This week in TV Guide: March 19, 1960

As you'll learn at the end of this week's piece, one of the most popular series on television is the legal drama Perry Mason*, and this week, we're going to take a look at some of the inside keys to the show's success.

* Interestingly, Perry Mason was always categorized in TV Guide as a "Mystery" rather than drama, as is usually the case with legal procedurals. I think that's fair; Mason's really as much a detective as he is an attorney. It's probably best classified as a hybrid detective/legal series.

One of the secrets to the success of Mason, according to this unbylined article, is its strong supporting cast, each of whom brings something special to his or her role. Take Bill Talman, for example, who plays Perry's nemesis Hamilton Burger. According to Talman, Mason creator Erle Stanley Gardner didn't think much of the D.A. "Erle detested Berger," Talman says, "and drew him as the prototype of the loud, blustering sorehead, like the one who used to plague him as a young lawyer." Talman has worked to flesh out the character, to reduce the temptation by viewers to see him as a heavy. "Otherwise, it would be no credit to Perry to set him down every week."

Ray Collins, the honest (if quick to judge) detective lieutenant Arthur Tragg, is an old pro, one who "can sense other actors' needs and throw the scene their way." For instance, if a young actor, perhaps one playing his first big role, is struggling with his lines, Collins will start fumbling his to take the pressure off—if, that is, Talman or Raymond Burr don't beat him to it.* But, as Collins adds, "we are professionals. Therefore, no matter how fond we are of one another, we all try to protect ourselves. If Willie Talman can get better lighting than I can, well, I assure you I'll try to change that." Barbara Hale, Perry's loyal secretary Della Street, says "It's like the competition in a family."

*I wonder about this. Collins was, by all accounts, a generous colleague, but it's been said that as his health began to fail (he died in 1965), he began to have more trouble memorizing and delivering his lines. It could be that Talman and Burr, almost certainly the sources of this anecdote, were in fact using it to cover for Collins. It's the kind of thing mensches would do.

William Hopper, son of the famed columnist Hedda, has learned his share of tricks of the trade, thanks both to his mother and veteran actors. He, too, has become a pro over the years; "If all you know is tricks, you're dead."

It's a tight cast, even if they do compete for better lighting and close-ups. Says Talman, who has shared a dressing room with Hopper for three years, "Can you think of rooming with a guy for three years and never having a quarrel or argument? I can't. But that has happened with Bill and me." Collins adds that "There's something else—call it a great affection, like a legit show on the road. When it closes you may never see each other again. Sometimes we think of that. And so we still speak to each other." "And laugh at each other's jokes," Talman adds.

At the center of it all is Raymond Burr, and Collins accurately sums up the man and his impact on the cast. "Take Raymond, a man doing 39 hour-long shows a year, appearing in almost every scene, knowing his lines letter-perfect, and who still devotes himself to making it better for other people." He and Talman are inveterate practical jokers, both on each other and on other members of the cast; Hale, who's a favorite target for Burr, once found everything in her dressing room—sink, flower pots, everything—filled with green gelatin.

Judging by the lack of jealousy among the cast, that must be the only thing that's green.

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Starting in 1954, Steve Allen helmed his own NBC variety show which, at the beginning, aired opposite that of Ed Sullivan. It didn't run as long as Ed's, of course, but then Allen said his goal was never to conquer Ed, but to coexist with him, which he did for four seasons. Let's see who gets the best of the contest this week.

Sullivan: Ed presents circus stars from all over the world. In London: Popov, famed Soviet clown; the Boxing Russian Bears. In New York: Emmett Kelly, celebrated American clown; the De Donge Chimps; Linon, high-wire clown; and the Three Murkies.

Allen: Steve's guests are actress Ann Blyth, Nick "The Rebel" Adams, comedian Jan Murray and the Nikolais dancers.

No contest here; unless you're a big fan of circuses, the only name you may recognize from Ed's lineup is Emmett Kelly, although I'll admit to having a soft spot for boxing bears. On the other hand, Steve has an actual lineup of stars, and while it may not be the strongest hand, it's the best one this week. The verdict: Allen takes the week.

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"For the Record" reviews one of the bigger television stories in recent history: the return of Jack Paar, after his celebrated walkout, on the March 7 Tonight Show. His sidekick, Hugh Downs, counted down the seconds, and then, "Here's Jack!" and out stepped"the lachrymose comedian with the porcupine-quill wit," to complete what the column calls "the most emotional, if not dramatic, re-entry in TV history." Paar's average nightly audience more than doubled, with a multi-city Arbitron rating of 25.5 tuned in to see him, "obviously laboring under great stress" as he resumed the late-night chores. Eyes of a Generation has an excellent recap of one of television's most controversial episodes, including a clip of his triumphant return.

That's not all the Hugh Downs news for this week; according to the TV Teletype, Downs will be appearing in a straight dramatic role in an upcoming episode of Riverboat, starring Darrin McGavin and Burt Reynolds. (If any further evidence is needed, that's him over there, to the left of McGavin.) And, speaking of Perry Mason as we were in the lede, CBS has confirmed that the show has been renewed for a fourth season. 

There's also a note that Reginald Rose has completed work on what Bob Stahl says may be "the most controversial TV play of the season," "The Sacco-Vanzetti Story," planned as a two-part Sunday Showcase presentation in May on NBC. Rose says that his "intensive research" shows that the anarchists, who were executed after being convicted of robbery and murder in South Braintree, Massachusetts, were framed due to their political beliefs. Martin Balsam and Steven Hill are scheduled to portray Sacco and Vanzetti; Sidney Lumet will direct. In the end, the production, which actually airs in June, wins critical acclaim from most critics (with New York Daily News columnist Ben Gross calling it "a blasting indictment of Massachusetts justice," and criticism from Boston Globe legal editor Joseph Harvey, who accused it of being unfair and unbalanced, albeit "absorbing" drama. It goes on to garner four Emmy nominations.

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To coin a phrase, we've got some really big stars in specials and regular fare alike, and that dominates our look at the week.

On Saturday Jack Benny gets a full hour special (9:00 p.m. CT) in addition to his regular weekly series, and he fills it up with Phil Silvers and Polly Bergen. Among the highlights, Jack interviews a "typical" TV Western viewer, gives his opinion on television commercials, and wonders about the runner taking the Olympic torch from Squaw Valley to Rome for the Summer Games.

Sunday brings us the return of Dr. Frank Baxter, whom we've enjoyed here before, in another Bell Telephone Science Special, "The Alphabet Conspiracy." (5:00 p.m., NBC) Dr. Baxter plays Dr. Linguistics, who's out to "prevent three plotters who are determined to do away with the alphabet and thus destroy all languages." Who knew they'd go on to invent emojis instead? Hans Conried plays The Mad Hatter, who for all I know may or may not be one of the plotters. If you missed this when it was first on 14 months ago, you may opt for this week's roundtable discussion on Small World (5:00, CBS), featuring Pablo Casals, Isaac Stern and Ernest Ansermet discussing the musician's political and social responsibilities. CBS follows that up at 5:30 with The Twentieth Century, as Walter Cronkite profiles "Patton and the Third Army."

Sunday evening brings a pair of specials; first, Our American Heritage (7:00 p.m., NBC) tells the story of "Autocrat and Son," also known as Oliver Wendell Holms Sr. and Jr. Sr. is played by Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Jr. by Christopher Plummer, and the whole thing was written by Ernest Kinoy, who wrote great teleplays into the 1990s, everything from The Defenders to the TV-movies Victory at Entebbe and Skokie. Then, at 8:30 p.m. on CBS, the General Mills Special Tonight series presents "The Valley of Decision" with Lloyd Bridges and Nancy Wickwire.

Compared to Sunday's lineup, Monday is pretty tame, but it does have its benefits, with Arlene Francis as Jack Paar's Tonight guest-host for the week (NBC, 10:30 p.m.), while Jack's in England taping next week's shows. (Speaking of Jack, as we were earlier.) Was Arlene the first woman to host Tonight? I think so, but don't hold me to it; I'm not sure at this point in history who else in might have been.

Tuesday starts off with Playhouse 90's chilling adaptation of Robert Shaw's novel "The Hiding Place" (7:00 p.m., CBS) starring James Mason as a Nazi holding two British flyers (Richard Basehart, Trevor Howard) prisoner in his cellar. They've spent years chained up in there, with Mason as their only contact to the outside world. What he doesn't tell them is that the war has been over for seven years. If that's too dark for you, you can check out a rare television appearance by Rex Harrison in Startime's "Dear Arthur" (7:30 p.m., NBC), co-starring Sarah Marshall and Hermoine Badderly, with Gore Vidal adapting the play by P.G. Wodehouse.

I like the sound of Perry Como's show on Wednesday (8:00 p.m., NBC), with Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gormé, and Don Adams. (Might be the best variety show of the week, for that matter.) You can also check out Richard Boone, taking time out from Have Gun—Will Travel to star in "The Charlie and the Kid" on The U.S. Steel Hour (9:00 p.m., CBS), with Geraldine Brooks.

The big event on Thursday is a local one, the start of the Minnesota State High School Basketball Tournament. (For boys, of course; it is 1960, after all.) I think most people think of hockey when they think sports in Minnesota, but in the years before professional sports came to town, the basketball tournament was very, very big stuff. The tournament ran for three days, with eight teams battling for the title, ending on Saturday night when nearly 20,000 would pack Williams Arena, home of the University of Minnesota Golden Gophers, to watch the final. If they're lucky, it would be a David-vs-Goliath story, with an unsung small school out of nowhere taking on the big city schools.

In 1960 that's exactly what happened, as Minnesota staged its very own version of Hoosiers, starring the team from tiny Edgerton, Minnesota (population 961). Edgerton, led by coach Rich Olson (so young that security guards demanded to see his identification before letting him into Williams Arena), had finished the regular season undefeated, then knocked off several large schools before making it into the tournament, where the standing-room only crowds adopted the tiny school as its own, cheering them on as they upset top-ranked Richfield in the semifinals before defeating Austin in the final. Edgerton was the smallest school ever to win the state championship, and to this day the tournament remains one of the most storied moments in Minnesota sports history.

On Friday, Robert Ryan and Ann Todd star in a live adaptation of Hemingway's story "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" (7:30 p.m., CBS), which must have been quite an accomplishment considering our hero leads a life of adventure all over the world. At least they have the right man at the helm, with John Frankenheimer directing. Pretty good supporting cast as well, with Janice Rule, Jean Hagen, Mary Astor and James Gregory.

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There's often a healthy dose of irony contained in TV Guide headlines from this era, and this week's example is the header on the cover, "How Bob Cummings Stays So Young." The short answer, contained in the story, is "advanced thinking on the subject of diet." The longer, and more interesting, answer is only partially found in the article; the rest of it can be tracked down in various articles about Cummings's problems later in life.

Cummings is a big believer in supplements, mostly in tablets and pills. "They're just vitamin, mineral and amino acid pills, but they're organic in origin, not synthetic," he tells the unidentified interview. It's not unusual for him to "gulp down as many as two dozen of these," and he downs "anywhere from 30 to 300 a day." When asked how to get on a supplemental diet, he says simply, "See your doctor and do what he says"

Well, Cummings's doctor was Max Jacobson, the infamous "Dr. Feelgood," who was doctor to many Hollywood celebrities, and once treated President Kennedy with a mixture of steroids and amphetamines. According to the always-reliable Wikipedia, "While Jacobson insisted that his injections contained only "vitamins, sheep sperm, and monkey gonads", they actually contained a substantial dose of methamphetamine." Cummings eventually became an addict, and after Jacobson was stripped of his medical license, Cummings was forced to find his own connections for the drugs. He wound up broke, living in various homes for indigent actors.

Now, I hasten to add that I don't know whether or not Cummings was seeing Jacobson at the time of this article; his quotes only refer to "pills," and Jacobson apparently trafficked in injections. However, Cummings was thought to have become addicted to meth by the mid-1950s, an addiction that continued to the end of his life. It's a sad footnote to a talented and very likable actor.

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And the winner is: Finally, the TV Guide Awards are presented live and in color on Friday night (7:30 p.m., NBC); before the Emmys attained their current level of credibility, the TV Guide Awards, along with other awards shows from magazines such as Look, were considered industry standard presentations. The categories are, obviously, much broader than one would see from the Emmys, but no less important, given that readers of TV Guide voted for the winners.

Robert Young, Nanette Fabray, and Fred MacMurray not only host, they perform in some pre-recorded skits, while the awards themselves are presented in both New York and Hollywood, depending on where the winner is. The show's producer is Bud Yorkin, and it's directed by Norman Lear.

Anyway, may I have the envelope please?

Favorite Series of One Hour or Longer: Perry Mason

Favorite Half-Hour Series: Father Knows Best

Best Single Musical or Variety Program: Another Evening with Fred Astaire

Most Popular Male Personality: Raymond Burr (Perry Mason)

Most Popular Female Personality: Loretta Young (The Loretta Young Show)

Best News or Information Program: The Huntley-Brinkley Report

Best Single Dramatic Program: "The Turn of the Screw" (Startime)

TV

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This week in TV Guide: January 24, 1959

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Trust me: don't take that trip!

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

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

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

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

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

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This week in TV Guide: January 17, 1959

We start off the week with Bob Johnson's very amusing article on James Garner and Jack Kelley, the "Maverick Brothers" of ABC's Sunday night series.

The two stars maintain separate lives; Johnson suggests that "the boys don't like to discuss each other," although I'm not sure that there's any particular animosity between them. Certainly Garner, who was the first Maverick, is also first among equals; his episodes have higher ratings, and his appearances outnumber Kelly's through the course of the season (of the 20 episodes so far this season, nine have starred Garner, six for Kelly, and five have featured both of them.

It's not hard to dissect Garner's popularity: his easy-going manner, the implicit humor he brings to the role, are all products of his acting talent—or, as he puts it, his lack of same. He's no actor, he insists, but a personality; in fact, he can't act. "I'll learn if I have to, but I haven't had to yet. I'm playing me. Bret Maverick is lazy. I'm lazy. I like to get the bit over with at the studio and get out of there. I like being lazy." He adds that he's never taken a script home to study, "and I don't plan to."

You might be familiar with the story behind Maverick, of how the first few episodes were played straight—stock Westerns—until bored scriptwriter Marion Hargroves inserted a stage direction that changed the series forever. "Maverick," he wrote, "looks at him with his beady little eyes." Garner loved it. "You can't say that about a star," the research department told Hargroves. Nonsense, replied Hargroves; he'd met Garner, and he does have beady little eyes.

Soon the series had made the transformation to a comedy, and the Maverick boys "have been subjected to more house gags, in stage directions by Hargrove and other writers, than any two other actors living." For example, when Kelly leaves the saloon, he doesn't just leave. "He sees his horse. He smiles. His horse sees him and just nods." Garner is described  as "ahr hero" or "an itinerant clergyman," and when he considers a problem, "we can see his flabby little mind make a small connection." There's even a situation where "His face shows resentment, frustration, anxiety and anything else the director thinks he can get out of him." These directions don't explicitly show up on screen, of course, but it influences the way Garner and Kelly play their roles, and more important it indicates the spirit that has infected the entire show.

Interestingly, Kelly thinks the show can go three more seasons after this one, but "Garner has other ideas." As to what those ideas are, Johnson doesn't really say; instead, he captures Garner talking about the recent satire the show did on Gunsmoke. ("It's a classic.") Garner's other ideas, however, don't include three more seasons of Maverick; he quits the series in 1960 in a dispute with Warner Brothers, a case he wins in court. He's replaced by, at various times, Roger Moore and Robert Colbert; ultimately, in the fifth and final season (as Jack Kelly predicted), reruns of old Garner stories alternate with Kelly's new shows. Maverick ends its run with a secure place in TV history, and a warm spot in viewers' hearts.

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

Sullivan: Ed's guests are actress Celeste Holm; French singer Edith Piaf; musical-comedy star Pat Suzuki; operatic soprano Antonietta Stella; musical-comedy writers Betty Comden and Adolph Green, currently appearing on Broadway in a two-man show; comedian Alan Drake; and juggler Francis Brunn.

Allen: Steve's guests are actress Esther Williams and singers Vic Damone and Jennie Smith. A large part of tonight's show takes place in and around a swimming pool located in the studio. Steve dons a bathing suit to join Miss Williams in an aquatic comedy routine.

As far as stars go, it's hard to top Celeste Holm, Edith Piaf, and Comden and Green. As far as entertainment, Steve Allen in a bathing suit with Esther Williams, cavorting in a studio swimming pool—that says it all. It depends on what turns you on, which is why this week is a push.

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That man in the baggy blue uniform is Bob Keeshan, aka Captain Kangaroo, whose show stands out "amid the cacophonous carnival of TV attractions for children" featuring broad slapstick comedy and raucous peanut galleries. Instead, the good Captain (his name comes from the enormous pockets on his jacket, vaguely resembling a kangaroo's pouch) treats them to "beautiful music, dancing, unusual games and toys, live animals, amusing cartoons, simple studies of nature, and tips on how to make things." 

Keeshan's entire television career has been about children. For five years he played the voiceless Clarabell the Clown on Howdy Doody, and followed that up with two local kids' shows in New York. Talking about the philosophy behind his series, Keeshan stresses the importance of his "gentle lessions" he presents to his young viewers, which mirror those he's imparted on his own children. "One important lesson I try to teach my own kids is that gentleness in a person doesn't necessarily indicate weakness; and that good manners and thoughtfullness are necessary to a happy life."

He's an ambassador for UNICEF, and creator of the "Trick or Treat" campaign that encouraged kids to collect coins, rather than Halloween candy, for the UN organization. (He's pictured above talking about UNICEF with three of Sir Winston Churchill's grandchildren.) Its success had led him to travel to other countries, including a stop at the Brussels World's Fair, encouraging similar ideas. He has a long-term goal of creating a news show for children, explaining the issues of the day in a way that they can understand. (A forerunner of In the News, perhaps?) Says Keeshan, "Children are an important part of the world—today's world. We owe them an honest explanation of what's happening to it."

Reading this brief article, one sees many of the same qualities and concerns that Fred Rogers would teach to later generations of children, and it's unfortunate, I think, that Captain Kangaroo often gets overlooked amidst the deserved praise that we've lavished on Mister Rogers over the years. Is it because of the Captain's episodes (the show ran on CBS from 1955 to 1984) were, as was too often the case back then, wiped? Or did Mister Rogers' Neighborhood come along at a time when children's programming was even worse, relatively speaking, than it was when Captain Kangaroo started? I'm not sure which, but the two men were great admirers of each other, and the shows themselves were never in competition. I've written about Captain Kangaroo before, noting the irony that the "Love Generation" that viewed his program often displayed attributes directly at odds with those he strove to teach them. Regardless, it's good to remember the genuine concern Bob Keeshan had for his young viewers, and the lessons he worked so hard and so long to teach them.

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Lest we get too caught up in the panacea of the 1950s, Wednesday reminds us of the decade's downside, with Edward R. Murrow's The Lost Class of '59 (7:00 p.m, CBS), a report on six high schools in Norfolk, Virginia, that the state ordered closed rather than submit to a federal court order to integrate. Murrow interviews local and state officials, segregation leaders and their opponents, and four local students to get their views on the situation, which affects some 43,000 students, including the "Norfolk 17," 17 black students whose attempt to enroll sparked the crisis. 

The Lost Class of '59 turns a national spotlight on Norfolk, bringing "unwanted" attention to the school crisis. Shortly after the broadcast, a group of 100 business leaders take out ◀ a full-page ad in the Virginian Pilot, urging that the schools reopen; they concede that while they prefer segregated schools, it's time to acknowledge and accept the "new reality." A week later, on February 2, the schools are reopened; by that time, however, many of the affected students had scattered to other schools in other cities and states, while others stayed home, married, or joined the military. On the 50th anniversary, honorary diplomas were awarded to 1,300 seniors who lost the experience of their senior year in high school. 

Murrow and producer Fred Friendly receive a Peabody Award for The Lost Class of '59, "for their concise reporting and compassionate insight into the plight of the group most seriously affected by the struggle for integration.  

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On a very quiet Saturday, I'll give the nod to Perry Como's show (7:00 p.m., NBC). Perry's guest stars are Nat King Cole, the McGuire Sisters, and Dick Van Dyke. At 11:30 p.m., KDAL in Duluth has the movie Michael Shayne, Private Detective, starring Lloyd Nolan. It's actually a pretty good movie if you forget both the novels by Brett Halliday and the series starring Richard Denning. Opposite that, on WTCN, is I Led Three Lives, and this week "Herb Philbrick becomes embroiled in a Communist plot to infiltrate a labor union." What a shock.

Returning to the news beat for a moment, Meet the Press expands to an hour on Sunday afternoon (5:00 p.m., NBC) for an appearance by Soviet First Deputy Premier Anastas Mikoyan, next to Khruschev the most powerful man in the Soviet Union. Mikoyan was a survivor if nothing else, serving Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev, and was one of the rare top Soviet officals to retire rather than meet a violent death at the hands of a rival; although he was forced out by Brezhnev, he was "allowed" to die of natural causes in 1978. In the great panoply of Communist figures, Mikoyan was thought to be friendlier to the United States than most, one reason why was sent to represent the USSR at the funeral of John F. Kennedy. He's being interviewed here on the occasion of his second trip to America.

The second half of Meet the Press runs into competition from ABC, with the final round of the Binbg Crosby Pro-Am golf tournament from Pebble Beach, California. (4:30 p.m.) Then, as now, the stars are part of the attraction, and this year's batch is expected to include Bob Hope, Phil Harris, Desi Arnaz, James Garner, Bob Crosby, Fred MacMurray, Randolph Scott and Dennis O'Keefe. And then there's Der Bingle, of course. It's as fine a lineup of stars as you'll see anywhere on TV this week.

There are a few stars left over for Sunday evening, though, as Nina Foch stars in a special presentation of Agatha Christie's famed mystery Ten Little Indians. (6:00 p.m., NBC) In today's politically correct times, it would probably be known by its alternate title, "And Then There Were None." Fine with me; the original title of the story is even more problematic. At 8:00 p.m., it's G.E. Theater on CBS, starring Tony Curtis, in the David and Goliath story, "The Stone." (8:00 p.m., CBS)

An ad in this week's issue proclaims CBS's hour-long block of The Danny Thomas Show and The Ann Sothern Show on Monday as the "funniest hour on TV." I wouldn't know about that, not being a particular fan of either one—which leads me to ask whether, aside from us classic TV aficionados, anyone really remembers them anymore. I'm not being sarcastic in asking this question, just wondering what kind of a cultural footprint either of them left. Danny Thomas, of course, is probably best known for St. Jude Children's Hospital, but how many know that at one time he was considered "one of television's greatest comedians"? Just a thought. At any rate, Danny's guest tonight is Tennessee Ernie Ford (8:00 p.m.), which counts for something. Meanwhile, Ann Sothern (8:30 p.m.) resurrects the old question facing women of the time: do you choose a career, or marriage? To find out, though, you'll have to pass up Peter Gunn on NBC and The Voice of Firestone on ABC. 

If one night of Steve Allen (Sunday) is good, two nights must be better, right? Tuesday is the second night, and The Bob Cummings Show* is the occasion (8:30 p.m., NBC). Tonight, Bob tries to get rid of his girlfriend Betty (Joyce Jameson) by telling her that he can get her a job on Steve's show. Have you seen that one, Hal Horn? Even more significant than a second night of Steve, though, is the first night of Alcoa Presents (9:00 p.m., ABC), which you'll probably recognize by its subtitle: One Step Beyond. The much-loved supernatural cult series, presented by John Newland, will stick around for three seasons, joining a panoply that includes The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits.

*Fun fact: According to the always-reliable Wikipedia, The Bob Cummings Show was the first series to debut as a midseason replacement. There's no citation to prove it, though. 

Lawrence Welk is one of the few stars to enjoy the distinction of two weekly prime time programs running each week; besides his better-known Saturday night extravaganza, he also has an hour each Wednesday. Initially known as Lawrence Welk Presents Top Tunes and New Talent, it now carries the title The Lawrence Welk Plymouth Show (6:30 p.m., ABC), and it has a distinction of its own: according to the always-reliable Wikipedia, the Welk Plymouth Show is the first television program to be aired in stereo; this was accomplished, "by ABC simulcast the show on its radio network, with the TV side airing one audio channel and the radio side airing the other; viewers would tune in both the TV and the radio to achieve the stereophonic effect." As corroboration, the program description notes that viewers watching the show on WTCN, the ABC affiliate in Minneapolis-St. Paul, "can hear this program in stereophonic sound by also tuning to radio station WTCN, operating on 1280 kilocycles." 

On Thursday, Cesar Romero guest stars as "The Gay Caballero" (not to be confused with Guy Caballero) on Zorro (7:00 p.m., ABC). I'll bet he steals the show. At 8:30 p.m., CBS's Playhouse 90 presents "The Velvet Alley," a Rod Serling play about a struggling writer who may have finally gotten his big break when he sells a script to—Playhouse 90. Art Carney makes a rare dramatic appearance as the playwright who has to ask himself whether success is worth selling your soul.

Speaking of show-stealing and meta stories, Phil Silvers is well-positioned to steal Friday in an expanded one-hour edition of his series (8:00 p.m., CBS) which is wonderfully, bizarrely meta. In it, Sydney Chaplin (actor and son of Charlie), playing himself, plans to use Bilko's life story for an Army musical. Bilko travels to Hollywood to meet the actor chosen to play him: Phil Silvers! Diana Dors, also playing herself, guests; later this year, she'll marry an actor who'll do pretty well in an Army sitcom himself—Richard Dawson.

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A word about the changing face of television production. While the movie studios have tried, once they realized that television wasn't going anywhere, to enter the TV production industry, the three studios that today dominate television are all independent from the movie moguls: Desilu, Screen Gems, and Revue. Together, as Dan Jenkins reports, the three of them will do an estimated gross of $100 million in this fiscal year, all of it in television. And their output far dwarfs that of their big-screen counterparts.

As an example, the three networks use an average of 36 hours of film in prime time each week, the equivalent of 24 feature films. Over the course of a 39-week television season, that amounts to an equivalent of 936 movies, more than four-and-a-half times the number of movies turned out by studios in 1958. And keep in mind that these figures don't include syndicated series or shows broadcast outside prime time.

Of the three, Screen Gems is the oldest, having started out in 1949 as a subsidiary of Columbia. Desilu represents "the ever-lengthening shadow of one man, Desi Arnaz," who has gone from being virtually shoved down CBS's throat by his wife, Lucille Ball, to become television's most successful producer, with three former motion picture studios and more soundstanges than are owned by MGM.* Revue, the third of the big three, grosses an estimated $40,000 per episode, multiplied by 39 episodes, for each of the series in its stable. Together, the three turn out 32 network and syndicated shows, representing 17 hours of television per week, "more than twice the footage of all the major and indpenedent movie companies combined." 

*And this is how, as the cover notes, Lucy and Desi became "America's Favorite Tycoons." 

There are, however, challenges on the horizon. Warner Bros. currently puts out four hours of television per week on ABC alone, including the aforementioned Maverick. Walt Disney has three film shows of his own on the same network, while other studios, including Ziv, "sausage-grinder of the syndication field," and George Burns' McCadden Productions.

For the most part, Jenkins notes, members from the motion picture industry have had little to do with the rise of television productions. Even when the studios have jumped into TV, they've chosen TV-trained executives, such as Harry Ackerman at Screen Jems, and Martin Manulis at Fox. Even in the case of rising contender Four Star Films, which was founded by movie actors Dick Powell, David Nive, and Charles Boyer, the organization was put together by radio-TV agent-producer Don Sharpe. 

Times will change, though. Remember not that long ago, we read about Lucille Ball selling out Desilu to Paramount. WB will become more and more prominent in television, and Disney will come to control just about everything. But in the meantime there is no question that the big three are part of Hollywood's new elite, in an industry that didn't even exist ten years ago.

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And now a moment to mention this week's starlet, 23-year-old Nancy Malone: 23, "red-haired and blue-eyed and freckled and pert." She's been acting since she was 11, and left school at 17 to appear in the Broadway play Time Out for Ginger. Since then she's appeared on many of the New York-based dramatic anthologies (Studio One, Armstrong Circle Theatre, Robert Montgomery Presents, the Hallmark Hall of Fame) and is currently a regular on the CBS sudser The Brighter Day, along with her dog, Miss Madrigal (five years old, half beagle, half dachshund, likes to chase squirels). 

Next year she'll take on her best-known role, that of Libby Kingston, aspiring actress and good-hearted girlfriend of Paul Burke's Detective Adam Flint, in Naked City. She'll remain on Naked City for three seasons; later, she'll be one of the stars on ABC's The Long Hot Summer. After that, she'll work her way up the entertainment ladder, moving into producing and directing (where she wins an Emmy and is nominated for two others), and does a stint as vice-president of television at 20th Century Fox. Always a pleasure to watch, she's an example of a starlet who makes good.

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Finally, some notes from the TV Teletype:

Bill Lundigan's new series Moon Flight, which is billed as a "new semidocumentary series abou tman's exploration of space," has gone into production. It will emerge with a new name, Men Into Space, when it airs this September on CBS. You can catch reruns of it on Comet if you're so inclined. And speaking of new series, that guest appearance by Tennessee Ernie Ford on Monday's Danny Thomas Show made an impact on the producer, who liked the character Ernie played on the show and thought it was a great idea for a new sitcom—not for Ernie, but for Andy Griffith. They're working on it now, and when it premieres as The Andy Griffith Show in October 1960, it will find a place in television history.

Dwayne Hickman is leaving the aforementioned The Bob Cummings Show at the end of this season for his own series, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, good for four seasons on CBS starting this fall. The detective series Peter Gunn, which debuted last September on NBC, has been picked up for the rest of the year—a full 39 episodes. And Dave Garroway has postponed his trip to Paris from April until early May; there's a funny ancedote about that trip in my interview with Jodie Peeler.

Finally, a note from the local section that Miss America 1959, Carol Ann Mobley, "is in town to crown the North St. Paul Jaycee Queen," and will be appearing with Arle Haeberle on her WCCO afternoon show Around the Town. I don't see any "Carol Ann Mobley" as Miss America, in 1959 or any other year. There is, however, a Mary Ann Mobley, who happens to be Miss America 1959. I hope the Jaycees that were expecting Carol weren't too disappointed. TV  

This week in TV Guide: October 22, 1966

When it comes to "Mod," no city defines the term better than the London of the 1960s. And that's where Lucille Ball is this Monday in a special hour-long edition of The Lucy Show entitled "Lucy Goes to London" (8:30 p.m. PT, CBS), with Anthony Newley on hand to take the world's favorite redhead around on a tour of the world's swingingest city. The premise sees Lucy winning a limerick contest that earns her a one-day tour of the city. Newley plays her tour guide, the owner of a threadbare travel agency, her other guests are Wilfrid Hyde-White as a museum guide; James Robertson Justice as the museum's drector; Peter Wyngarde as Petruchio, Shakespeare's male lead in The Taming of the Shrew, and the Dave Clark Five (as themselves?). Newley also finds some time, as himself, to perform songs from his hit musicals Stop the World and The Roar of the Greasepaint). 

As Robert Musel looks on, Lucy is preparing for a mod dance sequence to be staged at Osterley House, one of the stately homes you always see in tours of England. Looking at some of the "far-out costumes that end 6 inches above the knees", she wonders out loud to Musel if they're supposed to be short skirts or long belts, then proceeds to show off her own "notably elegant legs" in various outfits that form a pictorial during the scene. It can be painful sometimes watching these shows where your favorite stars try to act younger than their years, but if anyone can pull it off, I suspect it's Lucille Ball. Anyway, you've got a link to the video up there; you can check it out for yourself. 

In case you were wondering, and it should come as no surprise, the Brits love Lucy as mucg as we do; throughout her time there, "Truck drivers gaped and slowed down to give her the traditional thumbs up of approval, and there was a good deal of cheerful backchat with passers-by." In fact, while cast and crew were filming at Mme. Tussard's, she received quite a fright when she was approached for an autograph by a cleaning woman. The poor lady just wanted a good look at Lucy, so she had stood quietly, staring at the star and hoping not to attract any attention, totally unaware that from an angle she appeared to be part of one of the wax displays. And, of course, when one of those figures appears to come to life and start walking toward you—well, what else can you do but scream? Lucy happily, if somewhat shakily, signed the autograph. 

One scene in particular demonstrates Lucy's dedication to her work. It takes place at the poluted river Thames, which Musel describes as "'not much better than a sewer in some stretches." Lucy's character expresses a desire to go punting on the Thames, but Newly's hapless travel agent can only come up with an inflatable raft. Ball was warned that if she sank with the raft, as was called for in the script, she'd need typhoid and other shots, and if she swallowed any of the "sludge," she'd probably have to have her stomach pumped. Why don't we just go to a nice, clean—and safe—reservoir and film it there? Lucy, however, disagreed, and since she also happened to be Executive Producer of the special, her word was final. To prove it, she "went into the Thames up to her lips right then and there." No stunt doubles for this star.

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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: Jim "Gomer Pyle" Nabors, who sings "The Impossible Dream" and "Swanee"; singer Peggy Lee; jazz pianist-bandleader Duke Ellington; Mirella Freni and Gianni Raimondi, of the Metropolitan Opera; comics Joan Rivers and Norm Crosby; the Kovac and Rabovsky Gypsy Ballet; Upstairs at the Downstairs, comedy troupe; Tanya the Elephant; and the Muppets puppets.

Palace: Comedienne Phyllis Diller, making her debut as a Palace hostess, presents singer Tony Martin; comedian Bob Newhart, who offers a monolog about a policeman and a would-be suicide; Herman’s Hermits, rock ‘n’ roll group; dancer Lada Edmund Jr.; magician Kirk Kirkham; Del Morals’ acrobatic act; and the Palace Duo, trapeze artists.

You might remember that last week I promised I'd compare TV Guide's scheduled listing of Sullivan guests with the actual show lineup; this week's description was pretty accurate. There was only one significant addition, but I think it's worth mentioning; the four-person comedy troupe Upstairs at the Downstairs, one of those members being one Madeline Kahn. Otherwise it's a tough call, with Bob Newhart and Herman's Hermits making a strong statement for Palace. On the whole, though, I think Peggy Lee and Duke Ellington make the difference, and on that basis Sullivan carries the week.

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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. 

It's always nice to be able to analyze one of Cleveland Amory's reviews from the perspective of having actually seen the series he's reviewing, and this week we have such a case, with CBS's WWII action-adventure series Jericho. I never saw it during its original sincle season, but I had the chance to view the entire series this year, so when Cleve calls Jericho "the season’s best new adventure-filled, action-packed series involving undercover work in a fun war," I'm in a position to agree with him. Mind you, I didn't like the show quite as much as he did, or perhaps his ardor dimmed somewhat as the season progressed, but as Amory points out, it has a good many things going for it.

Start with the three principals, Don Francks, John Leyton, and Marino Masé, playing the three members of a special unit, code-named Jericho, sent to pull off impossibly impossible missions with the help of local partisans. They're all good actors, playng characters that are "intrinsically interesting," and though the show can be heavy-handed at times, well, what isn't? Amory singles out one episode which he considers "one of the finest individual episodes of any show we've ever seen," which is high praise indeed, particularly coming from Our Critic. It involved choirboys being smuggled into a secret German submarine base carrying loaves of bread containing bombs, and if that doesn't whet your appetite enough to go to Roku and check it out for yourself, there's not a whole lot more I can do for you. (It's called "A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread—and POW!" but don't let that stop you; remember that reporters don't compose their own headlines, either.) 

Having watched Jericho just after finishing Garrison's Gorillas and just before starting Combat!, I can tell you that the show, good as it might be, doesn't measure up to either one of those. It's certainly not as gritty as the latter (but then, what series is?), and the entertainment value of the former was just that much bit higher that it allowed one to overlook the implausibility in which both Garrison and Jericho traffic. However, as a devoted fan of Hogan's Heroes, I'm in no position to lecture anyone on plausiblity. Amory himself points out that the the trio might be well-served by going about their jobs displaying a little more grimness and a little less relish. As he concludes, "Fun's fun, boys—but still . . .

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I've had numerous occasion over the years to quote from Richard K. Doan's weekly Doan Report, a valuable source not only of insider stories, but of hard news perspectives on various issues within the industry. This week, while we're still absorbing the debuts from the new season, we get to see the debut of the Doan Report itself! Doan was, in the past, the radio-TV editor of the New York Herald Tribune; now, with the Herald Tribune closed for good as of August, the newspaper industry's loss is TV Guide's gain. And what, pray tell, is the first item on the plate? The ratings for the season's new shows, of course!

The first "definitive" poll of the season is in, that being the Nielsens for October 10, and while the week's top show was a returning favorite—Green Acres—first among the newcomers is ABC's WWII series The Rat Patrol. As for the biggest disappointment, at least in terms of potential, that belongs to the network's Stage 67, which was highly touted at the start of the season but "was so scorned by critic and viewer alike" that it's likely going to be replaced by a Wednesday night movie. The jury's still out on where Stage 67 winds up, and whether it survives as a weekly series or an occasional special. But since a Wednesday night movie requires more than just an hour, that's going to necessitate moving the week's second airing of Peyton Place. Where to? At this point, probably in place of The Man Who Never Was, although Shane and Hawk, two hour-long dramas, are in big trouble already. As for the year's biggest bomb, The Tammy Grimes Show, well, that's already a scratch.

The axe swung quickly at CBS as well, with Jean Arthur's new comedy to leave the air on December 5 after 12 episodes, to be replaced by a prime-time version of To Tell The Truth. And while the network hasn't announced any other casualties yet, "the Smothers Brothers, signed for a new variety hour, had been alerted to stand by for a January debut." Sure enough, when the new year comes around, the Brothers will be sitting in place of the revival of Garry Moore's show. Perhaps the best news for the Tiffany Network applies not to this season, but next Carol Burnett will be returning next fall in a comedy-variety hour, the first woman to helm such a show since Dinah Shore; it's probable she'll be replacing Danny Kaye, who's "experiencing ratings fatigue." 

Meanwhile, all is quiet at NBC; there are no reports of "second season talk," although The Roger Miller Show and The Hero are said to be on tenuous ground. A possible replacement: a long-promised live-action version of Dick Tracy. It's only been 58 years, but we're still waiting.

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President Johnson's tour of Asia takes up some airtime this week, with all three networks providing special programs of the events leading up to the Manila Conference dealing with the Vietnam War. CBS and ABC have reports on Saturday night, while CBS covers the president's arrival in Manila on Sunday (6:30 p.m.), the opening ceremonies of the conference on Tuesday (10:00 p.m.), and a 15-minute special on the conference's close on Thursday. (10:45 p.m.) Meanwhile, NBC plans daily coverage on Today (7:00 a.m.), and ABC, in addition to any special reports, plans to cover the story on the evening news. ABC also has a special, "To Save a Soldier" (Monday, 10:00 p.m.), narrated by Henry Fonda, which looks at the medical evacuation teams working on the battlefields in Vietnam. 

As for the rest of the week, on Sunday, KXTV tours the magnificent collection of Oriental art donated to the city of San Francisco by Avery Brundage; Brundage may be best known to most of you as the head of the International Olympic Committee from 1952 to 1972, a man for whom amateurism in the Olympics was a hill to die on, and one of the most controversial figures in sports in the 20th Century. Tuesday, Truman Capote is one of the guests on David Susskind's program (9:00 p.m., KQED), discussing his life and works, including "Breakfast at Tiffany's" and In Cold Blood. On Wednesday, Tony Bennett stars in his first hour-long special (10:00 p.m., ABC), with trumpeter Bobby Hackett, drummer Buddy Rich, vibraphonist Milt Jackson, Candido on bongos and conga drums, and flutist Paul Horn and his quintet. Bennett also performs with the Ralph Burns orchestra. Thursday sees the conclusion of a two-part Batman adventure (7:30 p.m., ABC) starring Liberace in the dual role of Chandell, the famouns pianist, and his evil twin brother Harry; as I recall, this story pulled in the highest ratings of Batman's run. And on Friday, Swingshif Theatre (1:00 a.m., KNTV in San Jose) presents "Who Killed Julie Greer?," an episode of The Dick Powell Show that served as the pilot for Burke's Law, with Powell himself in the role of our favorite millionaire police detective, Amos Burke.

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On Thursday, one of television's most enduring—and endearing—specials, It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown makes its television debut(8:30 p.m., CBS). It's the third of the Peanuts animated specials, after A Charlie Brown Christmas, which aired for the first time last December; and Charlie Brown's All Stars, which premiered in June. 

I think it's safe to say the Great Pumpkin is the second-most popular of all the Peanuts cartoons after A Charlie Brown Christmas, and it's probably also the second-most successful as far as merchandise marketing is concerned. I mean, have any of you gone been in a grocery store in the last month? If so, you've almost certainly seen boxes of pumpkins for sale, and just about every one of those boxes has Charlie Brown, Linus, and Snoopy on the side, sitting in a sincere pumpkin patch, waiting for the Great Pumpkin. And this is 58 years after the cartoon first aired! I've mentioned in the past how Hallmark really cashed in on it at the time, putting out The Peanuts Book of Pumpkin Carols, including the classics "Great Pumpkin is Comin' to Town" and "Pumpkin Bells." (Maybe they still publish it; it's been a while since I've been in a Hallmark store.) Then, of course, there's the legend of Snoopy vs the Red Baron; the storyline had been introduced in the comic strip the previous year and was instantly popular (just ask the Royal Guardsmen); it plays a crucial role in the plot of The Great Pumpkin. We don't do much for Halloween in the Hadley household besides greating trick-or-treaters at the door, but we always make it a point to watch The Great Pumpkin on Halloween night.

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Arthur Schlesinger Jr., John F. Kennedy's house historian and a past contributor to TV Guide, writes this week about the changes television hath wrought in politics. "More and more Americans, it appears, are forming their impressions of the world on the basis of the things they see on the tiny screen," he begins, adding that in 1964 Broadcasting magazine declared that "television had become the 'Nation’s primary news medium.'" (Substitute "social media" for television, and we're probably at the same point.) Some argue that reliance on the medium produces "a more alret and better-informed electorate" while others counter that it is "reducing our politics to a mixture of high-pressure salesmanship and beauty contests." Schlesinger attempts, in this article, to sort through the various claims and evidence and come up with an understanding of where the truth lies.

As far as news is concerned, Schlesinger believes that "the greatest influence in shaping political judgment is stil the reality of events themselves." This is the area in which television has had its most pronounced success; Schlesinger cites television coverage of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings on Vietnam as a prime example of an event that would not have had the same effect on the public had it not been on television, not only exposing the public to open debate on the issue, but giving viewers "the effect in many cases of heightening the sense of popular participation in public matters." This day-by-day coverage of politics has also made it more difficult for important issues and personalities to fly below the radar, giving the electorate "a larger knowledge of public personalities and a greater acquaintance with public issues."

On the other hand, television has also played a role in what Schlesinger refers to as "pseudo-news"; that is, "the creation of news on the initiative of the medium." That news may be legitimate, even important, but too often it winds up being "mischievous and irresponsible," as in the case where a TV news crew attempted, in the course of an interview, to spur Schlesinger into criticizing President Johnson. Although their efforts failed (and, to the crew's credit, they still aired the interview even without any provocative comments), this kind of interview technique, "designed to lure or trap people into sensational statements they would not otherwise make[,] can be dispensed with."

Schlesinger is less sure about the effect or usefulness of editorialization by news personalities. Frankly, he wonders, it's quite possible that television has a tendency to constrain such commentary. His preference is for panel discussion shows, most frequently seen on public broadcasting or local television. Schlesinger believes these shows "have improved the level of political discussion in part because they permit the suggestion of subtleties and complexities in public problems." Shows of this kind nowadays tend to become either echo chambers or shoutfests—one can only imagine what he'd think of them.

Finally, there's the question of paid political programming. Schlesinger's greatest fear is reserved for what he refers to as the "spot announcement," what we'd call a commercial. The length of political speeches has steadily decreased in the era of mass communication; whereas 60 years ago an audience would travel miles to hear a candidate discourse for a couple of hours on important issues, the coming of radio reduced such speeches to 45 minutes, then a half hour. By 1956, Adlai Stevenson's television advisers said that 15 minutes "represented the outer limit of the attention span of an American audience." Today, even that is too long. The result has "degrad[ed] the level and character of our political discourse" (preach it, Art!), resulting in "the vulgarization of issues, the exaltation of the immediately ingratiating personality and, in general, an orgy of electronic demagoguery." Perhaps the majority of the television audience doesn't want an intelligent discussion of the issues (it doesn't), but doesn't the media have an obligation to provide it for the minority who do? Schlesinger suggests that government subsidies enabling networks to give more time to candidates without losing ad revenue might be a possible solution.

Television has also resulted in an emphasis on style over substance, preferring "the poised, photogenic, otherdirected, manipulable candidate." Presidents such as Adams, Jackson, and Lincoln wouldn't have stood a chance in such an environment. Of course, Schlesinger's former boss, JFK, was among the first politicians to recognize the power and potential of television, and the words "poised" and "photogenic" describe him to a T. Schlesinger doesn't acknowledge that, but he does allow as to how the national grief following Kennedy's assassination was in part "a result of the way television had made him a cherished figure in remote lands." If television would "app[ly] as much as much thought and talent to this as it does to selling detergents," it could play a great role in making "our democracy more rational and responsible." 

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MST3K alert: I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957) A psychiatrist's drugs turn a youth into a monster. Michael Landon, Whit Bissell, Yvonne Lime, Tony Marshall. (Saturday, 1:00 a.m., KCRA in Sacramento) "You are not drinking a piña colada at Trader Vic’s, young man, you’re just not old enough."Michael Landon was two years away from Bonanza when he starred in Werewolf, and he remained a fan of the movie for the rest of his life. "I think it's a good movie. I like it. My kids like it. They better like it, their dad's in it." TV