This week in TV Guide: March 2, 1963

One of the season's more interesting new shows, both conceptually and in practice, is The Eleventh Hour, NBC's drama dealing with the world of the mind. The Eleventh Hour—the title refers to those patients "on the verge of breakdown" and facing the last chance for treatment—is the product of executive producer Norman Felton, creator of the radio programs "Doctors Today" and "Today in Medicine" with the American Medical Association, and of the dramatic series Dr. Kildare for NBC television.* 

*Felton is perhaps best-known for a later show with absolutely nothing to do with medicine, The Man From U.N.C.L.E. 

Felton is determined to remove The Eleventh Hour from the traditional stereotypes of psychiatry; "What we're not doing is the story of Pen, Pad and Couch. Our forensic psychiatrist—Dr. Ted Bassett—is no analyst taking notes about patients' dreams. He's active, not passive. He's a therapist, a healer." The field of psychiatry has been relatively untouched by television, so Felton has established an advisory board comprised of 20 psychiatrists and four psychologists, plus psychiatrist Dr. Harold Arlen as technical advisor. In so doing, Felton and his staff have unearthed some potential concerns; after viewing the pilot episode, one psychiatrist wondered if viewers, after seeing various mental illnesses dramatized, might wonder if they themselves are suffering from the same illness. Felton reassured the doctors that while the show will deal with serious issues and how people can get help, "At the same time we want to entertain and hold an audience so that our program doesn't end up on the Sunday morning schedule." 

The lead characters of The Eleventh Hour are Wendell Corey as the aforementioned Dr. Theodore Bassett, a forensic psychiatrist and former lawyer, who is often called in to consult on cases involving an accused's sanity or state of mind; and Jack Ging as clinical psychologist Dr. Paul Graham*. Originally Ging was to be another psychiatrist sharing the office with Bassett, until it was pointed out that in real life, psychiatrists do not share offices. Changing Ging's status created another problem, this one with the American Psychological Association, which accused the show of portraying psychologists too often with "little resemblance to the realities of today's methods for care and treatment of the emotionally disturbed." (Graham, for instance, is the member of the duo most likely to enlist the use of such tropes as ink blot tests.) The network replied that "the psychologists were preoccupied with professional status." I had no idea that the behind-the-scenes story could be so dramatic!

*Unlike psychiatrists, psychologists are not medical doctors and, for example, cannot prescribe medication. Their title of "doctor" refers to their Ph.D. or Sc.D. degrees.

If you're a longtime reader, you'll know that I have a great admiration for The Eleventh Hour, and particularly for Wendell Corey's performance. Corey portrays Ted Bassett with great sensitivity and compassion; the opening of the first episode sets the tone for the series. A disturbed patient is running berserk through the hospital halls, trying desperately to escape. As he reaches the elevator, the doors open, revealing our first look at Dr. Bassett. The patient comes to a complete stop, as Bassett holds out his hands and offers him a small smile of reassurance. The patient, calming down, takes Bassett's hand, and then allows the orderlies to lead him away. Bassett watches after him, saying, almost to himself, "Poor damned soul." 

Wendell Corey and Barbara Rush

Some critics found that opening melodramatic, carrying overtones of the "great white father" school of medicine. On the contrary, I found Corey's gesture to be deeply moving, the kind of caring that I'd want from my doctor in a similar situation. Corey is, in fact, the fulcrum around which this show pivots; Jack Ging's character is very good, equally committed to helping his patients, but I so admire Corey's performance as Dr. Bassett; it's no easy feat to take a broken person and try to put him back together, to find out what's at the root of the problem and treat it; but Corey gives you confidence that it can be done.

(Corey leaves the series after the first season, and is replaced by a similar character, played by Ralph Bellamy, for the show's second and last season, which has not been made available on DVD; if anyone is aware of a—ahem—gray market dealer who has it, please let me know.) 

Mental illness is precisely that, an illness; it should be viewed without stigma or prejudice. Those who scoff at such diagnoses, who think of it as a weakness, or who view it as a crutch, are not just misinformed, they're ignorant. As such, I'm a great believer in psychiatry, though one has to be very careful about the psychiatrist as well as the technique involved. You might recall a similar series, Breaking Point, which will be premiering on ABC in the 1963-64 season. I liked that show as well, and thought that it dealt with the issue with sensitivity. These shows, for the most part, avoid easy answers in favor of hopeful ones; the illnesses from which these patients suffer will not go away magically. It will take work, it will take desire on the part of the patient to get better, but these doctors will be there to help him on the way. Sam Rolfe, the producer of The Eleventh Hour, says that "We want to let people know that when a man is boxed in, when it's a case of 'I've lost my job and my world is tumbling down'—there are doctors for that, too." Doctors like Ted Bassett, whose philosophy, Wendell Corey says, is "Never mind the past. Let's give the patient a future." In this cruel, cruel world we live in today, it's impossible not to be moved by it. 

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ABC's new fall season

Spring is just around the corner, at least according to the calendar, and it's oft been said that in springtime, a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love. Unless, that is, he happens to be a young television executive, in which case springtime means his thoughts are focused, rather heavily, on the upcoming fall season. And, according to the Hollywood Teletype, there's quite a lot to think about. Titles for the new season are said to include The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters, starring Dan O'Herlihy; Butterball Brown, with Mickey Shaughnessy; Ready for the People, starring Everett Sloane; Arrest and Trial, with Ben Gazzara and Chuck Connors in a 90-minute drama; Please Stand By, a sci-fi anthology; The Fugitive, with David Janssen; Breaking Point, starring Paul Richards; The Patty Duke Show; The Greatest Show on Earth, with Jack Palance; Mr. Kingston, with Peter Graves and Walter Pidgeon; Thunderhead, starring George Montgomery; The Young and the Bold; and Archie. In the New York Teletype, a separate item mentions the upcoming 90-minute Jerry Lewis Show.

Some of these probably ring a bell. Please Stand By made it to the tube as The Outer Limits, while The Young and the Bold wound up as Channing and lasted one season. The Fugitive and Patty Duke speak for themselves; Arrest and Trial was truly innovative, but it took until Law & Order to make it work; Jaimie McPheeters was also one season and out, as was Breaking Point (unjustly) and Greatest Show. And you probably know about the bomb that was The Jerry Lewis Show.  The others left less of an oil slick than Jerry, but disappeared beneath the waves nonetheless.

As for the shows that have to go to make room for future hits, they include The Jetsons (which had a longer half-life than all but a couple of the new shows), The Rifleman, Going My Way, Our Man Higgins, I'm Dickens, He's Fenster, The Gallant Men, Naked City (a true classic), My Three Sons (which moved to CBS and ran for another seven seasons), and 77 Sunset Strip (although that survived by moving to another timeslot; the reformatted Sunset Strip was a disaster). Fred Astaire's Premiere anthology probably won't be back, but even if it is, Fred's already decided to return to movies (a good idea). 

I always enjoy looking at these proposed new series—which ones succeed beyond our wildest dreams, and which fail miserably, which cancelled shows are totally forgotten (like last week's My Friend Tony), and which are remembered forever (the aforementioned Jetsons). The fact that the young television executive, given the choice between love and television, chooses television, perhaps explains why TV itself seldom fulfills our expectations.

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And this serves as a nice lead-in to our next story, an interview with Dr. Gary A. Steiner, a psychologist from the University of Chicago, who's done a comprehensive study of television viewers, the findings of which are summarized in his new book The People Look at Television. In the TV Guide interview, Dr. Steiner explains "what viewers say they want to see on television and what they actually watch," and this should be good.

First of all, says Dr. Steiner, "everyone—highbrows included—watches mostly light entertainment," which includes action, comedy, variety, light drama, and sports. That accounts for roughly two-thirds of the average viewing week. Another large chunk of viewing comes from newscasts, making up anywhere between 25 and 40 percent of viewing. However, "heavier fare—serious drama, classical music, heavy information such as public affairs presentations" makes up less than 10 percent of the average viewing diet.

Isn't it the case, though, that viewer choices are based on what's available? Well, no. Even when given the choice, viewers, including better-educated ones, turn overwhelmingly to light entertainment. "Four out of five times" the college-educated viewer will pick light entertainment even when public affairs broadcasts are available. Even those viewers who say they want more public affairs programming consistently choose light entertainment shows when they have a choice. "So there is little evidence in support of the argument that viewers watch so much trivia because trivia is all they are offered."

As far as that light entertainment goes, Dr. Steiner's survey found that about every genre of programming has as many supporters as it does critics, meaning that for every critic who claims there are, for example, too many Westerns on TV, you're likely to find a satisfied fan. There is, in other words, "no simple change in program composition that on balance would satisfy more people than it would dissatisfy." 

There is, however, some correlation between education and the choice of entertainment; college educated viewers will turn from light to heavy entertainment when it's available. The general public, in such cases, still prefers light entertainment, and public affairs programs run a distant third. As for the fact that viewers say there needs to be more public affairs programming, Steiner speculates that this could be similar to "speed limits or integration—they recognize the need for information as a need for the country in general," not specifically for themselves. 

In general, viewers think there's too much violence on television, and they're particularly concerned about the exposure children have to such shows—both on shows designed for adults and for children. "It is the eye-gouging, slapping, hitting over the head—not mowing down with machine guns—that causes the greatest concern." They understand the need for commercials, but find them too long and interrupt too frequently, and at crucial points during a broadcast; they like commercials for beer, food, and automobiles, and dislike those for bathroom products, cigarettes, and undergarments. (I wonder what they'd think of today's commercials for, among other things, vaginal deodorant?)

In conclusion, Dr. Steiner gives us an idea of what the "composite viewer" wants. "First and foremost, give me more programs that are fun and worthwhile programs that I find relaxing and entertaining but, at the same time, are in some way informative, uplifting, useful." Make programs that are "safe for children and attract and hold their attention." Don't give us commercials that insult our intelligence, and don't interrupt in the middle of a program to show them. Raise the average level of all programs, rather than offering a few outstanding shows each year. And, since it's hard to control the amount of television watched by both adults and children, help us out by making those hours a little more worthwhile. "Television could certainly stand improvement. But all things considered, you're doing a good job."

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A pair of legal dramas lead off the week: Sam Benedict (Saturday, 7:30 p.m., NBC) has a change-of-pace episode, in which star Edmond O'Brien plays a dual role: high-powered attorney Benedict, and ne'er do well Charlie Dunphie, who's guilty of having bilked 17 charities—in order to support the 17 orphans he tends to on the old showboat they call home. I don't think the story is up to the caliber of most of the show's episodes, but it gives O'Brien a chance to show off his acting chops, and that's always welcome. Later, on The Defenders (8:30 p.m., CBS) the Prestons take the case of Luke Jackson (Rubert Duvall), a convicted murderer who's spent the last seven years on death row, and now a model of rehabilitation—just in time to be strapped into the electric chair. 

Looks as if whoever owned this issue planned to watch it as well!

If you're looking for a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, I have just the thing for you. It's the NBC Opera Company world premiere production of Gian Carlo Menotti's made-for-TV opera "Labyrinth" (Sunday, 2:00 p.m. ET), and when I say that it was made for television, I'm not kidding; the special effects and trick photography involved make it almost impossible for the opera to ever be performed on a stage. You can see the broadcast here, and it's a good thing that the video exists, because the opera was never rebroadcast and, aside from a 2020 performance at Ventura College, it has never been staged anywhere else. It saves us from having to ask the question: if an opera is performed and no video of it exists, did it really happen?

Sunday evening, Ed Sullivan's headline guests are Kate Smith, Bob Newhart, Anita Bryant, Nancy Walker, and Charles Nelson Reilly. He's also got a British ventriloquist, a Spanish dance group, and a hand-balancing act, but I think his main lineup would have won the day, regardless of what show it might have been going against (8:00 p.m., CBS). And on an NBC News Special, John Chancellor takes a look at the European Common Market, progenitor to the European Union. (10:00 p.m.) I don't know that it was a good idea then, any more than it is today.

Future Oscar winner Beatrice Straight stars as Edith in Monday's Ben Casey, a drama filled with family tensions: her niece Greta (Diana Hyland) is being controlled by her domineering mother; and Edith is refusing to undergo critical surgery until Greta is given her freedom. I wonder how Casey's going to handle this one?

The luminous Diane Baker appears as a young blind woman who's the target of farmer Lloyd Bridges' affections in The Lloyd Bridges Show (Tuesday, 8:00 p.m., CBS). Efron presents a rather interesting profile of the man whom she describes as "an enormously frail personality—so gentle and shy that it takes an hour of conversation before one gets any definite impression of him at all." His friends paint a similar picture;  Aaron Spelling, producer of Lloyd's current anthology series, calls him an enigma, "full of sweetness, full of love," while his wife Dorothy notes how "children worship him, flock around him." Both add, however, that his desire to love and please everyone is a source of trouble for him; "poor judgement," says Spelling, while his wife feels others take advantage of his gentle disposition. Not everyone is a fan; one critic says he doesn't believe all the talk of love of life and people: "He's weak, unrealistic. He refuses to look life in the face." Bridges himself doesn't particularly like the description of himself as a "gentle muscleman," but admits to a lack of aggressiveness, which could be due to a lack of confidence in his own abilities. Even though his new series lags in the ratings, he's enthusiastic about the opportunity to show that he can act, that he's not just the adventure star of Sea Hunt; he calls it "the biggest opportunity of my life." In the end, the series does leave the air after a single season, but Lloyd Bridges seldom leaves the small screen; he'll be back in Rod Serling's existential Western, The Loner, and was a fixture in guest appearances and TV-movies (not to mention his memorable role in the movie Airplane!) until his death in 1998.

Pop singer Joanie Sommers is Wednesday night's star; she appears first as one of Perry Como's guests on the Kraft Music Hall (9:00 p.m., NBC), along with Gene Sheldon, Charlie Manna, and the Four Step Brothers; later, she shows up on The Steve Allen Show (11:15 p.m., syndicated), with jazzman Frank Rosolino and singer Dean Reed. James Stewart makes a rare appearance on series television on Thursday, portraying himself in his real-life capacity as a brigadier general in the Air Force Reserves, on My Three Sons (9:00 p.m., ABC) in an episode in which Robbie is competing to win a high school letter for science achievement. 

On Friday, Leonard Bernstein's Young People's Concert presents its last show of the season, "The Latin American Spirit," featuring his new symphonic arrangement of West Side Story, along with pieces by Aaron Copland, Heitor Villa-Lobos, and Oscar Fernandez (7:30 p.m., CBS). Later, on The Jack Paar Program (10:00 p.m., NBC), former Vice President Richard Nixon makes his first network TV appearance since losing the election for governor of California last November. He's given Jack carte blanche on any question topics, and even takes time out to play a composition of his own on the piano. The audience reaction shows that even after his defeat, he remains a popular political figure.

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Ann Flood is frustrated. She's already an established star of daytime television as Nancy Pollock Karr, the fresh-scrubbed heroine of CBS's The Edge of Night. Before that, she was Liz Fraser Allen, the fresh-scrubbed heroine of From These Roots. And therein lies the rub: Flood, whom everyone describes as warm and sweet-hearted is feeling a little stifled. "I've been cast as the all-American-girl type, the sweetheart type, for years. For a change, I'd like to be the Other Woman." 

No matter what kind of character she plays, though, she's committed to the world of the soaps—which, for the most part, are still being done live. "I'm not pursuing a stellar career," she tells TV Guide. "My home is most important. I don't want my work to interfere." Earlier in her career, she was a fixture on just about every evening dramatic anthology, an experience she found "thrilling," but no longer. "Now it would interfere with my family."

So she doesn't get a chance to demonstrate a hard edge in her soap roles; maybe she makes up for that in her personal life. Her favorite show is The Untouchables; when she and her husband visited Chicago recently, the first thing she wanted to see was the site of the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. And she's a ferocious debater in social gatherings—"If it's a theatrical crowd, she's arguing about Method acting. And if it's a non-theatrical crowd, it's politics. She's usually denouncing union corruption." Listening to her husband talk about her, she says with a twinkle, "Down deep, this all-American girl is really Eliot Ness."

Ann Flood is too experienced, too well-known, to be considered a startlet, but I enjoy these kinds of stories because you're inevitably drawn to find out what happened to the rest of her career. And in her case, the answer is formidable. She continues to play Nancy Pollack Karr until the series ends in 1984, during which time The Edge of Night transitions from live broadcast to tape, and from CBS to ABC. She remains married to Herbert Granath, from 1952 until his death in 2019. Ann Flood dies in 2022, at the age of 89, proof positive that nice girls don't always finish last.

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MST3K alert: Bride of the Monster (1955) An intrepid female reporter investigates a mad scientist who is attempting to harness atomic energy to turn people into superhuman monsters. Bela Lugosi, Tor Johnson, Harvey B. Dunn, Dolores Fuller. (Thursday, 5:00 p.m., WFMJ in Youngstown) Two words: Ed Wood. Need I go any further? It may not be Plan 9 from Outer Space, but it doesn't have to be, does it? TV  

This week in TV Guide: April 9, 1955

When I was a kid playing with model trains, there was a line of accessories that you could use to build your own village, complete with stores, factories, and even a depot. It was called Plasticville, and it was (and is; it's still around) pretty cool. But can Plasticville possibly compete with Videotown, U.S.A.? 

Videotown is also known as New Brunswick, New Jersey, a community of nearly 40,000, which has been studied—"relentlessly scrutinized," as Frank De Blois calls it—for the last seven years to find out the impact TV has had on the community, "and, by extension, on all the rest of us." The raw figures tell us that 83 percent of families in Videotown own televisions (compared with 64 percent who own cars, and 80 percent with telephones), that the average size is 21 inches and that the family room is built around it, that 74 percent turn on the set at least once a day, and that the longer they have a set, the more they use it—at least three hours a day. What those numbers don't tell us is the effect television has had on these people. That is what we're about to find out.

It all started in 1948; there were 267 sets in the town at that point, and because of its proximity to New York City, the advertising firm of Cunningham and Walsh decided to launch their study. One of their initial conclusions was that, interestingly enough, television brought families together. "Children stopped playing stickball in the street. Parents quit going to the movies. Bowling leagues broke up. Even the sale of comic books went down. Result: the living room once again became the social center of the family." Said one mother in 1950, "We all stay home now. TV is wonderful." Women began doing their daily routine early in the morning, so they could get to watching TV. "It takes up so much of my time," one woman confided, "that I don't have enough left to do my housework." 

Since then, things have evened out a bit; "[P]eople began to go out to the movies again, to read books and magazines once in a while, and to get back into the bowling league. Even radio made a comeback." Even so, people continued to watch as much TV as ever: "Monday through Friday nights husbands total 13.3 hours; wives, 13.8 hours; kiddies 7.7." The conclusion, according to the firm's research chief Gerald Tasker, was that "for one thing, most viewers had completely stopped visiting their friends." When television first came along, one housewife recalls, "our neighbors used to come in every week and look at Milton Berle with us. But now they got the TV too—and whenever Milton Berle goes on, why, me and Pa just sit there and watch him all alone." Sure enough: whereas 25 percent used to go visiting or entertain, the number has now dropped to 10 percent. And that's how they can continue to go to movies, go bowling, read, or listen to the radio. Those who go out have simply traded one kind of socializing for another, but for those who don't leave the house at all, it's just them and their TV.

One of the broad conclusions that everyone seems to agree on is that people love their TVs ("It's the greatest thing in the world!"), and they'd hate to go without it. ("We'd rather hock the ice box.") The rest of the results are, as you might say, mixed: TV either starts or stops fights, it's good or bad for the eyes, it's better or worse than radio, and so on. 

It's hard to draw a direct parallel between 1955 and today, thanks to social media; you'd have to compare the number of hours people watched television back then with the number of hours they spend looking at their screens now. There are other differences; the multiplication of options and the introduction of various options for on-demand viewing mean that television—media, we have to call it—is no longer a unifying experience, with people watching the same shows at the same time. What it has succeeded in doing is isolating people, not only from their neighbors but from their own family members, as everyone retreats into his or her own virtual world. And it's trivialized so, so much; I do wonder if everyone still thinks of television as "the greatest thing in the world." 

On my reading list is Neil Postman's provocative Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, which I expect is going to have a lot to say about the effect television has had on our society. Once I've read it, you can be sure I'll be back to this subject. Maybe Videotown, U.S.A. is just another Plasticville after all.

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Here's something for my friend Hal Horn at The Horn Section: a profile of Bob Cummings, the "up and coming" star of The Bob Cummings Show, better known as Love That Bob. He's also the star of My Hero, which is currently in reruns and scoring healthy ratings. And he's also "a man endowed with a talent for spinning yarns so complicated and so fantastic—and yet, coming from him, so believable—that people believe them." For example, there are at least five different versions of how he came upon "Robert S. Beanblossom," the name of his My Hero character; the latest one says Beanblossom was a man who found a mechanical pencil that Cummings had lost and carried it with him for 16 years until he could return it to Cummings. 

Bob with co-star Ann B. Davis

Cummings is considered one of the most versatile performers in Hollywood, particularly in light comedies, but he's also made several movies, a Studio One drama, and a musical for NBC. (That Studio One drama, although the article doesn't mention this, was "Twelve Angry Men," in which he played the Henry Fonda role, and brilliantly.) And he's not afraid to use his influence, either: not only does he deliver the commercials on his show, he won the right to write them as well.

The concept for his new show—a Hollywood photographer with an eye for the starlets he snaps—came to Cummings in an episode he wrote for My Hero; independent of that, a similar idea had also come to Paul Henning, writer for Burns and Allen. When Henning approached Cummings with the idea, it turned out that Cummings had been about to call him with the same idea. Henning is now the show's producer and its only writer. The Bob Cummings Show will run for five successful seasons, and though Bob will have two other series and will appear many times on other shows (including a memorable appearance on The Twilight Zone), audiences will never love Bob as much as they do now.

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Sunday is Easter, and as is to be expected in the 1950s, television takes notice. Besides five chuch services on Sunday morning (two Catholic, two Episcopal, one Baptist for those of you keeping count at home), we have coverage of New York's Easter Parade on not one, but two stations. WPIX's ambitious two-hour broadcast, starting at 11:30 a.m., features Ed Sullivan as host and actress Haila Stoddard providing fashion commentary, plus the Georgetown Chimes a cappella group performing Easter songs, actress Patty McCormack reciting an Easter powm, Easter art fromt he Metropolitan Museum of Art, UN members talking about how the holiday is celebrated in their countries, appearances by Nancy Kelly, Don Ameche and other stars, and President Eisenhower's Easter message from Washington. Over on WRCA, coverage begins at 12:30 pm, with Ben Grauer on Fifth Avenue, Arlene Francis covering an international fashion show from the Hotel Pierre, and music from soprano Mimi Benzell and the Robert Shaw Male Chorus. Another Easter fashion show follows on WRCA at 1:00 p.m., this one from the Grand Ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria, hosted by Tex McCrary and Jinx Falkenburg. The show's called "The World of Silk," and it's sponsored, surprisingly, by the International Silk Association.

One of the day's highlights has to be The Kuklapolitan Easter Show (6:30 p.m., ABC), starring Fletcher Rabbit, with Fran Allison and the rest of Burr Tillstrom's Kuklapolitan puppets, plus a "special appearance" by Kukla and Ollie. It's an "egg-sighting" tour of the Easter Bunny's famous Egg Plant, and I think this would be a delightful show to see. The Hallmark Hall of Fame presents "Lydia" (5:00 p.m., NBC), with Sarah Churchill as a Greek pagan converted by the apostle Paul; there's also a special Easter show by Fred Waring and his Pennsylvanians on G.E. Theater (9:00 p.m., CBS) to round out the evening.

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There's music in the air this week as well, with a couple of specials to look forward to. Max Liebman's monthly "spectacular" on NBC is the Franz Lehar operetta, The Merry Widow, with Anne Jeffreys, Brian Sullivan, Edward Everett Horton, and John Conte heading the cast. (Saturday, 9:00 p.m.) And on Sunday, The Colgate Comedy Hour turns itself over to an hour-long adaptation of Roberta, the Jerome Kern-Otto Harbach operetta, starring Gordon MacRae, Nina Foch, Agnes Moorehead, and Jack Carter. The orchestra is conducted by Carmen Dragon, whom, we all know, is the father of Daryl Dragon, the former husband of Toni Tennille. (8:00 p.m., NBC)

As if that isn't enough, baseball season starts on Monday, with two traditions: the Cincinnati Redlegs, the first professional baseball team, opens the National League season at home against the Chicago Cubs, while in Washington D.C., President Eisenhower is on hand for the Senators opener against the Baltimore Orioles. However, in New York the television season begins much earlier; on Saturday, WOR carries the pre-season game betwen the Yankees and Dodgers from Ebbets Field in Brooklyn (1:55 p.m., with Vin Scully on the play-by-play!). and on Sunday the two teams meet again, this time at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx. (1:55 p.m., WPIX, with Mel Allen and Red Barber) You might wonder how baseball was handled in a three-team city like New York; WOR is the hme of the Dodgers, with all 77 home games and 25 road games on the channel; the Yankees and the New York Giants both call WPIX home, with each team having their 77 home games carried. Including the two exhibition games over the weekend, that means New Yorkers will be blessed with 258 games from which to choose. And here's a footnote: all three teams start weekday night games at 8:00 p.m. or so, much later than teams do today. Fewer night games, shorter games, and less crime are your reasons.

Keeping with the baseball motif, Ed Sullivan introduces all the stars on Toast of the Town. (Sunday, 8:00 p.m., CBS) The lineup includes Willie Mays, Pee Wee Reese, Dusty Rhodes, Robin Roberts, Warren Spahn, Vic Wertz, and Jerry Coleman. The first televised regular season games are on Tuesday (Dodgers vs. Pittsburgh Pirates at 1:25 on WOR; Yankees vs. Senators at 1:55 on WPIX.) Play ball!

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Some big names on Monday's shows: Robert Montgomery Presents stars Montgomery himself as Jay Gatsby in "The Great Gatsby" (9:30 p.m., NBC), which also includes Phyllis Kirk as Daisy, Ed Binns as Nick, John Newland (host of One Step Beyond) as Tom Buchanan, and Gena Rowlands as Myrtle. And at 10:00 p.m. on CBS's Studio One, Louis Jourdan stars as a Czechoslovakian hockey player plotting to defect after the Soviets take over his country, in "Passage at Arms"; Theodore Bikel is part of the supporting cast.

On Tuesday's Today (7:00 a.m., NBC), Dave Garroway interviews film producer Stanley Kramer; if Kramer's there to promote a movie (the listing doesn't say), it's probably Not as a Stranger, which comes out in June, and stars Olivia de Havilland, Robert Mitchum, Frank Sinatra, Gloria Grahame, Broderick Crawford, and Lee Marvin. Also, "[a]n armored truce is scheduled to drie up with a million dollars worth of jewels and Jinx Falkenburg inside." Whether the guards are for the jewels or Jinx isn't said. 

But since this is the second mention of Jinx Falkenburg in a handful of pages, let's take a timeout for a minute. Last year, after she appeared in a TV Guide from 1951, I noted that Jinx Falkenburg was the owner of the nightgown that Rita Hayworth wore in her famous pinup. Which is why I'm submitting this for your approval.

Getting back to the subject at hand, Tuesday night Wendell Corey and Keenan Wynn star in Rod Serling's "The Rack" on The United States Steel Hour (9:30 p.m., ABC). "The Rack" is a Korean War story about a decorated Army officer being court-martialed for collaborating with the Chinese as a result of being tortured in a POW camp. Marshall Thompson (Daktari) plays the young captain facing charges of treason; when the story's made into a movie the following year, the role's played by Paul Newman. The lesson remains that torture is second in immorality only to war itself.

Wednesday's Disneyland sees the premier of the three-part story "Davy Crockett, Indian Fighter" (7:30 p.m., ABC), shot on location in the Great Smoky Mountains and along the Ohio River, an impressive achievement for television. Fess Parker stars as Crockett, with Buddy Ebsen as George Russell. The Hollywood TV Teletype reports that Disney has already decided on four more Crockett films for next season.

This month's Shower of Stars (Thursday, 8:30 p.m., CBS) is called "Show Stoppers," and it figures to deliver, with Ethel Merman, Red Skelton, Peter Lind Hayes and Mary Healy, Harold Lang, and Cindy Robbins. It's nice to see how the ad reassures us that, even if you don't have a color set yet (a status that applies to roughly most of the country), you can still enjoy it in black and white. Later, on Four Star Playhouse (9:30 p.m., CBS), Charles Boyer and Angela Lansbury star in "Madeira! Madeira!" and Charles Bickford stars in "The Woman at Fog Point" on Ford Theatre (9:30 p.m., NBC). A big night for stars, indeed.

I don't know why, but I noticed the debut of a program on WOR called A Man's World (Friday, 7:00 p.m.), described as "a weekly series of fashion hints for men," starring a man with the unlikely name of Bert Bacharach. And no, of course it's not the composer. It's his father. 

l  l  l

Finally, a collection of those clever slides you used to see on your screen whenever technical difficulties would arise, which in the early days of television happened relatively often. There must have been a million of these at one time or another; these are some of them.

I'm sure we're all grateful that technology has become more dependable over the decades, but there's something charmingly playful that's missing from our oh-so-serious way of doing things, even as the things we do continue to seem less and less serious. The 3D, CGI graphics, slick and polished and identical no matter what or where the channel is—is there really no room for them today? As the pioneers of television might say, so uncreative. TV  

Divided we watch

As I've mentioned before, The Smithsonian Channel is one of the few channels I watch on a fairly regular basis, so it's no surprise that I'd stumble across this insightful quote at their website as to what the Balkanization of television has meant to the political order. After the quote, I'll be back with the pertinent details.

A stable national government requires a measure of cohesion of the ruled. Such cohesion can be derived from an implicit mutual agreement on goals and direction — or even on the processes of determining goals and direction. With the diversity of information channels available, there is a growing ease of creating groups having access to distinctly differing models of reality, without overlap. For example, nearly every ideological group. . . now has its own newspapers. Imagine a world in which there is a sufficient number of TV channels to keep each group, and in particular the less literate and tolerant members of the groups, wholly occupied? Will members of such groups ever again be able to talk meaningfully to one another? Will they ever obtain at least some information through the same filters so that their images of reality will overlap to some degree? Are we in danger of creating by electrical communications such diversity within society as to remove the commonness of experience cessary for human communication, political stability, and, indeed, nationhood itself? Must “confrontation” increasingly be used for human communication?

National political diversity requires good will and intelligence to work comfortably. The new visual media are not an unmixed blessing. This new diversity causes one to hope that the good will and intelligence of the nation is sufficiently broad-based to allow it to withstand the increasing communication pressures of the future.

Am I right? Not only interesting, but insightful. Now for the rest of the story.

The author of that quote is Paul Baran, one of the pioneers of the Internet and a man who predicted the development of the "portable telephone." It comes from a paper titled "On the Impact of the New Communications Media Upon Social Values," in which he looked at how the societal fragmentation created by technology could create a polariation in our political discource, something which, I think we can all agree, exists in abundance today. It's quoted in a Smithsonian article, TV Will Tear Us Apart: The Future of Political Polarization in American Media,

He wrote this paper in 1969.

The Smithsonian article was written in 2013.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, And if we thought things were bad then. . . TV  

The wonder of it all

I've said this before, but it bears repeating: I am a child of television. There's never been a time when television was not a reality in my life, never a moment when I wasn't able to turn it on and look in at the rest of the world. Television was always a marvel because of what it could do, but its existence was something I could take for granted because I didn't know any other way of life.

Because of that, I can't really imagine what the advent of television must have been like for people who'd lived maybe 20 or 30 years of their life without it. Was it something that never stopped being amazing to them, a phenomenon that, in some way, they appreciated more than those of use who grew up with it? That's how I feel sometimes when I look up at the moon, remembering the first nine years of my life, when nobody had ever set foot on its surface.

Or is it possible that they merely took it in stride, one more step in what must have seemed to be the inexorable march of progress: radio begat television, just as the movies preceded radio, gas led to electricity, balloons became the Wright Flyer, and so on. Sure, they were impressed, but they'd seen this kind of evolution before, and they were sure they'd see it again. I doubt that the millennials are much amazed by every next iteration of the iPhone or Android, and while the technology is a marvel, it couldn't be that surprising to someone who'd grown up watching Dick Tracy and his two-way wrist radio. On television, of course.

Paul Auster, the novelist and essayist, whose work I enjoy, is a bit older than I am but, like me, television was a constant presence in his life from his first conscious memories. In Report from the Interior, a memoir of his years growing up, he writes of an early childhood memory, conveying the sense of wonder that television could create in a five-year-old's mind, even from something as simple as watching a Felix the Cat cartoon:

They appear every afternoon on a television program called Junior Frolics, hosted by a man named Fred Sayles, who is known to you simply as Uncle Fred, the silver-haired gatekeeper to this land of marvels, and because you understand nothing about the production of animated films, cannot even begin to fathom the process by which drawings are made to move, you figure there must be some sort of alternate universe in which characters like Farmer Gray and Felix the Cat can exist—not as pen scratches dancing across a television screen, but as fully embodied, three-dimensional creatures as large as adults. Logic demands that they be large, since the people who appear on television are always larger than their images on-screen, and logic also demands that they belong to an alternate universe, since the universe you live in is not populated by cartoon characters, much as you might wish it was.

One day Auster's mother tells him that she will be taking him and his friend Billy to see Uncle Fred's show in person.

All this is exciting to you, inordinately exciting, but even more exciting is the thought that finally, after months of speculation, you will be able to set eyes on Farmer Gray and Felix the Cat. At long last you will discover what they really look like. In your mind, you see the action unfolding on an enormous stage, a stage the size of a football field, as the crotchety old farmer and the wily black cat chase each other back and forth in one of their epic skirmishes. On the appointed day, however, none of it happens as you thought it would. The studio is small, Uncle Fred has makeup on his face, and after you are given a bag of mints to keep you company during the show, you take your seat in the grandstand with Billy and the other children. You look down at what should be a stage, but which in fact is nothing more than the concrete floor of the studio, and what you see there is a television set. Not even a special television set, but one no bigger or smaller than the set you have at home. The farmer and the cat are nowhere in the vicinity. After Uncle Fred welcomes the audience to the show, he introduces the first cartoon. The television comes on, and there are Farmer Gray and Felix the Cat, bouncing around in the same way they always have, still trapped inside the box, still as small as they ever were. You are thoroughly confused. What error have you made? you ask yourself. Where has your thinking gone wrong? The real is so defiantly at odds with the imagined, you can't help feeling that a nasty trick has been played on you. Stunned with disappointment, you can barely bring yourself to look at the show. Afterward, walking back to the car with Billy and your mother, you toss away the mints in disgust.

Sure, the ending is something of a downer, but even so, Auster's tale speaks to the miracle of television, even to someone who has basically grown up with it. I was in the peanut gallery of one of those shows myself, once upon a time, although I don't recall having any expectations of seeing Felix the Cat in real life. (Maybe I was just a little older, or my imagination wasn't as fantastic.) I do remember how great it was to see backstage at a television studio. It's no big deal now, but it was back then.

How easy it's been for me to accept television, from rabbit ears to rooftop antennas to cable to satellite to streaming, from black-and-white to color to HD. How amazing it's been, and how easy it is to take it all in stride, as I do, as so many people do. I wonder; are we capable of wonder anymore? Kids start in on technology at such an early age, I don't know if it's even possible for them to be amazed by anything. Maybe we're past that, and if so, it's too bad. There's something exciting about the wonder of it all, the wonder and excitement that Paul Auster felt in that studio all those years ago. At least until he threw away the mints. TV  

This week in TV Guide: January 31, 1959

I don't often write about purely local events, let alone lead off with them, but this is an unusual week; we're interested in just a few specific shows, and most of our attention goes to things philosophic rather than the content on the tube, so there's no reason why we shouldn't start with a look at the big event in the Twin Cities: the St. Paul Winter Carnival.

1959 marks the 73rd edition of the great winter celebration, and even if you're not one for enjoying cold weather, you'll be able to stay in touch with the week-long excitement. It all starts at 2:00 p.m. on Saturday with the Winter Carnival Parade, covered on all four Twin Cities channels. (The listings even give the locations from which each station will be broadcasting.) The parade begins at the State Capitol and runs for two hours and 1.3 miles before ending at the St. Paul Auditorium, with 60 bands and 35 floats.* There are stars aplenty as well, including Jimmy Dean, Ronnie Burns (son of George), Arnold Stang, and George Montgomery.

*In the post-WWII period, over 250,000 lined the streets to watch the parade.

Jimmy's doing his CBS morning variety show from the Carnival all week; he'll be broadcasting from the Auditorium Tuesday and Friday, the skating plaza on Wednesday, and the toboggan slides on Thursday. The future sausage king isn't the only one who's brought his cameras to St. Paul, though: on Saturday following the parade, George Montgomery stops in to visit the teens on KSTP's Hi-Five Time (4:30 p.m.), and Wednesday, ABC's Wednesday Night Fights comes to you live from the Auditorium, as local favorite Del Flanagan takes on Ralph Dupas in a welterweight bout, with Carnival dignitaries taking part in the pre-fight ceremonies. One of the big events of the Carnival is the crowning of the Carnival Queen of the Snows, and KMSP's matinee movie hostess Mary Jo Tierney will be interviewing the candidates during the movie intermissions Monday and Tuesday. There won't be live coverage of the actual pageant and crowning, but the winner will be making the rounds of the local shows for the rest of the week.

As you can tell if you followed the link above, the St. Paul Winter Carnival continues to this day - this year the dates have been altered to coincide with the Super Bowl festival. Television stars aren't sent by sponsors to be part of the festivities, and in fact I'm not sure how much attention local TV even pays to it anymore. But there are concerts, ice sculpture contests, a triathlon and a parade; and even as we speak, the giant ice castle is under construction. In fact, it's kind of like television itself; it may have changed over the years, but it's still alive and kicking.

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What's Erle Stanley Gardner have to say about television? Since it's featured on the cover, we'd better take a look.

Not surprisingly considering the existence of a TV series based on Gardner's most famous literary character, the author of Perry Mason is positive about the medium. Right off the bat Gardner concedes television is a factor in juvenile delinquency - just one factor, though. "I think that where impressionable young people see violence on television, when they see wrongs being righted by means of the blazing six gun, they are tremendously impressed."

That's only 1% of America's young people, though; what about the other 99%? According to Gardner, these same forces "are at work today producing an overwhelming majority of outstanding young individuals who are the best weapons democracy has in its arsenal." For them, television serves as "a stimulant to constructive imagination," learning everything from analytical thinking to problem solving. As an example, he tells the story of a nine-year-old who recently submitted a script for a Perry Mason episode; while it reflected what Gardner calls "a juvenile turn of mind," it also indicated a remarkable understanding of plotting a complicated mystery show. "The swing and rhythm of plot development were there, the clue sequence, the motivation." It was so impressive that Gardner's publisher decided to put the script in print. "That couldn't have happened before the days of television," Gardner writes, and not just because television scripts didn't exist. "It couldn't have happened because a nine-year-old child wouldn't have developed that amount of constructive imagination."

Science, astronomy, even the field of law: all will be major beneficiaries of the constructive imagination developed as a result of television. "We learn as we are interested," Gardner writes. "The individual who watches a mystery story unfolding on television and is pitting his wits against those of the detective, is engaged in study." Great scientific discoveries, the understanding of the very solar system, come "because of detective ability, a shrewd reasoning from clues." Concludes Gardner, "[I]f anyone doesn't think this person is learning at a great pace, let him talk with some of the youthful fans who watch the mystery television shows today."

I have a great deal of respect for Gardner's analysis; television served much that function in my own youth. I think even today's television can provide the stimulation needed to develop the imagination, to teach the young to think outside the box, to give them knowledge about various aspects of history, science, and culture. It may not do it as well as it used to, but we should never underestimate the power of television to provide such stimulus - nor should we be afraid to use it more often.

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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 presents a filmed repeat of his show of June 29, 1958 when the entire program was devoted to a performance by the Moiseyev Dance Company.

Allen: Steve's guests are comedienne Martha Raye, magician Mr. Ballantine, singer Danny Staton, and jazz musicians Eddie Condon, Woody Herman and Gerry Mulligan.

It's a special Sullivan show this week, an entire hour with the famed Russian dance troupe during last year's historic tour of the United States, the first cultural offering by the Soviet Union in an exchange program with the U.S. I like Russian dancing, and ordinarily I'd say that this would be good enough to carry the week. On the other hand, Steverino has a top-flight show of his own, and Condon, Herman and Mulligan - not just jazz musicians, but greats (with Allen probably joining in) - is very, very hard to beat. Too hard, I'm afraid; for the second week running, it's Heigh-Ho Steverino.

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It isn't often that we have one television show that was the subject of a book, but such is the case this week, with Sunday afternoon's Omnibus broadcast of "Abraham Lincoln: The Early Years." (4:00 p.m., NBC) The story of this program actually goes back to 1952, the inaugural season of Omnibus, and a series of five films entitled "Mr. Lincoln," written by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author James Agee and directed by the renowned Norman Lloyd. The series was a huge success; one critic called it "the most beautiful writing ever done for television," and another classifies it as "among the finest - perhaps the finest - film about Abraham Lincoln ever made."But as William Hughes' book James Agee, Omnibus, and Mr. Lincoln: The Culture of Liberalism and the Challenge of Television 1952-1953 details, Agee's presentation of Lincoln and the Civil War is not simply a presentation of history; rather, it is an interpretation that was heavily influenced by the times, in particular the Cold War, not to mention Agee's strong personal identification with Lincoln.

As just one example. Hughes examines Agee's treatment of the alleged romance between Lincoln and Ann Rutledge, one of the pivotal stories in the series.. As Agee's Lincoln embarks on his political career, serving in the Illinois legislature, he grows ambivalent about his relationship with Rutledge; in one of their final meetings he "asserts his need for independence," According to Agee, Lincoln has begun to "realize the size of his vocation and the size of his responsibility toward it." In other words, as Hughes puts it, "The gifted must give priority to their gifts," and Lincoln realizes he must "redirect his misplaced love for Ann back onto the people he would serve."*

*As Hughes points out, "Given the writer's powerful identification with his hero, and the conflict between love and vocation in his own life, Agee's reworking of the Ann Rutledge story was a projection that owed as much to his personal story as to Lincoln's."

On the other hand, writes Hughes, the culture of Cold War liberals, prevalent particularly in the TV-Radio Workshop of the Ford Foundation, the underwriter of Omnibus, "were wary of the masses, with their immaturity, their volatility, and their potential susceptibility to totalitarianism," and Agee himself was scornful of what he called "common-man sentimentalists." How to reconcile this attitude with Lincoln's seeming self-sacrifice in order to serve those very people, whom Lincoln calls his "one great concern" and "his surest support"? It can be done only by looking at the environment in existence during the Cold War, and the vision of the heroic leader, the single-combat warrior. It is, after all, a distinctly American tendency, to elevate a single individual to the heights of national savior, the "Leader of the Free World," whether it be Franklin D. Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower, or John F. Kennedy.

Lincoln, therefore, serves as a surrogate for this necessary Cold War leader, and in seeing his growth from small town lawyer in New Salem to something more, Lincoln's words - or, rather, Agee's, since we don't really know how accurate they are - suggest the need for the public to understand the role they must play, that "the common people are capable of collective wisdom, but only when they recognize, nurture, and stand by those uncommonly gifted individuals who emerge in their midst." Perhaps we aren't meant to be moved by Lincoln's words about those who supported him during his formative years, but instead we congratulate those people for realizing Lincoln's nascent greatness and doing what is necessary to nurture it for future greatness. Whew.

What we see this Sunday is a segment of "Mr. Lincoln" entitled "The Early Years," with Royal Dano (St. Peter in King of Kings) as Lincoln and the young Joanne Woodward as Ann Rutledge, narrated by Martin Gabel, which presumably deals heavily with this relationship. Agee's portrayal was controversial even at the time, (host Alistair Cooke read one letter from a viewer that chastised Agee for treating the relationship "as gospel rather than gossip."* In a 1953 episode of Omnibus, Cooke broaches the subject in a debate between Agee (who died in 1955) and Civil War historian Allen Nevins, who said of Agee's characterization of the Lincoln-Rutledge relationship, "Our count against him is simply this: That he has tampered with the truth."

*Of course, we can guess that Agee's real purpose was to use the relationship as a metaphor for his view on Cold War leadership.

In addition to the book, the movie-length, condensed edit of Agee's film is now available on DVD, with one of the extras being the Omnibus debate between Agee and Nevins. As an example of how television's storytelling fits into the large picture of the political, economic, and cultural forces of the time*, this is incomparable.

*On Sunday alone, the topic on Religious Town Hall is "Democracy," and that afternoon Channel 5 has a special called For God and Country, produced by the American Legion.

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You might remember that in last week's TV Guide we read about "The Lost Class of '59," which detailed the controversy around school desegregation in Norfolk, Virginia. This week the focus is on the Second Agony of Atlanta (Sunday, 5:00 p.m., NBC), and a strange law that mandates that if one school desegregates, all public schools in the city must be closed. Now, I've never heard of a law like that, but again, consider the times. Now, however, the people of Atlanta are faced with the choice between integrating and closing the schools. It's appropriate in some ways that this is following Omnibus, because this is the Civil War in practical terms. On the one hand you've got people looking at the Federal government coming in and overturning the laws they've made, the way of life they've lived; on the other, you've got people being discriminated against, feeling as if their own government sees them as the enemy, wondering if anyone will come and rescue them. Setting aside the human element of it for a moment, it strikes at the fundamental question regarding the founding of the United States: who has the power? Under whose rules do the citizens live? Who has the last word? Of course, it's the very human element that makes it all tragic.

This is one reason why by 1959 the relevance of "Mr. Lincoln" is not limited simply to the Cold War. As the debate around civil rights grows, as the Federal government takes a more active role in school desegregation (remember, Brown v. Board occurs only two years after the initial airing of "Mr. Lincoln), the idea of a prophet-leader such as found in Agee's vision of Lincoln takes on even greater social significance. Critics blame Richard Nixon for the creation of the "Imperial Presidency," but I wonder if the hagiography surrounding the life of Lincoln, playing off the larger-than-life presidency of FDR, doesn't have something to do with it as well.

Edward R. Murrow was the host of that Norfolk special; this week, back on Person to Person (Friday, 9:30 p.m, CBS), Murrow has one of the oddest combinations one could ever ask for: "Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro and artist-illustrator Norman Rockwell." The anti-American and the all-American. Not at the same time, of course; that's not the way Person to Person worked, although it's interesting to think of Rockwell sketching an illustration of Castro during the show. Who could have imagined that in the next decade, Castro's Cuba would be the cause of a near-war and implicated in a presidential assassination, while Rockwell would be seen as the chronicler of an America that was old-fashioned and out of touch, one that had ceased to exist.

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"Television Diary," something of a predecessor to The Doan Report, tells us of a spat between, of all people, John Frankenheimer and Art Linkletter. Seems that one of the kids from the Linkletter show wandered on the set of a Playhouse 90 that Frankenheimer was working on, and the director chased him off. Linkletter responded, on-air, that Frankenheimer was "a young genius who takes himself too seriously," who which Frankenheimer replied that Linkletter is "one of the outstanding examples of TV's rush toward mediocrity." The "brickbats," apparently, are still flying. I've always enjoyed Frankenheimer's work, but judging from the defensiveness of his overheated retort, it sounds as if he does indeed take himself a bit too seriously.

And speaking of Playhouse 90, one of the last of the great dramatic anthology series, faces the ax at the end of the season. Finally Hubbell Robinson, speaking for CBS, says that the series will return for the 1959-60 season, but perhaps on a reduced schedule. In fact, the coming season will be the fourth and final for the series, and when it comes to an end so will an era. For now, though, this week's Playhouse 90 ("Child of Our Time") is up against NBC's Hallmark Hall of Fame (Thursday, 8:30 p.m.) presentation of "Berkeley Square," based on the Broadway play and movie of the same name, starring John Kerr and Jeannie Carson; and "introducing" Janet Munro - who appeared in the MST3K fave "The Crawling Eye" and was once married to Ian Hendry, an early partner of Patrick Macnee's John Steed in The Avengers.

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Finally, in the "Late and Exclusive" section, a report that George Burns is doing his show live for the next four weeks, apparently to get over with his contractual commitment to doing six live shows for the season. The report adds that Burns "was 63 years old last Jan. 17." Could they have known then that Burns' career hasn't even reached its high point yet, and that he'll go on performing for another 37 years?  TV