This week in TV Guide: September 13, 1980

It's time once again for the Fall Preview issue, and as I see it, there are three ways I can lay this out for you. I can, of course, try to cover everything, which would take a very long time, and if true, would mean that I am probably writing these words in July. I can concentrate on those shows that were huge successes, programs like Hill Street Blues that became a household name. Or I can do the opposite, look at the shows that failed miserably, which can be a lot of fun—especially if some of them were highly rated and had big names fronting them. 

I'll admit that each of these three options has something going for it. I'll be honest, though: since I'm not writing this in July, but on the day before you're reading it, you can assume I've decided not to go the comprehensive route. The only fair way to decide this, then, is the age-old solution of flipping a coin. Heads I go for the winners; tails and it's the losers. And you're here to keep an eye on things to make sure I'm honest, right? So here we go—wait. What do you mean it landed on its edge? Yes, I know what it means, but—no, of course I'm not suggesting you'd lie in front of all these people. Of course I trust you. All right then, I'll just have to compromise and do a little of each. Fair enough?

A proviso, though: as we're warned in TV Guide, there's an actors' strike in progress, and some of the shows listed in this issue may be postponed, or even cancelled, because of it. I'll try to point that out as I go along.

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I mentioned Hill Street Blues (NBC), which is certainly the most acclaimed of the new shows, although it will come perilously close to being cancelled before it catches on. It won't actually air until January 15 of next year, and it airs on three different nights during that first half-season (including Saturdays!) before it finally settles down to Thursdays at 10:00 p.m.

The most popular series of the new batch—and, I might argue, the best—is probably CBS's Magnum, P.I., and it's pretty hard to bet against Tom Sellick's charm and an exceptional supporting cast; the Hawaii scenery doesn't hurt either. It's up against Barney Miller on ABC and Thursday Night at the Movies on NBC. It does a little better than Hill Street Blues in terms of debuting—it hits the airwaves on December 11. It does better in the ratings as well, finishing the truncated season #14, as opposed to #87 for the Blues.

Three new series base their hopes on the popular movies they're adapted from, and—well, one out of three ain't bad. rate. Breaking Away (Saturdays, ABC), based on last year's Oscar-nominated movie, actually premieres in November, but while it's heavily publicized by the network and even brings some of the same cast members as the movie, only seven of its episodes are broadcast, and it's actually off the air before Hill Street Blues premieres. Freebie and the Bean (Saturdays, CBS), based on the 1974 buddy cop comedy, it fares no better; seven and out. Harper Valley, P.T.A. (Fridays, NBC), birthed by both a popular movie and song, actually survives for two seasons, and I'd suggest that a big reason for that success lies in its star, Barbara Eden.

Imitation is, they say, the sincerest form of flattery. In Hollywood, it's also the surest way to survival. What other way to explain the resurgance of the prime-time soap opera, spawned by the success of Dallas and Knotts Landing. NBC has Flamingo Road on Tuesdays, with a big-name cast including Morgan Fairchild, John Beck, Mark Harmon, Howard Duff, Barbara Rush, and Stella Stevens, and it lasts two seasons.* CBS hopes to continue its success with Saturday's Secrets of Midland Heights, but even though it's produced by Lorimar, maker of Dallas, and stars Lorenzo Lamas and the pre-Terminator Linda Hamilton, it remained a secret to audiences and disappeared after eight episodes. 

*It, too, was based on a successful movie, the 1949 hit starring Joan Crawford.

Closely related to the series based on a movie is the series spunoff from another series, and we've got a couple of those as well: Enos (Wednesdays, CBS), which takes Sonny Shroyer's character from The Dukes of Hazzard and puts him in his own series, actualy makes it through an entire truncated season of 18 episodes before Enos returns from whence he came. A spinoff of a different kind is Those Amazing Animals (Sundays, ABC), inspired by the same network's That's Incredible!, right down to having three hosts of its own: Burgess Meredith, Priscilla Presley and Jim Stafford. It's good for a full season.

Bosom Buddies (Thursdays, ABC) is almost a spin-off; its men-in-drag scenario is certainly reminiscent of Some Like it Hot, and while it lasts for four successful seasons, both of its stars went on to bigger and better things: Peter Scolari, and—especially—Tom Hanks. And there are two other ABC sitcoms that deserve some mention: Too Close For Comfort (Tuesdays), which, between its network and syndication runs for seven seasons, makes Ted Knight the second most-successful alum of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, right after Gavin MacLeod; and It's a Living (Thursdays), which played the same network/syndication parlay to six successful seasons. 

And finally a brief moment of silence while we recite the names of those series whose names are, if not known only to God, remain nonetheless relatively anonymous: Ladies' Man (Mondays, CBS. Episodes aired: 15) and I'm a Big Girl Now (Fridays, ABC; couldn't make it even with Diana Canova and Danny Thomas. Episodes aired: 19) I've heard of the latter, not the former, but I just can't think of anything else worth saying about them.

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One of the continuing trends is the star-studded, epic scale miniseries (even though many of them are nothng more than two-part movies, but of course that isn't sexy enough), and for all the talk of coming attractions (Masada, East of Eden, The Gangster Chronicles), the biggest one of the season kicks off on Monday: Shōgun, NBC's $20 million gamble, a 12-hour adaptation of James Clavell's massive (1,152 pages) best-seller starring Richard Chamberlain and Toshiro Mifune.

The 12 hours are spread out over five consecutive nights, with three-hour episodes on Monday and Friday, and two hours each on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. It's interesting scheduling, especially having it conclude on Friday; nowadays, I think we've become accustomed to Sunday being the big television night of the week, with multipart events skipping a night or two so that they can begin and end on that date. Having it air on consecutive nights is far more sraightforward, almost like the binge programming of today.

Shōgun is a huge hit for NBC, with the network garnering its highest weekly rating in its history. It will be nominated for 14 Emmys, winning three, including best limited series; it also wins a Golden Globe and a Peabody. Almost makes the rest of the season an anticlimax, doesn't it?

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One of the most anticipated sections of the Fall Preview is Judith Crist's look at the big-screen movies coming to television for the first time. Even with VHS and cable on the horizon, most of us still rely on the networks for the movies we missed in the theaters, or want to see again. Last year, there were 111 theatrical premieres on network TV, and that doesn't include 13 that had been announced but won't make it until this season. With that to look forward to, what are some of the highlights?

NBC's list is headed by two prestige hits from the middle of the last decade, both purporting to be based on true stories but with more fiction than fact: 1976's All the President's Men, with Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman; and 1977's Julia, starring Vanessa Redgrave and Jane Fonda. Other features include The Boys from Brazil, with Laurence Olivier and Gregory Peck; Eyes of Laura Mars, starring Faye Dunaway and Tommy Lee Jones; New York, New York, with Liza Minnelli as the last person to sing the theme before Frank Sinatra appropriated it as his own; and the 1970 documentary Woodstock.

Over at CBS, the emphasis, says Crist, is on "froth rather than 'class'," including the "wonderfully witty" Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe; George Hamilton and Susan Saint James in Love at First Bite; Same Time, Next Year, with Alan Alda and Ellen Burstyn, and Foul Play, with Goldie Hawn and Chevy Chase. Their headliner is 1979's The Amityville Horror, which Crist calls "the most boring, illogical and inept horror movie to have made $35 million at the box office," which was quite a bit of money at the time; and The Champ, with Jon Voight, Faye Duanway, and Ricky Schroder.

Last but not least, ABC has a lot to offer, beginning with 1977's Saturday Night Fever, which made John Travolta a star; 1977's The Spy Who Loved Me, which introduced us to the villain Jaws; Sally Field's 1979 Oscar turn in Norma Rae; Neil Simon's California Suite, and a doubleheader of Barbra Streisand: the "self-indulgent remake" of A Star is Born, and The Main Event. There's also Midnight Express, which details the horror of Turkish prison; and The Enforcer, Clint Eastwood's third turn as Dirty Harry Callahan. It's enough to make up for the "tedious, mindless" trucker movie Convoy.

All in all, says Crist, the season gives promise of being a good one for viewers. Even if you have to wait years, not weeks, for some of your favorites.

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In our hurry to look forward to the coming season, let's not forget that there are shows worth watching right now—depending on your tastes, of course. On Monday, it's the debut of Solid Gold (various stations throughout the week), with hostess Dionne Warwick welcoming Paul Anka, Irene Cara, and Johnny Lee. Hour Magazine, hosted by Gary Collins (and not to be confused with PM Magazine), debuts in syndication on Monday, while Alan Thicke premieres a weekday variety show; no, this isn't Thicke of the Night. Tuesday night gives two dubious changes: The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson goes from its traditional 90 minutes to an hour, while Tom Snyder's Tomorrow expands to 90 minutes to fill in the gap. An hour has since become the standard for such shows; it's hard to call them "talk shows" anymore, since nobody ever sticks around to talk. It is, in my opinion, a great, great loss to television, as well as the art of conversation.

On Saturday night at 10:30 p.m., PBS broadcasts the world television premiere of the opera The Ocean Flight, by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill. The original title was Der Flug der Lindberghs, telling the story of Charles Lindbergh's historic transatlantic solo flight; Brecht, who would become disillusioned with what he saw as Lindbergh's wartime isolationism and Nazi sympathies, later changed the name and removed all references to Lindbergh from the text. 

I was curious as to what it was like. Perhaps you will be, too.

There are some excellent movies on this week, starting with the Oscar-winning A Man for All Seasons (Sunday, 11:30 p.m., KIRO); it took me many years to warm to this movie and watch it all the way through, but now that I have, it's one of my favorites. (You should watch it, too; we may be living this way sooner rather than later.) The Man in the White Suit (Sunday, 11:45 p.m., CBUT) is a very funny Alec Guinness satire on modern business.And I quite like the movie Badlands (Friday, 12:15 a.m., CHEK), based on the 1957-58 murder spree of Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate, with Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek. 

Of course, we can't forget Casablanca (12:15 a.m., CBUT), can we? Otherwise, we'll never have Paris. TV

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This week in TV Guide: September 2, 1961

How to watch TV: 1. Walk over to set. 2. Turn on. 3. Watch.

Well, that's how I learned to watch television when I was a kid, anyway. Obviously, Leo Rosten has something a little more in mind. His idea, however, is even more radical: if you want better television, turn it off.

Rosten, political scientist, author and social critic, calls the current fare on television "dreary at best and ghastly at worst," but that doesn't make it much out of line from other forms of mass media; many newspapers are "sensational and shoddy," paperbacks "that are part of the alleged 'cultural revolution' are shallow and worthless," and "much of what appears on the Broadway stage is banal and unworthy of a civilized man's attention." In that sense, TV is no different. "The public appetite for the silly and the trivial, for sheer distraction, the national mania for "escape" and narcotic "fun"—these are so great and so widespread that one can only wonder how our schools and families and churches have turned out so many people whose taste is so abominable."

Just when you want to dismiss Rosten as another anti-television elitist, however, he confesses: "I love television. I do. I love it and I use it." It is a place to catch up with the news, to view superior dramas, to watch a sporting event without freezing. It gives him "access to a thousand things I could not otherwise experience." And that's the point: it's because Rosten loves television, and because it is here to stay, that he becomes outraged by bad programs. And that's why he says that "[p]arents can surely teach their children how to use TV—instead of letting TV use them." Television did not abolish parents, he notes, nor teachers, preachers and critics, "and I wish they would stop acting as if they were dead."

If you want better TV, Rosten says, vote by turning off the tube. "There is no swifter or more effective way of influencing Madison Avenue than by registering your vote for or against a program—that is, by listening to programs which are superior and by not listening to programs which are bilge." That we spend so much time agonizing over the quality of television programming is a direct indictment of—ourselves. "The chief trouble with television is nothing more or less than the lazy public which patronizes it with so little sense or taste or judgment." Networks would give us better shows, he concludes, "if enough Americans helped them by supporting excellence and throttling that venality which surrounds us." I wonder what he'd think of TV today?

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In the December 31, 1966 issue of TV Guide, Neil Hickey and Joe Finnigan wrote about a "TV disaster" called The Tammy Grimes Show. The reason I bring it up, and I'm counting on you to click on the link and check that article out for yourself, is because this week Edith Efron has a profile of "a truly unusual girl," none other than Tammy Grimes herself.

She's become a star, thanks to her turn in the Broadway hit The Unsinkable Molly Brown. "She drives critics and reporters into frenzied explosions of prose when they try to describe her appearance," Efron writes. One called her "a sexy little screwball," another described her as "sea spray in the Rockies, calypso in a New England cemetery, and Cinderella in a strip tease." And then there's that voice, that "grits like a key turning in a boudoir lock," that "combines froggy throatiness with an amusing squeak." "She talks in a stream-of-consciousness patter, appears to say whatever comes into her mind and almost never answers direct questions," according to a reporter who's interviewed her. There's an oversized quality to her, one made for the stage, that worked to her detriment on The Tammy Grimes Show.

However, says Efron, there's also a "savagely shy, withdrawn girl with wistful little eyes that nibble at one in sidelong glances, a girl with a twisted, crooked smile that looks more like a grimace of pain." She is a private person at heart, one uncomfortable talking about the things that mean the most to her. She admits that she's suspicious about people; "Sometimes I get terribly enthusiastic. I put them up on a pedestal. Then . . they fall down from the pedestal and I am disappointed." For a moment, as she tells Efron this, she seems to relax for the first time. Her desires are not the same as others; "They don't go after something because they want it. They're really not seeking pleasure for themselves at all. They just imitate each other blindly." When she says things like this, one wonders if she isn't talking about her ex-husband, actor Christopher Plummer, father of her daughter and future actress Amanda. ("I never saw a girl child who resembled her father so much. She looks like Henry the Fifth.")

Her desires are simple: the theater, one man, and children. She goes through two more marriages: one to actor Jeremy Slate, which lasts less than two years, and another to composer Richard Bell, which lasted until his death in 2005. Efron notes that once she broached the subject of happiness, she went back into her protective shell. Reading all this, it's easy to picture how this fits in to the disaster of The Tammy Grimes Show. Whether she was "let down" by people who convinced her they knew best about the show, if her personality wasn't suitable for the small screen, or if it was just a lousy show—we'll probably never know this for sure. What we do know is that Tammy Grimes is, as Efron puts it, an "unusual girl," or, as the press calls her, "a kook."

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Care for some morning baseball? Of course you do, and why not, thanks to the Mountain time zone. At 10:55 a.m. Saturday and Sunday, the Detroit Tigers face off at Yankee Stadium against the New York Yankees, with the American League's three top candidates for MVP: Norm Cash of the Tigers (who wins the batting title this season), and Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle of the Yanks. CBS brings you the games, with Dizzy Dean and Pee Wee Reese (◄) behind the microphones. Meanwhile, on NBC the action begins at 11:00 a.m. both days, with Lindsey Nelson and Joe Garagiola calling the play-by-play. Saturday it's the Los Angeles Dodgers at the Milwaukee Braves; Sunday it's the Cleveland Indians in Baltimore against the Orioles. If baseball's not your thing, Wide World of Sports has the World Water Ski Championships from Long Beach, with Jim McKay and Jim Simpson reporting. (3:00 p.m., ABC)

It is indeed a really big shew for Sunday's Ed Sullivan (6:00 p.m. MT, CBS), a rerun from last year with headliners Bobby Darin, Edith Piaf and Trude Adams, plus comedians Wayne and Shuster, Jackie Kannnon, the late Lord Buckley (who died in November, 1960), impressionist Rex Ramer, and the Pompoff Thedy Family of clowns. It's too bad I don't have anything to put up against it, because Ed would be a sure winner.

We've got an article about the resurgence of interest in the Glenn Miller Orchestra, led for the last five years by Ray McKinley, who calls it "real music"; "The kids, brought up on a diet of rock 'n' roll, sit there bored until they begin to listen to the music. Then they join their parents on the dance floor. I guess they find the old folks are right, that our music is pleasant and danceable." Find out for yourself Monday on Glenn Miller Time (8:00 p.m., CBS)

Playhouse 90 has a provocative offering on Tuesday night (7:30 p.m., CBS). "Journey to the Day" shows us what takes place in a group psychotherapy session through the eyes of six patients in a state mental hospital and their doctor. John Frankenheimer directs a stellar cast including Janice Rule, Mike Nichols, James Dunn, Vivian Nathan, James Gregory, and a rare TV appearance by Mary Astor, with Steven Hill as their doctor. A half-hour later, NBC presents a drama about the famed news photographer Margaret Bourke-White (who was played by Farrah Fawcett in a 1989 TV-movie), focusing on her dramatic battle for recovery from Parkinson's disease. Teresa Wright stars as Bourke-White, with Eli Wallach as fellow photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt.

Jack Paar's in Berlin the latter part of the week, so his seat in New York is being filled by Orson Bean on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Fortunately, as far as I know there were no international incidents as a result of Jack's trip.

Thursday at 9:30 p.m. KCPX, the ABC affiliate in Salt Lake City, has Tightrope, the police drama starring the pre-Mannix Mike Connors as an unnamed undercover agent who assumes a different persona in each episode; while KTVB, the ABC affiliate in Boise, has The Case of the Dangerous Robin, a ZIV-produced crime drama starring the pre-Combat Rick Jason as an insurance investigator. It's the time slot that, until February, was the home of Take a Good Look, Ernie Kovacs' bizarre panel show, co-starring wife Edie Adams. Ernie and his wild sense of humor (he says he's 10 5/8 years ahead of his time) are the subject of an article by Dwight Whitney. The show was not terribly successful in its two-year stint; Kovacs insists it was a satire of a panel show, but Whitney says the problem was that "he tried to pull his punches, to kid himself and his audience into thinking they actually were watching a panel show." It is a given by now that Kovacs has the most, well, unique sense of humor in the business; Jack Benny once told him that "Normally I hate what I don't understand, but I love this." He is said to have spent $3,000 on one three-second gag ("the used-car salesman whose car dropped through the concrete."). Studio crew members have been known to fight for the privilege of working on his shows. Dutch Masters, his loyal sponsor (even though he smokes only Cuban cigars), loves him; they even liked Take a Good Look. Even though that show is now history, ABC has signed him for a series of specials—three this year, six next year, which he, sadly, will not live to complete. He's not for everyone, but I think Ernie Kovacs is one of the funniest men ever born, and while you can see his influence in many shows over the years, I've yet to see anyone succeed him. And speaking of influence: tonight's Tightrope features a character named "Emile Kovacs." Coincidence?

Another thing on Thursday: Rocky Marciano, the former heavyweight champion, is one of Groucho's guests on You Bet Your Life (8:00 p.m., NBC). His mother was a guest on last week's episode. Friday, KBOI has a classic episode of The Twilight Zone (10:00 p.m.) starring Keenan Wynn and Phyllis Kirk; besides being a humorous episode, it marks the first on-screen appearance of Rod Serling, who actually gets sucked into the story.

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There's an unbylined profile of Dwayne Hickman, star of Dobie Gillis. It's a standard look at a young, level-headed man who's become an accomplished young light comedian, but there's a quote in here I think is worth noting. Rod Amateau, producer-director of Dobie Gillis, says, "I will surprise you. There is Steve McQueen, who has a cute little personality and could be a very fine young light comedian. With that single exception, Dwayne is all alone. Jack Lemmon? He's not young any more." Now there's a thought—Steve McQueen? True, he does have a nice light touch that he displays from time to time, but the King of Cool as a light comedian? The star of Bullitt, The Sand Pebbles, The Magnificent Seven, The Towering Inferno, The Thomas Crown Affair? Yes, a very interesting thought.

Henry Harding's "For the Record" feature at the beginning of the programming section has some notes worth mentioning. There's Robert Wood, the manager of broadcast standards for NBC, i.e. the network censor, talking about the challenge he faces from the myriad number of complaints his office gets from "people or groups "who feel they have been maligned"—anyone from plumbers to milliners. "I don't blame them," he says, "but it sure makes things difficult. If we paid attention to all the complaints, our villains would be faceless, formless, backgroundless and with no visible means of support." And he's not even talking about sponsors, who've been known to meddle a time or two in the details of a story.

Rhode Island Senator John Pastore*, who's had more than one run-in with the television industry, has issued a stern warning to broadcasters about liquor commercials on television. Along with Washington Senator Warren Magnuson, Pastore has said that it would be "foolhardy" for the industry to try and get liquor commercials on television "in these trying times with criticism of the broadcasting industry mounting." The dividing line traditionally has been whiskey; beer and wine are OK to advertise, but nothing harder. Such commercials "would certainly be taken into consideration" when time came for a station's license renewal. The National Association of Broadcasters promises they'll keep their members in line. Pastore, you may recall, was the senator in front of whom Fred Rogers famously testified on the need for funding for public broadcasting back in 1969.

*Fun fact: Pastore won reelection to the Senate in 1970 by defeating an anti-war Catholic priest named John McLaughlin. McLaughlin would later leave the priesthood and become a political pundit and television host. His show—The McLaughlin Group.

I mentioned the New York Yankees earlier; well, WPIX, Channel 11 in New York City, is delirious about its ratings for Yankees baseball this season. They're up 16 percent, not because the Yanks are headed for another American League pennant (they are), but because the M&M Boys, Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle, are both threatening Babe Ruth's storied single-season record of 60 home runs. "Even former Brooklyn Dodger fans are watching, pulling against them, natch!" Maris breaks the record on the final day of the season, finishing with 61, while Mantle, hobbled by an injury, winds up with a mere 54.

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Finally, it's always good to catch up with the Letters section, to find out what the viewers of America are thinking.

Mrs. E. Schlenger of Stamford, Connecticut is one of a number of letter writers who thought to invoke Dorothy Parker in commenting on last month's article about Joyce Gordon, the glamour girl who wears glasses. She says, "As one of the many who wear glasses, I have come to realize that: "Men who make passes seldom stop at glasses!" Speaking as a man, I have no quarrel with this.

Diane Read Haeselbarth of Maywood, New Jersey, noticed that last month's article on "The Working Mother" was written by a man (George Lefferts, "unless we have another George Sand"), and has a bone to pick with him. "I am a college-educated, ex-newspaper reporter, but according to apparent Lefferts-Margaret Mead standards, I am now a simple, bored housewife." She concludes with an opinion that, a scant ten years later, would be quite unfashionable: "Let us hope for the sake of our own and future generations that the American woman has the sensitivity to recognize challenge in the world, wifehood and motherhood, if she is lucky enough to be so blessed." Hear, hear!

We end with a couple of anonymous letters on "Is Television Aimed at the 12-Year-Old Mind," from the August 19 issue. (You can see that kids and TV was a continuing topic in TV Guides of the time.) A writer in Kimberly, Wisconsin speaks up for the kids who aren't fooled by the pablum that television gives them: "They know what they want even if they put it forth in a childlike manner. The article proves that kids today won't be satisfied with shows that are mediocre, repetitious, uninteresting and unbelievable." Would that I had so much confidence it today's youth—but, of course, they don't watch TV.

The letter of the issue, however—if not of the year—comes from someone signing his/herself as "A 12-Year-Old" in DeWitt, New York, who offers a contrary opinion. "Where did you pick up those oblong 12-year-olds? All the kids around here love bank-bang, shoot-'em-up type of TV shows. As for classics, they're the squarest." And then: "P.S. Please withhold my name for certain personal reasons. Namely my mother." There's not much else one can say after that, is there?  TV

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This week in TV Guide: August 30, 1980

In May of 1980, the city of Miami was rocked by three days of rioting, described by Dan Rather as "the Nation's worst outbreak of urban disorder in a single city" since 1967 in Detroit and Newark. The riots broke out after the death of a black man in police custody. Fires burned out of control, looters ran in and out of destroyed stores, police patrolled the streets. Does the story sound familiar yet?

Media critic Edwin Diamond takes a close look at how the networks covered the violence, and concludes: "something was missing from the story." The carefully considered "riot coverage guidelines" used by the networks are necessary, perhaps, but "not sufficient for the reporting assignment at hand"—indeed, perhaps, they "may prevent television from finding the stories beyond the immediate breaking news."

The trigger for the Miami riots was the acquittal of four Dade County police officers in the death of a black salesman, Arthur McDuffie, in a struggle after a high-speed chase. At the height of the violence, Miami mayor Maurice Ferre talked of "two Americas," and was quoted by NBC that "There's no way that those of us who live in air-conditioned comfort with two cars outside and $30,000 boats in this community can live side by side with people who live 10 to a room. . . infested with rats." This was the exception, rather than the rule, to TV's coverage of Miami. Part of the problem was that the riots coincided with the eruption of Mount St. Helens, a story that dominated the news cycle. It was, in the words of ABC World News Tonight anchor Max Robinson ("probably the most prominent black newsman on television") a "safe disaster," one that Diamond describes as "much more confortable for whites to contemplate compared with the human volcano" of Miami. But then, as Diamond points out, network television can't be "too sociological" in its coverage.

Diamond reviews what he calls the "safe, neutral, [and] responsible" provisions of the "riot coverage guidelines." For instance:

• "Be restrained, neutral and non-committal in your comments and behavior."
• "Do not describe a disturbance as a 'riot' unless the police or some other respnsible agency or official so designates it. Do not call a disturbance 'racial' until it is officially so described."
• "Avoid reports about 'crowd gathering' following incidents involving police in known trouble areas and avoid pinpointing sites of growing tension and possible trouble in a city."
• "Regard with suspician any interviewing of participants during riots. It is questionable whether such interviews serve a valid purpose and they may incite rather than inform."

You get the point. The overall reporting from all three networks was typical, with talks of how white businesses and black consumers were most hurt by the destruction, promises of Federal investigations, and so on. But do they get to the bottom of the story? Says one black journalist, "[I]n all my years in television, I don't recall ever sitting down at a meeting to discuss the different overall perception blacs and whites have of the racial climate in America," while another says, "We need special reports holding up a mirror to white America, but do people want to see that?" Diamond's conclusion is that television desperately needs to engage in coverage which involves "a lot of us—black and white—more deeply in its stories, and allow us to find our reactions to the major continuing American story of our time." And we need to do it "before the fire next time."

Has coverage really changed over these 40 years? Look at this summer, for example.  There was scarcely a whisper visible of the old riot coverage guidelines; oftentimes, reporters not only didn't regard participant comments with suspicion, they took them at face value and became advocates for it. Was reporting "restrained, neutral and non-committal"? My perception is that we're hearing much of the same rhetoric as before, but this time it comes from the media, advocating rather than reporting on the issue, lecturing instead of encouraging open discussion—prohibiting open discussion in many instances. Of course, that's only one way of looking at it, and this is hardly the place to debate the underlying issues. It's just fascinating, as always, to see how seldom things really change—either in America or in television.

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So just how smart are these televisions of 1981, anyway? Well, for starters, they've got computers! And keypads have replaced dials! Now you can use your TV's remote to tune your cable stations! And some models even offer stereo sound! Is there no end to this technology?

Yes, this can only mean that it's time for David Lachenbruch and his annual look at the new model TVs. Most of the technological advances discussed in this issue have to do with refining color and adding inputs in the rear of the television for the discerning technophile's VCR or laserdisk. I shouldn't really make fun of this; I was around in these days, and I remember being as impressed as anyone by these advances. But what interests me most about this article is that there's no attempt at forecasting the future, envisioning television screens as large as walls, or anything like that. It would have been fun, as always, to see just how close they came to predicting the future.

In the end, though, it's true that all of these advances have been incorporated into today's televisions as a fundamental part what makes TV work, and without them we probably wouldn't have what we enjoy today.

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Herminio Traviesas tells us what it's like to be a network censor, or as the headline puts it, "the thankless task of cleaning up everyone else's act." Traviesas is the former vice president of Broadcast Standards for NBC, which means one of the shows under his purview is Saturday Night Live, enough to give anyone a headache.

It's interesting getting a look at the SNL skits that Traviesas vetoed—for example, the one that made fun of the plight of the Iran hostages, proposed shortly after the militants seized the U.S. Embassy. Or the skit in the wake of the Jim Jones massacre in Guyana, when the show wanted to use it as imagery to represent the large number of shows NBC had just cancelled. That one might make it through today, but I think the hostage bit probably would never have a chance—it's fine to use the historical event in a movie such as Argo, but for humor? Likely not, but who knows in this "nothing sacred" era?

Traviesas also tells of a line that he vetoed from the old Laugh-In show, belonging to Henry Gibson's meek pastor, who would have said, "I don't understand members of my flock who on Saturday sow their wild oats and on Sunday pray for crop failure." That one definitely would make it today; in fact, even if Gibson's pastor was a Catholic priest, they'd probably let it go.

Lest you think Traviesas' job was limited to the series that one might expect to be pushing the envelope of good taste, he throws this one in, from The Dean Martin Show. Seems that one year Dean's producer, Greg Garrison, wanted to open every show in a bar. Traviesas explained to him why this couldn't be done: "community standards, the feminist movement, the plight of alcoholics," and so on. That probably wouldn't be an issue today; you'd likely have to glamorize it in a setting other than that of a successful variety show headed by a man known for having a fondness for drink. At any rate, Garrison wasn't having any of it, either. "Last year," he told Traviesas, his voice rising, "you took away the broads. Now you want to take away the booze. What have I got left?"

The show that gave Traviesas the most problems? None other than Johnny Carson's Tonight Show. Johnny would, on occasion, throw out a word that he knew wouldn't make it past the censor, but he used it to get a rise out of the studio audience. He was cool with it being bleeped out of the show. His guests, however, weren't as understanding, as in the case of one who used a word which, interpolating the context of the story Traviesas relates, I would guess was "ass." You hear a lot worse today on family shows, but this one got the boot. (Kind of nice, when you think about it.) Says Traviesas, tongue-in-cheek, "I just made another momentous policy decision for NBC."

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That really bad artist's depiction on the cover (not the art, but the colors are all wrong, especially on that Los Angeles Rams uniform) can mean only one thing: time for Melvin Durslag to pick this year's NFL winners. Over the course of the next few weeks, we'll probably run across several Letters to the Editor critiquing Durslag's picks, using the most colorful imagery available to a family magazine. However, we'll just have to make due with comparing his predictions to what really happens.

For instance, Durslag has as his three AFC division winners New England, Pittsburgh and San Diego. That actually sounds as if it would be a good bet today as well, doesn't it? In fact, however, of the three only the Chargers made it to the playoffs; both the Patriots and Steelers had winning records that would probably have gotten them into the playoffs nowadays, but back then there were only three divisions and two wild cards, so New England's 10-6 and Pittsburgh's 9-7 were just not good enough. Over in the NFC, Durslag faired no better. Of his division winners—Philadelphia, Chicago and New Orleans—only the Eagles came out on top (and they'll go all the way to the Super Bowl, before falling to the Oakland Raiders, whom Durslag had finishing third in the AFC West). The Saints, who Durslag saw as a team possibly on the rise, finished with a record of 1-15, the absolute worst in football. They didn't call them the 'Aints for nothing.

Of interest is Durslag's commentary on ABC's Monday Night Football. The franchise is still going strong, with Fran Tarkenton filling in for Don Meredith in nearly half the games. But there are possible cracks in the foundation, mostly pointing back to Howard Cosell. It's true that ad rates for MNF have risen from $65,000 a minute to $230,000 a minute in 1980.* But for the first time the ratings have slipped a little, and CBS Radio, also carrying the games, reported a record audience. Stories are that people watch the picture on ABC but turn down the sound to favor CBS. No such long-term worries, though: MNF (now seen on ESPN) and its progeny,  NBC's Sunday Night Football, continue to rule the ratings roost for their respective networks.

*All I can say is that it's a hell of a lot more today, by comparison.

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It's Labor Day Weekend, which back in the day meant only one thing: the Jerry Lewis Telethon. If I can digress for a moment and give a personal opinion, I'm still offended by the way in which the Muscular Dystrophy Association gave Lewis the heave-ho after so many decades of service, making a heretofore unknown disease into one of America's Charities (if that isn't too crass a way of putting it; it isn't meant to be). The MDA Telethon was an institution, and by the time it left the air altogether it had been reduced to little more than an infomercial with a few music videos thrown in. The failure of MDA to disclose the reasons for the change don't say much for the organization's definition of transparency either, enough so that we've stopped giving to them. For all the criticism Jerry Lewis took over the years, there was never a shred of evidence of any financial impropriety, a rarity for any charity nowadays, and given MDA's tight-lipped response, it would cause one to wonder how reputable the agency is in handling its donations with Lewis gone. The sad part of this is that it's the kids, as always, that suffer. I know they have a completely different fundraising model they follow now, and you still see many of the same community groups out their raising funds at this time of the year (firefighters asking you to fill the boot for MDA, etc.), know they're still taking in a lot of money (although I've heard that the conversation rates on pledges is much lower than previously; whether that's an urban myth or not I don't know), but they're not getting any of ours.

Be that as it may, there's no doubt that the show's quality declined over the years, which isn't surprising given the shift in entertainment, away from variety shows and mainstream Vegas entertainers and toward artists that no longer carry the cache in mainstream America. The 1980 lineup features some big names, including Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., Liza Minnelli, John and Patty Duke Astin, Johnny and June Carter Cash, Tony Bennett, Paul McCartney, and more. Now, there was an actors strike that year, so it's possible not everyone appeared, but it's still a pretty good lineup. I'm pretty sure I watched the Telethon that year; it might have been one of the last times I decided to make a go of it and watch the whole 21+ hours without sleep. I could do that back in my younger days, you know. The haul that year was $31,103,787.

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I realize I've gotten this far, and I really haven't talked a bit about what's on television. Hmm.

Saturday: Not a program, but one of those "Vital Statistics" that TV Guide used to insert into the programming guide to fill space. According to the Screen Actor's Guild, "Although they are a full one-third of this Nation's population, people under the age of 19 make up only one-tenth of television's fictional population." I wonder if that's still true today; it sure seems as if there are more youngsters, or adults playing teens, than there used to be. At least as far as the IQ of today's shows, we can rest assured that teens are well-represented.

Sunday: Here's a program that has a reach far beyond its local roots: Three American Reporters (9:00 p.m., PBS/KAVT), which I suspect was produced by KTCA, the PBS affiliate in Minneapolis-St. Paul. It features, well, three American reporters with Minnesota roots: Harry Reasoner, co-host of 60 Minutes; Harrison Salisbury, the distinguished New York Times correspondent; and Eric Sevareid, CBS commentator. Sailsbury was born in Minneapolis; all three attended high school in the city and went to the University of Minnesota; Reasoner and Sevareid both wrote for Minneapolis newspapers; and Reasoner worked for the precursor to Minneapolis' KMSP, while Sevareid's brother Paul was a news anchor in the city. The program's host is Minneapolis Tribune editor Charles Bailey, who was co-author, with Fletcher Knebel, of the best-seller Seven Days in May. Quite a show, huh? For people who think of Ted Baxter when they hear about Minneapolis news anchors, nothing could be further from the truth; before CBS, Walter Cronkite was offered a job as anchor at WCCO, a station which also produced CBS correspondents Susan Spencer and Tom Fenton, and CNN correspondent Skip Loescher, among others. Cedric Adams was a nationally-known television and newspaper personality, Headline News veteran Don Harrison was previously at KMSP, and the Magers brothers, Ron and Paul, both went on to great success in Chicago and Los Angeles, respectively. The local news situation isn't much anymore, but back in the day Minneapolis-St. Paul produced as many network correspondents as anyone.

Also on Sunday, an episode of William F. Buckley Jr.'s Firing Line (4:00 p.m., PBS) features Buckley's tribute to liberal activist Allard Lowenstein, who'd been murdered five months earlier. I include this because it shows how much politics has changed since the '80s; Lowenstein and Buckley were about as far apart politically as could be. Buckley was the author of the nation's conservative movement, while Lowenstein was a former congressman and head of the radical Americans for Democratic Action. Yet he was also a frequent guest on Firing Line, and the two men maintained a mutual respect despite their political differences. According to Buckley, Lowenstein "spent a praiseworthy and highly unusual amount of time listening to his constituents' complaints and trying to redress their grievances and injustices one-to-one, face-to-face." That, Buckley said, was a reason why he endorsed Lowenstein's reelection effort. Buckley was one of the eulogists at Lowenstein's funeral; here's a clip from the episode of Firing Line in question.

I wonder how many on either the right or left are like Buckley and Lowenstein today?

Monday: It's Labor Day, which means regular programming is subject to change. The Telethon continues on many channels, both independent and network affiliate. The CBS stations are covering the start of the second week of the U.S. Open tennis championship, with the broadcast starting at 11:30 a.m. CT and continuing through to 5:30 p.m., although WCCO bails out at 3:00 p.m. to present The Joker's Wild, followed by The John Davidson Show (talk about an unforced error). Until I started rereading the early '80s issues, I'd completely forgotten that Davidson had taken over for Mike Douglas on the Group W stations. He had the whole format down, from the 90-minute timespot to the celebrity co-host. Davidson didn't have Mike's easy charm or appeal, though, and the show ended after two seasons. I never really liked John Davidson, by the way, either professionally or personally. But then, I'm sure he feels the same way about me.

Labor Day sports include a matinee between the Cubs and Braves, tying up both WGN and WTBS for the afternoon, and a live broadcast of the All American Futurity quarter horse race from Ruidoso Downs, New Mexico. It was billed as the richest event in horse racing, and was broadcast at 7:00 p.m. on KMSP. I always coupled the Futurity with the Telethon back in the day; I didn't consider my marathon TV watching complete unless I was able to make it through the race as well.*

*I was so disappointed the first time I saw the race; it was the first time I'd ever seen a quarter horse race, and I wasn't expecting the even shorter-than-usual event. I remember thinking, "All this for a million bucks?"

Tuesday: It occurs to me that I've neglected to give you the biggest television story of the week, the continuing actors strike, which has indefinitely postponed the start of the new television season. As such, we're stuck with reruns, bad television movies, and reruns of bad television movies. Tonight we get part 1 of the massive war epic Midway (8:00 p.m., NBC); the disease-of-the-week drama "Echoes of a Summer Night" (8:00 p.m., CBS), salvaged by a cast including Richard Harris, Lois Nettleton and Jodie Foster); and reruns of staples like Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley and The Misadventures of Sheriff Lobo. And you wonder why I don't spend much time on television of the '80s?

Wednesday: A 90-minute NBC White Paper (8:30 p.m.) looks at the influence of Fidel Castro, "the spiritual godfather of every leftist revolution in Latin America." Back then, the U.S. still fought against Communist insurgents, particularly in this hemisphere. On the flip side, a coterie of stations present night two of telecasts from Billy Graham's crusade in Edmonton.

Thursday: PBS' afternoon talk-show lineup features a couple of episodes worth watching; the late, great Hugh Downs' interview with Peter Pan herself, Mary Martin, and her son, Dallas' own Larry Hagman (2:00 p.m., KTCA). Following that, Dick Cavett talks with the great opera baritone Sherrill Milnes, and there were few better than him.

Friday: The action's all on late-night this time: Bob Hope, Richard Chamberlain and David Bowie are among Johnny's guest on The Tonight Show (10:30 p.m., NBC), while CBS' late night features a classic Steed-Mrs. Peel episode of The Avengers (11:00 p.m.), followed by part 1 of the Charlton Heston-Sophia Loren epic El Cid (12:10 a.m.). And if that isn't enough for you, the classic sci-fi movie The Incredible Shrinking Man airs on WGN at (11;00 p.m.). In a week of reruns, it proves that the classics can still be the best thing on TV. TV

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This week in TV Guide: August 22, 1959

Wo there's a little something for everyone this week, and there's no better place to begin than at the beginning!

Saturday night football! The NFL preseason continues with a game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Chicago Cardinals from Austin, Texas (9:00 p.m. CT, ABC). The appeal of this game would have been obvious: Bobby Layne, the star quarterback of the Steelers, was a native of Texas and an all-time great at the University of Texas (which, of course, is in Austin), while John David Crow, star halfback of the Cardinals, had won the Heisman Trophy at Texas A&M. In these days before widespread coverage of pro football, when Texas didn’t have any professional football of its own, I imagine the chance to see two of Texas’ greatest football stars live and in person made for quite an event in Austin.

The Chicago Cardinals were nearing the end of their run as the Second Team in the Second City. Their history in Chicago dated back to 1920, but those years were spent mostly in futility and by 1959 the team had had only one winning season in the decade. There was no way the Cards could compete any longer with the Bears, and as the Bidwell family (which had owned the team since 1932) looked for options, a number of businessmen sought to buy the team and relocate it. Those attempts failed due to the family’s insistence on maintaining majority ownership of the team, and eventually the NFL allowed them to move the team to St. Louis.

Among those businessmen seeking (separately) to buy the Cardinals were Lamar Hunt and Bud Adams. When those efforts failed, they joined forces with others to form the American Football League, Hunt owning the Dallas Texans (which eventually moved to Kansas City) and Adams the Houston Oilers. I can’t help but wonder if the scheduling of this game was perhaps a trial run to test out the Texas market. In any event, by the next year the Lone Star State would have three professional teams: the Texans, the Oilers and the Dallas Cowboys. Of the three, only the Cowboys remain where they started. If, that is, you count Arlington as being part of Dallas, which I can assure you they don't in Arlington.

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On Sunday afternoon at 4:30, Arkansas Senator J. William Fullbright* (listed in TV Guide as “James W.”, which is technically correct but not the way he was usually referred to) is the guest on CBS’s Face the Nation. I’ve frequently mentioned how sports was not always wall-to-wall on the weekends, and stations generally filled the time with public affairs and documentary programming. At various times this Sunday we have Open Hearings (hosted by ABC’s John Secondari), College News Conference, Victory at Sea, Conquest (a science program on CBS narrated by Eric Sevareid), NBC’s Meet the Press (with this week’s guest, Erwin D. Canham, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and editor of the Christian Science Monitor), The Twentieth Century (CBS), and Chet Huntley Reporting (NBC). Religious programming, such as This Is the Life, This Is the Answer and The Gospel in Art fill out the schedule, along with Quiz a Catholic, which I guess would be both religion and public affairs.

*Fun fact: Fulbright’s sister Roberta is the maternal grandmother of political pundit Tucker Carlson.

There is some sports on Sunday; both NBC and CBS have afternoon baseball (Red Sox vs. Indians on CBS, Orioles vs. Tigers on NBC), but the games are blacked out in the Twin Cities, as the Triple-A Minneapolis Millers are hosting the Kentucky Colonels. WCCO fills the time with more auto racing from Shakopee’s Raceway Park, a place that I visited several times during my youth (with the souvenir checkered flag to prove it).

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The American Legion is holding its national convention in Minneapolis, and on Monday at 9:30 a.m., both Channels 4 and 9 will offer coverage of the Legion’s parade, which is expected to last eight to ten hours and feature 7,500 marchers, floats, bands, and delegations from nine foreign countries. Channel 4, the CBS affiliate, breaks away from the coverage from time to time for local news, soaps, and game shows; Channel 9, the independent station, actually begins its broadcast day 2½ hours earlier than usual, and only breaks for an afternoon movie. Can you imagine a local station doing this now? A few years ago, when we were living in Minneapolis, the Legion returned to the city for its convention, and I can testify that the parade is very long and very colorful, though I don’t think it attracted the crowd it did in 1959.

One thing I really like about the listing for this is the reference to representatives from “the 49 states.” That’s right, we’re in that one year when Alaska’s achieved statehood, but not yet Hawaii. That we’re able to capture a reference like this in writing, from such a relatively short timeframe, is just a very cool cultural reference.

At 9:00 p.m., CBS’ Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse presents the story of famed gangster Al Capone in part one of the two-part “The Untouchables,” with Neville Brand as Capone and Robert Stack as Eliot Ness, the G-Man who helped bring Capone down. The show was a hit when it was originally broadcast in January, and in October it premieres as a weekly series on ABC, where it remains for four successful (and extremely violent) seasons.*

*Fun fact: Desi Arnez, whose Desilu studio produced The Untouchables, went to high school with Al Capone’s son.

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Tuesday features a David Brinkley report entitled “Back to School” (7:00 p.m., NBC), which takes advantage of the upcoming start of the school year to examine the problems faced by America’s public schools. Not surprisingly, they’re some of the same problems that exist today, particularly financial ones: crowded classrooms in New York, no money for school construction in New Orleans, no funds for facility maintenance in Los Angeles, and desegregation problems throughout the South. But if you look closely, you’ll notice something strange. Many of those challenges facing American school systems in 1959 are the result of overcrowding. New Orleans, Los Angeles, Oklahoma City, New York—all face a need for more school buildings to house additional students. The school I attended for grades K-6, built early in the 20th century, had temporary classrooms built to accommodate the growing student population. And that’s not happening today. The baby boom is over, and in many places the increase in student enrollment comes from immigration, from people moving to a community from another state or country. Some school systems may be looking at expansion, but in how many situations is this anything other than a zero-sum game, with enrollment increases in one area coming at the expense of another?

So many things have changed since 1959, but the decrease in population growth is one of the most significant, and I think one of the saddest, of all. Maybe Bishop Sheen’s Live Is Worth Living (7:30 p.m., KMSP) has some insight into what plagues us today. The topic: "Cure for Selfishness. To do great deeds, we must supplant self with the Divine Will." But Bishop Sheen won't have much of a chance to say anything about it, not if the world of tonight's David Niven Show episode "The Last Room" comes to pass. (9:00 p.m., NBC) "In a totalitarian country where religious worship is a crime, a brutal inquisitor attempts to force prisoners to name the leaders of a group of citizens who are secretly attending church services." But that can't really happen here, not today. Can it?

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Wednesday: One of the more unique programs on television is Court of Last Resort (7:00 p.m., ABC), based on Erle Stanley Gardner’s organization, devoted to investigating cases in which reasonable doubt about the original verdict exists. Gardner, the creator of Perry Mason, started the actual Court of Last Resort in 1948 as a column in the popular magazine Argosy, and the program’s 26 episodes are based on actual cases investigated by the Court. The show ran for a single season in 1957-58 on NBC, and the broadcast in this week’s TV Guide is part of the series’ rebroadcast on ABC in 1958-59. Actors played the principals, but the real members of the Court appeared at the end of each episode.

Gardner believed that, because of "the exceptional nature of American liberty," no actual court could ever truly be a court of last resort; instead, that verdict could come only from "the people themselves." As opposed to today's organizations, which often work to free the unjustly convicted through DNA and other scientific findings, Gardner's cases were driven by polygraph tests, and augmented by findings from the Court's staff of investigators; the results would then be published in Argosy in hopes of creating a groundswell of public opinion. "Public opinion must be molded," he was once quoted as saying, "but it must be an enlightened public opinion based on facts, otherwise we would be charged, and justly charged, with the tactics of the rabble rousers."

One of the cases investigated by the real-life Court was that of the accused murderer Dr. Sam Sheppard in the late 1950s, with Gardner believing in Sheppard’s innocence even though nothing came of the Court’s investigation. Had The Fugitive existed in the same universe with Court of Last Resort, I suspect they would have investigated Dr. Kimble’s case as well. And isn’t that a meta conversation: a TV show about a fictional character from another TV show being aided by a fictional version of a real organization started by the creator of a different fictional character in an unrelated TV show. Makes your head spin, don't it?

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Thursday: Now here’s the type of local programming you don’t see anymore: at 7:30 on WCCO, Operation Southdale presents a fashion show in the Garden Court of the famed Southdale Center in Edina, Minnesota, the nation's first enclosed shopping center, and a mall in which I spent many, many hours over the decades. “For the men’s benefit,” an auto show is being held in the parking lot. And a musical group called the Jimarlen Trio provides background color for the show. For this, WCCO pre-empts a rerun of Yancy Derringer.

Later, Playhouse 90 (8:30 p.m., CBS) presents a curious drama, based on the true story of the first hydrogen bomb test. In “Nightmare at Ground Zero,” starring Barry Sullivan, the scientists behind the development of the bomb discover that they’ve made a few miscalculations, and that the bomb is really many times more destructive than they’d anticipated. Whoops!

On the face of it, this sounds like all the makings of one of those 50s sci-fi movies that winds up on MST3K. You know how it goes: the bomb goes off, much more powerful than they’d thought, with the result that people or insects or vegetation (or all three) are turned into mutants 50 feet tall. And it was written by Rod Serling. But it’s also directed by Franklin Schaffner, who would eventually win an Oscar for Patton, and the true story of the blast, which went off at 15 megatons rather than the expected five and vaporized three coral islands, in the process raining the fallout over a 7,000 square foot area , is remarkable.

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A big matchup for NBC’s Friday night fight on Gillette Cavalcade of Sports (9:00 p.m.), as Gene Fullmer faces Carmen Basillo for the world middleweight championship from the Cow Palace in San Francisco. There’s one thing that never changes in boxing, and that’s politics. The reason Fullmer and Basillo are meeting for the title is because the National Boxing Association (which would have been the bigger “NBA” at the time), had stripped Sugar Ray Robinson of the title, leaving the top two contenders, each of whom had both won and lost title fights to Robinson in the past, to settle the score.

Fullmer wins on a 14th round TKO.

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On the cover this week is the cast of I've Got a Secret, the long-running panel show on CBS. Inside, we read about some of the wackier secrets that have involved members of the panel through the years. There was, for instance, the time that Paul Newman appeared on the show. His secret was that, a few weeks before, he had appeared at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, disguised as a hot dog vendor, and sold an unsuspecting Henry Morgan a hot dog. It was hilarious stuff; Morgan might not have recognized Newman, but some in the crowd did, and by the time Newman reached Morgan's row he had already sold $25 worth of hot dogs. Well, acting is an uncertain occupation.

Among the more mundane and intriguing secrets which people both ordinary and famous bring to I've Got a Secret, it has become increasingly popular to involve the panel in the stunts. Host Garry Moore once wrestled an alligator (and did pretty well at that), while Ernest Borgnine, taking lessons from Newman, dressed up as a taxi driver and drove panelist Jayne Meadows to the show. By consensus, the butt of most of these "secrets" is Morgan, the acclaimed satirist and humorist who manages the almost impossible feat of simultaneously being witty, urbane, and charming, all the while remaining vaguely unlikable. In addition to his encounter with Newman, he's also wrestled a female judo expert and spent an entire day entertaining three women, ages 10, 20 and 30, whose identical secrets were, "I want a date with Henry Morgan." Ah, but then, the name of the show is I've Got a Secret, not I've Got a Neurosis.

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She's not exactly a starlet, but this week's profile is Diana Lynn, who's personal trademark is that of a "shrinking tigress." You know, the "brave but frightened girl, torn by conflicting emotions." Says a director of her characters, "Diana either can't scream above a whisper or is murmuring 'I love you' at the top of her lungs." She's a hard worker who's spent 20 years in the business; "I had no training. All I had was a kind of desperate, honest quality" that's taken her from a Hollywood career in movies to New York where she's done live TV on the major dramatic series, hit Broadway with Maurice Evans, and recorded an album of piano music—her dad's a piano teacher in Los Angeles, and she was considered a prodigy.

The last couple of years she's concentrated on her family and community work, with most of her appearances coming on Playhouse 90 (she's starred in it five times). She enjoys her work, wants to keep working, but appreciates the good life she has as a wife and mother. Remarkably, when this article comes out she has only a dozen years to live; while getting ready to do the movie Play It as It Lays, she suffers a stroke and dies in December, 1971.

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Finally, on Monday night there’s this ad from Channel 4 for a “Girl Reporter.” We're all familiar with the “Today Girl” on The Today Show, so the term wasn’t terribly unusual; still, it’s another of those things that reminds the reader that they’re in a different place and time. Naturally, the Girl Reporter’s job is to cover the unveiling of CBS’ daytime television schedule.

I wonder who the winner was, and if she ever went into the media business? TV

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