Every so often, we encounter one of these "Week to Watch!" issues, when television is filled with big-name, marquee-value specials. Back in the 1960s, they frequently happened around Thanksgiving, but nobody's waiting around this year! Most of this week's issue is devoted to backstage looks at the feature presentations, so let's get right to it and see just how special this week really is!
The week starts with
Saturday's
Ernie Kovacs Special (8:30 p.m. ET, ABC), one of the comedian's monthly appearances, sponsored by Dutch Masters Cigars. Kovacs, in an article accompanying the special, describes it as "a half hour composed of Beethoven's Fifth, a girl in a bathtub, an interview with Horace Gridley, the noted molester, and Stravinsky's 'Firebird Suite.'" Scattered throughout, he continues, are blackouts done to the tune of "Mack the Knife" (in the original German," plus "Mona Lisa" sung in Polish, and a section of the program devoted to "Sex and Violence." There are also "some complimentary phrases dedicated to Dutch Masters Cigars." And lest anyone think Kovacs isn't responsible for the content, "I direct the show. I also write and produce the show. Do you realize how much money I would be making if this show had any kind of decent budget?!" It's an absolutely delightful half hour, available on DVD in the Ernie Kovacs collection put out a few years ago by Shout!
Sunday bring a triple-header of specials, beginning with
The World of Bob Hope (7:30 p.m., NBC), which is
not the typical Bob Hope special we've all come to know and love; instead, it's a documentary look at Hope, narrated by Alexander Scourby, that not only reviews his show-biz career, but gives us a glimpse at what life is like for Hope on the road, interacting with friends, and talking about her personal and private life. That's a good lead-in to
The DuPont Show of the Week (10:00 p.m., NBC), which features none other than Joan Crawford, narrating "The Ziegfeld Touch," a look at the legendary producer and impresario. The documentary combines vintage film clips featuring stars of various Ziegfield Follies shows, including Fanny Brice, Eddie Cantor, Will Rogers, and W.C. Fields, and contemporary performances by musical-comedy performers, recreating performances from the era.
Now, if you're not in the mood for this, I recommend the David Susskind-produced adaptation of Graham Greene's novel
The Power and the Glory (9:00 p.m., CBS), with a sterling cast topped by Sir Laurence Olivier, and co-starring George C. Scott, Julie Harris, Martin Gabel, Roddy McDowall, Keenan Wynn, Patty Duke, Cyril Cusack, and others. (It's really too bad they couldn't have gotten some bigger names, isn't it?) The star, of course, is Olivier, who won an Emmy the previous year for "The Moon and Sixpence." Booton Herndon's profile of Sir Laurence is an admiring one, though he doesn't shy away from the actor's faults, including two spectacular and very public divorces.
But the man often referred to as the world's greatest actor comes off as sincere and unpretentious, admired by his colleagues and those who work with him (Keenan Wynn made two cross-country trips just to shoot one scene with Olivier "Because this guy is the greatest", and a valet remembers Olivier waiting around for an hour after a shoot in order to give the man a ride back to Manhattan), and his dedication to his craft is without question (he spent days just working on the Latin accent he used in the production). History records that
The Power and the Glory, which tells the story of a "whisky priest" in Mexico during the Catholic persecution, will fall short of its lofty ambition; Greene himself hated the adaptation, and critics gently chided Olivier for a tendency to ham it up at times. Nevertheless, its themes of faith, human frailty, and redemption are timeless, and the thought of a special like this appearing on commercial television today is just a dream. And you can
see it all here, including the original commercials.
On
Friday, James Arness is the unlikely host for
The Chevrolet Golden Anniversary Show (8:30 p.m., CBS), a variety special celebrating the 50th anniversary of the American auto manufacturer. These anniversary shows used to be quite common; the
Ford 50th Annivesary Show, nearly a decade earlier, not only ran
two hours, it was broadcast on both CBS and NBC simultaneously.* Many of us have seen clips from this show, as well as
The Edsel Show, which didn't commemorate an anniversary but did celebrate the launch of Ford's new automobile. (Only retrospectively does it look like a special covering the christening of the Titanic.) Anyway, back to Chevy; this "fun-filled" hour looks back at comedy and songs from the last 50 years, and features a lineup including Art Carney, Nanette Fabray, Tony Randall, Allen Case, and Eileen Rodgers. Now, if Matt Dillon ends the show by gunning down Henry Ford at high noon, I'm tuning in.
*
It should be pointed out that at the time (1953), neither network covered 100 percent of the country, necessitating a multi-network purchase to cover the whole nation. l l l
Granted, after all this, anything else is likely to pale, but there is certainly more worth watching: for instance, who could pass up John Carradine as "a half-crazed old man" (is there any other kind? I say this, of course, as a half-crazed old man myself) scaring Tom Poston and Elizabeth Montgomery with talk of vampires and such on
Monday's
Thriller episode "Masquerade" (10:00 p.m., NBC), which
you can watch here. And on
PM East . . . PM West (11:15 p.m., WBZ), Mike Wallace and Joyce Davidson's guests are monster and horror figures from the movies, including
Theodore, movie host
John Zacherle, "Famous Monsters" editor
Jim Warren, and producer Mike Ripps. By the way, did I happen to mention that the next day is Halloween?
Perhaps it's interesting only to me, but Tuesday's ABC News Closeup! (10:00 p.m.) on "The Awesome Servant" seems to strike a chord with today's world. It deals with the growing trend toward automation in industry, the unemployment it has caused, and the fear engendered in those losing their jobs. The special includes looks at a meat processing plant and a data processing center, and how jobs have been both lost and created in the process. Most of us are, I trust, familiar with the effects AI is having on various industries, from acting to writing; I've known several of my writing colleagues who've lost jobs because they've been replaced by AI. Like so many things, there's no easy solution to this problem; it's also clearly a situation that continues to replicate itself over and over again, in every era and generation.
Wednesday's daytime rerun of
I Love Lucy (10:30 a.m., CBS) is highlighted by a rare television appearance from William Holden, playing himself in a classic episode in which he meets Lucy, who's wearing a fake nose. We all remember that one, don't we? There's also a very funny takeoff on
The Untouchables, entitled "The Unscratchables," on
Top Cat (8:30 p.m., CBS), involving a gang of jewel thieves (fresh from the Louvre, perhaps?) who hide their stolen loot in T.C.'s garbage can.
Speaking of can, the question is whether or not William Shatner can bail himself out of trouble in an episode of Dr. Kildare that finds him being sued for malpractice after a patient he treated and released dies afterward. (Thursday, 8:30 p.m., NBC) Will Shat discover that the Kobayashi Maru doesn't work in Blair General and that he's going to have to act his way out of this one? Tune in tonight and find out.
And on Friday, Dinah Shore welcomes Dean Martin and Donald O'Connor to the spot she shares on an every-other-week basis with The Bell Telephone Hour. (9:30 p.m., NBC) Ironic, isn't it, that' just an hour before we were celebrating the anniversary of the company she used to shill for, Chevrolet? You can still see the U.S.A. in your Chevrolet, apparently, just not with Dinah. And what fun would that be?
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This week Gil Seldes gives us his opinion on two of television's legendary series,
The Twilight Zone and
Alfred Hitchcock Presents. One of the reasons I enjoy reading contemporary reviews of classic series is that, over time, such programs can become so wound up in reputation that it becomes difficult to, as John Ford might say, separate the fact from the legend. The good news, for fans of both shows, is that for the most part they live up to their reputation.
Serling has described episodes of
TZ as being mostly "far out," which is just fine with Seldes: "I, who am not even a mild addict of science fiction, find I like the far-outs better. In those,
The Twilight Zone not only kids me, it kids itself. In the others, it gets all solemn and allegorical." As an example of the former, he cites a pair of well-known episodes:
◀ "A World of His Own," in which Keenan Wynn plays a novelist who brings his characters to life through a tape recorder; and "The Arrival," with Harold J. Stone as an investigator who can't crack the case of an airliner that lands without any passengers or crew. Seldes praises the ending, with Stone's desperate cry of despair, as "magnificent." Less successful is one of the "important" episodes, "Two," with Charles Bronson and Elizabeth Montgomery as the last two survivors of a world war. It was, says Seldes, little more than "boy meets girl." Turning to
Hitchcock, there is "The Changing Heart," with a clock-maker (Abraham Sofaer) who can't bear the thought of his daughter (Anne Helm) leaving him, and "Specialty of the House," a darkly humorous story of cannibalism, with Robert Morley and Kenneth Haigh.
"At their best," Seldes writes," both of these programs are first-class entertainment and they are always well-made and thank heaven no one has inflated them beyond their proper length, which is half an hour." Of course,
The Twilight Zone would go to an hour for its fourth season (a story in inself), but the half-hour format is perfect for these tales; "I have in recent weeks seen three hour-long dramatic shows which among them hardly contained more entertainment than a single show of either of these."
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I'm well aware that not everyone will find a certain item as interesting as I do, and I do sometimes write about particular issues multiple times. Yet, that's the way of it as a historian; you trace certain significant trends as they evolve through the years, as a means of measuring their impact on whatever it is that you write about. This week, that issue is television sponsorship, as seen by the editors.
A recent FCC hearing "confirmed what everyone knew all along: Many sponsors censor their shows." It's not
necessarily as nefarious as it might sound; sponsors, risk-averse as always, seek to avoid "anything that might offend potential customers or place their products or companies in a bad light." And that's an understandable position, one for which you can hardly fault them, given that they're spending millions in support of their product. The threat comes when things get out of hand, and when writers and producers start to self-censor in an effort to proactively appease the sponsor, in which case "the result is bound to be bland, unimaginative programming." (Ask Rod Serling about the effects of sponsor pressure.)
So who's to blame, if not the sponsors, nor the content creators? It is, according to the editors, "a television system which permits an advertiser to decide upon, and to buy, the editorial material that surrounds his advertising." An advertiser can't do that in newspapers or magazines, and "television can't possibly be an independent, mature communications medium until he can't do it there either." The answer, ironically, could lie in the rising costs of television production, which is increasingly requiring multiple sponsors for a broadcast. The more sponsors a show has, the less influence any one sponsor can have on that show's content. Still, recent episodes of The Defenders and Bus Stop encountered significant opposition from a sponsor who threatened to withdraw sponsorship from both episodes. Will the producers of these shows seek "safer material" as a result?
What is the relevance for today's television? Well, oftentimes, ad time is sold through brokers, meaning that the sponsor might not even have an active role in determining what programs they sponsor. For this reason, sponsorship boycotts, while they may be good for headlines, often have no impact on overall content unless a program becomes too toxic for anyone to touch. On the other hand, in an era of corporate activism, one can't rule out coordinated efforts by various sponsors to influence programming. The real test comes when a network makes decisions that appear to be at odds with the network's own priority, which is presumably achieving successful ratings in a given demographic. When that metric begins to take a back seat, then we'll know there's something to worry about.
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I mentioned at the outset that this issue is dominated by the week's special programming, but there's still room for mention of a serious topic: whether or not television is being used as a "scapegoat" for social ills. Edward Walsh, the Patterson Professor of Journalism at Fordham University, thinks it is, and says that those who put down television need to take a good look in the mirror first. If, as Walsh suggests, television bears some responsibility for the sharp rise in juvenile delinquency in the nation, is it solely TV's fault? Or, as Walsh suggests, should the parents who "lash out at television as the great debaser of modern society" take a closer examination at the programming they watch? For "it's their viewing habits that set the pattern for those of their children, at least up to the age of 10."
Walsh refers to what he calls "a triangle of responsibility" regarding mass media, involving the government, the media themselves, and the public. Each bears a particular obligation to see to it that mass media remains a responsible part of society. And yet there's another triangle, one that has been around much longer and goes to "the very core of our society": the church, the school, and the home. Each of these has greater responsibility than that of the government or the media, but so far they've escaped the bulk of the blame. And that's not right, says Walsh; according to Fr. J. Franklin Ewing, an anthropologist at Fordham, "Culture is not an inhuman juggernaut. The participants in a culture are individuals. If errors, inadequacies or dangers appear to you to exist in TV,
you are the one to do something about this."
Indeed, writes Walsh, "Television content is a symptom of our social problems more than it is a cause of them. We may decry the great incidence of violence in the medium, but we must also remember that the age of mass communication has been an age characterized by violence." To the extent that television reflects the world in which it exists, "Can our society condemn television without condemning itself?"
Furthermore, there's the question of those who use television as a babysitter or pacifier. According to Dr. Wilbur Schramm, Director of the Institute for Communication Research at Stanford University, "If we do not introduce our children to books, simply because television is so easily available, then we are being foolish. If we do not help our children to build up healthy contacts with other humans their own age, simply because television 'keeps them at home,' then we are truly doing them an unkindness." One could, I suppose, say the same thing about social media.
Parents must take responsibility for their duties as parents: keep informed of what's on TV, and carefully supervise what their children watch. If this results in them developing good taste in programming, their influence will help elevate the quality of the content. "That is a long-range job," he concludes, "but most jobs worth doing are long range."
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MST3K alert: Plan Nine from Outer Space (1956) Reports of flying saucers terrify San Fernando Valley. Bela Lugosi, Vampira. (Saturday, 11:15 p.m., WPRO in Providence) Now, you didn't think we'd pass up the opportunity to spotlight one of the worst, if not
the worst, movies ever made? It's never better than in the Rifftrax edition—featuring a
colorized version of
Plan 9—in which our heroes play off the energy from a live audience to deliver a memorable interpretation of this epic failure. Who could ask for anything more?
TV
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