This week in TV Guide: July 24, 1953

Well, look at who's on the cover. Groucho! And he's either pulling our leg, or he's undergone something of a change during the six years he's been doing You Bet Your Life on radio and television. Oh, he's still the wisecracking fast-talker we've come to know and love from all these years; what's changed is the way he looks at people, specifically the contestants on his show. "My estimation of people has risen in the past six years," he says. "There are a lot of wonderful people in the world, and this job has given me a chance to meet them." To critics who accuse him of making fun of those contestants to get laughs, Groucho bristles. "I don't insult the people on my show, I spoof them," he says indignantly. "Others who did insult contestants have failed. You Bet Your Life wouldn't be a hit, if I did. There's a big difference between kidding and ridicule." (I wonder what Groucho would make of today's P.C.-induced chill on comedy?) "I find that they enjoy the fun of the shows, whether they win or not, and they like a lot of spoofing."

Marx enjoys the second career that television has afforded him. "Next to robbing a bank, it's about the easiest of all," he says of hosting You Bet Your Life. "But this is the culmination of years of hard knocks, believe me. Maybe I've earned this kind of job." He still remembers his struggle to make it in show business, starting in 1906 when he was 11. It's been a nomadic life, working the vaudeville circuit before making it big in Hollywood. But now he lives comfortably in Beverly Hills, spends time with old friends and his children, and hosting his weekly show. And after 40 years, he's learned to be unflappable, even when confronted with his sometimes colorful contestants, including a woman with two husbands named Bodovnic (must be something in the water), triplet sisters from Russia, and an Irish janitor working in a synagogue. "I've never been stumped yet," he says. "I guess those years of trouping do something for you.

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What was that I said earlier about hidden gems? Try out this week's starlet, a young woman hoping to make her name someday as the famous daughter of a famous father, but "if she does, it won't be because she tied herself to her father's shirt-tales." The father is Robert Montgomery, film and television star; his daughter is 20-year-old Elizabeth.

Dad's given her some breaks, including signing her as a member of his stock company of actors for his Robert Montgomery Presents summer series. But as far as her career goes, "Any time she wants to discuss her career with me, I'm available. But the decisions are hers." He's given her the benefit of his long experience in the business, though, by helping her in such areas as choosing publicity photos; when he saw one that he deemed "unflattering," he insisted that "Liz rip up the copy and have the negative in the network publicity files destroyed." It's no wonder he acted as President Eisenhower's television advisor.

Liz got the itch to act from watching her father. "I grew up with Dad's acting, which probably raised my hopes of becoming an actress. But I think I'd have wanted that even if Dad had never acted." She's studied with the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, and her goal is to follow in his footsteps as a Hollywood star (meaning movies), but she's determined to establish her acting chops first on television and Broadway, and, like her father, prefers comedy. Aside from one appearance on Robert Montgomery Presents, she's done no TV to this point, but that will change this summer, of course. And the elder Montgomery will be on hand, producing the series. No favoritism, though; "She'll have to prove herself."

Well, of course, she does. The mention of her preferring comedy is a prophetic one, given her eight seasons in Bewitched, which was at the time the most successful show in ABC's history and remains one of TV's most beloved sitcoms. She did branch into drama, as we know, with some hard-hitting TV movies, including A Case of Rape, that were as far from the Samantha Stephens role as you can get. And let's not forget her title as "Queen of Password," bestowed on her by none other than Allen Ludden himself. So I think it's probably safe to say that for many people today, Robert Montgomery is remembered as the famous father of a famous daughter.

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Television is, at heart, a medium of illusion, filled with dreams that sometimes come true and sometimes. . . well, a case in point is Bob Hope's season opener, scheduled for October 20 on NBC. He'll be doing the show from the Ohio Sesquicentennial (that's 150 years for those of you in the World's Worst Town™), and according to Dan Jenkins at the Hollywood Teletype, he's "trying to get such guests as Tyrone Power, Doris Day, Ted Lewis—and even Clark Gable." Big names indeed. As it turns out, however, a quick Google tells us that he wound up with Gloria DeHaven, Phil Harris and Ohio Governor Frank J. Lausche. I guess it just goes to show that hope springs eternal, Hope doesn't always come true.

What has the week got to offer us? Well, we've had a format tweak in the listings since we last visited 1953. Now, the weekday morning programs—Friday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday—are listed collectively. We learn, for example, that on the Paul Fogarty exercise show (9:00 a.m., WGN), the week's schedule includes:

Fri: For a trim ankle and a firm arch.
Mon: Grace and balance hints.
Tues: The "Cleopatra" exercise, for bust and shoulders.
Wed: A smaller, firmer waistline.
Thurs: Thigh and calf exercises.

It's good to know these things; I hate surprises.

One thing I've never been able to get used to is a description of what's on tap in a soap opera. There's a serial on NBC called The Bennetts (10:15 a.m.), a 15-minute affair that, quite frankly, sounds gripping. Check out the plotlines for the next week, if you can stand all the excitement:

Fri: In order to save one friend, Wayne Bennett comes close to losing another.
Mon: The end of the trial indicates it might not be the end of the case.
Tues: An artist gets a commission and a lawyer gets a tip.
Wed: A loan turns out to be a down payment on trouble.
Thurs: Wayne Bennett doesn't like his son's new friend.

This kind of format could be found, in one form or another, into the early '60s, and made a comeback in the last days of TV Guide, when the grid system was dominant.

Something else new for this market: a completely separate program section for WTMJ in Milwaukee. Most of it is simply a repetition of listings from Chicagoland, but it helps keep the two markets separate; we wouldn't want to confuse people by showing them stations they didn't get. I guess early television was more complicated than we thought.

Ethnic comedy was very popular in the 1950s, when cities were more likely to have distinct enclaves where people of various nationalities lived. The Goldbergs (Friday, 7:00 p.m., NBC), which started live as a popular radio comedy, is a prominent example. It's reviewed as the "Program of the Week," and though it's been off the air for almost a year, it follows the same formula which has made the show so successful (with some cast changes, including Robert H. Harris in place of Philip Loeb, who was blacklisted after accusations of being a communist). Most of the credit to Gertrude Berg, who not only plays Molly, the matriarch of the family, but also produces and writes the series. The series has come under criticism from some quarters, "asserting that the show tends to perpetuate the stereotype of the people about whom Mrs. Berg writes." The same charge has been leveled against other shows, Amos 'n' Andy and Life with Luigi, for example; those shows were about, respectively, blacks and Italians, while The Goldbergs looks at the Jews. As is the case with other ethnic shows, The Goldbergs presents its humor within the context of a family trying to assimilate into American society without losing its cultural heritage. "Mrs. Berg treats the characters so sympathetically that the show actually should help, not hinder, the fight against bigotry and intolerance." It should, although I doubt it would be acceptable on television today. Frankly, I've never found ethnic humor all that funny, including The Goldbergs, but that's just me; I certainly don't see it as offensive.

Other things I noticed: The Saturday night fight on ABC (8:00 p.m.) is a welterweight bout between Carmen Basilio and Billy Graham (don't worry, it's not that Billy Graham; his show is on Sunday, natch), while the five-minute news break each morning on WBBM is anchored by one of my favorites, Frank Reynolds, on his way to stardom. Speaking of anchors, if you think it strange that John Daly did the evening news on ABC while hosting What's My Line? on CBS, we also have Douglas Edwards, CBS news anchor, hosting Masquerade Party (Monday, 8:30 p.m.). At least it's on the same network. And, of course, there's Mike Wallace hosting the panel show I'll Buy That, which comes on right after Frank Reynolds (10:05 a.m.), long before becoming television's most feared interviewer. Hey, wake me when Norah O'Donnell hosts Wheel of Fortune.

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Geez, everyone's a critic.

Finally, Merrill Panitt's "As We See It" has a story we quite liked, about a man named Richard Gaughan who lives in New York. Mr. Gaughan is apparently a somewhat excitable young man, and it seems that recently he broke into a CBS rehearsal, stabbed a cameraman, and broke a water pitcher over an actor's head. His reason: "He doesn't like television." Panitt doesn't mention for which show the personnel were rehearsing, which could, I suppose, be considered a mitigating circumstance; were I on the jury, I could been convinced to convict on a lesser charge or, even acquit altogether.

The reason we're reading about this is to contrast Gaughan's reaction with that of "the highly intellectual" Bernard DeVoto, who spent 24 hours watching television, and then wrote about his thoughts on the medium. "It turned out that the time was well invested," Panitt writes, "for he sold the story of his situation to Harper's and Reader's Digest." It turns out that DeVoto is just as unimpressed with television as the unfortunate Gaughan, "who at least wasn't capitalizing on his dislike of the medium" for profit. Of the 24 hours he deigned to watch, he liked Dinah Shore, Kate Smith, and a speech by Charles E. Wilson. As for the rest of it, "he belabored TV drama in general, mysteries in particular, and commercials of all types." Notes Panitt, "Like other stuffy critics, he feels TV owes him the best in programming but the companies that pay for them shouldn't bother him." DeVoto couldn't fairly judge the programming by sitting in front of a TV for 24 hours, and he had to be biased to even attempt such a "stunt." With an attitude like that, it's obvious the man was a communist.

Panitt saves his savaging best for last. While Gaughan was confined to a mental hospital for his physical brand of critiquing, "Bernard DeVoto continues to be locked in by his own reasoning and unreasonable approach to a dynamic, promising new medium. As for the commercials, even dreamy, ivory tower types should know that the man who pays the piper is entitled to call the tune." Come to think of it, even the communists understood TV better than DeVoto. TV

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This week in TV Guide: July 21, 1973

The year is 1967, and you're a Navy flier in Vietnam. While flying a mission on May 18 of that year, you're shot down over North Vietnam and taken prisoner. For nearly six years, until March 4, 1973, you're shuttled from prison to prison, including the infamous "Hanoi Hilton." During that time, you've missed Laugh-In, the Smothers Brothers, and Neil Armstrong walking on the moon. You didn't see the end of The Fugitive, Peyton Place or The Ed Sullivan Show. You've never seen Monday Night Football or Big Bird. Even though it's only (!) been six years, you have, in essence, missed an entire generation of American pop culture. This is the world that Lt. Robert Naughton returned to when he was released from North Vietnam custody, and this week he tells Clifford Terry how television has changed during his time as a POW.

He never saw television during those six years, but he and his fellow prisoners talked about it. "I must give it credit for providing us with a lot of entertainment," he says. "We'd discuss the shows we had seen in order to pass the time and cheer each other up." In doing so, he says, "[T]hat's when I awakened to its lack of depth. If I tried to tell the guys the story of a certain episode, I'd realize there really wasn't any. Nor any message." As he thought of the shows he'd once considered his favorites, such as The Andy Griffith Show and The Dick Van Dyke Show, he came to the same conclusion. "My feeling now is that you can be entertained and at the same time have your intellect stimulated."

What might surprise you—or not, when you think about it—is that Naughton doesn't see much of any change in television now from how he remembered it. "only the names of the prime-time shows are different. I saw The Doris Day Show and Sanford and Son, and got a few laughs out of them, but I couldn't watch to the end." He'd always enjoyed Dean Martin, but after seeing a recent show, "I'm sorry to say it was a kind of nothing." As for the #1 show in America, All in the Family, "I thought it was funny, but someone who doesn't do any analyzing may think, 'Oh, everyone's laughing, that must be the way to live.' I couldn't see any subtlety to it. And kids might pick up some of the words, the bigotry."

He enjoys Alistair Cooke's America ("If that could represent the over-all quality, television would be above reproach"), and thinks shows such as Face the Nation and Meet the Press are great, but that it's "almost criminal" that they're stuck on Sunday mornings or afternoons. He's impressed with public television and its capacity to educate young people. As a matter of fact, television's ability to educate as well as enlighten is a big point with him; he points out how more and more people get their news not from newspapers but TV. "The communications media have a real obligation to the country—especially television, because of the fast pace of American life." He enjoys newsmen who present their opinions as well as the news, from Eric Sevareid and Harry Reasoner to Paul Harvey, and he stresses the need of news programs to subject politicians to public scrutiny. "Of course," he cautions, "if it ever should come to the point of slanting the news, then it should be stopped. I heard a lot of slanted news in North Vietnam in the last few years—propaganda that was directed to about the 6th- or 7th-grade level. No subtlety at all."

Not surprisingly, the subject of Hogan's Heroes comes up. "I think they begin [the show] from the point where the prisoners already have been beaten up; they assume everyone knows that a POW is tortured—just by the fact that he is a POW. The program misrepresented what I went through, but the fact that a person is able to laugh at the situation is very true." As Reader's Digest always said, laughter is the best medicine; "A sense of humor got us through quite a bit. We called it 'sick prison humor'." He likes TV's new candidness, as long as it's "handled intelligently and not used as an excuse to make bawdy jokes" He appreciates talk shows such as Dick Cavett's, which isn't afraid to discuss issues frankly and honestly.

In terms of this discussion, one of the things he appreciates most of all is freedom,; radio programs in North Vietnam were broadcast over loudspeakers in the streets, "so you listen whether you want to or not. Here, you can always walk up and turn off the radio or TV. That's one of the freedoms I've come to appreciate: the right to quit." To have the freedom to watch TV or not; that is a great thing. One of the understandings that Robert Naughton came to in prison was the importance, the value, of time. "I thought a good deal about how much time I had watched television—unproductive programs. I more or less made a resolution that I wasn't going to become glued to the TV screen."

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Two of TV's definitive 70s-era rock music shows, NBC's The Midnight Special and ABC's In Concert, faced off on Friday nights. Midnight Special was a weekly show, airing after Johnny Carson, while In Concert was an every-other week part of Wide World of Entertainment.  Whenever the two slug it out, we'll be there to see who's better, who's best.

Funny thing about Channel 9, the then-ABC affiliate in MSP. Throughout the sixties and seventies, Channel 9 would show a movie in place of the network’s Friday late-night offering, showing the pre-empted program instead on Sunday after the late local news. Has to do with revenue from those commercials, I know, but it’s still an interesting quirk in KMSP’s programming.*

*They also frequently delayed the Monday through Thursday offering, particularly during the Les Crane and Joey Bishop eras, until after their 10:30 movie.

So even though there wasn’t a Midnight Special-In Concert clash scheduled for this week, we’ll have one anyway, using Channel 9’s Sunday night’s broadcast of last Friday’s episode. Talk about luck!

In Concert: The Guess Who, B.B. King and Melanie perform in this rock concert taped at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. Produced by Dick Clark Teleshows, Inc.

Midnight Special: Hostess Dionne Warwicke, with Johnny Mathis, Kenny Rogers and the First Edition, folk singer Leo Kottke, rock group Malo and pop singer Bud Brisbois.

Dionne Warwicke was in her “e” phase in 1973*, and was also making the talk show rounds. Just before this Midnight Special appearance, she’s appearing with guest host Jerry Lewis on the Tonight Show, and—at least on the Special—she’s going with what made her famous: the songs of Burt Bacharach, including 1968’s hit “I Say a Little Prayer.” Johnny Mathis follows with one of his hits, “Killing Me Softly with Her Song.” Throw in the pre-Gambler Kenny Rogers and singer Leo Kottke (later a frequent guest on radio’s Prairie Home Companion), and you have the kind of eclectic music mix that was a hallmark of top-40 radio, and is virtually non-existent nowadays.

*From the always-reliable Wikipedia: Warwick, for years an aficionado of psychic phenomena, was advised by astrologer Linda Goodman in 1971 to add a small "e" to her last name, making Warwick ‘WARWICKe’ for good luck and to recognize her married name and her spouse, actor and drummer William ‘Bill’ Elliott. Goodman convinced Warwick that the extra small ‘e’ would add a vibration needed to balance her last name and bring her even more good fortune in her marriage and her professional life. Unfortunately, Goodman proved to be mistaken about this. The extra ‘e,’ according to Dionne, "was the worst thing I could have done in retrospect, and in 1975 I finally got rid of that damn ‘’e” and became “Dionne Warwick“ again.’” You’d think she would have known that would happen, don’t you?

Meanwhile, In Concert features some hits of its own: The Guess Who’s “American Woman,” B.B. King’s “The Thrill Is Gone,” and Melanie’s “What Have They Done to My Song, Ma?” So who’s the winner this week? I’m afraid I’m going to show my age here, but if you can’t share it with your friends, who can you share it with? Midnight Special, on style points alone.

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If it’s July, it must be football season, right? This Friday night the gridiron greats return with coverage of the College All-Star Game from Soldier Field in Chicago (8:30 p.m, CT, ABC), pitting the NFL champion Miami Dolphins (coming off their undefeated season) against a team featuring future pro stars Bert Jones, Otis Armstrong and John Matuszak. Melvin Durslag’s preview article discusses the history of the game, which started in 1934 as a benefit for the Chicago Tribune Charities.*

*The game was started by Tribune sports editor Arch Ward, who was also responsible for major league baseball’s All-Star Game.

One of the problems the game faces (which helped end the game in the mid '70s) is a growing reluctance of NFL teams to allow their newly drafted stars to participate, due to both a concern about injuries and the amount of training camp the rookies will miss. This helps explain why the game’s usually a rout, and this year’s edition is expected to be no different, but the All Stars, coached by USC’s legendary John McKay, give the Fins all they can handle, and more. In the fourth quarter, buoyed by a strong defense led by Matuszak, the Stars trail the Dolphins only by 7-3, before Miami running back Larry Csonka scores the clinching touchdown in a surprisingly tough 14-3 victory.

And speaking of baseball’s All-Star Game, that’s this week as well. Before the days of cable TV and regularly scheduled interleague play, the All-Star Game really was must-see TV. For many of us living in Minnesota, it was one of the rare times we got to see National League players, whom we’d otherwise only see on the Saturday game of the week.

This year’s game is Tuesday night in Kansas City (7:00 p.m., NBC), with the Nationals (the league, not the team, which won't be around for another thirty years or so) routing the Americans 7-1 for their 10th win in the last 11 years. They aren't kidding about this being an all-star game, either; the Nats featured nine future Hall of Famers, including Johnny Bench, Hank Aaron, Joe Morgan, Ron Santo, Tom Seaver, Don Sutton, Billy Williams, Willie Mays and Willie Stargell—plus that pesky Pete Rose character. The Americans countered with nine of their own: Carlton Fisk, Rod Carew, Brooks Robinson, Reggie Jackson, Carl Yastrzemski, Nolan Ryan, Catfish Hunter, Rollie Fingers and Bert Blyleven. I wonder—will this year’s game do as well?

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What with so many regular series in summer reruns, we’ve been focusing the last few weeks on summer replacement shows. Ready for some more? Saturday night, Jack Burns and Avery Schreiber star in The Burns and Schreiber Comedy Hour (8:00 p.m., ABC), in place of the cancelled Julie Andrews show, with guests Ed McMahon, Teresa Graves and the Muledeer and Moondogg Medicine Show. On Thursday night NBC has Helen Reddy sitting in for Flip Wilson at 8:00 p.m., with fellow feminist Gloria Steinem, B.B. King, the New Seekers, Albert Brooks and the Modern Jazz Quartet; that's followed at 9:00 p.m. by the premiere of Dean Martin Presents Music Country, this week starring Johnny Cash, Mac Davis, Loretta Lynn, Marty Robbins and a cast of thousands.

There are plenty of movies to choose from this week, including the summertime staple, failed pilots for series that never came to pass. Two such are I Love a Mystery, an unsold pilot from 1966 with Ida Lupino (Monday, 8:00 p.m., NBC) and Crime Club (Tuesday, 8:30 p.m., CBS), which is only a year old, starring Lloyd Bridges, Barbara Rush, Paul Burke, Cloris Leachman, Martin Sheen, Victor Buono and William Devane. Great cast; I wonder why it didn't sell.

There is one kind of summer program not seen anymore, at least in Minneapolis: the twin Aquatennial parades. When I was a kid, the Minneapolis Aquatennial was the biggest summer festival around (it even featured as the backdrop for an episode of Route 66), and the two parades—the Grande Day Parade on Saturday and the Torchlight Parade on Wednesday—were major events. WCCO preempts its regular programming Saturday afternoon for the Grand Day parade starting at 2:30 p.m., featuring a pair of celebrity grand marshals, Larry Linville from M*A*S*H* and evangelist Billy Graham, and an appearance by Colonel Sanders. Keeping with the “Seas of Antiquity,” there are also a number of representatives from Turkey, Egypt, Lebanon and Greece.

*No coincidence that a CBS star would appear on a parade being televised by a CBS affiliate, right?

KSTP does the honors for the Torchlight parade, beginning at 8:30 p.m. (preempting Madigan and Search) with grand marshal Simcha Dimitz, Israeli Ambassador to the United States, along with the Israeli consul general, and another appearance by Colonel Sanders. Although the floats are the same ones from the Saturday parade (now with lights attached), I wonder if all of the Arab representatives still participated, considering the company they’d be keeping? After all, the Yom Kippur War is less than three months away.

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Since we’re talking about old TV, here’s something interesting—a program about TV shows that were already considered old in 1973. That’s not too meta for you, is it?

It’s CBS News Retrospective, airing Sunday afternoons at 5:00 p.m., in which the network dips into its vaults to rebroadcast some of its most acclaimed and influential CBS Reports documentaries from the fifties and sixties. This week it’s the 1963 documentary “The Silent Spring of Rachel Carson,” the landmark program that first shown the spotlight on ecology and the environment, specifically the uses of DDT and other pesticides, and the effects they had on birds, fish and the soil. Carson’s assertions were controversial then, and they remain controversial today.

Thanks to being in the Twin Cities for the summer (after the first of six years in the World's Worst Town™), I was able to see this limited-run series, which included several documentaries by Edward R. Murrow. This was advocacy television at its finest (in terms of quality, that is, not necessarily ideology), and these programs were great examples of a type of television journalism that’s pretty much nonexistent today. And I can’t help but wonder about the method behind CBS airing these shows at this particular time. Could it be that the Tiffany Network was reminding viewers of their great news tradition, in order to bolster the division’s credibility during the continuing coverage of the Watergate hearings? Or is that too cynical a thought?

Speaking of which, we’re reminded at the start of the programming section (as well as several times throughout the week) that regular programming stands to be preempted for those Senate Watergate hearings. The nation has just been stunned the previous week by former presidential aide Alexander Butterfield’s casual comment that there was tape recording going on in the Oval Office. On Monday, July 23, special prosecutor Archibald Cox will demand that the White House turn over transcripts of those taped conversations, which President Nixon will refuse to do, citing Executive Privilege.

What’s interesting is that even at this point, roughly a year before Nixon will be forced to resign, the public is still divided over the issue. While 50% believe former aide John Dean’s accusations that Nixon is covering up the affair, they’re also split evenly (38%-37%) as to whom they would believe if Nixon denies the charge. Ah, politics.

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We'll wrap things up with our cover story. Back in the days before the internet, Americans relied on television to give them the information they couldn’t get from their doctors. And what better “virtual” physicians to have than the kindly Marcus Welby and the dedicated Joe Gannon? Muriel Davidson’s cover story shares real-life incidents of lives being saved because of what viewers had seen on their favorite medical shows. 

A boy in Inver Grove Heights, Minnesota, administers mouth-to-mouth and heart massage on his asthmatic brother because he’d seen it done on Marcus Welby, M.D.; a man in Springfield, Missouri watching Welby self-diagnoses himself with a bleeding ulcer (he was right); a woman living in Los Angeles sees a man on Medical Center suffering from slurred speech, numb hands, and difficulty seeing – symptoms identical to hers. She tells her doctor she thinks she has M.S., because that’s what the character on Medical Center had. The skeptical doctor runs the tests, which confirm her suspicions. It’s not all WebMD-type diagnoses, though; another Welby episode tells the story of a brain-damaged boy who’s been labeled “slow”—the sensitivity and compassion of the episode produced thousands of letters of commendation.

Doctors caution people not to rely on fictional television stories in place of actual medical care, and point to patients having cancelled scheduled needed surgeries after seeing a Bold Ones episode about an unscrupulous doctor performing unnecessary surgery for profit. The producers of the shows say that their purpose is not to replace doctors, but to provide awareness education for viewers, pointing out potential health concerns or de-stigmatizing others, such as sexually-transmitted diseases.

Ultimately, the money line in the story points to the growing role of television in American society, and its power—at the time—to unify. Says a mother of a child suffering from a similar brain-damaged syndrome, who used the Welby episode to educate teachers and classmates on his condition, “It’s a miracle what can be done when people no longer are alone.” Words for thought, eh? TV

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This week in TV Guide: July 10, 1971

Indulge me for a moment in a personal reminiscence. It was the summer of 1971, the year before we moved to the World's Worst Town™, and we were on vacation at a lake resort in Alexandria, Minnesota. We were often in the area during the summer, considering Alex was only about an hour from the town of infamy, and while I have nothing against the place other than KCMT, that doesn't mean I'm in any hurry to go back. But I digress.

I was going through television withdrawal, since our cabin didn't have one, and I was particularly suffering since Tuesday night was the baseball All-Star Game, the Midsummer Classic, played that year in Detroit. (Tuesday, 7:00 p.m. CT, NBC) We were in the dining room of the resort, between dinner and dessert; I heard a shout from the lounge, where there was a TV tuned to the game, and rushed in to see what the fuss was about. (To this day I marvel at how patient my mother and grandparents were with me.)

"What happened?" I asked a man who was watching the game.

"Jackson just hit one off the light tower," he replied.

I'd missed Reggie Jackson's home run, but caught the replay. It was a titanic shot off the light standard on top of the roof of the right field stands at Tiger Stadium, traveling so high that the camera was unable to follow its flight all the way up. (It's been estimated the blast would have gone well over 500 feet had the tower not gotten in the way, and was reportedly still going up at the time.) It was instantly one of the most famous home runs in All-Star Game history, and remains so to this day.

It was an immensely entertaining game, with the American League ending a long losing streak by beating the National League 6-4, with all ten runs scored on home runs. The rosters of the two teams included 25 future Hall of Famers (including both managers), an astounding amount of talent

The only way it could have been any better would have been if I could have seen it all. And if that doesn't mark me as a true child of television, I don't know what does.

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There was, at least, one good thing to come out of my six years in the WWT: Sesame Street.

By the mid-1970s, I'd become so desperate to watch something—anything—besides the bilge on KCMT that I'd taken to watching the show in the afternoons after coming home from high school, courtesy of KWCM in Appleton, the only station other than KCMT that we could get without an antenna. I was, of course, much too old to be part of the show's target audience, so I watched in the detached way that adults did, enjoying the sly humor included for the benefit of parents forced to watch with their kids, jokes that preschoolers would never get.

*Sample: Ernie (to Bert's brother Bart): "I'm aghast!" Bart: "No, I'm aghast—you live here!" 

But all that is in the future; let us return to 1971, when the occasion for Cookie Monster's cover appearance is the second anniversary of Sesame Street's premiere, as Max Gunther takes a measure of the show's first two years. It's difficult to appreciate exactly how revolutionary Sesame Street has been since its premiere, but to fully understand, one has to go back to the state of American education in the years preceding its debut. "Sesame Street began," Gunther points out, "because many people in this country were worried about what happens to poor kids—the so-called 'culturally deprived'—when they start school." They lack the exposure to books and magazines that other children have; thus, "they come into kindergarten or first grade with an often cruel handicap." Letters and words are unfamiliar to them, they don't understand what the teacher's talking about, they fall further behind, and may give up in frustration, winding up on the mean streets of the ghetto. The Head Start program, which was meant to address the situation, fell short. The cost of various early education proposals was often prohibitive. It was then that Joan Cooney suggested television. After all, almost every kid has access to one, and TV has long been adept at selling products. Couldn't it also sell education?

The show has had its share of critics. A Cornell psychologist complains that Sesame Street is part of a dream world, with "no racial tensions; nobody ever gets mad; no sharp words are spoken." How, he wonders, does this prepare children for real life? A school principal says that the show "makes no demands on the kids. Real school and real life aren't like that. If a problem is troubling you, you can't just switch it off and walk away." The show has ten times as many fans, though, who point at dramatic increases in test scores among disadvantaged children who watch Sesame Street often. And Susan, one of the show's humans who was previously a housewife, is now a nurse; "Women's lib has a thing about housewives."

The producers envision Sesame Street as a show continuously evolving to better serve the needs of its young viewers. The research chief of Children's Television Workshop constantly tests kids' reactions, incorporating the findings into future shows; for instance, they've discovered that children are not, as one might suspect, bored by seeing the same thing several times in one broadcast; repetition, therefore, is a key aspect to successful learning. They also tend to remember things when they're able to say or sing it along with the performer on-screen. And fully 20% of the stations showing the program are commercial stations in areas that don't yet have educational television; although CTW won't allow advertising during the show, many station executives know that kids watching Sesame Street will probably leave the TV tuned to the same channel afterward, allowing them to charge a premium for that show. In other cases, corporations and civic groups have bought the time to air the show. And a second show, The Electric Company, is planned for this fall; its target will be 7- 10-year-olds.

Within all this good news, the cloud on the horizon, as always, is funding. Congress will do its best, and new licensing deals will help. "I think we've started something big," Cooney says; her Congressional ally, Sen. John Tunney, agrees. "People are only beginning to understand what early schooling can accomplish." And even I was able to learn something; thanks to Sesame Street, I can at least count to 20 in Spanish.

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You know that I try to be as positive as possible, but the truth is that we've got a case of the summer blahs this week. A couple of movies stand out, and we'll get to them, but between summer replacements and repeats, there's just not a lot to fly at the top of the flagpole. It doesn't mean we can't find a few highlights, though. For instance. . .

I had just started to get an appreciation for golf in 1971, so when I say that the All-Star Game was the big sporting event of the week, it's more a matter of personal opinion. Other eyes are looking toward England, where the 100th British Open, the world's oldest golf tournament, is being contested at Royal Birkdale, with ABC providing same-day coverage of the final round on Wide World of Sports (Saturday, 4:00 p.m.) Lee Trevino, in his greatest season, wins a thrilling duel with Lu Liang-Huan and Tony Jacklin to take his first of two consecutive British Opens; it's also his second consecutive major, having bested Jack Nicklaus in a playoff to win the U.S. Open the previous month. Later that night, NBC's Saturday Night at the Movies presents the touching movie A Patch of Blue (7:30 p.m.), starring Sidney Poitier, Elizabeth Hartman, Shelley Winters (who won an Oscar) and Wallace Ford in what Judith Crist calls "a quartet of brilliant performances" that "make the sentimental melodrama memorable." Sunday belongs to PBS, first with the return of Evening at Pops (7:00 p.m.), tonight featuring an all-Tchaikovsky hour with Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops. That's followed at 8:00 by Masterpiece Theatre and part one of one of its most famous stories, The First Churchills, with John Neville and Susan Hampshire.

Sticking with PBS, Lorne Greene, Dan Blocker and Michael Landon teach the difference between near and far on Monday's Sesame Street (4:30 p.m.). Turning to the networks, Dave Garroway returns to network television after a nine-year absence with CBS Newcomers (9:00 p.m.), a weekly talent show with professional entertainers from night clubs and theaters around the country. You can read more about that at Jodie's Dave Garroway blog here and here. If you're not in the mood for Tuesday's All-Star Game, ABC has a rare prime time network showing of a classic movie, with 1939's Made for Each Other, starring James Stewart and Carole Lombard. It's classic soap opera as well, Judith Crist says, but with Stewart and Lombard "at the height of their romantic appeal," the mush is "not only palatable but well worth savoring." If you think we've had it bad with the coronavirus, just look at the staff of Medical Center Wednesday (8:00 p.m., CBS)—they're looking for a missing radium implant that could contaminate the entire hospital. Over at NBC, the Kraft Music Hall (8:00 p.m.) has moved across the pond for the summer, with British comedian Des O'Connor and Connie Stevens doing the honors; this week, their special guest is Phyllis Diller.

Thursday, NBC Action Playhouse (6:30 p.m.) has a rerun from 1966 (see what I mean by a weak week?), Massacre at Fort Phil Kearny, a drama about the military inquest into the deaths of 81 U.S. soldiers massacred by Sioux warriors in 1866. It's got a good cast, though, with Richard Egan, Robert Fuller, Carroll O'Connor and Robert Pine. A Tom Jones special (6:30 p.m.) highlights ABC's night, with Nicol Williamson, Tom Paxton and Lulu. Future Oscar winner Joel Grey (he wins next year for Cabaret) plays a jockey suspected of throwing races on Ironside (7:30 p.m., NBC), with former Tarzan Ron Ely, future Paramount CEO Sherry Lansing, and Dana Elcar. Later, Johnny Cash is the honoree on This Is Your Life (9:30 p.m., KTHI). And we'll bring the week to an end with Friday's summer replacement series It Was a Very Good Year (8:30 p.m., ABC); the year is 1939, which was an extraordinary year: the German invasions of Czechoslovakia and Poland, Picasso's extraordinary antiwar painting "Guernica," the movies The Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind, the opening of the legendary New York World's Fair, and the retirement of Lou Gehrig.

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And speaking of Tom Jones. . .

It's not unusual to see Tom featuring in an ad like this, but it's also interesting to see the wide variety of names and styles that were big in 1971: Led Zeppelin; Dean Martin; Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young; Glenn Miller; Mantovani; Loretta Lynn; Emerson, Lake & Palmer; the Bee Gees; Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra, and more. It's quite a slice of musical life—if you can't find anything there, I imagine you just don't like music. Ads like this were common in TV Guide; most of the time you could find them in the center section where the paper was stiffer, but this one was on the last two pages of the issue. And you can appreciate the latest in technology: records, cassettes, and 8-track!

June and Allan Jefferys' humorous article about being the first family on the block to have a VCR is about technology as well. Being able to show movies without commercial interruption makes the Jefferys a very popular family, and it isn't long before they're hosting movie nights for their friends, complete with popcorn and theater seating! It kind of predicts the home theater experience of today, albeit on a much smaller scale. 

It reminds me of something else though, of how technology used to bring people together in social situations. Having the first VCR on the block wasn't any different from having the first TV, or a radio that could bring in stations from other parts of the country—it became an occasion for having friends over, getting to know your neighbors, just like playing cards or having dessert on the porch. Bars installed TVs and saw their business explode. Nowadays the neighborhoods are virtual, and technology is accused of isolating people, of pushing them apart instead of bringing them together. But things could be a lot worse than our own virtual community here.

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And finally, a word from our friend gracing this week's cover, the Cookie Monster:

 Who says there's no class on TV anymore? TV

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This week in TV Guide: July 2, 1966

Whis is the way it is: only now, in July of 1966, is Walter Cronkite beginning to get the credit that would, in years to come, seem to be his by right, or maybe divine fiat. Today we're conditioned to view every landmark in American history through the eyes of the Most Trusted Man in America, and yet just two years before, in August 1964, he had been removed from the lead chair for CBS's coverage of the Democratic National Convention. Back then, rumors were rampant that Cronkite's job was on the line, that he'd either be replaced or teamed with someone more "glamorous." That's life for you.

As Richard Schickel notes in this week's cover story, it's taken years of struggle, but for the first time Cronkite and the CBS Evening News have started to top NBC's powerhouse Huntley-Brinkley Report. Not that he takes any satisfaction from it; for Cronkite, it's all about the news, not the ratings. "Walter is a newsman who has remained a newsman and has never tried to be a television 'personality,'" says Richard Salant, head of CBS News. Cronkite reminds people that it was only last year that he'd worked on television longer than for newspapers and wire-services, and he jealously protects his title as "Managing Editor" of the evening news. Over the years, viewers have come to recognize and trust the passion Cronkite has for the news, "that over the years he has generated a quality of believably no other broadcaster can match." In time, that will translate into becoming "the most trusted man in America."

He's a strong backer of the program's resident pundit, Eric Sevareid, whom he believes is right more often than not in his opinions; he also appreciates the freedom that Sevareid's commentaries have given him from having to interpret the news himself. He's devoted to hard news, which he thinks gives the program an advantage over "the softer Huntley-Brinkley approach." Fred Friendly, the former head of CBS News, puts it this way: "Walter and his staff are better newsmen than the opposition." The night that Luna 9, the Soviet Union's unmanned spacecraft, made the first soft landing on the moon, Cronkite led with pictures from the landing. NBC "doesn't put them on until they are 16 minutes into it."

The Cronk and his son Chip, working on a 
slot car track; a swell gift for a boy in the '60s.

I've made this point before, but it bears repeating: NBC's ratings for the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963 were higher than those for CBS and ABC combined. And as noted earlier, Cronkite's position was said to be in jeopardy a year later. Today, thanks to CBS's generous use of the Cronkite library—Cronkite announcing JFK's death, Cronkite overcome by the moon landing, Cronkite proclaiming that Vietnam is lost—one might think that Walter Cronkite was not just America's most trusted newsman, but America's only newsman. In light of that, it strikes me as somewhat disingenuous when Friendly, Salant, Cronkite, and the rest talk about how the ratings don't matter, that to even discuss them is to play NBC's game. On the other hand, the triumph of Cronkite's legacy, like his eventual victory in the ratings race, shows the value of playing the long game. The way it was isn't remembered; what goes in the history books is the way it is.

Which is not in any way intended to cast a shadow on that legacy. Unlike today's newsreaders, Cronkite was a newsman, and never stopped being one. He took the news seriously, and he took his obligation to the viewers seriously. Like the big-game sportscasters I've written about in the past, when you heard Walter Cronkite's voice, you stopped and listened.

In his office there is a quote from a review that Cronkite has framed and hung on the wall. "Viewers rarely recall and relish a Cronkite statement. They believe it instead." That's not a bad legacy either, one that today's television personalities might want to consider.

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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 guests are singers Tom Jones, Frankie Avalon, Annette Funicello and Mireille Mathieu; actor Ray Milland, who appears in a scene from his Broadway play Hostile Witness; comics Don Rickles, John Byner and Arthur Haynes; puppet Topo Gigio; Los Vegas, singing-instrumental group; and Elizabeth and Collins, knife-throwing act.

Palace: Host Vincent "Ben Casey" Edwards presents an all-female guest lineup: actress Bette Davis, who reads Dorothy Parker's poem "Biographies"; singer-dancers Liza Minnelli and Liliane Montevecchi; comedienne Joan Rivers; Miss Elizabeth, Swiss trapeze artist; the balancing Roggé Sisters; and performing elephants Bertha and Tina.

We're in rerun season, of course, and it's not hard to see why these two episodes were chosen. I suppose Vince Edwards was a natural for hosting an all-female Palace, given that he's displayed his innate animal magnetism for years on Ben Casey. He's got a good cast, too, particularly when Bette Davis is the lead guest. However, even with Liza (with a Z) and Joan Rivers, Palace is not about to compete with Tom Jones, Frankie and Annette, Ray Milland, and Don Rickles, and if Ed feels he still needs a few more stars, John Byner can probably impersonate them. No pretending here; Sullivan for the win.

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From 1963 to 1976, 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 series of the era. 

Bad news for all you fans of The Cleve this week; our erstwhile hero-critic is on vacation. Not to fear, however, for his substitute (I don't think I can ever recall someone subbing for Amory, though I could be wrong about that) is none other than Judith Crist, movie critic for the New York Herald Tribune and film and drama critic of the Today show, and future movie reviewer for TV Guide.

For her subject this week, Crist not surprisingly looks at the state of the movie as seen on TV. Like the farmer and the rancher, she says, "movies and television have been forced into wary friendship and coexistence for economic survival." It is, however, time for "an awareness of what effect television is having not only on movie making but also on movie watching." The effect can be seen most strongly in young viewers, Crist says, those who have been conditioned to short-attention spans from television, delivered "in 12-minute doses of concentrated action zooming to a climax that is suddenly aborted" by commercial time. They don't know about subplots, the intricacies of plotting, and the subtleties of moviemaking. All they know is that they want their movies to be like their TV shows, "a series of exciting episodes and vignettes."

And it isn't just kids; many adults, according to Crist, admit that "their attention wanders after 20 of the 30 uninterrupted minutes Schaefer Award Theater allots its movies as a 'public service.'" Crist acknowledges that "it's a rare movie that can't be pared here and there," but such edits have to be judicious. Too many times, though, the end result is "out-and-out butchery." with film fans left nonplussed by bizarre jumps and stories that fall apart due to the total absence of certain scenes. What, for example, happened to the Marseillaise scene in Casablanca?

Television also needs to take its movie business more seriously. Rather than flooding the airwaves with "pop pap," Crist urges stations to seek out innovative opportunities such as airing a local film festival, or even serving as an art revival house. (An excellent idea, by the way; many PBS stations used to do this.) She suggests that movie hosts share inside information with viewers about then-unknown stars who might be appearing in tonight's flick, not unlike what Robert Osborne would do on TCM decades later. "All it takes," she writes, "is some thought and less money." Ah, we can but dream, can't we? 

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This week's starlet is Leigh Chapman, also known as Napoleon Solo's secretary on The Man from U.N.C.L.E., and despite her cool and chic appearance, she's her own biggest critic. "I despise selling myself as an actress because I don't like my body. There are too many defects," she says. "As writers go I might be good-looking, but as actresses go—"

She's written scripts for Burke's Law, Dr. Kildare, and My Favorite Martian, among other shows, and when asked how a nice girl like her wound up behind a typewriter, she replies simply, "I like words." She wants to prove she can write as well as a man can, and in fact she prefers to take a masculine point of view "because we have a masculine-oriented society."

Looking at Leigh Chapman's later writing career, it all makes sense. She becomes known for action-adventure movies and TV shows: Dirty Mary Crazy Larry, The Octagon, The Wild Wild West, Mission: Impossible, It Takes a Thief. She wrote the pilot for Walker, Texas Ranger. "I like larger-than-life characters who do dangerous, heroic things," she said. "And that, to me, means men." She gave up acting after a disagreeable experience with Desi Arnaz, an incident she details in a fascinating interview she does with Stephen Bowie. She dies of cancer in 2014, but not before having taken up underwater photography. With that kind of talent, who needs acting?

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Well, we've gotten this far, and we've barely touched on the week's programs. Let's see what we can do to rectify that.

Did NBC read an advance copy of Judith Crist's article? This week's Saturday Night at the Movies, Sam Peckinpah's Ride the High Country (9:00 p.m. PT), includes a feature following the movie, with Ken Murray (known for his home movies of life in Hollywood) taking a look at the careers of the movie's stars, Joel McCrea and Randolph Scott. (Pause, repeat "Randoph Scott" reverently.) Networks used to have these featurettes from time to time, when the movie didn't fill the entire two-hour timeslot. And on ABC Scope (7:00 p.m.), "War Comes to Main Street" visits the places where violence and demonstrations aren't taking place on every street corner: "To find out how Vietnam is affecting the less vocal majority, Desmond Smith takes his camera crew to Dodge City, Kan., a prosperous community of cattle ranchers and wheat farmers."

On Sunday, ABC Sports visits close to home with coverage of the final round of the U.S. Women's Open golf championship (2:00 p.m.), from Hazeltine National Golf Club in Chaska, Minnesota, a suburb of the Twin Cities. Golf fans probably recognize Hazeltine from hosting the Ryder Cup in 2016, but its first brush with fame, or infamy if you will, was as host of the 1970 men's Open. The course, less than a decade old, had yet to mature, and was despised by most of the pros; Dave Hill famously suggested that it only needed "80 acres of corn and a few cows" to be truly complete; Minnesotans, being the proud people we are, serenaded Hill with mooing for the rest of the tournament. Sandra Spuzich, at +9, wins the Women's Open, and a first-prize of $4,000. If you're not in the mood for that, Discovery '66 (11:00 a.m., ABC) takes a look at "The World of Charles Dickens," with host Frank Buxton touring old London and looking in at the home in which Dickens wrote many of his works.

Monday is the 4th of July, which explains why NBC's on the air with the Minnesota Twins playing the Cleveland Indians (4:00 p.m.). It's been a disappointing season for the defending American League champion Twins, but the Indians have stayed near the top thanks to pitching from Luis Tiant, Sonny Siebert, and Sudden Sam McDowell—remember him? That's the only bit of holiday programming for the day, but remember that most people are out, going to parades and fireworks shows, or just enjoying the high point of summer. They probably have better things to do that stay inside watching television. I myself have no idea what I was up to.

Telly Savalas (right) and Beau Bridges guest star in Tuesday's episode of The Fugitive (10:00 p.m., ABC). Beau accidentally shoots the driver of a passing car; he wants to turn himself in, but Telly won't hear of it, leaving Dr. Kimble—who was riding in the car—as the prime suspect. I know I've mentioned things like this before, but how many times as something like this actually happened to you, let alone an innocent man on the run from the law? I wonder.

Wednesday's fun just for browsing through the night and seeing all the guest stars: Frank Gorshin as the Riddler on Batman (ABC, 7:30 p.m.), Glenn Corbett and John Doucette on The Virginian (NBC, 7:30 p.m.), James Brolin and Kim Carnes—yes, Miss "Bette Davis Eyes" herself—on The Patty Duke Show (ABC, 8:00 p.m.), Marilyn Mason in The Big Valley (ABC, 9:00 p.m.), Jack Lord, Dana Wynter, Pat O'Brien and Sheree North in "The Crime" on Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre (NBC, 9:00 p.m.), Pippa Scott on The Dick Van Dyke Show (CBS, 9:30 p.m.), and Julie London and producer Sheldon Leonard on I Spy (NBC, 10:00 p.m.). Oh, and Buddy Hackett is one of Johnny Carson's guests on The Tonight Show (NBC, 11:15 p.m.)

The highlight on Thursday is one of the most charming of movies (and star Jimmy Stewart's favorite role), Harvey, on the CBS Thursday Night Movie. (CBS, 9:00 p.m.) And in their pre-Laugh-In days, Rowan and Martin continue as summer subs for Dean Martin. (NBC, 10:00 p.m.)

Decisions, decisions: on Friday's Donna Reed rerun (ABC, noon), "Alex wants a new set of golf clubs, but Donna says that the family needs a new washing machine." Things were different in 1966, we know; still, you'd think that a doctor would be able to afford both. No wonder Carl Betz was so excited to play Clinton Judd—it probably meant a raise in pay. And on Court-Martial (ABC, 10:00 p.m.), Bradford Dilman discovers that his client is innocent of the crime for which he's charged, but guilty of another crime. Why didn't things like this ever happen to Perry Mason?

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MST3K alert: I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957) A psychiatrist's drugs turn a youth into a monster. Michael Landon, Whit Bissell, Yvonne Lime, Tony Marshall. (Friday, 5:00 p.m., KGO in San Francisco) "You are not drinking a piña colada at Trader Vic’s, young man, you’re just not old enough." Michael Landon was two years away from Bonanza when he starred in Werewolf, and he remained a fan of the movie for the rest of his life. "I think it's a good movie. I like it. My kids like it. They better like it, their dad's in it."

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That's it for this America 250 Fourth of July, 2026. Not quite like the Bicentennial year was, is it? Here's a hope for happier times ahead, and never forget what this day is all about. TV

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