Around the dial

Our opening feature this week comes from bare-bones e-zine, where Jack's Hitchcock Project looks at the sixth-season episode "Self Defense" by John T. Kelley, starring George Nader, Audrey Totter, and Bob Paget, and including some interesting unanswered questions.

David brings Comfort TV to 1976, with his review of Sunday night programming. Some solid shows: 60 Minutes, Kojak, The Six Million Dollar Man, Disney, and the Sunday Mystery Movie. Some not so: The Big Event, Cos, Delvecchio. Another great look back.

Cult TV Blog continues the "Sylvia Coleridge Season," and this week John arrives at the 1986 BBC TV movie The Good Doctor Bodkin Adams, a drama about one of Britain's most notorious serial killers, with as many as 300 victims to his credit. If this is news to you, as it was to me, it's worth checking out.

You'll remember my traumatic years living in the World's Worst Town™, where I was held hostage in a town with one commercial TV channel; well, this week at Mavis Movie Madness, Paul looks at another of those movies I heard of but never got to see, the 1978 teleflick Deadman's Curve, the story of Jan and Dean.

At Classic Film & TV Cafe, Rick shares seven things to know about Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. The first season and a half, with its Cold War overtones, was consistently good; the last two and a half, which featured lots of monsters and weird things, not so much. But it's still one of my favorites for a fun evening. 

Two highlights from A Shroud of Thoughts: first, Terence remembers Denise Alexander, the soap opera legend who was also a frequent guest star on television in the 1960s and 70s; then, it's a celebration of the Muppets and their television debut, 70 years ago. Man, do I feel old.

At The View from the Junkyard, Roger's latest turn on The A-Team is "Pros and Cons," which features a perfect example of the "Chekhov's gun" trope. Oh, by the way, it's also a pretty good episode, with some particularly violent scenes.

Finally, the latest episode of American TV with Mitchell Hadley is up, a fun episode in which Dan Schneider and I compare lists of the ten most significant moments in TV history. There was very little overlap, although many of them were complimentary, which makes it even more fun. TV  

This week in TV Guide: May 2, 1964

Often lost in the shuffle of more famous bombs, such as The Jerry Lewis Show, is the failure of Judy Garland's much-heralded TV series debut. This week we'll rectify that oversight, thanks to Vernon Scott's in-depth look at Judy's side of the story.

"I don't blame people for watching Bonanza instead of The Judy Garland Show," she tells Scott. "It was a natural choice." She says it without rancor, without bitterness, because in doing the show, she felt that there was something more important than ratings. "I wasn't disappointed," she says of them. "I don't think we deserved [higher ratings]. The time slot was impossible. After four or five years of loyalty to Bonanza, I can understand why viewers did not switch to my show." What was more important, she insists, is what she demonstrated to the industry. "I did prove to everybody that I was reliable. They said I'd never answer the bell for the second round. But we turned out 26 shows. And some of them were damned good, too. Especially the last five we did."

She calls the experience of doing a weekly series "very enlightening—and funny." It was "instant disaster" from the beginning, and sometimes "instant success." Every week, one way or the other. Speaking of the last five shows, which were done in a concert format (something Judy had wanted from the outset), she says, "By the time we discovered where we were going it was too late." But the network had insisted on a variety series, that it would be impossible to do the equivalent of a special every week, and she went along because "I believed they did know what they were doing." 

They, meaning the network executives, didn't like how she touched her guests so much, that viewers would think she was drunk or that there were sexual impliations. She didn't like the turntable stage they installed on the set; not only was it too noisy, it gave her motion sickness. There were nine different formats during the 24 weeks the show aired, and oftentimes she couldn't hear the orchestra because they were off to one side; she finally succeeded in getting them put on stage behind her. She was never a part of the editing process, so her hairdo and wardrobe would change from scene to scene with no explanation. 

Everyone agrees she could be difficult to work with. She only rehearsed two days a week, Thursdays and Fridays, with taping done on Friday nights. Last minute changes would be made after dress rehearsals, throwing everyone into a panic. Sometimes, she says, she'd be learning the lyrics to new songs by singing them off idiot cards. Despite all this, nobody has a bad word for her. "She wears everybody out," says producer Gary Smith, who lasted the longest of anyone on the show (21 episodes). "But she is a magnificent performer and she adapted herself beautifully to the weekly TV format." Smith, like everyone else who worked on the show, was eventually fired, presumably by Judy. But he only says, "She's a great creative star and an awesome personality." 

It was, Scott says, more of a personal than a professional defeat for Garland, for whom being popular is very important. Yet she remains grateful for having done the series, which she feels introduced her to new fans who'll want to see her in person on concert tours. "All in all, the show was a good thing to have happened to me. I learned a great deal. But if I had known what I was in for, I would never have tried a weekly series. Not ever."

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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: Guests include songstress Patti Page; comics Bill Dana and Vaughn Meader; Jerry and the Pacemakers, English rock 'n' rollers; the Claytons, whip and rope act; and rock 'n' roller Little Stevie Wonder. (Plus the cat of "America Be Seated," with Louis Gossett, May Barnes, and Bibby Oscarwall. Vaughn Meader was apparently a no-show.)

Palace: Host Louis Jourdan introduces Olympic gymnasts Muriel and Abe Grossfeld, Armando Vega and NCAA champion gymnast Ron Barak; songstress Anna Maria Alberghetti; the singing King Sisters; comedian Henny Youngman; tap dancer John Bubbles; ventriloquist Russ Lewis; comics Lewis and Christy; and juggler Johnny Broadway.

We have plusses and minuses on both shows this week; after Palace's brief excursion into Wide World of Sports territory, there are some recognizable names, if nothing to set the world on fire. Over on Sullivan, we can't be too surprised in Vaughn Meader didn't appear; his career all but ended after the death of Kennedy. Otherwise, we see Bill Dana and Jerry and the Pacemakers while they were still big, and Stevie Wonder while he was still little, and that's good enough to give Sullivan the gold medal for 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. 

There's folk music, as Cleveland Amory points out, and there's folk music. Gospel folk, country folk, city folk, Dixieland folk, and just plain folk folk. And just about all of it can be seen, from week to week, in ABC's music series Hootenanny. The show, hosted by Art Linkletter's son Jack, is broadcast from a different college each week, and features a wider range of talent than just about any other show on the air. Folk music, I should interject here, is just about my least favorite kind of music, and I'm someone with fairly eclectic tastes. Even I've heard of some of these acts, though—the Travelers Three, the Brothers Four, the Serendipity Singers, the New Christy Minstrels, even Johnny Cash, who I'd never considered a folk singer until now, but as Cleve says, just about everything is folk music today except for the Boston Symphony, and he isn't even sure about that.

It's all put together in an unpretentious manner by producer Richard Lewine and director Garth Dietrick, and that has to be a relief compared to some of the more overly produced variety shows on the air today. I doubt, for instance, that you'd see the same kind of staging as you do on NBC's Hullabaloo. "At its best," Amory says, "it's very little short of wonderful and even at its worst it's pretty fair TV fare. You name your favorite song and if you're patient, sooner or later someone will sing it." (I kind of doubt it in my case, but then, who knows?)

It's all music, except for one comedian featured on each show, something that seems to have been a trademark of music shows of the era. One of the best, Amory says, is a "diffident young man" named Jackie Vernon, whom we all know as the voice of Frosty the Snowman. "Everything about me used to be dull," he says in his trademark deadpan voice. "My favorite comedians were Bert Parks and Allen Ludden." He also tells a story about his grandfather, who had to leave the west because "he said a discouraging word." (It helps if you read the line in his voice.) Like so many things, Hootenanny eventually falls victim to the changing musical tastes that resulted from the British Invasion, but it was fun while it lasted. 

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The biggest sports event of the week comes to us from Louisville, Kentucky, where the great Northern Dancer wins the 90th running of the Kentucky Derby (5:00 p.m. ET, CBS). Nothern Dancer will go on to win the Preakness before finishing third in the Belmont Stakes; he will run one more race before pulling up lame and going to stud, having an equally successful career there.

However, the bigger sports news came not from any arena, but at the Hollywood Advertising Club, where ABC president Tom Moore sounded off on a few things, including some "radical changes" to sports in America. According to Henry Harding, these suggestions included replacing college football bowl games with an elimination tournament, determining champion golfers by a points system during the PGA tour, and shortening the major league baseball schedule to 60 games—two per weekend. The reaction from sportswriters was mostly negative, but let's take a step back and look at Moore's suggestions. The PGA has, indeed, gone to a points system, culminating in the FedEx Cup; whether or not that really determines the champion golfer of the year, it's a fact. Also a fact is the creation of the College Football Playoff, which has reduced the role of bowl games to filler on ESPN. It has many faults, but it's a reality. As for shortening the baseball season, it hasn't happened and probably never will, but the increase in playoff teams pushing the World Series into November and rendering much of the regular season meaningless, I think there are a lot of people who'd be on board to at least cut back. It'll probably happen when pigs fly, but who knows?

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Saturday night's late movie on Maine's WMTW is one that should bring a smile to any fan of the Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker team: Zero Hour! (10:30 p.m.), the movie that served as the model for Airplane! Dana Andrews stars as Ted Stryker, the ex-fighter pilot haunted by guilt who's called on to land a passenger airlineer after the crew becomes sick from eating bad fish; Linda Darnell is his wife, who's preparing to leave him because of his inability to pull his life back together; and Sterling Hayden is Captain Treleaven, Stryker's old commanding officer, who's called in to help talk Stryker down. If all this sounds familiar, it should; ZAZ paid $2,500 for the rights to the screenplay in order to make sure they didn't run into a problem with copyright while working on Airplane! (See the comparisons here.) If you're looking for something a little more conventionally great, stick around until 11:40 p.m. for the John Wayne classic The Searchers (WJAR in Providence).

Nelson Rockefeller's brother Winthrop, currently running for governor of Arkansas, is the guest on Sunday's Meet the Press (6:00 p.m., NBC), notable because it originates from the World's Fair in New York. I've noticed that a number of programs are broadcast from the Fair during its two-year run; today, you might see Meet the Press broadcast from the site of the Super Bowl, but only if NBC's showing it, and only if the topic concerns sports on TV. Later, on Lassie (7:00 p.m., CBS), Timmy and Lassie bring an injured raccoon back to the farm after a tornado. No word on whether or not they found a dislodged building with a woman's legs protruding from underneath it.

On Monday, it's the debut of the daytime drama Another World (3:00 p.m., NBC), which will spawn a spinoff, Somerset, and will run on the network for 35 seasons and 8,891 episodes; as I recall, that was one of my mother's favorite soaps. In primetime, the echo of President Kennedy's assassination continues to reverberate on Sing Along With Mitch (10:00 p.m., NBC), a special segment of which is devoted to songs that were favorites of the late president, including "Beyond the BLue Horizon," "Too-ra Loo-ra Loo-ra," and "Greenland's Icy Mountains." I can't help but wonder if those really were JFK's favorites; the whole Camelot legend was predicated in part on stories that the soundtrack to the musical was one of his favorites, although I've read reports that, in fact, he had barely any interest in the show. But as we know, when the truth confronts the legend, print the legend.

Red Skelton's guests on Tuesday are a pair of child stars: Mickey Rooney and Jackie Coogan (8:00 p.m., CBS). Interesting paring, don't you think? And tonight's episode of The Jack Benny Program (9:30 p.m., CBS) is a classic of its type; Jack finds himself (in his dream) on trial for murder, with none othet than the great Perry Mason (Raymond Burr) defending him. You can see that episode, including the hilarious courtroom scene, on YouTube. And the Bell Telephone Hour (10:00 p.m., NBC) presents a truly eclectic hour of music, with Van Heflin narrating "Concord Bridge" to Morton Gould's "Declaration Suite" in honor of Armed Forces Day; Connie Francis singing a medley of popular songs, and opera stars Jon Vickers and Giulietta Simionato performing the judgment scene from Aida.

Speaking as we have been of classics, Wednesday's Dick Van Dyke Show (9:30 p.m., CBS) gives us one of the best: the episode "That's My Boy??," where Rob has doubts that the baby Laura brought home from the hospital is the right one, until he meets the parents of the other baby. You can see, and laugh along with, the episode here; stories persist that the joke from the end of the episode produced the longest laugh ever, much of which had to be edited out due to the length. You can read an interesting anticdote about that episode here. And The Danny Kaye Show (10:00 p.m., CBS) kicks off a series of reruns with its Christmas show, featuring the aforementioned Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore, along with Mr. Christmas, Andy Williams.

On Thursday, the primetime edition of Password (7:30 p.m., CBS) features Lucille Ball and her husband, Gary Morton as the celebrity players. Dr. Kildare (8:30 pm., NBC) has a rare dramatic appearance by Cyril Ritchard as an eccentric writer who throws Blair General into a tizzy when he insists he'll be dead within a week. And on Kraft Suspense Theatre (10:00 p.m., NBC), Keenan Wynn portrays an innocent man charged with murder; when he finds that he enjoys the notoriety, he confesses to the crime.

The week's end kicks off with the day's beginning: the recently retired baseball great Stan "The Man" Musial is a guest on Today (Friday, 7:00 a.m., NBC). Sticking with NBC for primetime, David Frost makes a return appearance on That Was The Week That Was (9:30 p.m.), guesting for the first time since the early weeks of the show; he was, of course, one of the creators and stars of the British edition. And at 10:00 p.m., Jack Paar's guests include Richard Burton, currently starring in "Hamlet" on Broadway; you can see an excerpt from that appearance here. 

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And now the story behind a concept called Project 120, a movie called Johnny North, and the picture below, in which Ronald Reagan is beating the hell out of Angie Dickinson.

It all started with a deal between NBC and the production company MCA to produce a series of two-hour feature movies that would be made especially for television, and distributed later to movie houses. (In the pre-DVD era, this would make more sense that it does today.) The first of the planned features to emerge from Project 120 was called Johnny North, based on Ernest Hemingway's short story "The Killers." "But, as the poet said, there's many a slip 'twixt the conference table and the screen." The movie, which was budgeted at just under $250,000, came in instead at more than $900,000. Not only that (as if that wasn't enough to begin with), the powers that be judget that the finished product was both too sexy (witness a kissing scene between Dickinson and her race-car-driver boyfriend, John Cassavetes) and too violent (not only did Reagan rough up Angie, she also got belted around by both Lee Marvin and Clu Gulager). In order to recoup the costs, MCA has now decided that the movie will be released in theaters, renamed Ernest Hemingway's The Killers. NBC says Project 120 will continue (as, indeed, it does), only with less sex, less violence, and less cost.

As for that picture—well, The Killers was Ronald Reagan's last movie, one which he made against his better judgment. It was the only time he ever playedd the heavy, and he was said to be quite distraught over the scene in which he slaps Dickinson; it was the one role that Reagan most regretted playing. Of course, unbeknownste to all, he has a much bigger role ahead of him. 

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MST3K alert: The Indestructible Man (1956) On his way to the gas chamber, "The Butcher" vowed he'd return from the grave and get the three men who doublecrossed him. Lon Chaney, Casey Adams. (Saturday, 11:30 p.m., WNAC in Boston) When combined with the short that preceded it, part two of "Undersea Kingdom," Lon Chaney became the first and only actor to appear in both segments of a single MST3K episode. Look for a short, fatal, turn from future McHale's Navy star Joe Flynn. Your pleasure, I promise, will not be indestructible. TV  

Around the dial

We start the week at RealWeegieMidget with Gill and hubby's monthly review of movies, including teleflicks with killer bees, Playboy bunnies, 80s aerobics instructors, murder mysteries, and fashionistas. What more could you ask for?

Over at The Horn Section, Hal appears on Dan Schneider's Cosmoetica podcast (home to yours truly's American TV history series) to discuss The White Shadow with Dan and Harv Aronson of Abstract Sports. Take a listen to an enjoyable hour.

David's journey through 1970s TV continues at Comfort TV, where we're up to Thursday nights in 1975: The Waltons continues to dominate, NBC continues to fall short, and ABC gives us Barney Miller, The Streets of San Francisco, and Harry-O. Not bad at all.

At The Twilight Zone Vortex, Brian looks at "Ninety Years Without Slumbering," starring Ed Wynn, written (partly) by George Clayton Johnson, with a score by Bernard Herrmann, and a backstory that's almost as interesting as what appears on the screen. 

The Hitchcock Project continues at bare•bones e-zine with Michael Hogan's story "The Safe Place," starring the ubiquitous Robert H. Harris (you'd recognize him if you saw him) and Joanne Linville in a story of greed, murder, and a crook who's a little too clever for his own good.

At Cult TV Blog, John returns to his series on television "tales of unease" with "Superstitious Ignorance," a story of the house-hunting trip from Hell involving some very unpleasant people, and a sense of unease that increases throughout the episode.

Roger's episode-by-episode review of The New Avengers continues at The View from the Junkyard, with this week's story, "Gnaws," which features a giant rat in the sewers of London, and—for better or worse—hearkens back to the fantastical stories of the original series.

At A Shroud of Thoughts, Terence marks the 40th anniversary of Moonlighting, one of the most ground-breaking and influential shows of the 1980s. It starred Cybill Shepherd, whom I don't like, and Bruce Willis, whom I do, and featured as much drama off-screen as it did on. TV  

Around the dial

Now that's my kind of car!

We lead off the week at Comfort TV, where David reviews the TV career of the late Tony Roberts, who first came to my attention as one-half of the legal series Rosetti and Ryan, co-starring with Squire Fridell; I was a captive viewer from back in the days of the one-station in the World's Worst Town™. 

RealWeegieMidget is back on the TV-movie circuit with the 1984 teleflick Obsessive Love, which stars Yvette Mimieux and Simon MacCorkindale and carries with it more than a whiff of Fatal Attraction. It's part of the "So Bad It's Good" Blogathon, which perhaps tells you all you need to know. 

At bare•bones e-zine, Jack's Hitchcock Project continues apace with the seventh-season story "The Children of Alda Nuova," Robert Wallsten's adaptation of his own short story, with Jack Carson starring as a criminal who makes a wrong turn into a wrong town.

Let's continue with crime, as John wraps up his "Private Detective Season" at Cult TV Blog with 1967's The Big M, with all the requisite sleaze that P.I.s thrive on. John also looks at some additional series, including the very good Philip Marlowe, Private Eye, with Powers Boothe.

At The Saturday Evening Post, Bob Sassone's "News of the Week" includes two pertinent questions about the TV ratings system: is it accurate, and does it even matter? Read the story, and stick around for this year's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nominees.

Travalanche has an excellent look back at the ubiquitqious John Charles Daly, urbane moderator of What's My Line?, anchor of ABC's evening news program, and one of my absolute favorite television persons ever. I may be coming up on 65, but I still say that I want to be like him when I grow up.

It's only tangentially related to classic TV, but unless you've been under a rock for the last couple of years, you know about the disintegration of cable television. Variety has an in-depth look at the future of Comcast, including USA Network (which produced many an original show in the day), and what it may bode for the industry as a whole.

Speaking of, it looks as if the long relationship between ESPN and Major League Baseball is over at the end of the upcoming season. Did MLB undervalue its product? And what could this mean for a new television partner? Sports Media Watch has all the details, including what happens to ESPN.

Wrapping things up with The View from the Junkyard, Roger continues his episode-by-episode review of The New Avengers, with "The Tale of the Big Why," an example of how the series handles comedy with a deft touch—unlike, perhaps, the original. TV  

Around the dial

We'll start off the week with a twin bill from the "American TV" series I do with Dan Schneider: episode #1 is a look at the history of ABC and its reputation as a network willing to take chances, while episode #2 is a fun change-of-pace, in which we answer questions about how our series started, some of our favorite shows, early TV crushes, and more! 

My friend Alan Hayes has some exciting news on the horizon: Escapades: An Exploration of Avengers Curiosities, a new book co-authored with J.Z. Ferguson, which takes a deep dive into aspects of the classic series that haven't been previously covered, such as the London stage play, the South African radio series, a couple of unmade TV scripts, and a Mexican wrestling film—and that's just for starters! The book is available for pre-order here, and I'd encourage all you Avengers fans to look into it. And stay tuned to this space over the next few weeks, for an interview with Alan and a review of the book.

Let's work it a little more, as Roger's review of The New Avengers continues at A View from the Junkyard, with the latest episode being "Target!" He sees it as "another superb episode in a season that hasn’t put a foot wrong yet," and even ventures that it's better than the original series. What do you think?

The Broadcast Archives has several classic TV stories this week, covering everything from Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me to the first made-for-TV movie. They're all fun, but why not start out with the single-season series Mr. Lucky, a Blake Edwards creation starring John Vivyan. 

At bare-bones e-zine, Jack's Hitchcock Project continues with "Total Loss," a fourth-season episode by J.E. Selby that is most assuredly a product of its times. Nancy Olson and Ralph Meeker star; find out if the bad guy gets away with it.

The Rose Medallion is the next series in line in John's continuing "private detective season" at Cult TV Blog. John says that we have to watch this 1981 series about an uncovered skeleton and the quest to find out the rest of the story, and he's a pretty good judge of shows.uuu

The Globe and Mail has this essay on ditching streaming in favor of DVDs. I've been in this camp for quite awhile; aside from the fact that it's difficult to find some of the more obscure programs on streaming, it's too often a case of "here today, gone tomorrow." I'll always be a believer in physical media.

David's journey through 1970s TV at Comfort TV has now come to Wednesday, 1975, and if we can't remember When Things Were Rotten, Kate McShane, and Doctors' Hospital, we can certainly recall Little House on the Prairie, Starsky & Hutch, Cannon, and more.

At RealWeegieMidget, Gill (and Darlin' Husband) take a look at movie recommendations from January, including a miniseries with Barry Bostwick and Stefanie Powers, a movie with brothers Charlie Sheen and Emilio Estevez, and Gary Coleman as a pint-size arsonist!

Do we ever get tired of the latest schemes cooked up by Sgt. O'Rourke and Corporal Agarn at F Troop? Not if we're Hal at The Horn Section, and the latest sure-to-fail scam, "The West Goes Ghost," involves ghosts, the railroad, and the two passing themselves off as medical men, for starters.

At Drunk TV, Paul reviews the second season of Simon & Simon, one of the quintessentially '80s series of, well, the '80s, with Gerald McRaney and Jameson Parker as the brothers running the Simon & Simon detective agency. Thrilling cases and beautiful women galore!

Martin Grams, who wrote one of the definitive books on The Twilight Zone, looks at books containing adaptations of Rod Serling's TZ scripts (done by Serling himself), as well as adaptations and original stories written by Walter Gibson, all of which were quite successful.

I've written before about Turn On, the legendary one-episode ABC series that was virtually cancelled before that one episode was done. But was it really as bad as history says? Not so fast, says Travalanche, who believes it was far from the worst show of all time. TV  

Around the dial

This little guy's got his priorities right: his television set and his cat. It doesn't get much better than that. But if it did, you can bet one of these shows would be on the tube.

On the home front, in my latest apperance on Dan Schneider's Video Interview, Dan and I discuss the history of Westerns on television. On Tommy Kovac's Splat from the Past, Tommy and I talk about Christmas memories on television. And at Eventually Supertrain, Dan and I are all about Garrison's Gorillas (plus more great stuff).

At The Horn Section, Hal returns with another episode of Love That Bob!, "Bob's Economy Wave," with Bob trying to juggle a strict household budget, a photography assignment, and a hot date. Note the operative word: trying. 

I don't know how many of you have snow on the ground right now, but if you'd like to get rid of it, Gill has just the movie for you at RealWeegieMidget: Hollywood Wives, the steamy 1985 miniseries based on the novel by Jackie Collins, with a who's who of big-haired seductive sirens.

The Broadcasting Archives shares the background of how Karl Freund helped develop the three-camera system for filming TV shows, along with a couple of pictures from the I Love Lucy set showing the system at work.

At Comfort TV, David notes something that I've commented on many times: how so many of the issues raised in shows of the 1960s and '70s are still issues today, and (perhaps more important) why television doesn't seem to try to offer answers to those issues anymore.

John takes a break from his series on character actress Ann Wray at Cult TV Blog in order to look at a pair of mysteries: "Death in Ecstasy" from the 1964 anthology series Detective, and Don't Open 'Till Christmas, a 1984 slasher movie that's short on quality but rich in atmosphere.

Jodie has an interesting guest post at Garroway at Large from voiceover artist Ross Bagley, who recalls his encounter with Dave, and the influence he had on Ross's career. A charming story, and it helps emphasize what an interesting, curious man Dave Garroway was.

At A Shroud of Thoughts, Terence writes on the 70th anniversary of the movie White Christmas. Now, White Christmas is far from being my favorite Christmas movie; you may remember it was the target of my annual Christmas post last year. Still, I can't imagine a Christmas without watching it!

Did someone say Christmas? Martin Grams has the lowdown on the Yuletide episode of Steve Canyon, the series based on Milton Caniff's comic strip, with a script written by Ray Bradbury. How was it? Read, and find out.

And at The Hits Just Keep On Comin', JB takes a look at Christmas music that doesn't work for him. A bit unusual, I know, but we cover everything here, and there are certainly enough Christmas albums I could add to the list. 

Shadow & Substance reminds us that, with the New Year less than two weeks away, Syfy is doing it's annual Twilight Zone marathon again, and Paul has the complete schedule for December 31, January 1, and January 2. What a great way to start the year. TV  

Around the dial

We'll begin this week's review at bare•bones e-zine, where Jack's Hitchcock Project looks at the second season story "Kill by Kindness" by A.J. Russell, based on a teleplay he'd previously written for The Clock (not uncommon in the early years of TV), and starring Hume Cronyn, Carmen Matthews, and James Gleason. As frequently happens, the ending is both surprising and satisfying.

John's examination of the television works of British actor Denis Shaw continues at Cult TV Blog, and this week we see Shaw's performance in an American television series, The Vise, and the episode "The Very Silent Traveler." As John mentions, there are a couple of different versions of The Vise, one that includes detective Mark Saber, but this isn't one of those episodes, even though it does contain crime and punishment.

A pair of interesting observations from Travalanche; the first is a brief look at William S. Paley and the birth of CBS. Paley, of course, is one of the major figures in the history of television; even though he didn't appear in front of the camera, he had a lot to do with who did. Next, it's 70 years of The Tonight Show, and you can certainly see how that institution has changed over the years. 

Likewise, TV Obscurities entertains with a couple of interesting bits on the 1969 series The New People, one of television's rare attempts at a 45-minute series. The first is a five-page proposal for the series, with some significant changes from the finished product; the secnd is a promotional spot designed to explain the premise to viewers.

It's another week of obituaries at A Shroud of Thoughts; first, observations on the death of Kris Kristofferson at 88. Although he was primarily a singer, he was also a very effective actor, with several television credits to his name. Then, it's John Amos, who actually died in August; his death wasn't made public until earlier this week. He was 84, with an impressive pedigree, including Roots, Good Times, and The Mary Tyler Moore Show. 

Television's New Frontier: The 1960s covers 1962 and the end of the third season and start of the fourth season of The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, The quality is erratic, but you'll always enjoy Dwayne Hickman and Bob Denver, and how can you completely hate a series that gave us Tuesday Weld and includes a couple of apperances by Yvonne Craig?

At The Hits Just Keep On Comin', jb passes final judgment on Barnaby Jones, the detective series starring Buddy Ebsen. The quality of the show came and went, but I know of many, many people who have very fond memories of it; as jb says, "It's not good, exactly, but the rhythms and tropes of 70s TV are comfort food, and in a world such as this one, we need that." Amen to all that.

Paul returns to the world of the TV-movie at Drunk TV with the 1972 thriller The Norliss Tapes, which bore more than a passing resemblance to The Night Stalker—well, it was made by Dan Curtis. The good news: there's Angie Dickinson, although she's wasted. The bad news: there's also Roy Thinnes, who happens to be the star. The worst news: unlike The Night Stalker, there's no real sense of humor. And that's no laughing matter. TV  

This week in TV Guide: August 30, 1969

His name, he reminds you at the start of every show, is Johnny Cash. He's been around since 1955, and he's recognized as one of the biggest names in American country music, the successor to JImmie Rodgers and Hank Williams. But, as Neil Hickey writes in this week's cover story, it's only been in the last year that he's become a major figure in non-country America; first, with his epic live album from Folsom Prison in California, and now with his ABC summer series, The Johnny Cash Show. He is, in fact, well on the way to becoming not just a music superstar, but an American legend. 

Hickey calls him "television's roughest diamond," and it's no surprise, considering that he sings about lost loves and jail time, poverty and homecoming and Bible stories offering redemption. A child of the depression, he began writing and recording songs after a sting in the Air Force; in 1955, Sun Records finally took a chance on him with "Hey, Porter" and "Cry! Cry! Cry!" He'd become a major star by the next year ("with deceptive ease"), performing with the Grand Ole Opry and doing one-night-stands throughout the South; his hit "I Walk the Line" was high on the charts. 

His success hid a darker side, though. His first marriage was crumbling, and combined with the stress and strain of his constant touring, he soon was on "a psysiological roller-coaster ride," taking as many as 100 pep pills a day to get him through his work, followed by fistfulls of tranquilizers to calm him down. Even as recently as two years ago, he was known as the "biggest no-show" in the business, either missing concerts completely or showing up missing his voice. He was arrested for drug possession in 1965 (and given a suspended sentence), he'd lost 100 pounds, and his family had decided to commit him at one point to save him from himself. 

That he has come back from all this, unlike Rodgers and Williams, both of whom succumbed to their darker demons, is a testament to the love of family and friends, and particularly his second wife, June Carter, herself from a legendary country music family. He got off the pills and settled down to a life of hard work, crowned by a successful 1967 concert to a sold-out audience at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. Says actor Dale Robertson, "He's to country music what John Wayne is to Westerns." Whereas he once picked cotton and hauled water for work ganges, he's now a millionaire from his recordings and concerts, Says Cash, "I’m happy to be alive—lucky to be alive. I know damn well I'm a good man."

The Johnny Cash Show runs from 1969 to 1971, hosting some of the biggest names in the country music world, not to mention stars such as Louis Armstrong, Jose Feliciano, Liza Minnelli, and Joni Mitchell; surely, on a per-show basis it has to be considered one of the most star-studded variety series ever seen on television, hosted by one of the biggest stars to ever host a series while still in his prime. It fell victim to the double-barrelled challenge of the Prime-Time Access rule, eliminating a half-hour per night of network programming, and the Rural Purge. For Johnny Cash, though, the star continued to shine, adding some acclaimed acting roles to his portfolio, working with U2, and covering songs by Nine Inch Nails and Depeche Mode. His troubles did not end; he went through additional stints of drug addiction and rehab. He remained, in many ways, a rough diamond, as I suspect he'd have been the first to admit, and I don't think he'd have been embarrased to admit it.

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This week, the Doan Report updates us on what is now a three-way battle for late-night supremacy, what with Merv Griffin's August 18 debut on CBS. Insiders agree that it's "much too early to tell" how this race is going to end (it is, after all, a marathon, not a sprint), but the early returns auger well for Johnny holding on to his crown. CBS boasted that the Griffin show won opening night, with a 31 percent share compared to Carson's 25 and Bishop's 8; NBC, however, was equally quick to throw cold water on that boast, pointing out that "while Griffin opened with a big lead, by the end fo the 90-minute heat Carson had the larger audience." Said one NBC vice president, "I guess a lot of people sampled Griffin, then when back to their old favorite." 

One factor that might have contributed to the early ratings: the quality of guest lineups. Griffin was plagued by no-shows, including New York Major John Lindsay and New York Jets star quarterback Joe Namath; meanwhile, Carson, broadcasting that week from Hollywood, countered with "TV's biggest draw," Bob Hope. (Interestingly enough, Bishop's lineup that night included the Smothers Brothers, to no ratings avail; fame is fleeting, isn't it?)

Which leads us to this week's feature. Back in the day, I used to enjoy going through TV Guide, looking at the lineups for the talk shows and seeing who had the best guests, even though I couldn't stay up and watch them. What with this being Merv's third week on the job, it and having seen the importance of booking big-name guests when it comes to ratings, it seemed like it might be kind of interesting to resume the practice, at least for one week. Let's see who's got the strongest lineup, and whether Johnny really has become the King of Late Night, or if he's just a comfortable habit.

Now, the guest list in TV Guide has always been full of caveats, with clauses like "tentatively scheduled guests," and the like. And we know how Merv was victimized by no-shows on his opening night. So, in the interests of providing you, the loyal reader, with the most accurate information possible, I've augmented the guest list found in this week's issue with info from sources ranging from the IMDb to the TV listings of various newspapers. In addition, since a lot of you may not recognize the names here, I've linked to their bios on Wikipedia and other places. (Rather than running the risk of insulting your intelligence, I've just gone ahead and linked all of them, even though you probably know who Tony Randall and William Holden are.) So have a go at it, and see what you think.

		JOHNNY	MERV	JOEY
	MON.	• Tony Randall • William Holden • Pat Morita • Marilyn Maye • Turley Richards	• Hermione Gingold • Bobby Sherman • George Carlin • Barbara Tai-Sing • The Free Design • Gwen Davis	• Polly Bergen (guest host) • Laurindo Almeida • Arlene Golonka • Robert Goulet • Nick Ullett
	TUES.	• Jaye P. Morgan • John Byner • Orson Bean • Adela Rogers St. Johns	• David Susskind • Hugh O'Brian • Polly Bergen • Lily Tomlin • Dr. Roger O. Egeberg • Eloise Haws • Slappy White and Steve Rossi • Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Armstrong	• Art Linkletter • Dino, Desi & Billy • Jeannie C. Riley
	WED.	• Phyllis Newman • Corbett Monica • Mel Tormé • The People Tree	• Tommy Smothers • Theodore H. White • Phil Ford and Mimi Hines • Katie Drew-Wllkinson • Virginia Graham • Rip Taylor • The Checkmates	• Merle Haggard and the Strangers • Bobbi Martin
	THURS.	• Dana Valery • The Youngbloods • Jimmie Rodgers	• Soupy Sales • Phil Leeds • Dr. James Brussel • Eddy Arnold • Terry O'Mara • Children's fashion show featuring Merv's son	• Charo • Hedgemon Lewis • Ryan O'Neal • Smokey Robinson • Leigh Taylor-Young
	FRI.	• David Frye • Linda Bennett • Gary Lewis & the Playboys	• Zsa Zsa Gabor • Madeline Kahn • Robert Klein • Hubert Humphrey • Harry Hershfield • Oliver	• Abbe Lane • Norm Crosby • Pierre Salinger • Chris and Peter Allen

In the meantime, Dick Cavett has yet to become part of the late-night troika; having started out with a five-day-a-week daytime show on ABC, he's now been moved to prime time for the summer, where he airs each Monday, Tuesday, and Friday at 10:00 p.m. (He'll be in the Joey Bishop timeslot before the end of the year, though.) Nonetheless, he might have the best guest lineup of the week: Monday, it's actor Sal Mineo, B.B. King, and journalist I.F. Stone; Tuesday features William Holden, Eartha Kitt, and Nero Wolfe author Rex Stout; and Friday he spends the entire hour with Groucho Marx. Yes, I'd call that lineup a winner.

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But as we all know, television does not live by late-night alone. Amid the reruns that populate the waning weeks of summer, Saturday's Get Smart repeat bears watching (8:00 p.m. PT, NBC). It's a spoof of Rear Window, with Max taking on the Jimmy Stewart role (and who had that phrase on their TV Guide bingo card?), watching through binoculars as 99 takes on KAOS. I suspect she'll be able to handle herself, don't you? If you're looking for the real Jimmy Stewart though, you'll find him in brilliant form in Anatomy of a Murder (midnight, KPIX in San Francisco), with George C. Scott, Ben Gazzara, Lee Remick, Eve Arden, and Arthur O'Connell all in equally top form. It's an adult movie in the classic sense of the word, in that it deals with mature themes in a serious manner, but it was also controversial in its time for the sexual frankness of the dialog; it's said to be the first movie in which the words ""contraceptive," "climax," and "spermatogenesis" were used. I wonder if they made it on TV in 1969?

Culture, both highbrow and middlebrow, is on display Sunday; with no Hollywood Palace to go up against, Ed Sullivan has the field to himself (8:00 p.m., CBS), and he comes through in style, with Metropolitan Opera soprano Anna Moffo, singers Sandler and Young, Sam and Dave, and Roslyn Kind; the Ballet America; comics Jackie Mason and Pat Cooper; and clown Charlie Cairoli. At the same time, NET's Sounds of Summer presents the farewell concert of legendary conductor Erich Leinsdorf, retiring from the Boston Symphony. A star-studded lineup, including Beverly Sills and Justino Diaz, is on hand for the finale from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. At the intermission, Leinsdorf is interviewed by host Steve Allen.

Vivian Vance returns to The Lucy Show on Monday (8:30 p.m., CBS), in a flashback-filled show that has the two recalling past adventures while Lucy recovers from a broken leg. Meanwhile, Jimmie Rodgers finishes up his stint as summer replacement for Carol Burnett with a show featuring pianist Roger Williams and comic Scoey Mitchell, along with two of Carol's regulars, Vicki Lawrence and Lyle Waggoner. 

You remember a few paragraphs ago, when we learned that Ryan O'Neal and his wife, Leigh Taylor-Young, were guests on The Joey Bishop Show? There's probably a good reason for that; on Tuesday, the couple stars in an unsold pilot, Under the Yum Yum Tree (Tuesday, 9:00 p.m., ABC), based on the 1963 movie of the same name, which starred Jack Lemmon and Carol Lynley. It's no criticism of O'Neal to note that he's no Jack Lemmon.

Helen Hayes makes a rare television appearance on Wednesday's episode of Tarzan (7:30 p.m., CBS), along with her son, James MacArthur, whom we all know and love as Danno on Hawaii Five-O. For those of you who thought Tarzan was an NBC series, you're right; its original run was from 1966-68, and CBS aired reruns during the 1969 summer. And Darren McGavin's unjustly-forgotten private detective series The Outsider comes to an end with an episode involvung a millionaire "who has never been photographed." (10:00 p.m., NBC) The reclusive Howard Hughes, anyone? 

The Ghost and Mrs. Muir was cancelled after a single season on NBC, but it's been picked up by ABC for the coming season, and to celebrate, the show's stars, Hope Lange and Edward Mulhare, host an hour-long special previewing the network's Super Saturday morning cartoon lineup. (Thursday, 7:30 p.m.) Not everyone will agree with me on this—it depends a lot on your childhood memories—but the new Saturday schedule is far from the glory days of cartoons, with a scheule that includes "Smokey the Bear, a cartoon with a conservation message; The Cattanooga Cats, an hour hosted by five soft-rock felines; Hot Wheels, the adventures of a car club; The Hardy Boys, based on the mystery-book series; and Sky Hawks, the saga of a flying family." Jonathan Frid is along for the ride, along with the regulars from Ghost.

The John Davidson Show ends its summer run on Friday, and his final show features a fine cast, including the Moody Blues, Rich Little (impersonating W.C. Fields), the Committee, and Mireille Mathieu. (8:00 p.m., ABC) To be perfectly frank, the weakest link in the show is the host himself. Opposite this is a Bell Telephone Hour special on the life and art of the legendary pianist Arthur Rubinstein (8:30 p.m. NBC). And Dick Powell gives the definitive interpretation of Raymond Chandler's fabled private detective Philip Marlowe in Murder, My Sweet (9:00 p.m., KTXL in Sacramento). A good way to close out the week.

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Judith Crist, TV Guide's movie critic, has a thing or two to say about TV-movies. Movies on television, as we know, have been big business for some time, and ever since the studios loosened their grip and began to allow newer films to grace the small screen, the "sad truth" has been that "the worst of the Hollywood product would pull in more viewers than the best of creative television could." Lesson learned, network executives determined that "anything that Hollywood could do badly for itself, it could do worse for television, and in color yet."

It's long been accepted that Hollywood's backlog of movies has been drying up, and that there aren't enough movies being made to fill the insatiable demand from television. It's now been three years, and 31 telemovies, since the first "world premiere" movie made its appearance. And, says Crist, the "cold fact" is that "for the most part, and emphasize the 'most' part, the public’s been offered a series of pilot and pseudo-pilot films, the vast majority of which wouldn’t have earned a B rating on any theatrical movie meter bill." They stand out from their theatrical bretheren in that they generally feature cheap production values, stars "who have not quite retained their place at the top or not quite found it," and plots that are clearly shaped around the needs for commercials at set times. But people watch them—their ratings have been very close to those of theatrical premieres—and so we can count on more of them.

A major selling point to TV-movies, one that makes the positive ratings even more attractive, is that they're relatively cheap to make. The costs run anywhere between $800,000 and $1.3 million, for which the network gets to show the movie twice during the season, sell it off in a syndicated package with other movies, and then sell it again for foreign theatrical release. At that rate, she says, the expenditures have not only been recouped, but doubled. And that doesn't even begin to include the benefits if the movie is made into a successful series. It is, therefore, profitable junk 

Not all of it is junk; stars of the calibur of Henry Fonda and Anne Baxter can give telemovies a veneer of quality. Still, Crist can point to "perhaps three our four" of the past season's movies had a claim to special interest: Something for a Lonely Man, a Western starring Dan Blocker, and two courtroom dramas that would become the basis for "The Lawyers" segment of The Bold Ones, "The Sound of Anger" and "The Whole World is Watching." Interestingly enough, Crist is unimpressed by Prescription: Murder, the first movie to feature Peter Falk's Lieutenant Columbo, calling it "one of those how-to-kill-your-wife" bores." (She notes that NBC speculates that "The Falk character could return annually"; in truth, it was the second Columbo movie, Ransom for a Dead Man, that sold the concept as part of the Mystery Movie wheel. 

One observation is that many TV-movies have the feel of a regular series episode that's been padded out to fill a larger timeslot; the answer to that lies in shorter movies (ABC's Movie of the Week famously runs for 75 minutes plus commercials) or movies with multiple, distinct stories (such as NBC's Night Gallery pilot). In the long run, Crist feels, TV-movies will improve with experience, but much depends on the industry's ability to attract good writers, which itself will depend on whether television goes the route of "factory productions" (think of the Warner Bros. assembly line method) or the "workshop" way of thinking, in which writers are invited to write about whatever interests them. 

Today, despite Crist's criticisms, many people have fond memories from this era of TV-movies, particularly the ABC Movie of the Week, which wasn't afraid to tackle controversial issues as well as making frequent foray into horror movies. I don't think it's the case that these movies have improve in retrospect, either; many of them were highly-rated and critically reviewed at the time. It's likely that Crist's standards were high, as they were for theatrical movies, and that she was inherently inclined to look down at these movies. What she's right about, though, is that eventually the quality of the TV-movie would improve in time; by the time of prestige television, many of them surpass theatrical movies in quality.

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MST3K alert: 12 to the Moon (1960) Moon beings fear that earthmen are bringing greed and destruction to their world. Ken Clark, Michi Kobi. (Wednesday, 6:30 p.m., KTXL) This is one of those MST3K occasions where the short is actually more disturbing than the feature. In the musical short "Design for Living," "a woman dreams of a mysterious masked man who takes her to see the future." It's actuallySa an ad for the 1956 General Motors Motorama, but to borrrow a phrase from Tom Servo, "This has all the markings of a Clay Shaw party!" TV