Around the dial

The Goodies was a British sketch comedy show that ran in the 1980s and 90s, with an accent on absurdist and non-PC humor. At Cult TV Blog, John looks at the episode "Black and White Beauty," which most assuredly falls into both categories.

David takes a moment at Comfort TV to remember one of the truly great pioneers of television, Steve Allen. We've always done a lousy job in TV land of remembering our heroes, and David reminds us why we should remember Steverino.

Speaking of absurdity, at The View from the Junkyard, Roger reviews the A-Team episode "Cowboy George," in which our heroes battle a ruthless gang of criminals while arranging a concert featuring "country" singer Boy George, mistakenly booked in place of Cowboy George.

The Television Obscurities review of the 1966-67 TV Guide season continues with a look at the issue of October 15, 1966, which featured articles on football, Vietnam (what else?), William Shatner, and the week's cover girl, Love on a Rooftop's Judy Carne.

A twin spin from A Shroud of Thoughts to celebrate twin 75th anniversaries: remembering one of television's great anthology series, Goodyear Television Playhouse, and a look at the original opening credits for I Love Lucy. 

Continuing with everyone's favorite redhead, at Drunk TV, Paul remembers Lucy on her anniversary, and how Lucy always carries on fron generation to generation; he also offers some sharp observations about today's "media consumers."  

Back to OTR, and Martin Grams looks back at one of the recurring secondary characters from The Green Hornet: Muggs, a shady sort who nonetheless is frequently heard helping out Brit Reid in his fight against crime. TV

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This week in TV Guide: March 23, 1963

Let's start the week with some hoops, just for a change of pace. It is March Madness after all, even though nobody's thought to call it that yet, and the nation's two major college basketball tournaments have their championship games on Saturday—one of them rather routine, all things considered, while the other boasts a historical significance that reaches beyond the court. 

At Madison Square Garden in New York, the National Invitation Tournament, now seen as a consolation tournament but at one time the most prestigious competition in the country, comes to a conclusion as Providence defeats Canisius 81-66 (6:00 p.m. ET, WNBC, on a two-hour tape delay). Providence completes the season as the #13-ranked team in the country, but otherwise the game leaves little in the way of an imprint.

Later that same night, the championship game of the 25th NCAA Basketball Tournament tips off from Freedom Hall in Louisville, with Loyola (Chicago) taking on the two-time defending champions from the University of Cincinnati (9:30 p.m., syndicated by Sports Network Incorporated). Why is this significant? Well, remember that we're still in the era of segregated sports—there's even an unofficial rule of thumb in college basketball that no more that two of a team's five players on the court at any one time will be black. But when Loyola and Cincinnati line up for the tip-off, seven of the ten players starting the game are black—four for Loyola, three for Cincinnati; it's the first time time in championship game history in which a majority of the players are black. It is a memorable game all-around; Loyola rallies from a 15-point second-half deficit to send the game against Cincinnati into overtime, where Loyola eventually prevails with a last-second shot, 60-58 to win the NCAA championship. 

     Loyola's title-winning team.

Loyola had faced hostile conditions throughout the season due to their integrated lineup*, but perhaps the most dramatic moment came in their second round tournament game in East Lansing, Michigan against Mississippi State, which has come to be known as the "Game of Change." An unofficial state law at the time prohibited Mississippi teams from competing against black players, but Mississippi State university president Dean Colvard was determined that the team should play in tournament; in order to avoid an injunction from state, the team used decoy players and snuck out of the state on a charter plane. After a handshake between the captains of the two teams (with photographic flashbulbs popping everywhere, Loyola went on to win an uneventful game, 61-51. It's debatable as to how much actual "change" came about as a result of the "Game of Change," but regardless of its historical legacy, its historical moment in time is undeniable, as it is in the case of the Loyola-Cincinnati championship game. 

*When the team played Loyola of New Orleans the previous season, black and white players were forced to stay in separate hotels; during a game in Houston, fans shouted slurs and threw popcorn and ice at the players. 

Three years later, Texas Western, fielding an all-black starting lineup, would defeat the all-white University of Kentucky to win the championship, and that's the game most people remember as the landmark moment in desegregating college basketball. But it had to start somewhere, and there's no debating that when Loyola and Cincinnati took the court on Saturday night with seven black starters between them, it was a significant moment. I wonder how many people watching that night, either on the three stations in this issue carrying it (WNEW and WPIX in New York and WNHC in New Haven), or on stations around the country, were aware they were seeing history as it happened?

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Leading our look back at the week: a pair of documentaries on recently deceased legends, along with a pair of shows that look ahead to equally unpleasant times.

At 9:30 p.m. on Sunday (ABC), Mike Wallace hosts a half-hour retrospective on the life and career of the late Marilyn Monroe, only seven months after her untimely death. The special portrays her meteoric rise to stardom, "But while her fame grows and her public image is being formed, the seeds of her premature death have already taken root." I have always wondered how many of these "seeds" were seen at the time as predictive, and how many have been retrofitted to conform to the narrative that has grown since. I suspect Wallace got the narrating job for this documentary based on his work with the syndicated series Biography.

Gary Cooper died in May 1961, but had been a superstar long before then. NBC's documentary series Project 20 remembers "Gary Cooper—Tall American," narrated by Walter Brennan. (Tuesday, 7:30 p.m.) Cooper was a two-time Oscar winner (plus an honorary Oscar in 1961, just a month before his death), and "in the eyes of the rest of the world, he became the image of the American frontiersman." He might not be nearly as enticing or mysterious today—I don't think Elton John ever wrote a song about him—but he was every bit the star Marilyn Monroe was, and left every bit as big a legacy.

Also on Tuesday is an ABC news special that looks to the future, even though we don't know it yet. "A Conversation with the Vice President" (10:30 p.m.) is a half-hour interview with the current holder of the office, Lyndon B. Johnson. During his term, Johnson has traveled throughout the world on behalf of the United States; in addition to his official duties as president of the Senate, he's also chairman of the National Aeronautics and Space Council, and a member of the National Security Council. Johnson is very unconvincing when he tells ABC correspondents about how satisfying he finds the Vice Presidency; he comes across as a once-powerful man who knows his political career is all but finished. Portions of this interview are replayed on ABC the night of November 22. 

In that same vein, one of Andy Williams's guests on his NBC variety series (Thursday, 10:00 p.m.) is comedian Vaughn Meader, fresh off his success with his best-selling record The First Family, in which Meader and his supporting cast satirize President Kennedy and various family members. (Here's a clip of him from that show.) It was, at the time, the fastest-selling record in U.S. history, and would go on to win the 1963 Grammy as Album of the Year. His career would, essentially, be over by the end of the year.

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Speaking of Andy Williams, he's this week's cover story. He's been successful in nightclubs and on records, and he's done his time as a summer-replacement host, but this is his first shot at success with a show that belongs to him—or, perhaps more accurately, a show with his name on it, because it's pretty clear that the TV people don't know what in the world to do with him. You'd think this would require very little thought; take a young man with natural, easy-going charm and one of the best sets of pipes in the business, throw in a guest star or two each week, and let him do what he does best. But, as Dwight Whitney points out, that's not how it works in the TV business.

You see, in order to succeed, you have to have an image. And those TV people who know about such things don't know what Andy Williams' s image is. The goal, according to head writer Mort Green, is to develop him as a Bing Crosby-type, the kind of entertainer who would "go on forever." But he's an "unknown entity. There was nothing for him to talk about. Crosby’s writers could make hair jokes (Crosby wore a toupee), money jokes (Crosby was rich), kid jokes (Crosby had lots of kids), horse jokes (Crosby’s horses were notably slow), Bob Hope jokes, etc., all bouncing off commonly known facts about Crosby." Said one friend, "Mort just didn't know what to do with Andy, whether to make him into Mortimer Snerd or Noel Coward."  All he knew, the source says, was that "this troubadour should become the biggest thing since Corn Flakes." 

Ideas are tried and discarded: The New Christy Minstrels were added for a time, and that worked fine "until they began to be staged like the Bolshoi Ballet." A couple of "coffee-house types," Marion Mercer and R.G. Brown, were added for comic touches. It was all as appropriate as "ketchup on ice cream." Ratings floundered, and last month the network told Andy that for the coming season, his show would be cut back from weekly to a series of twelve one-hour specials. Even Williams admits that "there are times when I'm confused about what I am." 

That's not to say that everything has been a bust; the "most significant addition," according to Whitney, has been the addition of the Osmond Brothers, "whose youngest member, Jay, 7, bore a startling resemblance to Andy when he first began to wow them" (wait until they see Donny), and under producer Bob Finkel, the show has taken on a "folksy, all-purpose informality" including a ramp that brings Andy closer to the audience. But regardless of what happens on television, Dwight Whitney says not to worry about Andy's future; his natural milieu is the night club and, after all, "He is a singer, and as long as those pipes hold out, he'll find a market." Like Branson, say09.

With all of this, one is left to wonder0- just how it was that Andy Williams became one of the most popular stars on television? Well, despite all the confusion portrayed in Whitney's article, The Andy Williams Show winds up winning an Emmy for Outstanding Variety Series in 1963, while Andy himself is nominated for Outstanding Performance. And then there are the Christmas specials, which include the Williams Brothers, mom and dad, wife Claudine, and an increasing number of children; those specials came to rival those of none other than Bing Crosby himself, enshrining Andy as Mr. Christmas to an entire generation of television viewers. You can even see clips from his non-Christmas programs on YouTube, and buy DVDs of them. People liked Andy Williams, and once they were allowed to see him, they watched him.

You'll remember that just last week we read about Tennessee Ernie Ford, another entertainer who knew more about what viewers wanted to see than the supposed TV experts did. A similar situation existed with Jimmy Dean, who knew—far better than the executives did—what his viewers would buy, as we saw in a piece from several years ago. "In the show's first season," I wrote then, "when the network had tried to pass him off as urbane and sophisticated, the show teetered on the edge of cancellation until Dean put his foot down. 'Lemme do it mah way,' he told the suits, and the ratings took off." These examples, and others (like trying to make Richard Pryor appropriate for TV) show that you can't always rely on the "experts" to know what's best. Sort of like economists, I guess, or those scientists at the CDC.

There's a saying, in fields as diverse as sports and politics, that goes, "Let [name of person] be [name of person]." In other words, stop fooling around with a particular way of packaging someone, and let that person be himself or herself, not someone else. It's a lesson that some people never learn, which is why so many ideas that look great on paper turn out to be failures. In the case of Andy Williams, I'd say they finally got it right. 

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As you can see from this two-page spread, Steve Allen is back on late-night TV. His new show, syndicated through Group W, premiered in June of last year, three months after Jack Paar's final Tonight, and a little less than four months before Johnny Carson's debut. (Note that the quotes compare Allen favorably to both Carson and Paar.) The timing was important; there was no certainty that Carson would succeed, let alone become a legend, and word is that Allen is positioning himself in the event that NBC deems the Carson experiment a failure. We all know how that turned out, don't we? 

The show is very much in the vein of Allen's previous shows, which is to say it wasn't a strictly traditional talk show; think of something more like David Letterman's early work. For instance, a show from the first season began with Steve perched, with his piano atop a 75-foot flagpole in the parking lot of the Hollywood Ranch Market; that show also featured an elephant tug-o-war. Allen was joined by a cast of regulars, including Don Knotts, Bill Dana, Tom Poston, and Steve's wife Jayne. 

 

You can find out more about The Steve Allen Westinghouse Show in this interview with Allen from the Emmy Legends YouTube channel; it's well worth watching. Allen would leave the show after a little less than two-and-a-half years following a dispute with Westinghouse over creative control, but not before putting on an episode that featured a roundtable discussion involving historical figures in costume, a demonstration episode for a new series Allen was proposing, which became his show Meeting of Minds.

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Some other highlights of the week: 

• Zero Mostel and Julie Harris star in Magic Magic Magic (Sunday, 7:00 p.m., WOR), an "enchanting full-hour of entertainment," featuring magician Milbourne Christopher. It's the first in a series of hour-long specials for the whole family. 
• Lucy visits the White House with Viv and their pack of Cub Scouts on The Lucy Show (Monday, 8:30 p.m., CBS); comedian Elliott Reid, known for his impression of John F. Kennedy, plays "The Voice." Could have been Vaughn Meader. . 
• On Tuesday, Festival of Performing Arts (9:00 p.m., WNEW) showcases folk singer Miriam Makeba, who was "introduced to U.S. viewers four years ago on Steve Allen’s network show."
• Also on Tuesday, Jack Benny (9:30 p.m., CBS) does an adaptation of Gilbert and Sullivan's "The Mikado," with Jack as Ko-Ko, the Lord High Executioner; Dennis Day as the Wandering Minstrel; and Don Wilson in the title role as the Mikado. 
• Winthrop Rockefeller, brother of New York Governor Nelson and himself future governor of Arkansas, is Harry Reasoner's guest on Portrait (Wednesday, 7:30 p.m., CBS). 
• Andy Williams' wife, Claudine Longet, is one of the guest stars on McHale's Navy (Thursday, 9:30 p.m., ABC). She plays a French beauty who invites Tim Conway's Ensign Parker to spend the weekend at her father's island plantation.
• On Friday night, Dave Garroway's Exploring the Universe (8:00 p.m., WNDT) examines the possibility of life on other planets. Astronomy was one of the many interests of Garroway, a true Renaissance man. 

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Finally, it's time for the fourth annual TV Guide Awards, in which you, the readers, choose the winners! And while the deadline for sending in your ballot has long passed, I thought you might be interested in seeing the ballot with the nominees in the eight categories. What are your picks for the winners? We'll have the final results in a future issue.

TV  

This week in TV Guide: July 29, 1967

This week we've got yet another article telling us how cable television is going to change the industry forever, and we'll get to that in a bit, but this must be the umpteenth time TV Guide has featured one of these stories, and to tell you the truth, there are only so many ways one can go through them and say, yes, this one came true, and no, this one didn't, and this one did but on your phone instead of your TV. And, seeing how I just read something about how more Americans now get their programs from streaming services than cable, it seems as if we're talking more about what was and what will never be.

So instead we're starting off with a look at a man who's always interesting, Steve Allen.

Allen, "the well-known producer, director, actor, comedian, musician, songwriter, sculptor, poet, political theorist, lecturer, biographer and novelist" (in Dick Hobson's words), is being wooed (along with Jackie Gleason and Jack Paar) to return to the late-night wars as host of a new CBS show. He's not enthusiastic about the idea, though, telling Hobson that "(1) I can make a lot more money doing an early-evening show, and (2) it would take too much of my time." Instead, he's content to host the summer replacement Steve Allen Comedy Hour, which gives him the chance to "do satire and social commentary on current events." 

In fact, Allen's focus now is on the bigger picture. Asked if he worries about his show's rating, he replies, "I am worried about mankind's rating." He likes the format of his show because it gives him the chance to touch on those issues; "My sketches almost always have a point of view; they're not just silly jokes. We've taken on political extremism, for example, and air and water pollution." He still remembers with distain the time back in 1960, when NBC's Broadcast Standards department "axed as 'too controversial' a serious roundtable discussion of crime and punishment with actors portraying St. Thomas Aquinas, Aristotle, Darrow, Dostoyevsky, Freud, Hegel, Montaigne and Socrates. 'NBC would have preferred that I function in an intellectual vacuum, restricting myself to making audiences laugh rather than think.'" Allen does eventually find someone to take on that idea, though; he's describing Meeting of Minds, which aired on PBS from 1977 to 1981 and rarely failed to fascinate. 

Despite his unwillingness to go back to late-night, he does offer a few ideas on what makes a good host. "There may be only four or five guys in the world who can do it," he says (apparently in contrast to the current television fad of thinking that anyone can host a late-night show, and then going on to prove that Allen was right all along). He says there are five keys to success: first, the host has to appear as if he's a non-show-biz type. "The viewer thinks we're just plain folks, just like himself." Second, the audience needs to see you as a good guy. "They should feel toward you as toward a friend. Fast wit and repartee is less important than being likable." Third, "You have to be good at interviewing others and develop the ability to be interested in the person interviewed." Fourth, the host should "be at ease." Bishop, he thinks, isn't there yet. Paar never was, but he was never boring; "his keyed-up-emotionalism made him interesting." Finally (the lesson today's hosts seem to have the most trouble learning), "We shouldn't compete with our guests. I never try to top anybody, especially another comedian."

In the end, Allen successfully wards off CBS's interest in him as a late-night host; they wind up going with Merv Griffin. He does return to the talk wars with a syndicated series in 1968, which ran for three years and was shown at various times of the day in different markets. He writes a successful series of mystery novels in which he and wife Jayne star as fictional versions of themselves, and becomes a vocal opponent of obscenity on television. As I say, always interesting.

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While The Hollywood Palace is on summer break, ABC fills the Saturday night time slot with Piccadilly Palace, a London-based variety show starring the iconic British comedy duo of Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise. We'll stop in from time to time during the summer months to see who has the best lineup..
Sullivan:  In this rerun from Expo 67, Ed welcomes operatic soprano Birgit Nilsson; comic Alan King; singer Petula Clark; the Seekers, vocal group; and choreographer Peter Gennaro, who leads a dance-tour of the fair. Canadian artists: pianist Ronald Turini; singer Claude Leveillee; Les Feux Follets, dance group; and the Montreal Symphony.

Piccadilly: The rockin’ Kinks and singer Engelbert Humperdinck storm the Palace tonight. Hosts Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise take to the air in scale model planes, and perform a slapstick ventriloquist act. Millicent Martin, Michael Sammes singers.

To be honest, I was seriously considering dropping the Sullivan/Piccadilly segment, or at least putting it on pause. Piccadilly Palace is much more like, say, The Dean Martin Show than it is The Hollywood Palace, which makes it difficult to get a true matchup with Sullivan. And then I looked at this week's lineup, and decided I owed it to everyone to include a show that has the unlikely combination of Engelbert Humperdinck and Ray Davies and the Kinks! For that reason alone, even though Ed has some big name talent, I'm calling the week a Push.

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I'm not sure we've ever had a Eugene Burdick week here at the blog, but it just goes to show you there's a first time for everything. And before the puzzled expressions you usually have when reading the material here become permanently frozen like some character on The Twilight Zone, I'll explain it all to you. 

The feature on Saturday Night at the Movies (9:00 p.m., NBC) is The Ugly American, an adaptation of the novel by Eugene Burdick and William Lederer outlining what they saw as failed U.S. policy in Southeast Asia (remember, this was written in 1958); the movie stars Marlon Brando as an American ambassador who fails to understand the complexity of the situation in the region until it's too late. 

Skip ahead to the end of the week, and the CBS Friday Night Movie (9:00 p.m.) is based on yet another Eugene Burdick novel, Fail-Safe, this one written with Harvey Wheeler. The story of an accidental nuclear war stars Henry Fonda as the president, Walter Matthau (in a very nasty performmance) as a neocon political scientists, and Dan O'Herlihy (in a very sensitive performance) as the Air Force Chief of Staff. 

Judith Crist calls the pairing "serious melodramas, topical in theme and honorable in intent," but adds that they "give unconventional themes purely conventional treatment." Despite that (and I haven't seen The Ugly American, but I think Fail-Safe is very good), what I wouldn't give to have more theatrical films of a serious bent like these, rather than a steady diet of action adventure and superhero movies.

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Since we've gotten a head start on the week's activities, let's just keep on going. 

Remember a couple of weeks ago TV Guide featured the cast of the ABC series The Big Valley on the cover? Well, on Saturday, the seventh annual Captain Weber Days Parade (held in honor of Captain Charles Maria Weber, the founder of Stockton, California) has a trio of stars from the show serving as grand marshals: Lee Majors, Richard Long, and Peter Breck. (6:30 p.m. PT, KOVR in Sacramento) KOVR, by the way, happens to be an ABC affiliate. Coincidence?

And speaking of coincidence, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (Sunday, 7:00 p.m., ABC) has a plot that sounds familiar, at least if you read my recent piece on The Outer Limits episode "A Feasibility Study": "An army of rock men attacks the Seaview. The lumbering creatures are commanded by a half-human, half-fossilized madman bent on conquering the world." Frankly, had I seen this earlier, it might have changed my entire understanding of "Feasibility Study." Hmm. . .

On Monday, we have a most interesting cast of guests this week on The Match Game (2:30 p.m., NBC): sportscasters Sandy Koufax, Mel Allen, Curt Gowdy, Kyle Rote and Paul Christman; and former football great Y. A. Tittle. Recognize all of them, and I enjoyed listening to them all. Later in the evening, the same network presents an encore showing of the NBC News Special "Khrushchev in Exile—His Opinions and Revelations" (8:00 p.m.), as host Edwin Newman talks with the former Soviet premier about world events during his time as leader, and the "loneliness and boredom of being banished to oblivion." The documentary was originally shown on July 11, but was pushed out of prime time due to the length of the baseball All-Star Game, a 15-inning affair that ran for more than three-and-a-half hours. By the way, two of the announcers on that game were Curt Gowdy and Sandy Koufax.

Also on Monday, Coronet Blue continues on CBS (10:00 p.m.), which reminds me of a Letter to the Editor this week from Eileen S. Macdonald of New York City, who complains about the network's cancellation of the show without a concluding episode. Her letter, which begins, "I'm so annoyed I can hardly type this letter fast enough," says, in part, "All I can say is that I think it’s a good show, and so does my teen-age son. In fact, we seldom agree on programs and I consider that most of what he watches is junk—that’s why we're a two-set family. Isn’t it time that advertisers woke up and stopped letting the networks push the audiences around?" To that I would say two things: 1) I agree; and 2) Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny aren't real, either. Of course, the story is more complicated than what Ms. Macdonald suggests, but it's certainly unfortunate all-around.

Peter Graves did a lot of B-movie sci-fi before Fury, Court-Martial, and Mission: Impossible, and Tuesday's episode of The Invaders (8:30 p.m., ABC) sounds like it could have been right out of one of them: "The murder of two astronauts prompts David and an Air Force security officer (Graves) to investigate the invaders' interest in the manned lunar program." Joanne Linville and Anthony Eisley guest-star; I'm just sorry we don't get a chance to see Graves's character, wild-eyed, shouting, "You've got to believe me!"

Hands-down, Wednesday's highlight is the KOVR 9:00 p.m. movie, The Third Man, starring Joseph Cotten, Orson Welles, Ailda Valli, Trevor Howard, and Bernard Lee. It's a terrific movie, which spawned both a radio series, also starring Welles, and a television series, with Michael Rennie playing as a reformed Harry Lime after the war. This means that Lime survived that shootout in the sewer at the end of the movie, which might be a stretch, but on the other hand, we never did see Lime actually get shot, did we? And as Welles himself once said, "If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story."

Continuing on to Thursday, it's a good night for comedy. At 7:30 p.m., the only regularly-scheduled black-and-white program left on television, The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour (repeats of the 1957-58 series of specials) airs an episode featuring Lucy's new neighbors, Ernie Kovacs and Edie Adams, and immediately starts wooing Edie to get a spot for Dezi on Ernie's TV show. If you're not a fan of Lucy, then I'd recommend an F Troop repeat (8:00 p.m., ABC) in which Larry Storch plays a dual role: Corporal Agarn and his visiting Russing cousin Demtri Agarnoff. I can imagine just how over-the-top Storch was in this episode, which is why I think it's worth watching. I wonder what Hal Horn thinks of this one?

One of the things I really miss from my youthful sports fandom is the College All-Star Game, the football game that matched the defending NFL champions against a group of college all-stars, played at Soldier Field in Chicago. (Friday, 6:30 p.m., ABC) This game, along with the Coaches All-America all-star game earlier in the month, signaled the unofficial start of the football season. I've written about it before so I won't bore you with the details, but as the Green Bay Packers were my team, you know I was rooting for them here. They'd beaten the Stars 38-0 the year before, and even though this year's All-Star team features Steve Spurrier, Bob Griese, Floyd Little, Bubba Smith, Alan Page, and others, the Packers crush them again, this time 27-0.

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And now that story about cable TV. 

CATV, according to Albert Warren, represents "the four letters that have rocked broadcasting." Until recently, cable has mainly brought TV to rural and isolated areas not able to otherwise get a decent signal. (Average cable bill: $5 per month.) But now, it's being rolled out in more metropolitan areas as a kind of test—New York City, for example—where skyscrapers can interfere with clear signals. "The facts are that scarcely anyone in New York can get all nine with the consistently high technical quality CATV [especially color broadcasts] would provide." 

One of the beauties of CATV is that there's no technical limit to the number of channels you can transmit through the cable. Most have space currently for 12, but "engineers are working on systems providing 20, 30 or more." The growth of cable is limited for now by the FCC, which narrowly voted to maintain severe restrictions, such as not bringing in stations from distant cities, and not originating its own programming. The rationale is that since local stations require both large viewing audiences and sponsor advertising in order to maintain free program, it would be unfair for them to have to compete with cable. There are also questions about copyrighted material, for which CATV operators say they're willing to pay a "fair rate," but a couple of recent conflicting court cases have suggested Congress will probably have to get involved eventually.

There's plenty of speculation as to what the CATV system of the future will look like: "electronic newspapers, shopping, teaching, voting, surveying, gas and electric meter reading, library research, mail delivery, emergency warnings—you name it. Even now, CATV provides news, weather services and even stock quotations on channels not occupied by local TV stations." (I noticed there was nothing about 24-hour sports networks, but then who could possibly be interested in that?)

There's more, but I think you get the gist of it. One of the intriguing footnotes is that all three broadcast networks have "dipped their toes" in the cable pool; "ABC was hot about CATV for a while, but it marked time while the FCC considered its merger with ITT. CBS has been quietly buying systems—but all in Canada, to gain operating experience while avoiding the complications of U.S. ownership. NBC has bought a couple of small systems, also for toe-dipping purposes." Today, of course, NBC is owned by a cable system, Comcast, and each network is involved, in one way or another, with streaming services. We've already passed throught the expansion of cable and now we're seeing its contraction. As for what comes next, I think one would be a fool to even try and predict what even the next few months have in store. But it's safe to say that those four letters rocking broadcasting have been replaced with three words: Cut the Cord.

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Some assorted notes to round out the week: this week's "As We See It" concerns CBS's recent inquiry into the Warren Report on the assassination of President Kennedy. Running for an hour each night for four consecutive nights, June 25 through June 28, the editors call it "a major journalistic achievement," revolutionizing the way such information is presented by spreading it out over multiple evenings rather than telling it all in a three- or four-hour documentary. The content was "supurb" as well, "a masterful compilation of facts, interviews, experiments and opinions—a job of journalism that will be difficult to surpass." Most important, the shows were a ratings hit, beating almost every show that was scheduled opposite it, and proving that "[w]hen serious programs that interest them are scheduled during prime time, viewers will tune in." Would they do so today? Well, it depends on whether or not you think we're still a serious people. I remember my seven-year-old self being fascinated by this, but then I always was precocious.

A sign that cooler heads have prevailed is evident in the Hollywood Teletype, which reports that "the idea of having a girl for Leonard Nimoy in Star Trek has been abandoned." It's also a sign that there was some level of insanity in the NBC executive offices to even consider such a thing. I guess not everyone back then was "serious."  

Finally, there's that cover picture on the stars of The Rat Patrol. As you may recall, that show was a favorite of mine when I was growing up, but took a severe dive upon rewatching last year, enough so that it's now on the resell pile. But it's worth a mention that the feature is a profile of Gary Raymond, the English actor who plays Sergeant Moffitt, the most likeable of the four members of the team. And, according to Leslie Raddatz's story, he seems like a pretty good guy. Glad to hear it!

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MST3K alert: Night of the Blood Beast (1958) An alien entity takes control of an astronaut’s body. Is he friend or foe? Michael Emmet, Angela Greene, Ed Nelson, Tyler McVey, Ross Sturlin. (Saturday, 2:00 p.m., KGO in San Francisco) Yet another science fiction movie involving aliens and self-sacrifice, but not quite as good as "A Feasibility Study." In other words, the kind of movie Ed Nelson did before he wound up on Peyton Place. The MST3K version is combined with a really bad short, "Once Upon a Honeymoon," which features Virginia Gibson before she wound up on ABC's Discovery. Well, I guess everybody has to start somewhere. TV  

This week in TV Guide: August 21, 1954

Considering how sexual television has become, the kiss is perhaps one of the tamer expressions of sensual pleasure we're likely to see, although, as the Baptists say about dancing, we all know how one thing can lead to another. As a matter of fact, I was briefly concerned that this story might be a little too hot to cover here, before I concluded that the average reader of this blog is probably old enough to handle such a frank discussion. I don't have any demographic information to back that up, though, so if it turns out that you haven't had that talk about the birds and bees yet (or if you're a Baptist worried that I'm going to be writing about Dancing with the Stars), accept my apology and, please, don't complain to Blogger that this blog should have a "mature content" label.

But to return to the point, Kathy Pedell's article is on how the simple kiss is anything but simple when it comes to 1950s television. While Hollywood and Broadway are cool with the heat, when it comes to TV, "a conference is called. The producer, director and continuity acceptance (censorship) department discuss the matter thoroughly. A most unromantic prelude to passion." When all is said and done, the decision often is to skip the kiss altogether; "not doing something is the best way to avoid offending."

Example #1: "Some time ago,* a TV version of a stage comedy, "Reunion in Vienna," stressed kissing, lots and lots of it. This was bad enough, but during some of the bussing, the actors were just a bit too sincere. Everybody, hardened [sic] critics too, objected. So now there's an unwritten law: No prolonged kisses on TV."

*The article doesn't specify, but based on extensive Google research of at least three minutes, it may well have been the Celanese Theatre production of January 9, 1952, which starred Melvyn Douglas and Signe Hasso.

Example #2: "On Studio One recently, a couple met after walking out on their respective spouses. It was kismet, or whatever operates at such moments, and they planned a mad whirl in Spain. But they never kissed. They never got to Spain, either. You could see why that didn't happen, but why the ban on kissing? 'Not proper,' explained producer Felix Jackson. 'They're married to other people and any such manifestations of affection might antagonize viewers.'"

I might be a little slow on the uptake here, so let me see if I've got this straight: according to Jackson's reasoning, adultery would be fine, just as long as the couple doesn't kiss. Is that about it? I ask because I was a pre-law minor in college, and as far as I can remember, the act of adultery does not require kissing; it does require a somewhat different act of affection, however, which also doesn't require kissing, and isn't shown on TV either. 

One of the challenges facing television producers is that "it's never been clearly defined when a TV couple may or may not kiss. Nor has the length of a TV kiss been formally limited, not even by the code of the National Association of Radio and TV Broadcasters." Says Herbert Carlborg, part of the CBS censorship—that is, continuity acceptance—department, "We don't want to be stuffy, but we're so gun-shy of what people will think, we blow the whistle on almost everything."

The whole thing seems kind of silly; even Mister Peepers didn't get to kiss Nancy until he gave her the engagement ring. As Pedell remarks, "the kisses TV 'husbands' and 'wives' give each other will never do a thing to promote marriage." It's one thing to suggest that married couples never sleep in the same bed, but to defer from expressing any type of normal affection is hardly a ringing endorsement of the quality of television programming. It serves to put into context the perennial complaints we've read here by TV writers beefing about their lack of freedom in writing about adult subjects.

Still and all, it is a slippery slope, isn't it? One minute a teen couple is shown kissing, and the next thing you know, they're dancing on American Bandstand. And we all know where that leads.

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Well, I don't know about you, but after all that I feel like I need a cold shower. And when you find yourself in that kind of situation, who better to bring you back to earth than Ed Sullivan? Ed's show this Sunday (7:00 p.m. CT, CBS) is noteworthy in that it's the first ever color telecast for Talk of the Town. It's an experimental broadcast by the network; as the listing notes, Ed has appeared on many of CBS's such broadcasts, and after a brief review of the wonderful world of color television (to coin a phrase), Ed brings out his guests: sultry songstress Eartha Kitt; Janis Paige and John Raitt of the Broadway musical The Pajama Game*, "Miss Malta and Company," a dog act; a European dance troupe, The Andrea Dancers. Not an overwhelming lineup, perhaps, especially considering that one of Sullivan's favorites, Alan King, is appearing opposite on NBC's Summer Comedy Hour.

*The better-known movie version starred Doris Day in the role played by Paige.

The Fall Preview issue doesn't come out until September 25, but some of our favorite stars are getting a head start on the new season. Perry Como returns with his 15-minute, thrice-weekly program (6:45 p.m., CBS), as is Eddie Fisher's show (Wednesday, 6:30 p.m. NBC). Life With Father returns at 9:00 p.m. Tuesday on CBS; did you know that one of the stars is Marion Ross? You probably did; I'm always among the last to know. Dragnet's season premiere (Thursday, 8:00 p.m., NBC) puts Friday and Smith on the trail of someone pushing "objectionable material" in a high school; I'll bet it doesn't depict two people kissing, which is probably why it can be shown on TV. Also on Thursday, Lux Video Theater debuts its new one-hour format after four seasons of half-hour dramas, as Dorothy McGuire stars in "To Each His Own" (9:00 p.m., NBC), a story of a woman dealing with tragedy from World War I. And on the local scene, which in this case means Chicagoland, The Howard Miller Show returns on Friday night for two hours of music and guest stars (11:00 p.m., WBBM).

The Teletype notes that September 11 will see the first-ever broadcast of the Miss America Pageant, with John Daly emceeing the broadcast (Bob Russell hosts the actual pageant). By contrast, the last pageant was streamed only. The following month, the premiere of CBS's action series Climax (airing October 7) will be Raymond Chandler's The Long Goodbye, featuring Dick Powell as Philip Marlowe. Having played Marlowe in the big-screen Murder, My Sweet (and then in two radio adaptations of the same story), Powell becomes the first actor to play Chandler's iconic detective multiple times; to my mind, he remains the definitive Marlowe.

And a premiere of sorts; on Saturday, August 28, NBC will be kicking off weekly coverage of Canadian Football, presenting games of the Interprovincial Rugby Football Union (which exists today as the East Division of the Canadian Football League), and the network introduces viewers to this strange version of the game with a preview of the new season Monday night at 8:00 p.m. Things were a little different back then; American professional football wasn't quite as lucrative as it is today, and some Canadian teams paid more than their American counterparts; additionally, many black American collegiate players found it easier to play in Canada than the U.S. All this means that you might well recognize several of the names playing this season north of the border. For comparison, this year's CFL season began on June 9.

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You may remember how Mac Davis had a hit song back in 1980 called "It's Hard to Be Humble," and if you're one of those unfortunates who have that problem, all you have to do is look at the life of Steve Allen, and you'll develop, as I have, an instant inferiority complex. Wonder why? "He's a panel stalwart on What's My Line; the star of a critic-caressed late-night New York variety show NBC plans to give nightly coast-to-coast showcasing effective September 27 [that would be, in case you're wondering, The Tonight Show]; a writer of TV dramas; a composer of song hits; an aspiring novelist." Not only that, he turned down the opportunity to host Talent Scouts in the event the show's current host, Arthur Godfrey, decides not to return in the fall. Oh, and did I mention he just got married last month, to the charming Jayne Meadows? Not only does his career make me feel inferior; I now feel as if I should have written a better paragraph describing all this; punchier, more fitting for a man of his accomplishments. 

Allen doesn't look the part of a typical comedian; he's "quiet-mannered, soft-spoken, relaxed" and laughs self-consciously when he tells a joke. He rejects the idea of being a "smart and sophisticated" comedian, and says he likes to make people feel they're part of the joke. Scheduled to be the last comedian on the bill for a benefit show, his quick mind and quicker wit helped turned a potential disaster into triumph by "basing his material on what was done by those who were on before him," becoming the hit of the evening.

You might recognize Jayne from her time as a regular panelist on I've Got a Secret* (like Steve's What's My Line?, a Goodson-Todman production; nothing like keeping it in the family), and now that she's got a new husband and his three boys from a previous marriage, she's planning "devote all her time to Steve, his sons and TV." And while NBC is considering a series starring the two of them (an idea from Jayne), Steve jokes that they "may do a show together some time during the next 20 years."

*Ironically, Steve would wind up hosting I've Got a Secret on CBS after Garry Moore's departure, but Jayne had long since left the panel, replaced by Bess Myerson.

Before we go, let's take a moment to consider Steve Allen's career. In addition to Tonight, he hosted a variety show that went head-to-head with Ed Sullivan (we occasionally grade those matchups), wrote 8,500 songs (including his theme, "This Could Be the Start of Something Big") and won a jazz Grammy, wrote more than 50 books (including a series of ghostwritten* murder mysteries that starred both him and Jayne and should have been made into a television series), created Meeting of Minds, a PBS series that featured discussions between famous figures of history, and campaigned against what he called "the rising tide of smut on television." (I wonder how he felt about kissing?) He was a religious skeptic, a political liberal, a witty and clever entertainer, was mentioned on Mystery Science Theater 3000 as having thought of "everything," and a man who led an extraordinary life. Now if you'll forgive me, I think I'll just dry up and fly away.

*One of the ghostwriters, Robert T. Westbrook, is himself an accomplished mystery writer, most notably the series featuring Howard Moon Dear. Quite a fascinating life: his mother was Sheilah Graham, columnist and former lover of F. Scott Fitzgerald; his father purportedly was actor Robert Taylor. You can't make this stuff up,

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I'll admit, perhaps I've gone a little overboard in returning things to an even keel after the excitement of that lead story. In fact, I wouldn't blame anyone for dropping off there for a few minutes in the middle of that discussion about Canadian Football. Hopefully, I can raise the temperature a little bit with this concluding piece, a letter to the editor from Mary Tocts of Racine, Wisconsin, who'd like to see a special kind of pin-up. "I love to watch wrestling on TV," she writes, "but they never show the faces of wrestlers clearly. Would you please tell me where I could write to get some pictures of all the wrestlers?" The answer from the editor: "Cameramen and directors apparently subscribe to the theory that close-ups of the grunt ’n groaners might frighten the viewers. However, if you’re an indomitable muscle fan, try writing to the stations on which wrestling is seen."

Hot and sweaty groaners. Just the thing that television needs, right? TV  

Reminder: I'm giving away my inventory of The Electronic Mirror. Find out how you can get your free copy (only paying for shipping and handling) here. 

This week in TV Guide: October 16, 1953

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ne of these days I ought to start a feature called "You Can't Do That Anymore," and if I did, you can bet that almost every issue of TV Guide from this era would have a story that qualifies. Of course, the way things are going in this country, before long everything will belong in that category, but I digress. This week's entrant is the cover story on the winners of something called the "1953 T-Venus contest." Now, I had to study that headline* several times to figure out just what this meant; is a T-Venus some kind of female equivalent of a T-Rex? As it turns out, and you may have been quicker to figure this out than I was, the joke is that it's a combination of TV and Venus, the Roman goddess of love and beauty. Ergo, TVenus! 

*Not the pictures, though. I didn't pay any attention to them.

Anyway, the purpose of the contest is to select six winners who will appear during the season on NBC's Colgate Comedy Hour, interacting with the hosts, holding title cards, and so on. The judges, including Jimmy Durante, Sam Fuller, and Groucho and Harpo Marx, had the arduous task of paring down 300 young lovelies to the final six over a period of two-and-one-half hours. Hardly seems like enough time to properly devote to the deliberations, but again I digress. The judges did their job, and the six winners were chosen. 

As you know from past experience, one of the questions we like to ask of stories like this is whether or not any of these young ladies amounted to anything. Not surprisingly, since the prize was appearing on the Colgate Comedy Hour, they all had careers of one sort or another. Suzanne Ames (far right on the cover) appeared in several movies, including Bells Are Ringing; Dona Cole (center) was in The Beast With a Million Eyes; Mary Ann Edwards was in Cowboy G-Men and Giant. And theAsn there's the young woman on the left. Recognize her? If not, try to imagine her with blond hair. Need more clues? She's from Kulm, North Dakota, hung out with the Rat Pack, was married to Burt Bacharach, and just celebrated her 89th birthday. That's right: Angie Dickinson. I'd say she had a pretty successful career, wouldn't you?

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Here's another entrant for that "You Can't Do That Anymore" category, from the New York TV Teletype:

I've not heard this story before. It's true that the NCAA ruled the television deal with an iron fist, not only to protect the live gate at local games, but to prevent any team from becoming a national power through multiple yearly appearances on TV. (Yes, Notre Dame, we're looking at you.) And it's also true that the United States Olympic Committee was very tough on amateurism back then; one athlete lost his eligibility because he appeared on a quiz show, and several Olympic athletes played college football. But this? As this article reminds us, college football was ruled by what was known as the "gentleman's agreement," in which "northern schools tacitly understood they would not use black players in games with southern schools." And Avery Brundage, longtime Olympic major domo, has long been linked to racial prejudices. So what do we make of this? Although I'm usually loathe to read ulterior motives into stories, I think that in this case, if you want to do just that, it's perfectly fine with me.

Staying on the college football beat for just a moment longer, here's something else you won't see nowadays, although there's nothing offensive in the least about it. Since televised college football is so controlled, "columnist" Wm. A. Que* writes that WMAQ radio (670 on your AM dial) plans a full season of Saturday afternoon college football games guaranteed to appeal to Midwesterners, featuring Notre Dame and teams from the Big Ten. It's a pretty good lineup; every one of these games would be on TV today. But it tells a lot about the power and sweep of radio that it's promoted in TV Guide.

*Wm. A. Que—WMAQ. Get it? I tell you, this issue is a laugh riot, isn't it?

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Rather than looking at the highlights throughout the week, let's stop and take a look at what's on Sunday, since it's a really interesting TV day. It begins Sunday afternoon as Alistair Cooke's Omnibus presents a monumental live adaptation of Shakespeare's King Lear (4:00 p.m. CT, CBS), with Orson Welles (in his television debut!) starring as Lear, Alan Badel as the Fool, and, in the role of Goneril, future Academy Award-winner Beatrice Straight. Welles was living in England at the time, and returned to America to do the broadcast. It was a difficult time in Welles's life; according to the always-reliable Wikipedia, "He was guarded by IRS agents, prohibited to leave his hotel room when not at the studio, prevented from making any purchases, and the entire sum (less expenses) he earned went to his tax bill." The performance survives today on video, something we should be grateful for. By the way, I've commented in the past on how thorough TV Guide's listings used to be; well, the description of Lear runs a column-and-a-half, and presents a synopsis of each of the play's four acts. 

Opposite Omnibus in the Sunday cultural ghetto is NBC's Hallmark Hall of Fame, presenting McCoy of Abilene, the story of Joe McCoy, the man who almost single-handedly built the great stockyards of the Midwest. The production is directed by Albert McCleery, one of the pioneers in early television, and a great innovator. One of his trademarks was a theater-in-the-round style of production, in which the stage was surrounded by black backgrounds, allowing him to position cameras for shots from any angle while they remained unseen by viewers. Very impressionistic, that. He did a lot of work on Hall of Fame, including the first two-hour American television production of Hamlet, shown earlier in 1953. 

Moving to latenight, here's something that would, I believe, have been a big deal in 1953: a movie that had been in theaters only last year! It's the British movie Wings of Danger, starring Zachary Scott, airing Sunday at 10:00 p.m. on WGN. Sabotage in the sky! Who could ask for anything more?

As we know, the movie industry wasn't exactly excited by the appearance of television; despite some whistling-in-the-dark talk about how TV was a fad, the studios knew that the new medium was a threat; all they had to do was look at how movie attendance plummeted on those nights when popular programs were on, such as Milton Berle's Texaco Star Theater. As early as 1948, though, a number of British films were sold to television, and I suspect Wings of Danger would have been part of a similar package. Why, one might argue, should studios be eagar to sell product to their competitors, when those competitors would promptly use said product against them? (Another, less commented-upon reason for studio reluctance probably had to do with the low price that networks were willing to offer, another reason why British movies might have been more prevalent.) Eventually that attitude would change, but TV Guides of the era are replete with moves from the 1930s, such as X Marks the Spot (1931), and Flying Fists (1937), which has the added appeal of being both old and British.

At any rate, with this as the standard, it's not hard to see why WGN would make such a point of showing a movie that was only a year old, whether it was any good or not. (I haven't seen it myself; any of you out there?) But times will change. By the fall of 1955, ABC will premiere Famous Film Festival, featuring British films from the 1940s and early 1950s, and in 1961 NBC debuts Saturday Night at the Movies, with post-1950 movies from Fox, many in color. That will issue in an era of movie dominance on TV for decades to come.

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Some quick looks at other items of note: Bill Cullen, known in game show circles as the host's host, is the subject of a warm profile this week, which seems appropriate since he's one of the warmest personalities on television. He's also refreshingly candid about his fame; talking about his spot as a permanent panel member on I've Got a Secret, he says, "Not for a minute will I deny that being a panel member is a soft job." Although there are certain things to keep in mind (like showing up at the studio on the right night, or paying attention to what questions the other panelists ask so he doesn't duplicate them), he concludes that "It's nice work."  

◄ Steve Allen is the hipster's hipster, a man who writes, composes music, and still has time to appear on What's My Line? as well as his own late-night talk show on New York's NBC affiliate. Right now, his hipness rests on a retelling of "The Three Little Pigs" recorded by Al "Jazzbo" Collins. "Once in the land of Nitty Grittyville lived three little pigs . . . One was very cool, the other one was more on the commercial side and the third one was, beyond a shadow of doubt, as square as they come. One day as the three pigs were taking five, one of them chanced to pick up a copy of downbeat. 'Say, boys, I see where the Big Bad Wolf is playing a one-nighter in this area next week.' 'Oh-oh,' said the second little pig, 'that wolf is bad. That means it's panic time in Porky Park.' 'Oh,' said the square little pig, 'this is the most depressing news since Ronnie Reagan got out of show business.'" Although Allen's talents are still relatively untapped by television, don't worry: that local late-night show of his is about to morph into The Tonight Show.

And speaking of Tonight, CBS is working on a daytime musical show for their young comic, Jack Paar. It winds up as The Morning Show, CBS's answer to Today, which also spawned Dick Van Dyke and Walter Cronkite as hosts. He only worked the mornings for a year, but he'll wind up working nights before too long.

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Finally, since we started with Colgate Comedy Hour, it's approprite that we finish there as well. It seems that none of the rotating hosts on that show really get along very well with each other, and so you can imagine the fireworks that ensued when someone got the big idea to have them all on at the same time to celebrate the show's anniversary.

Staged or real? Only their agents know for sure.

The sparks started during the rehearsal. Since the time had to be divided evenly among the various parties, and given that it was unthinkable that any two of the acts could appear in the same skit, that meant each one was allocated exactly eight minutes. Before you knew it, Eddie Cantor was complaining that Bob Hope was taking too much time for his monologue. He'd been up on stage for eleven minutes already! Furthermore, Hope was just mumbling his lines, intent on keeping any of his colleagues from hearing (and stealing) his jokes. Next, it was time for Bud Abbott and Lou Costello; they, too, mimed their way through their act. This didn't sit too well with their bitter rivals, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis*, who sat in the otherwise empty theater carrying on a loud whispered conversation with some friends. Soon enough, someone asked—loud enough for the performers on stage to hear—"What's the matter with those two? They afraid you're going to steal their material?" After waiting a beat, Jerry replied, "What material?" When their turn came, Dean and Jerry threw their script out and proceeded to do a devastating take-off on the typical Abbott & Costello routines.

*Just think, if we included the intramural feuds between Abbott and Costello, and Martin and Lewis—you'd have more factions than the United Nations.

Like most good entertainers, the battling hosts saved their best performances for the live show. First, Hope ran over (again) with his monologue, forcing one of the other acts to bear the burdon. That fell to Martin & Lewis, who were in the closing slot. If that wasn't bad enough, Hope also spilled the beans that Dean and Jerry—whose appearance hadn't been publicized and was supposed to be a surprise—were actually backstage. The two were so furious that, according to our anonymous correspondent, they haven't spoken to Hope since. For his part, when asked where Lewis' dressing room was, Hope replied, "He doesn't have one. They keep him in a cage." In case you were wondering, Hope isn't back on Colgate this season, having been replaced by Jimmy Durante, whom everyone seems to like. And Donald O'Connor, the fourth host, "is still too young to stay mad at anyone."

Somehow or other, the show, which doesn't sound much like a comedy, managed to come off without any homicides on stage. That doesn't mean the bullets didn't keep flying, though. During a recent tour through London, both Abbott & Costello and Martin & Lewis played the Palladium within two weeks of each other. The reviews of Dean and Jerry were, by all accounts, pretty harsh. Bud and Lou, on the other hand, met with raves from critics and audiences alike, and took the opportunity to sprinkle their act with several "uncomplementary" references to their rivals.

The whole thing reminds me of a joke from an old Academy Awards broadcast: "Tonight we set aside petty differences, forget old feuds and start new ones." The man who said that was none other than Bob Hope himself. I guess knew what he was talking about, didn't he? TV