, that "if we have an open mind towards this younger generation, we can learn many good things from them."

If it's true, as Diehl asserts, that Welk really doesn't understand what's happening in the world of contemporary pop music, it's also true that it doesn't really matter. Welk has already outlasted Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, and Harry James; the way things are going, he may go beyond the Beatles and Elvis as well. "I'm dedicated to entertaining people. I'm more interested in that than in creating art. If people pay a dollar to hear us, then we ought to give them a dollar and a half's entertainment. If we just do something for ourselves that's 'Art,' we've cheated them. Well, here we are, 55 years later, and The Lawrence Welk Show is still going strong with reruns on many PBS stations. And this is after running on the network and in syndication until 1982—indeed, long after the Beatles (see above) and Elvis fled the scene. That's not to say the others aren't still popular, but so is Welk. The maestro, it would seem, knew what he was talking about after all.

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There's a rare full-page editorial on the cancellation of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour by CBS. As the editors note, "This publication has in the past wholeheartedly defended the right of even the Smothers Brothers to have their say on the issues of the day." They continue, "We are in full accord, however, with the Columbia Broadcasting System in its wise, determined and wholly justified insistence on meeting its responsibilities by retaining the right to preview what it will telecast over its facilities." And the Smothers made that impossible by delaying the delivery of their finished shows to the network for review, as was their contractual obligation. It's their right to do so; after all, it's CBS that "is open to censure from the public for its telecasts; it therefore should have some control of what is said. And the Smothers Brothers have been saying plenty to arouse a substantial part of America." 

To those who claim CBS's decision stomps on free speech, the Editors respond that "Freedom of speech is not, the issue. The issue is taste. And responsibility. And honesty. And perspective. And a proper respect for the views of others." They continue, "Shall entertainers using a mass medium for all the people be allowed to amuse a few by satirizing religion while offending the substantial majority?. . . Shall a network be required to provide time for a Joan Baez to pay tribute to her draft-evading husband while hundreds of thousands of viewers in the households of men fighting and dying in Vietnam look on in shocked resentment?" These are good questions, ones not easily answered, possibly because we've lived in a culture that reveres egalitarianism so much that we casually brush off the idea of anything being sacred. And yet, this was not always the case.

"For all the Smothers Brothers’ pseudo-intellectualism, it seems doubtful that they have ever encountered George Bernard Shaw’s statement that 'Liberty means responsibility.'" The editors agree with CBS's decision, based on a policy "that is determined not to insult the general mores of the country." They also applaud the judgment shown by NBC and ABC in not picking up the Brothers. "Tom Smothers has been quoted recently as saying, “We don’t want to offend anyone out there. But if you get offended, that’s the way the cookie crumbles.” The last person who made a social pronouncement in terms of pastry was Marie Antoinette. And look what happened to her."

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What else? Well, Liz Trotta, one of the best television reporters and war correspondents, talks about her experiences in Vietnam. I would have written about this, except I'm afraid you might be getting Vietnam fatigue. Nonetheless, I didn't want to pass up the opportunity to link to this article I wrote a few years ago about Trotta and her two books, including Fighting for Air: In the Trenches with Television News, a wonderful memoir of her career, including her time in Vietnam. If you're interested, I'd suggest reading the book rather than her brief TV Guide article; it will give you much, much more.

And there's an article by Merle Miller on his hometown of Marshalltown, Iowa, a town where people just don't watch much TV. I have no idea whether or not that is still the case, having never visited Marshalltown despite spending most of my life in a neighboring state that was only a good afternoon's drive away. But let's be honest here; this is a website about television. Do we really want to read about people who don't watch television, even though they may be far more well-rounded and mentally adjusted than we are?

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MST3K alert: Cat Women of the Moon (1954) A rocket ship from the Earth lands on the moon, where its crew discovers a civilization of cat women. Sonny Tufts, Marie Windsor, Victor Jory. (Saturday, 8:00 a.m., KCRA in Sacramento) This is another Rifftrax feature, which, as you know, is close enough for us, if not for government work. Appropriately enough, our riffers are Mary Jo Pehl, who played Pearl Forrester on MST3K, and Bridget Nelson, the better half of Michael J. Nelson. Marie Windsor is campily evil, and Victor Jory appropriately heroic. All this, and Sonny Tufts too! TV  

This week in TV Guide: February 5, 1966

I remember the first time I saw a demonstration of High-Definition television. It was in the KSTP booth at the Minnesota State Fair, and the presenter told us this was the future of television. It was impressive, all right; the clarity of the picture was astounding, and that was just while it was showing images of trees and plants. When it switched over to something one might actually watch—like football—it was even more impressive. A few years later, we got our first HD television, which remains our living room TV to this day; the first program we saw was a match from the 2010 World Cup, and the fact that we could see the footprints left on the grass by the players was truly amazing.

I bring all this up not to sing the praises of HDTV, which has absolutely nothing to do with this week's issue, but as an intro to the wonder of television technology, circa 1966: color TV. Now, there had been color broadcasts on TV since the 1950s, but it wouldn't be until the fall of 1966 that the three networks were broadcasting exclusively in color for prime time, and it wasn't until 1972 that more than 50 percent of American homes had a color set. So in February 1966, "Color TV" is still something pretty sexy, not to be taken for granted. You can see this in the way color programming is featured in advertising. Take KTVU, the independent station in San Francisco-Oakland, where Tuesday nights are a "Cavalcade of Color."

Notice the programs they're broadcasting in color—they involve travel to exotic lands with colorful scenes; think about the kind of pictures you saw in National Geographic. Perfect shows to take advantage of the color palette. And look at the way "Color" is emphasized in the ad; even when limited to black and gray, it still manages to convey the sense of multicolored images. It makes you want to go out there and get a color set if you don't already have one; and if you have to choose between a show broadcast in color and one being shown in black-and-white, is there any doubt which one you're going to choose? It's precisely the sensation the ad is designed to produce. 

KTVU isn't the only station emphasizing color programming, of course. San Francisco's KGO and KOVR in Sacramento both highlight movies that were shot in color, and KCRA (also in Sacramento) even makes it part of their logo. There's something about these ads that identify their stations with progress, modernity, technology, broadcasting shows that jump right out—things that might put them a step ahead of the competition. And after all, we all want to stick with a winner, right? 

In February, 1966, according to Broadcasting magazine, about 70 percent of the combined prime time programming from the three networks was in color (almost all of NBC's schedule was in color, while CBS and ABC were at roughly 50 percent). By the fall of '66, all three networks will be broadcasting their primetime shows 100 percent in color. And TV Guide, which had always indicated which shows were being broadcast in color, changes that policy in 1971 or so; since color programs are now the rule, rather than the exception, they only show when a program is in black-and-white.

All these changes were extremely exciting; I remember what it was like when we visited friends with a color set, and it was even more exciting when we got a color set of our own in the 1970s. Younger people won't understand this; for them, color is the way it's always been, so much so that the black-and-white label almost carries a stigma with it. I'm sure that many of them don't even recall the pre-HD days, probably can't imagine that there was a time when the picture didn't fill up the entire screen.

Is there any kind of technology today that can provide the kind of thrill we got with the color experience, or the amazement we felt the first time we saw a show in high-def? I suppose nowadays it's like getting the latest iPhone, but I feel sorry in a ay for people who don't know what it was like having your socks knocked off by something like color television. It may seem simple today; it was anything but simple, back then. 

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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: Ed's scheduled guests: comedian Alan King; singer Rosemary Clooney, rock 'in' rollers Simon and Garfunkel, dancer Peter Gennaro and the rock 'n' rolling Animals.

Palace: Host Vincent "Ben Casey" Edwards presents an all-female guest lineup: actress Bette Davis, giving a reading; singer Liza Minnelli; comedienne Joan Rivers; dancer Liliane Montevecchi; the acrobatic Rogge Sisters; performing elephants Bertha and Tina; and Miss Elizabeth, trapeze artist.

As you know, these reviews are purely subjective on my part; your mileage may vary. So when I downgrade Ed's lineup because I don't like Simon and Garfunkel, that's just my opinion. And because I do like the Animals, I can say that the two offset each other. On the other hand, Ed has Rosemary Clooney and Alan King. I'm not a big fan of either Vince Edwards or Joan Rivers, and I don't think Bette Davis and Liza are quite enough to make up for it, not even with a pair of performing elephants thrown into the mix. This week, Sullivan 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. 

So, is Lost in Space a children's program or not? Well, according to Cleveland Amory, that depends. Like most shows designed primarily for children, it seems to be written by them as well. It was created by Irwin Allen, "whom you may forget—if not forgive —for having given us Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea." (Hey, I like that show!) And it has what Cleve calls "an irritating backyard quality, complete with boy-next-planet, girl-next-star, etc." that extends to the casting, with the typical parents, the family friend, one blonde daughter, one brunette daughter, and a freckle-faced boy. It's all straight out of Central Casting.

But don't let this discourage you from watching Lost in Space, for it has two qualities which define it as something out of the ordinary. The first is the robot, without which there would be no show. "He knows his lines. He’s appealing to both boys and girls, and he’s even neat and well-mannered enough for the old folks to stand him." And whenever something happens, no matter what, he's the one the Robinsons turn to, that "when the chips are down, he’ll do his duty, even if it means a hopeless charge against the alien space ship’s 'force field.' Like the brave TV executives upstairs, his not to reason why, his but to program and die."

Added to that is perhaps the best villain television has to offer, Dr. Zachary Smith (Jonathan Harris). "He is responsible almost every week for lousing up outer space with his innate rottenness, and you’ve got to love him for it." As a counterpoint to the too-perfect Robinsons, he gives the show the spark and dimension it needs. And while Robinson and West would probably just as soon pitch him into space and lose him, the women and children always seem to get in the way; "Why they continue, week after week, to trust Dr. Smith beats us." But let's hope they always do, because without him, Lost in Space might be lost in the ratings.

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Let's see what the week has to offer. There's always something, even if it is in black-and-white.

The worlds of sports and entertainment collide yet again this weekend, with coverage of the fourth and fifth rounds of the Bob Hope Desert Classic (Saturday, 1:00 p.m.; Sunday, 12:30 p.m., NBC). The five-day, 90-hole tournament (longest on the pro circuit) delivers some of the biggest names on the pro golf tour: defending champion Billy Casper, Arnold Palmer, Tony Lema, Julius Boros, Gene Littler, Doug Sanders and Tommy Aaron. Celebrities are plentiful as well, with Kirk Douglas, Joe DiMaggio, James Garner, Phil Harris and Ray Bolger among the stars competing on the amateur side. They're all on-hand to see Sanders take the victory on Sunday, in a playoff over Palmer. 

Sunday has a serious side, as well. I'm not going to say anything else about this, except that, looking at it from today's perspective, it seems to cut a little too close to the bone for me. I'll add this, though: they were entirely upfront about what they were going to do and how they were going to do it (Sunday, 6:30 p.m., NBC):

On Tuesday, the CBS News Special "16 in Webster Groves" (10:00 p.m.) looks to find out "what 16-year-olds think of love, war, cheating, and parents." Webster Groves, Missouri, is a suburb of St. Louis, and in 1966 the population was probably around 29,000 (it's a little over 24,000 today). The special's producer, Arthur Barron, calls it a representative suburb, and that it "may well be like this in other American suburbs." Interviews with host Charles Kuralt "point up the teenagers’ desire for social acceptance—to be 'in' rather than 'out'—and cameras show the youngsters during confrontations with their parents, and at class, the local drag strip, a traditional football rally and a night club for teens only." In many ways, teens back in 1966 are much like teens are today; I'd wager, though, that the things they do when they're acting out, the ways in which they seek to be "in," their hopes and fears—those might be a little different today. Do they think the world will be a better place when they're adults? Do they think their children will have a better quality of life than they do? Do they even think there will be a future? I wonder. But on the very next page of this week's issue, there's an add for the latest volume from Time-Life Books, and that might give us the answer:

Meanwhile, all Richard Kimble has to worry about on The Fugitive (Tuesday, 10:00 p.m., ABC) is whether or not his new female friend's uncle, a retired detective, is on to him. Just a little thing, right?

Here's a kind of Whitman's sampler of some of the more popular programs on Wednesday: On the aforementioned Lost in Space (7:30 p.m,. CBS), "Will insists on repairing the rusted robot he found, despite a warning from the Robinsons’ own robot that the device is actually a robotoid—capable of free choice." Danger, Will Robinson! You can't say that Cleveland Amory didn't warn us about what happens when the Robinsons ignore the robot's recommendations. On The Beverly Hillbillies (8:30 p.m., CBS), "Sonny Drysdale [Louis Nye], who's been attending college for 19 years, is summoned home by his stepfather. The elder Drysdale wants Sonny to try working for a change—and he'd also like to see him get married to Elly May." You know what? I don't think so. And on The Big Valley (9:00 p.m., ABC), "Jarrod wants to help Keno Nash, who has been released from prison after serving nine years for a crime he didn’t commit. Jarrod, as prosecuting attorney, helped put Nash behind bars." Considering that Nash is played by the always-disagreeable Albert Salmi, I don't think it's going to be as easy as all that.

On Friday, Sammy Davis Jr. returns as host of The Sammy Davis Jr. Show (8:30 p.m., NBC), and if you're wondering why this is such a big deal, let's flash back to this article, which recounts the troubled history of the show, particularly the contractual problem that Sammy found himself in as a result of an ABC special called "Sammy and His Friends," which had aired the previous week and prohibited Davis from appearing on any other network for the three weeks immediately preceding the show. (Both Davis and NBC had hoped that ABC would either air the special earlier, or waive the provision in the contract, but the network was unwilling to budge on either.) So while this week's episode is the fifth to air, it's only the second one to feature Sammy as the host of his own show. (Johnny Carson, Sean Connery, and Jerry Lewis filled in as hosts while Davis was sidelined.) Unfortunately, the show only runs for 15 weeks, but that's another story. Oh well; Sammy's guests tonight are Trini Lopez, Corbett Monica, Paula Wayne, and dancer Johnny Brown, who performs as part of a production number with the cast of "Golden Boy," the musical in which Davis stars on Broadway. 

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Later on Friday, it's The Smothers Brothers Show (9:30 p.m, CBS), and the story behind this odd series is covered in a feature article by Leslie Raddatz. Unlike their controversial variety show, this version of The Smothers Brothers Show is a sitcom, featuring Dick as a junior executive at a publishing company, and Tom as his deceased brother, who has returned as an apprentice angel trying to earn his wings. (And if that isn't a recipe for disaster, I don't know what is.) What is the same, however, is the controversy behind the scenes, with the Brothers providing more than a little stubborn when it comes to putting the show on the air.

Everything was smooth going, Raddatz recounts, until the Brothers read the first script. They hated it—"It was too gimmicky and full of old jokes."—and they refused to shoot the script until it was rewritten. The delay cost the studio, Four Star Television, a reported $15,000. Tom and Dick insist that they tried to be cooperative, but as they watched the dailies, they could tell the show wasn't working. "We didn't know what we wanted, but we knew what we didn't want," Tom says. As one source reports, "the attitude on the set was murder." Phil Sharp, then the show's producer, says that he didn't think the Brothers understood how the humor of a sitcom works, and felt their complaints were hiding the fact they were afraid. When Thomas McDermott, president of Four Star, suggested that if everyone couldn't get along, they should just call it quits, the Brothers rose in unison, said, "Fine!" and got up to leave. They were almost out the door before McDermott caught them. The upshot was that Phil Sharp was out as producer, replaced by Fred de Cordova, and the quality of the show—and the Brothers' satisfaction—gradually improved. Raddatz concludes that, "as Messrs. Sharp and McDermott discovered, you don’t tamper with the Smothers Brothers."

Now, I've never been a fan of the Smothers Brothers, and I can easily believe how difficult they may have been to work with in this case. But I have to feel some sympathy with them here, being asked to do something that is clearly not a good fit. The variety show, whether one thought it was funny or not, was a format that was perfect for them; trying to shoehorn them into a sitcom premise like this doesn't strike me as the best use of the very talent that brought them to the public eye in the first place. But, then, what do I know?

I do know this about the picture there and the headline that accompanies it: This must have been the only time the Smothers Brothers ever tilted to the right.

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MST3K alert: Untamed Youth (1957) Two sisters are arrested for vagrancy. Mamie Van Doren, Lori Nelson, John Russell, Don Burnett. (Wednesday, 11:30 p.m., KNTV in San Jose). As far as let's-put-on-a-show musicals goes, this one is actually a cut above normal. Could it be because of John Russell's performance as the evil work-farm overlord, or Lurene Tuttle in her patented weak-needy-woman role as the judge who unwittingly provides Russell with free labor because she's secretly married to him? No, everyone knows that, besides the musical numbers, there are two reasons this movie stands out: Mamie Van Doren. As Dr. Erhardt says, the Mad Scientists should keep her movies for themselves. TV