Around the dial

Good morning from Towson, Maryland, where I'm coming to you live today from the Mid Atlantic Nostalgia Convention, our annual pilgrimage where we can talk about old TV and movies without sounding hopelessly out of touch with the rest of the world. Although considering the state of the world today, being out of touch isn't such a bad thing. After all, around here, when people talk about late night television, it's usually either Johnny Carson or a test pattern. And speaking as I was the other day about "old," it's not such a bad thing. Anyway, let's get to it.

At Comfort TV, David gives me the chance to link to someone else promoting me, with his very kind review of Darkness in Primetime. And by the way, have you purchased your copy yet? You do want to be part of the cool crowd, don't you? 

John is back in documentary mode at Cult TV Blog with this look at the infamous "Nine O'Clock Service" experiment in the Church of England; it's a double-header post, because John also tells us about an admirable book that serves as a perfect compliment to the documentary. It makes for disgusting reading; afterward, I felt as if I had to take another shower.

I'm breaking from Roger's A-Team reviews at A View from the Junkyard for his look at "The Computer Wore Menace Shoes," an all-time Simpsons classic featuring Patrick McGoohan's final television performance as the redoubtable Number 6. I'll tell you no more about it; read it for yourself.

At Classic Film and TV Corner, Maddie celebrates an anniversary of a show that both she and I count as a favorite: The Wild Wild West, which premiered 60 years ago. Besides Robert Conrad and Ross Martin, the show was blessed with terrific guest stars, especially Michael Dunn; it also had going for it something increasingly rare on television: an original idea.

In my TV Guide pieces, I've occasionally mentioned Startime, one of the shows from the end of the Golden Age that truly lived up to its name as a home for star-studded spectaculars; at Drunk TV, Paul looks at the 1959 broadcast of "The Jazz Singer," starring Jerry Lewis in a then-rare dramatic role. It's an opportunity to look at a color broadcast from the late 1950s, and worth checking out.

Garry Berman is back with ten great sitcom episodes that seldom get talked about, and it's particularly interesting considering how many of these episodes are from series that we're quite familiar with. Being a completist at heart, it's always nice to go into those deep cuts and see what you come up with.

What's that, you say? Assorted trivia from TV Guide? Well, I'm not going to pass this up, thanks to Martin Grams. I will always say that TV Guide is one of the best time capsules you can find. And speaking of MANC as we were, I'd be remiss if I didn't remind you of the presentation I gave here a few years ago on the very subject of TV Guide as a time capsule!  TV

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This week in TV Guide: May 21, 1966

This week's cover features the stars of CBS's hit steampunk Western-cum-James Bond adventure series The Wild Wild West, Robert Conrad and Ross Martin. Although Conrad is the focal point of the CBS series (he is, after all, the one named West), it is Martin's performance as Artemus Gordon, master of disguise, that remains in the memory years later; Conrad himself freely admitted that Martin brought a warmth and style to his character that complimented and softened Conrad's brash and typically heroic James West, in much the same way that David McCallum did with Robert Vaughn on The Man from U.N.C.L.E. And, much as was the case with McCallum's Illya Kuryakin, Artemus Gordon has built up a fan base of his own, culminating in Leslie Raddatz's profile of "The wild, wild man from The Wild, Wild West." 

Martin, an exceptionally talented actor, has resigned himself to the fact that he'll never be the star, the heroic romantic lead; he was a psychopathic killer in the movie Experiment in Terror with Glenn Ford and Lee Remick, John Vivyan's sidekick Andamo in Mr. Lucky, and one of the regular panelists on Stump the Stars. "I can't say I'm happy being a second banana," he tells Raddatz, although he concedes that the role of Gordon, in which he eventually plays over 100 different characters, is "a show-off's showcase!" So far, he's had the chance to portray "a myopic Viennese geologist, a desert-rat prospector, a hammy Shakespearean actor, a derelict Civil War veteran, an old Swedish railroad worker, a Chinese coolie, a Parisian art connoisseur and President Grant himself." A show-off's showcase, indeed.

The road West hasn't always been a smooth or straight one; as Martin Rosenblatt, a new graduate from the City College of New York in 1940, he took the stage name Mickey Ross and started out in a vaudeville act with a classmate named, ironically, Bernie West. The act focused on topical comedy, and gave him the chance to impersonate contemporary figures such as FDR, Hitler, Ronald Coleman, and even the rooster that figures in the opening credits for the RKO-Pathé newsreel. After settling down and starting a family, the itch to return to acting—the job he wanted all along—became impossible to ignore. He was hired as an actor and announcer at WTOP radio in Washington D.C., where he also served to introduce Arthur Godfrey's daily show. "The first day, after Ross had intoned the introduction in what he considered the proper announcorial tone, Godfrey came on saying, 'Ross Martin —well, la-de-da!' The next morning, Ross made the announcement in an exact take-off of Godfrey’s voice. There was a moment of silence, after which The Great Man merely said, 'Good morning,' which is the way it was from then on."

His big break came when he landed a small part in Peter Gunn, a prototype of the Andamo role he was to take on in Mr. Lucky. Both shows were directed by Blake Edwards, who remembered him, and when Edwards called him six months after Gunn and offered him the job in Mr. Lucky, Martin thought it a joke at first. From there on, the TV and movie roles followed. Although Martin describes himself as "a warm, somewhat talky, even-dispositioned, multi-interested, bright dilettante," he is in fact respected and well-liked by his contemporaries. He has a friendly but somewhat guarded relationship with Conrad, as he did with Vivyan on Mr. Lucky; in fact, most of his friends are from outside of show business. 

Although The Wild Wild West was Martin's best-known role, he remained working in television; in addition to returning as Artemus in two Wild Wild West made for TV movies, he played a recurring villain in Hawaii Five-O, did a wonderful turn as a murderer in Columbo, and even portrayed Charlie Chan in a pilot for a possible series. Oh, by the way, he was also a concert-trained violinist, a talent he was able to employ in an episode of West. He died from a heart attack in 1981 at the much-too-early age of 61, but he left a body of work that continues to entertain today.

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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: singers Maria Cole and Nancy Sinatra; Metropolitan Opera baritone Robert Merrill; the comedy teams of Allen and Rossi, and Stiller and Meara; Elva Miller, a housewife-turned-singer; and the West Point Glee Club.

Palace:  Host Bing Crosby introduces comedian Shelly Berman; singer Leslie Uggams; lyricist Johnny Mercer; the singing King Family; the Three Mecners, Polish acrobats; Mac Ronay, French comic magician; and British vaudevillians Pat Daly and Bill Wayne.

Little-known fact of the week: when the King Family first appeared on The Hollywood Palace, almost two years to the date from this issue, the outpouring of public approval (reportedly 53,000 letters) resulted in them getting their own series. That series has since come and gone, but this week the Kings are back on the Palace. As for the rest of the matchup, on the one hand you have the great Robert Merrill, the occasionally funny Stiller and Meara, the funny-then-but-not-so-much-now Allen and Rossi, and Nancy Sinatra; on the other you have Bing Crosby, Shelly Berman, Leslie Uggams, and Johnny Mercer. Almost a push, but not quite, so we'll Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive and give the nod to the Palace. (Besides, the Kings outnumber the rest of us.)

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Throughout the 60s and early 70s, TV Guide's weekly 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 shows of the era. 

Peter Graves had a considerable body of work to his name prior to Mission: Impossible, including a raft of B-movies that wound up on Mystery Science Theater 3000. As far as television is concerned, though, I'm guessing he was probably best known for Fury. It's interesting, therefore, to get Cleveland Amory's take on one of his lesser-remembered series, the military drama Court-Martial, which co-stars Bradford Dillman. 

Court-Martial is part of the British invasion of American television, produced by Lew Grade's ITC (responsible for British imports ranging from Thunderbirds to The Avengers, The Prisoner, and The Saint), but the focus is on Graves and Dillman, who play Judge Advocate Generals for the United States Army during World War II. It probably has one of the longest gestation periods of any television series, based on a 1963 episode of Kraft Suspense Theatre that also starred Graves and Dillman; however, it was worth the wait. Despite its title, relatively little of the series actually takes place in court; most of the plots focus on the preparation of the case for the defense, with Graves and Dillman rotating leads each week. Unlike the criminal justice system, military justice can be somewhat unforgiving, and the mitigating circumstances that might get you a reduced sentence in a regular court don't count for much here. Frequently, "there’s only one ending possible, an unhappy one." Fortunately, adds Cleve, this is a British production, and "the British have the guts to make those endings possible on your screen."

In addition to the challenging storylines, the series features exciting storylines and excellent performances, from guest stars and leads alike. According to Amory, "Graves, brother of James Arness, is more believable in his role than is Dillman, husband of Suzy Parker." Have no fear, though, for regardless of who plays the lead, "this is the kind of show where even the bad guys are such good actors you feel sorry for them." There used to be some episodes floating around on YouTube and the Internet Archive, although most of them seem to have disappeared; on the other hand, if you're dipping into the grey market, you'll be able to track them down. You just might find it worth your while.

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Saturday begins with some major sporting events, starting at 2:00 p.m. PT as Cassius Clay defends his world heavyweight championship against England's Henry Cooper on ABC's Wide World of Sports, live via Early Bird satellite from Arsenal Stadium in London. Cooper is thought to have a real chance in this fight; he'd knocked Clay down in their previous bout in 1963 before Clay rallied to win. Cooper is a bleeder who cuts easily, though, and after Clay opens up a cut above Cooper's left eye in the sixth round (which would later require 12 stitches to close), the referee stops the bout, with Clay retaining his title. 

Stateside, it's the Preakness Stakes, second jewel of the Triple Crown, with CBS's half-hour coverage beginning at 2:30 p.m. Kauai King, the Kentucky Derby winner, takes the prize here as well, but his Triple Crown hopes will be dashed three weeks hence with a fourth place finish in the Belmont. And, if you're up for it, there's yet another championship boxing match, with José Torres successfully defending his light-heavyweight championship against Wayne Thornton, live from Shea Stadium in New York City (7:30 p.m., KTVU in San Francisco). For the less violent, try the ◀ Miss U.S.A. Beauty Pageant (10:00 p.m., CBS), live-on-tape from the sun-and-fun capital of America, Miami Beach, with June Lockhart, Jack Linkletter, and Pat Boone placing the crown on Hungarian refugee Maria Remenyi, Miss California. 

Sunday night, it's the final first-run episode of Perry Mason, "The Case of the Final Fade-Out" (9:00 p.m., CBS), with (spoiler alert!) Dick Clark as the killer! I love how this episode ends; after everything's wrapped up, Perry, Della, and Paul begin looking over the files of another case. The implication: though the series may be over, Perry's work never ends. A perfect lead-in to an eternity of reruns and TV-movies.

That's followed at 10:00 p.m. by the 18th annual Emmy Awards (CBS), hosted by Danny Kaye in Hollywood and Bill Cosby in New York. The night's big winner is The Dick Van Dyke Show, which takes home four awards, including best comedy series, best actor (Dick Van Dyke), and best actress (Mary Tyler Moore). The other major winners include The Fugitive for best drama, The Andy Williams Show for best variety series, and Frank Sinatra: A Man and His Music as best musical program. The broadcast clocks in at a cool 90 minutes; those were the days.

Monday marks the start of the week, and the start of celebrities' week-long stints on various daytime game shows. It's a pretty good lineup on hand: Peter Lawford and Lee Remick on Password (1:00 p.m., CBS), John Astin and Ruta Lee on You Don't Say! (2;00 p.m., NBC), and Carol Lawrence and Mitch Miller on The Match Game (2:30 p.m., NBC) 

This week marks the 49th birthday of the late John F. Kennedy, commemorated with two specials during the week. On Tuesday, Joseph Cotton narrates "Young Man from Boston" (7:30 p.m., KGO in San Francisco), which follows JFK in his early years, including his days at Harvard, his life as son to Ambassador Joseph Kennedy, his naval career, and the beginning of his life in politics; Gordon MacRae, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and the Kingston Trio provide the music. On Wednesday, Cliff Robertson (who starred as Kennedy in the movie PT 109) narrates "John Fitzgerald Kennedy" (9:00 p.m., KTVU in San Francisco), which picks up with Kennedy as a freshman senator, his election as president, and major events including the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the Berlin Wall. Jim Bishop, author of A Day in the Life of President Kennedy (and future author of The Day Kennedy Was Shot) describes JFK's family life—the sanitized version, one would imagine. Also on Tuesday, CBS presents the second National Drivers Test (10:00 p.m.), and there's a handy answer form in TV Guide for those of you competing at home. Walter Cronkite and Mike Wallace are the hosts.

Opinions have always been split on Gilligan's Island: some thing it's nothing more than a silly sitcom, while others see it as a shrewd satire on the human condition. Thursday's episode (8:00 p.m., CBS) as a little something for everyone, I think: "Scientists believe they've discovered life on Mars, unaware that their space probe veered off course—and that the rocket's TV camera was focused on the castaways' hut. An absurd idea, unless you want to view it as a poke at the gullibility of scientists—which, considering the last few years, may be exactly the way to watch it.

More and more, it seems as if the humor in politics is unintentional, or at least ironic, but there was a time when one could find plenty to laugh about in satirizing our elected officials, and we can see it in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the White House (Friday, 7:00 p.m., in a rebroadcast of a network program from last week, KRCR in Redding). Jack Paar is the host and narrator, which his guests Elliott Reid, Tom Lehrer, the Plaza 9 Players, and the Buster Davis Singers. We could use some laughs like this today, couldn't we?. 

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Speaking of sports, as we were, there's another article of interest in this issue, notable as much for what it doesn't say as for what it does. It's Neil Hickey's "Is There An Athletic Gap?", a look at Sunday night's NBC documentary The Russian Sports Revolution. The question on everyone's mind is why the Soviets have become such a athletic superpower. The reasons given are the standard ones: special training for promising athletes identified at a young age to be groomed for success, governed and subsidized by a government organization called the All-Union Committee for Physical Culture and Sport. "It's a sports-crazy country," sportscaster Jim Simpson says, and international success by Soviet teams and individuals has become a prime weapon in the ongoing Cold War.

Accepting the idea that the Soviet system has its advantages, how can the Americans hope to compete? The ongoing rivalry between the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) and the NCAA is blamed for much of the nation's problems. "We have such a hit-and-miss, shoddy athletic system here it's unbelievable," Simpson says. A special Senate committee investigation produces such a gloomy prognosis that Vice President Humphrey appoints a special arbitration committee in hopes of resolving the intra-organizational dispute.

Doubtless all of this was true, but we now know much more, including the preponderance of performance-enhancing drugs that were used by Eastern bloc countries, especially East Germany. Hormones, steroids, blood doping, and the like were thought responsible for as many as 10,000 athletes, many of whom had no idea they were being turned into addicts by their trainers and coaches. 

There had always been rumors about what the Eastern Europeans were doing; I wonder if any of them made their way into NBC's broadcast?

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Scattered notes from the Teletype: Batman, after just one week, has hit the top 10 in Japan. Johnny Carson begins a five-week vacation in July; Joey Bishop will guest host. And Martin Landau has a recurring guest-star role in the new Mission: Impossible, playing a makeup artist who's a master of disguise.*

*Possibly a descendant of Artemus Gordon?

The thing is, if you watch the first season of M:I, you'll notice that Landau is in every episode, albeit listed as "Special Appearance by"—but how special can it be if he's there every week? In fact, one of the reasons for Landau's expanded presence on the series was that star Steven Hill, an Orthodox Jew, refused to work after 4pm Friday until after sundown Saturday, and Landau's character, who in fact was only supposed to appear as one of several rotating guest stars, took up much of the slack. (Indeed, in several episodes Landau's assignment has little to do with disguise.) Landau himself refused to sign the typical contract in order to maintain availability for feature film work, and didn't become an actual "regular" until the second season, by which time Hill had been replaced by none other than Court-Martial's Peter Graves; at least now we know what he was doing before he joined the Impossible Missions Force.

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Last week, we spent some time looking at the quality of television programming in 1964, and there were a lot of people who felt it wasn't quite up-to-par. This week, Henry Harding looks at it from another perspective, based on a study conducted by the Politz Media Service in the fall of 1965, for which they surveyed 4,020 viewers on their television preferences. Nothing particularly unusual about that; Nielsen's been doing it for quite a while. What Politz did, however, was break down the results by various demographic characteristics*, and the results produced a number of surprises.

*I'm assuming, based on the amount of ink used on this article, that such extensive demographic profiling was fairly uncommon for the time.

For one thing, it appears that education level is not a defining characteristic when it comes to the most popular television programs. Shows that might ordinarily be thought of as "low-brow"—Red Skelton, Gomer Pyle, Lawrence Welk, Ed Sullivan and The Beverly Hillbillies were among the shows cited— were among the most popular programs for college graduates.

In search of an explanation for these seemingly counter-intuitive results, Herbert Kay Research, Inc. came up with some "tentative" conclusions, including: "People of high intelligence tend to like the same programs that people of lower intelligence like." That sounds obvious considering the findings of the Politz poll, but it's interesting nonetheless; we've long heard about how television viewers don't really want intelligent programming. Is this evidence of that, or do intelligent people watch "non-intelligent" shows because that's all that's on?

Ah, you might say, but intelligent shows don't get high ratings because there aren't enough smart people to watch them. Everyone knows smart people have better things to do with their time than watch the boob tube! But you'd be wrong; again, according to Kay Research, "proportionately more people of high intelligence than low were found among those who habitually watch a great deal of television."

I suppose you could argue that TV had already succeeded in dumbing down even the smartest audience.  But it's probably a question we'll never be able to answer.

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MST3K alert: Teen-Age Crime Wave (1955). Three dangerous juvenile delinquents take refuge in the home of a farmer and his family. Tommy Cook, Mollie McCart, Sue England. (Saturday, 1:45 a.m. as part of KGO's All-Night Movies ) Let's see, so far we've had Teen-Age Caveman, Teen-Age Strangler, and Teenagers From Outer Space, so I suppose this would be the natural succession. Our three stars are the three teens holding the family hostage, but of course one of them has to be the weak link, allowing the plot to fail. Well, what did you expect—In Cold Blood? And if those actors are teenagers, then I'm Truman Capote. TV  

This week in TV Guide: April 16, 1966

I can appreciate that some of you are, by now, tired of the continuous references to Vietnam in the TV Guides of this era. If, like me, you lived through that time, you might well prefer not going through it again; on the other hand, if you're too young to remember all that, you might not care about what seems to you like ancient history. 

Nevertheless, the fact that Vietnam is written about so frequently in a television magazine shows how thoroughly it dominated the culture in the second half of the 1960s. Such is the case once again this week, in "A Remarkable Letter from Vietnam,"* written by Jesse Zousmer, ABC's vice president and director of TV news and a veteran newsman, shortly before he and his wife were killed in a plane crash near Tokyo. 

*Which, I should add, has absolutely nothing to do with the pictures of the three beauties from Petticoat Junction that grace the cover.

The letter was written to Elmer Lower, president of ABC News, in an attempt to explain, to him and all ABC staffers concerned, about the problems encountered in covering this war. "It is," he says, "like trying to cover our South in revolt on a bicycle with one correspondent." It is, he continues, being 13 miles from the biggest battle of the day "and not [hearing] a word of it, even though I talked to such as Westmoreland, Kinnard, the 7th commander, Col. Moore and more damn [Public Information Officers] than you could smile at." His point: "They didn’t know either."

You'd better be ready to find your own way around, too. "It is just frequently not possible to get from one base to another. If we score a big victory, the Army will lay on planes for all who want to go. But generally you are on your own. You just show up at the airport and check in." You pack the night before, "the shaving mirror and the anti-insect stuff, the extra everythings, the toilet paper and the candy, the extra towel for around the neck to absorb sweat and keep the sand from settling on your collar and giving you a rash." It's unspeakably hot, especially when the sun comes up; "When it gets noonish, run for the shade." And it's important to stay in constant shape—it's the only way to keep up, and you must keep up.

      Jesse Zousmer

Just as the jeep was the mode of transportation in previous wars, in Vietnam it's the helicopter. "And each time you ride, a gunner sits half out the left and right sides, peering for action. We saw no bullets and heard none. But these kids don’t kid around." The choppers take off and land 24 hours a day, every day. "There are so many you can't ever count what you can see at one time." They take you to a bombed-out jungle—"We are Americans. Where there are jungles, we tear them down. Where there are forests, we level them. Where there are mountains, we cut roads through them. Where there are bomb-blasted tree stumps, we use them as foundations for our construction." One sniper can threaten the whole area; "If he fires one bullet at us, we respond with an arsenal of howitzers and mortars and all those ugly things that have big numbers followed by mm... like 105 mm and 155 mm etc." And there's one motto: "Kill the VC's." [Viet Cong]

The correspondents sleep 15 to a tent with no pillows, no blankets. Cooking is done inside on Coleman stoves; the tent's flaps are down to keep the blackout. "It’s a night of racking coughing, and some guys dreaming out loud." Then, there are the pounding sounds of the heavy guns and the ever-present helicopters. "Let the VC’s fire a gun . . one of our birds someplace up there sees it, and for fun or fear he calls in artillery corrections, etc. God, how the hell the VC’s must feel . . . how hopeless against our power .. . what they must consider our waste ... if they had any comprehension of our costs." (Yeah, probably felt hopeless all the way to victory, right?)  

Zousmer has great admiration for the correspondents reporting from Vietnam, particularly the cameramen lugging their heavy equipment everywhere. "Our guys are superb," he says. "Smiling, helpful, hep, quick, brave." That's nothing compared to what he feels for the soldiers there, though; "veteran soldiers, all kids, all in different kinds of the same clothes, each carrying a different weapon, or a different piece of gear." 

All in all, Zousmer's depiction of covering the war is a depressing one, and that's just for the press; it must have been multiple times worse for the soldiers themselves—miserable conditions in the middle of nowhere, out of contact, not sure why they're there, with even their leaders not sure what's going on. As many have written, before and since, it was a war unlike anything we were used to, and one can only think that the troops showed great courage in the face of it. It's too bad that courage proved to be in a wasted effort.

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During the 60s, the Ed Sullivan Show and The Hollywood Palace were the premiere variety shows on television. Whenever they appear in TV Guide together, we'll match them up and see who has the best lineup.

Sullivan: Ed's scheduled guests: Jimmy Durante; singer Petula Clark; the rock 'n' rolling Animals; opera singers Franco Corelli and Dorothy Kirsten; comic Myron Cohen; Gita Morelly, contortionist; and, in a taped segment, the Swingle Singers, who use jazz rhythms in performing classical music.

Palace: Singer Tony Martin and dancer Cyd Charisse (Mrs. Martin) introduce actor Cesar Romero, who appears in the sketch "At Home with the Martins"; singer Vikki Carr; the comedy team of Rowan and Martin; comedian Norm Crosby; juggler Bobby Winters; and the acrobatic Suns Family. 

Tough call this week. I like a lot of Ed's lineup, from Durante to a really good lineup of singers (including Petula Clark, who's identified in the listing as "Pet" Clark), and Myron Cohen, who generally has a very funny routine. On the other hand, I also like Rowan and Martin, and Norm Crosby (although I know some people don't like his schtick), and I'd enjoy seeing the skit with Cesar Romero and the Martins. And if Cyd Charisse dances, well, that's a bonus. So what would you do? As Crow T. Robot would say, "If you're past midfield, go for it. Or just punt." That's what I'm going to do—punt. This week is a Push.

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Throughout the 60s and early 70s, TV Guide's weekly 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 shows of the era. 

The Wild' Wild West is, Cleveland Amory says, for those who appreciate the good old days, the "post-Civil War times when men were men and women were women and there weren't any teen-agers at all." And while the show's two stars, Robert Conrad and Ross Martin, are pretty good, what's really wild about it are the gadgets. I mean, who among us wouldn't want our man cave to be a pool hall with one ball that turns into a smoke bomb, and two cues that turn into, respectively, a rapier and a gun? Or to walk around with a pistol in the heel of our shoes, bullets in the belt buckle, and secret pockets with keys to open every door? Says Cleve, "The only thing lacking to make a real vacation of it was credit cards."

Of course it requires a certain suspension of disbelief—what action series, then or now, doesn't?—it's also true that the action keeps you on your toes enough that you won't have time to notice it. And, after all, why should we be in any doubt about a plot to assassinate a Supreme Court justice masterminded by a master puppeteer operating a world of steam-filled puppets under the sea, assisted by a beautiful girl puppet who turns out to be a real woman? Or an episode starring Nehemiah Persofff, who turns out to be Victor Buono in disguise? Admit it: considering the headlines we're subjected to every day in the news, does this really seem to be that implausible? It makes a hell of a lot more sense than anything I've read online lately.

What's most implausible, Amory says, is the title. Originally it was to be called The Wild West, but "some genius upstairs had the wild idea of calling it The Wild, Wild West." Which was pretty stupid, since the hero's name is West and it is a Western. It should have been called The Wild West West. But who, I ask you, would believe a series with a title like that?

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The entertainment highlight of the week is the 38th Academy Awards, hosted once again by Bob Hope, and broadcast for the first time in color! (Monday, 7:00 p.m. PT, ABC) George Christy, in this week's cover story, makes a compelling case for the idea that the best show actually happens off camera. (Considering what the Oscarcast has become over the last few years, one would hope this is still the case.) Take 1961, for example, when Mitzi Gaynor, scheduled to interview the winners, was left waiting because Best Actress winner Elizabeth Taylor had passed out in the ladies' room. "Poor Mitzi was left on camera with egg on her face," says producer-director Dick Dunlap, doing this year's show for the sixth time; "Nobody bothered to say much to her; all the action was backstage" with people, including the other winners, off looking for Liz.

Costume consultant Edith Head, an eight-time Oscar winner for costume design, announces the red carpet arrival on television and radio, and always checks the stars' gowns at the Sunday afternoon dress rehearsal. But it seems as if some of the stars are determined to defy her; "Come evening, when the show is in progress, Edith, looking at her notes, announces, 'Here comes Judy Garland in black velvet'—only Judy has switched at the last minute to red silk, and when Edith looks up, she feels like a goon," Dunlap recounts grimly. 

No article on off-camera drama would be complete without recounting the 1963 Oscars, and the clash between Joan Crawford and Bette Davis. Both women, who had co-starred in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, were scheduled presenters; in addition, Davis had been nominated for Best Actress for the movie, while Crawford (who had not been nominated) had agreed to accept for Anne Bancroft—nominated for The Miracle Worker—should she win. "There are only two large dressing rooms backstage," Dunlap explains. "Sinatra [that year's host] was automatically assigned one, and who do you think took over the other? Joan, of course, who moved right in with two Pepsi-Cola coolers, a portable bar stocked with champagne and booze, and a buffet table." Dunlap arranged for Davis to use Sinatra's dressing room to wait in, and as Maximillian Schell began to read the names of the nominees, the drama rose to peak pitch, leaving Dunlap with a decision to make. "[T]here is a desperation between actresses to win. [Bette would have been the first three-time Best Actress winner.] And Joan was not even a nominee, but if Anne Bancroft won, she would save face and dazzle the audience. For a second, I debated: Should I show the scene to the viewers? I decided I couldn’t—it would have been cruel."

In the end, Schell ripped open the envelope—and announced Anne Bancroft's name. "Joan instantly stood erect—shoulders back, neck straight, head up. She stamped out her cigaret butt, grabbed the hand of the stage manager, who blurted afterward that she 'practically broke all my fingers with her strength.' Then she soared calmly on-stage with that incomparable Crawford composure. Backstage, Bette bit her cigaret and seemed to stop breathing. Joan was out there; suddenly it was her night." Now, how could anything on-screen hope to compete with that?

As far as this year's broadcast is concerned, it's become fashionable for nominees to be no-shows, so only two of the Best Actor nominees are present: Lee Marvin for Cat Ballou, and Rod Steiger, for The Pawnbroker. Either would be worthy winners, but it's Marvin who takes home the prize. He joins Julie Christie, who wins Best Actress for Darling, and Robert Wise, Best Director for the year's Best Picture, The Sound of Music. 

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Sometimes we run into one of those "where are they now" moments, when we read about someone who was supposed to become the Next Big Thing but instead turned out to be someone we've never heard of, who has an IMDb listing of one or two lines. It happens in the sports world as well as the entertainment business, as we see in the ABC News documentary The Big Guy (Saturday, 10:30 p.m., KOVR in Sacramento), a profile of heavyweight boxer Jim Beattie. The show covers Beattie's preparation for an upcoming fight against journeyman Dick Wipperman at Madison Square Garden in New York.  Beattie, who weighs in at 6' 9" and 240, is touted as a future contender for the heavyweight crown, but the fight against Wipperman, who comes in with 26 wins in 30 fights, is a major step up. 

In the fight, Wipperman gives Beattie a tough battle before Beattie scores a TKO in the seventh round. Beattie's rise in the rankings finally comes to an end in 1968 when he's knocked out by heavyweight contender Buster Mathis; after losing his following fight, he steps away from the sport. Although he makes a comeback in 1976, fighting on local cards in his hometown of St. Paul, Minnesota, he retires for good in 1979 with a career record 0f 40-10, never really fulfilling that early promise. His closest whiff of the crown coming in the 1970 James Earl Jones movie The Great White Hope, where Beattie plays "the Kid"—as you can find in IMDb. 

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Elsewhere in sports, Saturday is the season debut of the baseball Game of the Week (11:00 a.m., NBC), with the New York Yankees taking on the Baltimore Orioles, led by their newest addition, former National League MVP Frank Robinson. In October, the Orioles will win the World Series, while Robinson wins the Triple Crown and American League MVP. Meanwhile, on Sunday it's the first game of the NBA Finals (11:00 a.m., ABC), as the defending champion Boston Celtics host the Los Angeles Lakers. It's the tenth consecutive appearance in the finals for the Celtics, seeking their eighth straight title; although the Lakers win game one in overtime, 133-129, the Celtics come out on top in a thrilling seven-game series.

Monday sees the debut of The John Bartholomew Tucker Show (weekdays, 3:30 p.m., KPIX in San Francisco). Tucker comes from radio, where he worked for WJZ in Baltimore, hosts this live "variety show for happy people," with former Miss Minnesota Sharon Carnes and the Ralph Sharon Trio; guest on this opening show is Jimmy Dean. By the way, for those of you who remember NBC's radio program Monitor, Tucker was one of the final two communicators with the show when it ended in 1975.

Fred Astaire concludes a rare dramatic television role on Dr. Kildare (Tuesday, 8:30 p.m., NBC), in the conclusion of a four-part story, in which he plays pool shark Joe Quinlan, reunited with his seriously ill daughter, a nun (Laura Devon). By this time Kildare is a half-hour series, broadcast twice weekly, so the story isn't really as long as it might seem; it's really a two-hour story spread out over four episodes. In tonight's final episode, Quinlin—himself suffering from a heart ailment—insists on leaving the hospital to play in a big-stakes tournament, with plenty of stress.

Wednesday, Danny Thomas returns with another in his series of variety specials, a spoof of the Bing Crosby-Bob Hope "Road" movies (9:00 p.m., NBC). It all begins on The Today Show, where Crosby tells Hugh Downs that he doesn't want Hope as his co-star in his latest movie, The Road to Lebanon. Danny Thomas would be perfect," Crosby says. "He's younger, fresher, and Lebanese." Claudine Auger, the Bond Girl in Thunderball, rounds out the cast (no pun intended). 

Horrors! The Howells find out from a radio broadcast that they're not legally married, in a traumatic Gilligan's Island (Thursday, 8:00 p.m., CBS). Without looking this episode up, I'm willing to bet that the solution to this awkward situation is to have the Skipper marry them, since we all know that ship's captains are authorized to perform marriages, right? Wrong! According to the always-reliable Wikipedia (which I verified by watching an episode of Perry Mason), a ship's captain does not have the legal right to officiate a wedding at sea, unless he's either a judge, a justice of the peace, a minister, or a Notary Public. (Hey—you could have been married by me back in the day!) Now, it is true that most Princess Cruise captains have Bermuda licenses to perform weddings, so you can get married on certain Princess ships. But you have to go to a judge and swear that everything in the documentation is accurate. There are various theories as to how the trope came into being, but it's not worth going into now; if you're planning to get married at sea in the near future, I'll leave it to you to check things out beforehand.

On Friday, it's the fourth and final movie in the series of UN dramas shown on ABC over the last three years, The Poppy is Also a Flower (7:30 p.m.). The series, which I wrote about here, dramatizes (or propagandizes, depending on your point of view) the vital role played in the world by the UN—in this case, the fight against the international drug trade. Like the others, tonight's movie is sponsored by Xerox and presented without commercial interruption, and features a true all-star cast from top to bottom: directed by three-time James Bond director Terence Young, based on a story idea by Ian Fleming, introduced by Princess Grace of Monaco, and starring (among others) E.G. Marshall, Trevor Howard, Angie Dickinson, Yul Brynner, Rita Hayworth, Marcello Mastroianni, Omar Sharif, Barry Sullivan, and Eli Wallach. It makes my fingers hurt just to list them all.

Also on Friday, it's the final episode of Sammy Davis Jr., ill-fated variety show (8:30 p.m., NBC). I wrote about some of the show's challenges here; although Davis would buckle down in an effort to right the ship, it came too late to save it from the chopping block. Tonight's show is, quite possibly, the best of the series: a one-man show starring Sammy, which you can see here.

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MST3K alert: The Amazing Colossal Man (1957) After being burned in a plutonium explosion, an Army colonel starts growing at the rate of 10 feet per day. Glenn Langan, Cathy Downs. (Wednesday, 5:00 p.m., KGO in San Francisco) Unfortunately, since the rights to use the movie expired, you can no longer see the MST3K version, except on YouTube. However, you can still catch the unwanted, unasked-for sequel, War of the Colossal Beast, with a completely different cast. Take it from me: if you've seen one colossal man, you've seen them all. TV  

Around the dial

There's a wealth of interesting informatin out there just waiting to be had, so let's have it!

This year's Mid-Atlantic Nostalgia Convention was an unfortunate victim of the Wuhan virus, but fear not: thanks to Martin and Michelle Grams' ingenuity, this year's convention goes online with highlights from previous years. The virtual MANC runs Friday and Saturday, September 25 and 26, and can be seen through Sunday at the MANC Facebook page. Included among the presentations is my good friend Carol Ford's 2015 talk about Bob Crane, one that sets the record straight on a lot of misrepresentations regarding Bob's life. 

The Hitchcock Project continues exploring the works of Harold Swanton at bare•bones e-zine, and this week Jack's focus is on the seventh-season episode "The Twelve-Hour Caper," starring Dick York. How well did Swanton adapt the original short story by Mike Marmer? Read and find out.

At Comfort TV, David looks at the delightful Twilight Zone episode "A Nice Place to Visit" and Couture's painting “The Romans of the Decadence,” and places them within the context of today's confusing times. Make time to read a very incisive piece.

Having just interviewed William Bartlett about his book NBC and 30 Rock, I'm in kind of an NBC frame of mind. Jodie has the answer to that at Garroway at Large with an update on her Dave Garroway bio. This is a book I'm really looking forward to when it comes out. 

At this week's Cult TV Blog, it's John's turn to take the trip across the pond, and it's no surprise when the show is The Wild Wild West, a series that is reminiscent in many ways of The Avengers. As John says of "The Night of the Lord of Limbo," what's not to love about a story that combines time travel and magic?    

It doesn't seem possible that the sitcom The Odd Couple turns 50 this year, because that reminds me of how old I'm getting. Be that as it may, Terence looks back at the legendary comedy at A Shroud of Thoughts. It's enough to make me forget my age. TV  

What I've been watching: February 2020

Shows I’ve Watched:	Shows I’ve Bought:
The Wild Wild West	Doctor Who: The Moonbase
Star Trek: The Original Series	Doctor Who: The War Games
The Outer Limits

It’s often said that nostalgia is a way of reliving the past; detractors often accuse us of simply living in the past, as if we refuse to avoid or inhabit the present. I suppose I’d have to consult one of the doctors on The Eleventh Hour to find out the truth of that, not that I don’t on occasion get nostalgic for the days when I had more hair and carried fewer pounds. But then, you don’t want to hear me natter about a post-midlife crisis, or any such nonsense. You came here to read about old television shows, and by golly, I’m going to do my best to satisfy that desire.

Let’s take The Wild Wild West, for example. It’s the leadoff program on our Friday night viewing, having filled a role once occupied by The Man from U.N.C.L.E., and I link those two series deliberately, because they have a lot in common. Both series ran for four seasons, in each case the first season being black-and-white. Both owed a considerable debt to the success of the James Bond movie franchise; both featured a dynamic duo of suave agents dedicated to combating some kind of ridiculous, overly-complicated plot for world domination constructed by an absurdly colorful, egomaniacal villain living on the wrong side of sanity. In both shows the second banana served to soften the edges of the actor playing the hero, allowing the emergency of a humanity that might not otherwise be apparent to the viewer. And, most relevant to this discussion, neither The Wild Wild West nor The Man from U.N.C.L.E. are series that I watched regularly when they were originally on. It’s true that I might have been a bit young for them when they first started, but certainly by the time each series went off the air, I would have matured enough to enjoy the fast-paced action, the outrageous storylines, and the beautiful women that were hallmarks of the two.

So why didn’t I? I’m not entirely certain. It’s possible that the adults in the household wanted to watch something else, although I seem to have a vague memory of being told to watch U.N.C.L.E. once when I was bored and fussy, the idea being that this was the kind of show I ought to be enjoying. Certainly, at that age the most important thing on television for me was sports, but it’s impossible to think that there would have been a game on every single night that these programs aired. Barring some kind of regression therapy to take me back to the past, which might not answer these questions and certainly wouldn’t help me either grow hair or lose weight, I’m afraid we may never know.

I’m off on another tangent, aren’t I? All right, let’s get back to the point. If it’s true that I didn’t watch either of these shows back in the day, then it’s hard to accuse me of trying to relive the past by watching them now. Perhaps the best way to put it is that I’m trying to understand the past, particularly an era that for some reason continues to fascinate me. If this is what I’m doing, then I’m also discovering the added benefit that I enjoy both of these shows immensely.

The Wild Wild West stars Robert Conrad as James West and Ross Martin as Artemus Gordon, agents of the United States Secret Service working under the direction of President Ulysses S. Grant. We don’t often see Grant in the series, because their job isn’t to protect him bodily, but to foil plots that are usually aimed at toppling the United States government. West is the more prominent of the two, which you can tell right away because his name is part of the title (hence, the implicit pun, because West does indeed lead a wild, wild life), in the same way that Robert Vaughn was the titular Man from U.N.C.L.E. West is fast with his fists, with words, and with the ladies, which usually puts him in a fair degree of danger each week. And although he seems to specialize in extricating himself from these threats, it’s a good thing that he has Gordon, a master of disguise and dialect, backing him up.

Gordon, although he seems to spend a good amount of time unconscious as the result of the villain or his henchmen, is a good second to West for a couple of reasons. First, his disguises often allow him in to the villain’s lair, where he proves to be both clever and a tough customer to deal with, occasionally bailing West out at the last moment. Perhaps more important to us as viewers, though, Ross Martin performs that service I mentioned back at the outset: as David McCallum does with Robert Vaughn in U.N.C.L.E., Martin helps to soften and humanize Robert Conrad, who can often come across as abrasive and arrogant, without threatening his status as the show’s star. In West, Conrad’s ego is put to good use, as Conrad displays the confidence necessary for a hero, and his insistence on doing his own stunts is both effective and very impressive. The chemistry between Conrad and Martin, in fact, is one of the show’s best traits; although we’re not quite sure what the relationship is supposed to be at the outset, when the two agents refer to each other as “James” and “Artemus,” by the end of the first season they’ve become “Jim” and “Artie,” and their loyalty and devotion to each other is as great as that which they both show to their government.

I’d be way off base if I didn’t follow up on those colorful villains for a moment, the most famous and best-loved of them being the sinister Dr. Miguelito Loveless, played wonderfully by Oscar-nominee Michael Dunn. His appearances, from the very first, are one of the show’s highlights, but the over-the-top performances by various well-known actors each week ensure that West and Gordon face worthy rivals, to keep the show from descending into a complete cartoon.

I deliberately scheduled both The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and The Wild Wild West as Friday viewing not only because it’s historically accurate, but because they’re the perfect antidote to the workweek. After slaving over a desk for five days, who wouldn’t be happy to come home to such pleasant, reassuring company on the screen? It’s the perfect way to start a weekend.

My wife considers herself a purist when it comes to Star Trek: The Original Series, and so the enhanced special effects that come with the restored set didn't hold a lot of interest for her. We got the Blu Ray edition, though, because there was a sale going on at Amazon, and it seemed like the right thing to do. And boy, does it make a difference! It would be hyperbole to say that the new effects blew us away, because we're experienced television viewers who've seen a lot of special effects in the day, but it's difficult to describe how they bring Star Trek into, well, the present. It gives one the feeling of how it must have been to watch them during the original network run, even though they're much clearer now than they ever would have been then.

Original effects on the left, enhanced on the right

But for all that, the effects don't overpower what made the original Trek such compelling viewing. One of the things I always find interesting in these early episodes is how easy it could have been, as someone said, for the series to turn into The Mr. Spock Hour. He's an amazing character, even though he's not quite a finished product, with a superb portrayal by Leonard Nimoy. William Shatner, of course, is Captain Kirk, and these early episodes emphasize two things: the humanity of the man, and I don't mean that as charity, although that is present as well, but talking about the value of being fully human, something that neither machine nor Vulcan can replicate; and the importance to him of the Enterprise. As Harry Mudd tells one of his women, a Starfleet captain is married to his ship, and Kirk is a perfect example of this. DeForest Kelley's Dr. McCoy completes the trio that remains beloved for decades. All that, and special effects that are, dare we say it, out of this world? No, let's simply say that, like Baby Bear's porridge, they're just right.

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I've alluded to it in the past, but I might as well make it obvious here: the only Doctor Who I'm interested in is the classic series. I'll live with Ecclestone, Tennant, Smith and Capaldi (and John Hurt as the War Doctor), but that's as far as it goes. You can probably figure out who I've left off that list, but from what I've read, I haven't missed anything in the last couple of years.

That's a discussion for another day, though. After all, the name of this feature is "What I've Been Watching," not "What I Haven't Been Watching." Allow me to mention two new acquisitions I haven't had the chance to watch—yet. With an opening on the Saturday night viewing horizon, it's time to begin planning a start-to-finish viewing of Doctor Who—the first time since I originally saw them 30-some years ago. One of the reasons I haven't done that yet is that I haven't yet succeeded in replacing my old VHS versions with DVDs. And in case you haven't checked lately, the price of some Doctor Who discs is off the wall, bec ause they've gone out of print in the United States. They haven't in England, however, and because 1) I happen to have a region-free DVD player, and 2) the Region 2 discs are less expensive, I've been filling in the gaps, particularly in my Patrick Troughton collection.

The Troughton era suffered greatly from the BBC's policy of wiping video tapes in order to reuse them; until the last few years, less than a dozen of his stories had survived, and the balance existed only as telesnaps, a combination of the original soundtracks (they survived the purge) and still photos that had been taken, as I recall, during episode rehearsals. However, in the past few years copies of additional stories have turned up, found in the storerooms of former British colonies, and storiesthat only partially existed were completed by animating the missing episodes.

With the addition of The Moonbase and The War Games (the final Troughton story), I only have two more to buy; then I'll have the full Hartnell and Troughton collections. I figure that will take over a year to go through, by which time I'll be able to fill in some more gaps down the line. Providing coronavirus doesn't get me, I might get the complete series one of these days. And you'll read about it here. TV