This week in TV Guide: April 24, 1953

A couple of weeks ago, when I wrote about the issue with Eve Arden on the cover, one of our readers commented that it was too bad I didn't write anything about her. Well, you know how it is—time and space, and I'm not talking about Doctor Who. I like Eve Arden too, and I love her sense of humor, especially her delivery. Well, I get a second chance this week: she's mentioned as one of the "Funny Females" that can be found all over the airwaves. Not just Arden, but Lucy, Imogene Coca, Gracie Allen, Gale Storm, and others. Which raises the question: why are there so many funny women on TV?

Dr. Bergen Evans, who moderates the show Down You Go, thinks that it's because women can succeed faster in television than in other, male-dominated professions. You see, afternoon soaps, which have a dominant female audience, thrive on "weak male characters and strong women."  When hubby comes home, however, they have to revert to "chiefly comic" roles. "They will have to be attractive but giddy, blundering with charming impetuosity from one absurdity to another, to be rescued at last by the superior and forgiving male. That will make hubby beam." He's speaking partly with tongue-in-cheek, but I think there's something to this; We know stories about how men feel threatened by smart, clever women (never mind that Bogie always seemed to be attracted to them, and always seemed to get them), and that women often had to hide that intelligence in order to get ahead. But who really has the last laugh? That character that Dr. Evans is describing sounds a lot like Lucy, and she did turn out to be quite a television mogul, didn't she?

Dr. Miles Murphy, a professor of psychology, believes that women succeed in comedy because they don't face the same constraints that men do, the need that many men seem to have to appear respectable. Does this mean that comedy isn't respectable? I don't think so; I think it more likely means that women are less self-conscious than men might be about letting themselves go. Dr. Yale Nathanson, who practices psychology, looks at the ways in which women are often charged with holding families together and says that comedy is a relief, "the escape valve that lets off the pressure of responsibilities or worries."  I admit, though that I'm partial to the explanation from anthropologist Ashley Montagu, who points out that "women are, on the whole, so much more appealing than men," and adds that it was inevitable that they would take over television entertainment. "Women possess the qualities of warmth and sympathy which immediately draw their fellow human beings toward them. Men may be clever, but it is the women who are good"

As for Eve Arden, "She's witty, easy on the eyes but generally finishes second to the male." THe first two are true enough, but second best? Just because she doesn't get Mr. Boynton? My wife says she never could understand what Connie Brooks would see in him. And anyway, it's not called Our Mr. Boynton, is it?

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We’re always looking at Ed Sullivan’s competition around here, and in the first half of the 1950s, that competition is NBC’s Colgate Comedy Hour and its stable of rotating hosts. Colgate and Sullivan's Toast of the Town have been going head-to-head every Sunday since 1950. Let’s see how it looks this week.

Sullivan: Ed presents a preview of "Never Let Me Go" with Clark Gable & Gene Tierney. Guests: singers Roberta Peters & Jan Peerce; Willie West & McGinty, comedy team; and the Marquis Monkeys. Also the four Copa Girls, and comedian Wally Boag.

Comedy Hour: Bud Abbott and Lou Costello host this week, with guests Hoagy Carmichael, Teresa Brewer and the Amin Brothers.

Sullivan often presented movie previews on Talk of the Town, so you can't really consider Gable and Tierney as guests; otherwise, the competition would be pretty much over. As it is, Roberta Peters and Jan Peerce are two of the biggest stars that the Metropolitan Opera has to offer (I wonder if they were appearing together in anything that season?) Willie West & McGinty were second-generation vaudevillians carrying on an act that had been around since the turn of the century, and I'm guessing the Marquis Monkeys are better known as the Marquis Chimps. On the other hand, Abbott & Costello are big box office, and combined with Hoagy Carmichael and Teresa Brewer, that's a formidable group of headliners. Maybe if Gable was actually on with Ed. . . this week's nod goes to the Comedy Hour.

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What, from this issue, speaks to us today? The man on the cover is Ralph Edwards, and in 1953 he was a TV star, with his show This Is Your Life. It began on the radio, as was the case with so many shows of the period, and after four years, in 1952, it transitioned to television. It remained on NBC until 1961, and was revived a couple of times along the way. Does the name mean much to you today? What about the idea of surprising people with the story of their life, including voices and appearances from friends, co-workers, and family? To tell you the truth, it doesn't do a whole lot for me; I don't think I'd want my life story played out in public, and this guy sure didn't.

Does Mister Peepers speak to you? It had a great cast, with Wally Cox starring in the title role of the mild-mannered Robinson J. Peepers, before he became the voice of the mild-mannered Shoeshine Boy, alias Underdog. (I should ask, first; does Underdog speak to you?) You'd recognize some of the other names in the cast: Tony Randall, Jack Warden, Marian Lorne, Ernest Truax. I confess that other than scattered clips, I've never seen an episode, but I've been told that it holds up pretty well. This issue features a look at some of the gadgets that have become a trademark of the show's humor (a trick locker, a sagging gooseneck desk lamp, Peepers' shaving mirror). Of course, besides Peepers and Underdog, Wally Cox is probably best-known as one of the original regulars on The Hollywood Squares.

And then there's Jackie Gleason, the Great One. I would like to think that he still speaks to a lot of people, but then I'd also like to think that whoever succeeded Ed McMahon as spokesman for Publishers' Clearing House is going to show up at our door any day now, and I'll welcome that person with open arms, social distancing or not. At any rate, this week's lead story goes behind the scenes to show us the writers' room, where all those great Gleason bits come from; I take some comfort from reading about how even professional writers who compose professional jokes can have writer's block, struggling to come up with an idea that takes off, especially when dealing with someone as larger-than-life as Gleason. And speaking of the Great One, it comes as no surprise that he disdains things such as rehearsals, not even bothering with the script until the day before the show. But once he gets involved, watch out; he controls everything from the music performed on the show (and how the music is performed) to the camera angles for the dance routines. Says an observer, "I've often marveled that the show ever gets off the ground. Week after week I'm frankly surprised that it does. Somebody appears to be a genius around here—and my guess is that it's Gleason."

The TV Teletype asks questions. Will he or won't he? Danny Kaye is demanding $200,000 for a three-minute guest spot on an unnamed show. "Producers are convinced he made his asking price intentionally prohibitive" because he's not ready to move to the new medium. That won't come for another decade, but when he does, he'll meet with much success. Does he or doesn't he? Red Skelton is threatening to move to ABC in the fall with a filmed show. It doesn't happen, though: Red, who's currently on NBC, instead moves over to CBS, where he'll remain until he returns to NBC in 1970. Does this speak, can you hear it?

It can be a challenge, in these early, unshaped days of television, to know what to look for, to identify that which is significant, to find what speaks to us today. It seems so long ago. And yet all these people, and those you read about below, they do speak to us. They've helped to form the cultural world we live in today; even if you haven't seen This Is Your Life, everyone knows the premise and recognizes the spoof. We live in their world, after all, and we're richer for it, whether we hear them calling us or not.

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Cultural programming (i.e. the classy show) on TV isn't dead yet, and we've got several examples this week, even if they aren't in prime time. On Saturday, NBC Opera Theatre presents part one of a two-part Der Rosenkavalier, Richard Strauss' magnificent opera, at 3:30 p.m. (part two airs next week). Then, at 2:30 p.m. Sunday afternoon, NBC's back at it with a two-hour Hallmark Hall of Fame presentation of Hamlet (left), starring the great Maurice Evans (also known as Sam's father on Bewitched), Ruth Chatterton, Joseph Schildkraut, Sarah Churchill and Barry Jones; TV Guide calls it "the epitome of high level entertainment." In one of those unfortunate scheduling moments that people are always complaining about in the pre-VCR days, CBS's Omnibus (3:30 p.m.) has a terrific show of its own, including a dramatic reading from A Tale of Two Cities, a dance performance by the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, a look at the latest exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and a short story by James Thurber. It's great stuff—providing you're willing to skip the last hour of Hamlet—and it's the kind of thing that you can see, if not all the time, with far more frequency than you see today.

(One of the reasons we don't see programming like this anymore is because weekends are dominated by sports. Well, this weekend all we have is a horse race on Saturday, and a pair of Cubs games Saturday and Sunday. Makes you wonder how people freaked out by the virus-induced sports meltdown would have reacted back then.)

On Monday night the classics continue, as the enduring Voice of Firestone (7:30 p.m., NBC) features opera stars George London and Dorothy Warenskjold performing hits from both opera and musical theater. There's music of another kind on Tuesday; on Dinah Shore's thrice-weekly show (6:30 p.m., NBC), Dinah "welcomes Nashville, Tennessee to the network* and goes to a senior prom, singing "Tennessee Waltz" and "Dear Hearts and Gentle People." Later on, it's Milton Berle's Texaco Star Theater (7:00 p.m., NBC), and Uncle Miltie's guests are Bob Cummings, the aforementioned Wally Cox, and Lisa Kirk. Arthur Godfrey hasn't fired Julius LaRosa yet, so you'll see him Wednesday on Arthur Godfrey and Friends (7:00 p.m., CBS), along with friends including Frank Parker, Marion Marlowe, Janette Davis, and the Maguire Sisters.

*WSM, according to Wikipedia; the radio station of the same name is home to the Grand Ole Opry.

Thursday night Amos 'n' Andy (7:30 p.m., CBS) puts the Kingfish in a spot; a computer error results in a vocational guidance center grading him as an artistic genius. Next, it's Dragnet (8:00 p.m., NBC), as Sgt. Friday investigates the case of a man who apparently died from a heart attack—that is, until they find traces of poison in his system. On Friday, Dr. Bergen Evans—you remember, from the article on funny women—hosts Down You Go at 9:30 p.m. on DuMont; earlier, one of those funny women, Eve Arden, tries to help Principle Conklin make a good impression for "Board of Education Day" on Our Miss Brooks (8:30 p.m., CBS) And at 10:00 p.m., WBKB's Jim Moran hosts the fourth annual "Chicago Fights Cancer" Telethon, where you can see "Show Biz Greats" help hit a goal of $100,000 for the American Cancer Society. And who knows? You might win a 1953 Hudson!

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There's a nice article this week on 20-year-old Judy Tyler, aka Princess Summerfall Winterspring on Howdy Doody. You might remember her from this 1956 issue in which she shared the cover with Ed Sullivan; you might also remember her for the somewhat, shall we say, colorful aspects to her life that I mentioned at the time—with the kinds of details that don't make it into the pages of TV Guide, at least not in the 1950s.

But here all is goodness and light. The profile mentions how she's always wanted an acting career (her parents were both entertainers), and how, "[a]t a time most girls were concerned with dolls, Judy was modeling for Harry Conover. And that's not all, I want to say, but I won't. We don't, after all, know, although based on what we've learned, we can't help but wonder. But there's no question that Judy's got talent, and she's well on her way to having a big career; she's already won a national beauty contest, had her own show on WOR, and appeared in movies and as a bit player in nightclub acts. She married in 1950, when she was 18. She currently makes between $25,000 and $30,000 a year, which isn't chicken feed in 1953.

She'd just finished Jailhouse Rock with Elvis when she and her second husband were killed in an auto accident in 1957, when she was just 24. I prefer not to think of her that, or the other things; better to picture her as she is here, 20 years old, with a whole life to live and a career that seems limitless.

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There was a time—indeed, a very long time ago now—when, if something was wrong with your television, you didn't just up and buy a new one. You see, back then, TVs were—well, when they first came along they were pretty much a luxury item, and even after they became more commonplace, they were still pretty expensive relative to the amount of money the average household had. They weren't disposable items, in other words. So when something happened to your set, if the sound went bad (or you had no sound at all), or if suddenly black bars started appearing across the picture, you'd call a television repairman.

The repairman would come out to your home and remove the back of your set (as that repairman is doing at left) to see what the problem was. Televisions were made of tubes, resistors and capacitors, things that could be repaired or replaced, and it might be a case of merely changing a couple of tubes, like you might change the spark plugs on your car's engine; otherwise, he'd wind up putting the set in his truck and taking it back to the shop, where he'd repair the set and then bring it back to you, along with a bill for parts and labor.

The problem, which you would constantly be reminded of by the media, was that many television repairmen were crooks. They'd charge you for parts that didn't need to be replaced, or tell you they'd spent more time working on your TV than they actually had. They had the same reputation as auto mechanics, but since by then the television, like the family car, had become indispensable, you either asked your friends who they used or you picked a name from the phone book* and hoped for the best.

*A big book with names, addresses and telephone numbers in it. I'll tell you about it sometime.

The ad at the left is something you definitely would not have seen in any TV Guide from the past 40 years or so. There are several other ads in this issue for individual repairmen. It looks like good business to me; after all, if you're having trouble with your TV, why not trust someone who advertises in TV Guide? Notice that several of the shops offer "day & night" service, because you never know when your set might go on the fritz, and if you're like me, you're not going to want to wait until the next day to see if it can be repaired.

There's no question that times are different today; I think the last time I had a TV repaired was in 1988, and that only bought me a few more years at best. It's said that most modern televisions can be repaired, and it can save you a lot of money by having someone look at it, but I wonder if most people do that, or they just buy a new TV. Still, there's something about getting rid of an otherwise perfectly good appliance, like a television, just because a small part might not work. I hate the idea of planned obsolesce, but that kind of philosophy is itself obsolete. There's something about this ad that I like; it reminds me of my childhood, and of the shows from that time period. Just don't ask me to give up my big-screen TV. TV  

This week in TV Guide: March 16, 1968

Yes, children, there was a time when you didn't simply run out to the store and buy a new TV when the old one stopped working, nor did you go online and order one.* This was a time long, long ago, when you weren't even a glimmer in your parents' eyes, and the only people who remember it are very, very old indeed. When your set "went on the blink," as we used to say, you picked up this big book with yellow pages, and flipped through it until you found what you were looking for, and then you picked up the telephone - they were attached to the wall back in those days - and called a man, and pretty soon he came out in a truck and took the back off your set and tried to find out what was wrong with it and "repair" it. He warned you that he might have to take it back with him to his "shop," where he could run some tests and find out exactly what was the matter. And when he was all done, your television set would work again, and the repairman would give you an astronomical bill for work, most of which you didn't think was necessary. But you had your television back, and in the end that was all that mattered, and they all lived happily ever after. The end.

*Al Gore hadn't invented the information superhighway yet, at least not for consumer use.

Well, perhaps it isn't quite that simple, but it is true that television repairmen were the politicians of their time; in other words, they had a terrible reputation. And this week, they take to the pages of TV Guide to insist that they are not all crooks, that in fact they are "misunderstood, maligned, distrusted, unappreciated, overworked and underpaid." True, they concede, there are dishonest ones among them, as is the case in any profession, but to judge the 130,000 or so TV repairmen by the actions of a few bad apples is grossly unfair.

Last year, a TV Guide article on set repair fraud estimated examined 20 service dealers in New York and Chicago, and found that 65% of them charged more than they should have (on a repair job that should have cost about $8.00), some "claiming to have made extensive repairs." But does this really give us a balanced view of the repairman's job? To find out, author David Lachenbruch talked with Richard Tinnell, a former electronics professor at Oklahoma State, who's coordinating a development program to train more repairmen, a program sponsored by the nation's television manufacturers. He points out that at this moment there are 515 million electronic instruments of various kinds in the U.S., and 75 million being added each year. "All 515 million are in working order. If 65 percent of the service technicians were unethical or incompetent, this situation just couldn't exist."

Tinnell finds the claim that the repair job in question should have cost $8 to be dubious. According to the definitive Blue Book of service charges, a tube replacement alone should run anywhere from $9 to $14, depending on the socio-economic area. "Anything below $15 looks reasonable." A technician's itemized invoice of such a repair job lists the following prices, which remind us of how long ago 1968 was:

Recording and scheduling call: $0.50
Travel time: $1.00
Locating and replacing tube, explaining trouble to the customer: $2.00
Shop overhead (estimated at 150% of actual labor costs): $5.25
Cost of the new tube: $5.00
Total expenses: $13.75

This adds up to a wage of about $4.00 per hour, or $8,000 per year, for the repairman.

John Gooley, service manager of the National Appliance and Radio-TV Dealers Association, points out that with expenses such as a truck, parts inventories, test equipment, uniforms, laundry, rent and insurance, such expenses aren't out of line. In fact, the union bus driver in New York City makes more on an hourly basis. Says a part-time serviceman who works on sets in his spare time, "On each job I'm happy if I make enough for gasoline and a couple of dollars for beer and cigarets. Good luck to those thousands of trainees who try to make a living in this business."

And then, says Gooley, there's the customer, who bears some responsibility himself. "People who have these problems are often those who have larceny in their own hears, and who fall for lowball prices. A shop can't exist on $2 service calls and 20-per-cent-off parts. A little simple arithmetic and cost-of-living figures will show you why." Indeed; it's the complaint we hear even today from brick-and-mortar stores struggling to compete with online retailers who are able to offer the same products at a fraction of the cost to consumers looking for the best deal, or simply trying to maximize their purchasing power.

Whatever the reason, concludes Lachenbruch, the color-TV era brings with it new challenges, more complex technology, and the sense that the "old-fashioned 'tube-puller' can't survive." The end result: "Reliable TV service isn't cheap and you're probably going to have to pay even more for it.

Either that, or throw it out and buy a new one, right?

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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: Scheduled guests include Lucille Ball; George Hamilton; singers Tony Sandler and Ralph Young, the Bee Gees, Fran Jeffries, and the Dubliners; and comedians Stiller and Meara, and Jackie Kahane.

Palace: Host Don Knotts and guests Douglas Fairbanks Jr., singer Nancy Ames, Met soprano Mary Costa, Country-Western guitarist Glenn Ash the rocking Merry-Go-Round and magician Ralph Adams.

This week's matchups seem fair well-balanced in terms of overall entertainment. However, when one looks at star power - well, there's Lucy. And I think Ed has the deeper bench this week, which leads me to give the nod to Sullivan, by the strength of the redhead.

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Throughout the 60s and early 70s, TV Guide's reviews were written by the witty and acerbic Cleveland Amory. Whenever we get the chance, we'll look at Cleve's latest take on the series of the era. 

A few weeks ago I mentioned Operation: Entertainment, the new ABC series that takes entertainers to American servicemen stationed at various bases around the country. It's a worthy idea, according to Cleveland Amory, but not one without some drawbacks. The very concept "involves the necessity of everyone playing not primarily to you  [the viewer], but to the GI audiences. And thus everyone seems one step further removed from you than you are used to." There's also what Amory calls a"a kind of amateur-night quality" to the whole enterprise, particularly in the way GIs become participants in the show. In one example, the program's "entertainment girls" are tasked to "help chosen GIs find someone who kissed like their wives," while in another, "there was a contest among three GI photographers to choose the best model poses for three entertainment girls." It was rigged, of course, since one of the girls turns out to be the fiance to one of the GIs, resulting in much jocularity. By the way, did we mention that this show was created by Chuck Barris?

The professional talent leaves something to be desired as well. There was gospel-singer Bessie Griffin and her Pearls; "[t]heir screaming, yelling jumping performance was one of the most appalling acts we've seen this year. Altougher, if it hadn't been for singer Fran Jeffries, who was excellent, we would have gone A.W.O.L." Another show, with Tim Conway and Paul Lynde, was equally bad. Cleve did have kind words for an episode hosted by Dean Jones, in which "singer Barbara McNair was wonderful and we even went along with sailors trying to sing while being nuzzled by Sivi Aberg, Eileen O'Neill and Shawn Robinson." Seems to me that if that doesn't make you sing, nothing will.

He doesn't say it, but he doesn't have to: Operation: Entertainment may have been born with the best of intentions, but we all know just where that road can lead you, right?

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Our look at some of the week's programs begins on Saturday night with an unusual triple-feature courtesy of CBLT* in Toronto. It leads off with one of the grittiest movies of the '60s, The Pawnbroker, starring Rod Steiger in an Oscar-nominated turn as a concentration camp survivor. That's followed by an Elvis movie, Follow that Dream, in which Presley portrays a "naive and girl-shy Southerner." The evening (or morning, more accurately) winds up with Meet the Girls, a 30s screwball comedy in which two dancers wind up in Hawaii. As I said, a very unconventional pairing.

*No truth to the rumors that BLT stands for bacon, lettuce and tomato.

In 1960, the famed author John Steinbeck toured the United States in a camper-truck, accompanied by his French poodle Charley, where he observed the many facets and peoples of America, The result, Travels with Charley, became a best-seller and, on Sunday night (10:00 p.m. ET), an NBC documentary. Steinbeck's words are read by Henry Fonda, with animation recounting Charley's role in the adventure. The score is by Rod McKuen.

On Monday, Bill Cosby appears in his first television special (8:00 p.m. NBC). "The key to Cosby's wit," according to the Close-Up, "is his wonderfulness - a mobile face and a warmly whimsical appreciation of childhood's fears, fantasies, experiences and delights." Reminds you of just how popular Cosby was from the '60s until the last few years, and how it has to be one of the quicker, more spectacular falls from grace that the entertainment industry has seen.

Tuesday, CFTO, also in Toronto, runs last week's Batman episode, featuring the great Frank Gorshin as The Riddler, with Joan Collins as his sidekick, The Siren. That seems about right. It's also a night for stars on Tuesday's variety shows - Merv Griffin and Barbara Eden guest on Jerry Lewis' show (NBC, 8:00 p.m.), while on CBS (8:30 p.m.), Red Skelton welcomes Eddy Arnold. At 10:00 p.m., CBS carries another of Andy Rooney's delightful essays, "The Strange Case of the English Language," narrated by Harry Reasoner, with an appearance by Peter Ustinov, modeling foreign accents.

It's a momentous occasion on Wednesday, as Mrs. Emma Peel says farewell to The Avengers. (7:30 p.m., ABC) Replacing the delightful Diana Rigg is the give-her-time-and-she'll-grow-on-you Linda Thorson as Tara King, with more boot-kicking action to follow. Also, tonight's Bob Hope special (9:00 p.m., NBC) boasts a lineup including Anne Bancroft, Lou Rawls, Jill St. John and Arnold Palmer. That's followed by a Jack Benny special with Lucille Ball, Johnny Carson, Paul Revere and the Raiders and Ben Blue.

*Highlight: in introducing herself to John Steed for the first time, she identifies herself as Tara, followed by "Ra-Boom-De-Ay." I've included the Wikipedia link for those of you too young to remember the reference, a group I suspect is closely aligned with those who don't remember TV repairmen.

Thursday, NBC's Children's Theatre special (7:30 p.m.) kicks off its run with "The Reluctant Dragon" (right), a puppet drama with Burr Tillstrom, Fran Allison, and the Kuklapolitan Players, based on a story by Kenneth Grahame, author of "The Wind in the Willows." One guess as to which of the Kuklapolitans plays the Dragon.
On

Finally, Friday rounds out the week with the conclusion of "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" on ABC's Off to See the Wizard (7:30 p.m.), The Bell Telephone Hour (10:00 p.m., NBC) presents something you'd never see on prime-time network television today: an hour of operatic ensemble scenes, with some of the greats of opera: Joan Sutherland, Tito Gobbi, Nicolai Gedda, Phyllis Curtin, Jerome Hines, Mildred Miller and Charles Anthony. Just Google Joan Sutherland, for example, and you'll see I don't exaggerate. Last but not least, I'm often joking about how thus-and-such movie looks as if it should be on MST3K - well, here's one that was! It's The Giant Gila Monster, the first half of WKBW's horror double-feature. The second half, The Monster Demolisher, sounds as if it should have been.

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Did I say that was it? Indulge me one more. In this week's TV Jibe, two executives are talking across a desk. Says the one to the other, "I think the pilot script is vacuous, inane, and insulting to any viewer's intelligence. Now let's hope the sponsor likes it, too."

Which goes to show that not everything changes over time.

Thanks to John Rowe for providing this week's issue! TV