Aristophanes comes to Hooterville

What does it mean to be a "classic television historian"? It's a question I've had cause to ask myself during the course of promoting Darkness in Primetime. Back in the day, I coined the term "cultural archaeologist" to describe what I do—in other words, one who looks at the remnants of a particular time in television history and drew conclusions from it that I could relate to our own times, much as an actual archaeologist looks at artifacts and bones and tells us what life was like in 100 B.C. It is often said by historians that it can take decades before one can accurately assess the overall effect of a particular era; therefore, the time should be ripe for us to look at the classic television era (for our purposes, primarily the 1950s through the 1970s) and find out what it tells us about life, and how it's changed (or hasn't changed) in the interval. Television, as much as—if not more than—other sources of the time (history books, newspapers, Time, Life and Newsweek), functions as a sort of time capsule, a description of what life was like then.

This week, what we have on tap is what I like to call a "time capsule moment," when we come across something—a clip from a television show, an article from a magazine—that teaches us a fundamental truth about the era. It happened one morning some time ago, when, while perusing the various classic TV channels on the various Roku/Pluto/Tubi offerings, I ran across an episode of Petticoat Junction. It's been a long time since I watched Junction with any regularity, although thanks to my friend Dan Budnick's excellent book I have more than a passing acquaintance with it. 

The moment in question comes from the series' final season in 1970, an episode called "Susan B. Anthony, I Love You." In it, "Billie Jo returns from Chicago with a visionary zeal for the women's liberation movement, and enlists her sisters in 'the cause.' " It's a product of its time; women's lib is all the rage, no-fault divorce was passed by California the year before, Ms. will start publication the year after, the Equal Rights Amendment is already in the works and will be passed by Congress in 1972. As we join the episode, Billie Jo is in high dudgeon, reciting various statistics illustrating the various states of inequality that exist between women and men, and urging her sisters and Dr. Janet Craig (June Lockhart) to fight. (When Betty Jo says that doesn't sound very "ladylike," Billie Jo reminds her that they're women, not ladies, and that "ladies" is a term coined by men to render women subservient.)*

*Lest you wonder how I was able to amass this kind of detail while only catching a glimpse of the episode, I won't lie to you: I looked it up.

The key line, the one that ensures this episode a spot in the time capsule, is when Billie Jo insists that the way to fight back is to have nothing to do with men: "complete segregation," including sex and marriage. In response, the doubtful Bobbie Jo, replies,  "If we're not going to marry men, who else is there?" The line gets a huge response from the laugh track*, and Billie Jo assures her sister this isn't going to happen, that they're just going to let men know that "we're invading their world."

*Ironic line number one.

If anything, the episode is probably a Hooterville (i.e. G-rated) take on Aristophanes' famous play Lysistrata, in which Greek women withhold sex from their men to force them to stop warring. It's an old and venerable story, one which has been adapted endlessly, and I suspect this had to be at least in the back of the minds of writers Charles Stewart and Dick Conway. (As perhaps a concession to the sign of the times, Dr. Craig asks Billie Jo about what happens to "sex and marriage," subtly suggesting the two might exist separately*.)

*Ironic line number two.

Now, you have to keep in mind that by this time in the series, Bobbie Jo has come to represent, as the always-reliable Wikipedia puts it, the "humorous scatterbrain." In other words, someone who often states the obvious. And in this case, the obvious is reduced to: duh, women marry men. Billie Jo's answer is equally obvious; she doesn't suggest that women marry each other, or live together communally in a community that excludes men. No, it's to get men to accept women as equals, to redefine the relationship rather than eradicate it.

There's no doubt that the institution of marriage had already been battered by the revolution of the '60s; remember the joke about "who wants to live in an institution"? It's an era of free love, of shunning the shackles of marriage in favor of open relationships. Gay rights protests were hardly unknown at the time; Stonewall had happened just the year before.

This tells us a great deal about how marriage is seen in its time. While Dr. Craig's comment does suggest sex can exist outside of marriage, Bobbie Jo's question about who else they could marry—well, it certainly shows that same-sex marriage isn't on anyone's radar screen at the time. It's a punch line, a statement so utterly obvious that it's put in the mouth of the resident scatterbrain to prove its point. It's a perfect representation of popular culture at that moment in time, far more so than picture one might see of a lavish wedding in Life. Second, it tells us something about the fight for equal rights in 1970, the thought that such a revolutionary idea could even come to Hooterville. Even while presenting serious statistics, however, it leavens the moment by leaning heavily on the naivete and earnestness of the equality movement's less dogmatic members. It is, after all, a comedy, not a dramedy.

Again, this is not an essay about politics or moral beliefs; what I'm interested in with this time capsule moment is what it tells us about the culture that conceived and aired it. And in this episode, "Susan B. Anthony, I Love You," Petticoat Junction presents the perfect time capsule moment, the clip that I'd show someone if they asked me what we thought about marriage way back in 1970. TV

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This week in TV Guide: July 15, 1961

The brooding visage on the cover of this week's TV Guide is not that of Dave Garroway, although you'd be forgiven for thinking that it was, given how it seems to be a perfect match for the sidebar teaser on the left. No, on the cover you see Gardner McKay, star of Adventures in Paradise. More about him later. First, here's Garroway.

David Cunningham Garroway, the subject of Richard Gehman's multi-part profile, is one of the pioneers of television, a man of immeasurable influence insofar as on-camera persona is concerned. He is a very complex man as well, a troubled man, and for once the psychoanalytical angle that Gehman so likes to use comes in handy.

Garroway is the star of NBC's Today Show, or to be more precise, The Dave Garroway Today Show, as it is currently known. His friendly demeanor, inquisitive mind and engaging personality all combine to make him one of the first big stars in the new medium. Today reflects that personality perfectly. Would that today's Today (a cumbersome handle, to be sure) had as much variety and innovation as Garroway's did.

And yet the Dave Garroway that millions see every weekday morning is a far cry from the offscreen Garroway. It's sometimes said that when TV viewers see a personality on their sets often enough, they come to feel as if they actually know that person. In Garroway's case, those viewers probably know as much about him as his friends and coworkers do. Garroway is almost painfully shy, far preferring the company of his cars and telescopes to human interaction. He used to disguise himself before leaving the house, and he has a bomb shelter in his Manhattan townhouse, along with a bottle of Secanol in case of nuclear war. He tells Gehman that his anxieties actually make him better on TV, where "he can be himself" in the unblinking eye of the camera lens.

I described Garroway above as the host of Today; actually, that will be true only for another two days. Come Monday morning, John Chancellor will take over as host of the new, hard-news version of Today. Garroway had made the announcement in May, a month after his wife had committed suicide by swallowing a bottle of sleeping pills, that he would be leaving the show in October, or earlier if possible. He cites the need to recharge his batteries, to get away from the entertainment business for awhile. The article promises that part two will tell why Garroway really left Today; unfortunately, I don't have that issue. (But if you think I should have it, in order to finish the story, I'll gladly give you my PayPal address.)

I've frequently picked on Richard Gehman's writing style as being unnecessarily sarcastic and snarky, making his own cleverness too much a part of the story. And yet, perhaps this time, as I suggested earlier, the subject is a perfect match for the writer. His opening paragraph is certainly as good as anything you'll read in classic TV Guide*: "In these troubled and abandoned days, some of the more troubled and abandoned among us celebrate the birth of Christ by behaving much like the very Romans who crucified Him. A bacchanalian Christmas party given three years ago by the staff of the Today show would have delighted a contemporary Edward Gibbon."

*When I mentioned this to my wife, she asked if today's TV Guide even has any writing; she thought maybe all they did was compose captions to pictures.\

Gehman goes on to discuss Garroway's obvious boredom and discomfort in these surroundings, taking it for as long as he could before getting up and disappearing. He continues, comparing Garroway to Tod Hackett, the protagonist of Nathaneal West's novel The Day of the Locust: "He was really a very complicated young man with a whole set of personalities, one inside the other like a nest of Chinese boxes." Garroway, a "very complicated 48," knows this better than anyone. "For 14 years, off and on, he has been seeing a psychiatrist in an effort to learn what is inside those boxes. And what he has learned is that there are more boxes." 

What I particularly like about those paragraphs is that Gehman assumes his readers will recognize the name Edward Gibbon, that they will know who Nathaneal West was and perhaps might even have read one of his books. It doesn't strike me that he's forcing these references; he's simply respecting his audience. TV Guide always prided itself on being more than a fan magazine, with readers who were a far cry from those who read the other rags; writing such as this tends to confirm that assumption.

Dave Garroway's story is a sad one, and it's not just because one of the pioneers of television is virtually unknown today. He appeared on various media off and on through the years, hosting a science show on NET, several radio programs on both coasts, and occasional guest appearances in various series, including on Today show anniversaries. He was married three times; the first ended in divorce, the second (as we saw above) with the suicide of his wife in 1961; his third to an astronomer, not surprising given his interest in that field. He underwent heart surgery in 1982 and, suffering from complications as well as his continuing battle with depression, killed himself with a single blast from a shotgun later that year. He was only 69 years old. 

Here's a clip from the first episode of Today in January, 1952. And here is a clip from Garroway's last television appearance, on the 30th anniversary show, where he's reunited with his old Today partners, Jack Lescoulie and Frank Blair. And to learn more about him, I highly recommend Jodie Peeler's wonderful biography of Garroway, Peace.

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And now on to Gardner McKay. He was discovered by Dominick Dunne, who was at the time a producer at 20th Century Fox, and hired to star in a new series Dunne was co-producing, Adventures in Paradise. Standing an imposing 6'5", he cuts a figure that leads Life magazine, in a cover story, to dub him "the new Apollo." McKay considers himself to still be a rookie when it comes to acting—"I'm no real actor," he tells the unnamed interviewer; "Show me a two-page speech from 'Antigone' and I'd get sick."—but Dunne, who first spotted McKay reading a book of poetry in a coffee shop, says that though he was a nobody in Hollywood terms, "his attitude declared that he was somebody." Despite the criticism of his acting, McKay is unquestionably a star, receiving up to 3,000 pieces of fan mail a week, and is well-liked by the crew that services his series.

Adventures in Paradise is now in its third and final season, but McKay remains untouched by his celebrity; he still drives the same 1958 Chevy convertible he had before Paradise, and he has no press agent, no business manager. On his weekly salary of over $1,500, he has "a few blue chip stocks and a bank account." In 1961, "the future burns brightly" for Gardner McKay. 

Like Dave Garroway after Today, Gardner McKay's life will travel a different route after Adventures in Paradise ends, but unlike Garroway's, it has a happy ending. After the series ends, McKay declines to renew his contract with Fox and turns down a chance to co-star in a movie with Marilyn Monroe, who personally lobbied him to take the part. Giving up acting completely, McKay works in the Amazon for two years and spends time in France and Egypt before returning to Hawaii, where he finds new success as a writer*, publishing several novels, an autobiography, and numerous short stories, as well as writing plays (winning a Drama Critics Circle Award for "Sea Marks"). In addition, he serves for five years as the drama critic for the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner and teaches a writing class at UCLA.

*I remember once seeing an interview with him, perhaps on Today; he was plugging his latest book, possibly The Kinsman, and mentioned how at first people didn't believe he'd written it himself, until they realized the depth of detail with which he wrote about sailing.

A friend said that he always considered himself a writer rather than an actor, and added that "He hated the fact that he was known for that television series. It was not the professional or private path he wanted to take." Gardner McKay was 69, the same age as Dave Garroway, when he died of cancer, a man who by all appearances was able to write himself a happy ending.

And if you're interested, you can see the episode of Adventures in Paradise that played in this episode: a rerun of "The Big Surf."

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If you're of an age where you only remember Julie London as nurse Dixie McCall on Emergency, you don't know what you've been missing.

London, who's already had a successful career as a singer but looks to add acting to her repertoire, complains of her lack of roles in Hollywood: "Sometimes I think they tend to measure an actress's talents by her—uh—measurements. If the measurements go beyond a certain point, they figure she can't possibly act." London's measurements, the unnamed writer helpfully points out, are 5'3", 37-23-36.

London was formerly married to Jack Webb*; the marriage was a good one until the success of Dragnet, with which he became obsessed. (Don't get me wrong; I love Jack Webb, but what do you say about a man who's married to Julie London and becomes obsessed with a television show?) They divorce in 1953, and in 1959 she marries jazz musician Bobby Troup, who also starred in Emergency but is probably best known (as he should be) for writing the song "Route 66," which made a lot of money for both him and Nat King Cole, among others.

*Of course, the irony here is that Webb, who remained on good terms with London, would hire both her and Troup for Emergency. When it came to television, Webb apparently only cared about getting the right people.

Today, though she continues singing, she still waits for the right role. "All I really want," she says, "is what every other girl in this town wants—a really good script."

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Saturday starts with golf, ends with murder, and features beauty in-between. The golf comes from the Royal Birkdale Golf Course in Southport, England, where Wide World of Sports expands to two hours for the final round of the British Open, taped earlier in the day. (5:00 p.m. ET, ABC) Arnold Palmer is scheduled to join Jim Simpson for commentary on the final three holes, but he'll have to work hard to fit it in; Arnie's busy winning his second Open Championship (and first of two in a row), defeating Welch golfer Dai Rees by one shot. The beauty can be found in Miami Beach, where Germany's Marlene Schmidt* is crowned Miss Universe. (10:00 p.m., CBS). Johnny Carson is the emcee at the Miami Beach Convention Center, while the broadcast hosts are John Daly and Jayne Meadows. And the murder comes from the 1946 movie The Killers, one of the great film noirs of all time, starring Burt Lancaster, Ava Gardner, and Edmund O'Brien.

*Fun fact: Marlene Schmidt was the third of eight wives of Bronco star Ty Hardin.

Sunday's episode of Dennis the Menace (7:30 p.m., CBS) presents the long-suffering Mr. Wilson (Joseph Kearns) with yet another headache: a washed-out bridge leaves him trapped at a mountain campsite with Dennis and five other young boys. A profile of Kearns shows us another side of the actor, who was once a child actor himself. Now, however, he's a veteran character actor, worried that "the 24 inmates of a nursery school will find out that Mr. Wilson lives right across the street." And the house he lives in? It's a 2½ story soundproof home he designed and built around a 26-rank Wurlitzer pipe organ that was originally designed for Warner Brothers back in 1926 and which he delights in playing for guests.  

On Monday, the aforementioned Ty Harden appears with Clint Walker and Will Hutchins in a rare Cheyenne episode featuring all three of its stars (7:30 p.m., ABC), as they battle someone who doesn't want Cheyenne's cattle drive to reach its destination. Later, the irrepressible Spike Jones and his wife, singer Helen Grayco, return for a second season of hosting a summer replacement series, this time for Danny Thomas. Their guests for this first show are Bill Dana and Jack Jones. 

Stagecoach West (Tuesday, 9:00 p.m., ABC) is the first of a trio of obscure series that we're looking at this week; it's the first primetime starring role for Wayne Rogers, who, along with Robert Bray, operates a stagecoach in the Wyoming Territory. Tonight's episode features guest stars Pippa Scott and Warren Oats, along with Robert Vaughn, whose character has the perfectly Robert Vaughn-ish name Beaumont Butler Buell. Wonderfully smarmy, don't you think?

Remember Father Dowling Mysteries, the series starring Tom Bosley as a priest who solved murders in his spare time? (A priest told me once that he only wished he had that kind of free time; some days he barely had a chance to eat.) The series was based on the novels by Catholic author Ralph McInerny, but he wasn't the literary world's first crime-fighting prelate; before him, there was Father Brown*, the hero of G.K. Chesterton's short stories that mixed mystery and theology. Wednesday, we see an example of it in the 1954 movie The Detective (11:30 p.m., WCPO in Columbus), with Alec Guinness essaying the priestly role, and Peter Finch as the archcriminal Flambeau. 

*The current Father Brown series on BBC, starring Mark Williams, strays considerably from the moral theology with which Chesterton invested his stories.

Outlaws is a two-season Western, running between 1960 and 1962, starring Barton MacLane, Don Collier, and Wynn Pearce as U.S. Marshals patrolling the Oklahoma Territory in the latter part of the 19th Century. Despite the fact that the series focused on the lives of the outlaws rather than the lawmen, Thursday's episode (7:30 p.m., NBC) remains unusual in that none of the regular cast appear in it; this story of a cowhand-turned-outlaw is carried entirely by the guest cast, including Joe Maross as the badman. I must admit this is one of the many series with which I haven't previously been familiar until now.

Don Wilson, Jack Benny's longtime announcer, makes a rare straight acting appearance as an oil tycoon in Harrigan and Son (Friday, 8:00 p.m., ABC), a sitcom starring Pat O'Brien and Roger Perry as father-and-son attorneys. You'll be forgiven if you haven't heard on this one, either; it had a single-season run. Far more stimulating is the late movie on Dayton's WHIO, the 1949 adaptation of Ayn Rand's novel The Fountainhead, starring Gary Cooper as Howard Roarke, the uncompromising architect, and Patricia Neal as the woman who loves him.

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Finally, a couple of programs that epitomize the notion of television as a time capsule, and point out the importance of television preservation as an original document of cultural history.

The cover of George Lefferts'
collection of scripts from the show

We begin with NBC's series of occasional afternoon programs, Special For Woman, which returns on Tuesday for a six-week primetime run (10:00 p.m.). "Each taped drama," according to the program description, "deals with a problem faced by women in America," and concludes with a brief discussion led by NBC news reporter Pauline Frederick.* This week's episode, entitled "The Single Woman," presents the dilemma of Elisabeth Greenway (Barbara Baxley), who "has reached an age where she knows she ought to get married." She has a beau (Michael Tolan) ready and willing to tie the knot, but "Elisabeth just can't see her way clear to committing herself to him—or any man—for life." Although it's not mentioned in the description, she's also being wooed by a married man, played by Patrick O'Neal. Following the play, Frederick interviews psychiatrist Louis English.

*An example of the "women's stories" that Frederick complained about, prior to becoming NBC's U.N. correspondent. 

Here's a great reminder of the culture of the early 1960s, when marriage and a family is still considered the norm for women, and the stigma that's attached to being an unmarried woman—even the idea that she's not quite respectable. I wager that the phrase "old maid" isn't used nearly as much today as it was back then; now, we might think such an unmarried woman is just coming into her own today. As for her choices, does she choose boyfriend Michael Tolan, or is she content to be the "other woman" with Patrick O'Neal? And what role does the psychiatrist play in the discussion? Is he there to reassure women that the desire to remain single is not abnormal—or does he encourage them to confront their fear of commitment?*

*I cheated a bit, and skipped to the end of George Lefferts' collection of scripts from the show, which you can find at the Internet Archive; she chooses Michael Tolan. "I don't know when I'll be ready to marry you, Mike—maybe not for a long while. I need some time to think and maybe grow up a little more. But if you have the patience—" Says Dr. English in the summary, "Finding the right man is a by-product of doing the things that you yourself enjoy." Go to page 89 for more.     

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This week's other blast from the past comes courtesy of CBS' Sunday morning religious series Look Up and Live (10:00 a.m.) that, with few adaptations, could be presented today. "The Police," based on the play by Polish writer Slawomir Mrozek, tells the story of a prison rapidly losing its reason for being. "All the other prisoners, convinced that they were living under 'the best system in the world,' have confessed their crimes against the state, received their pardons and gone home. Now there's only one prisoner left, and he too wants to confess. The Commissioner receives this news with a certain amount of regret."

Mrozek, often compared to the Absurdist playwright Eugène Ionesco, is a fascinating character himself. He was once an ardent Communist, praising Polish authorities for their persecution of religious leaders, and took part in demonstrations defaming Catholic priests. Following his defection from Poland in 1963, he became a harsh critic of Communism. The always-reliable Wikipedia offers this quote from him, explaining the change: "Being twenty years old, I was ready to accept any ideological proposition without looking a gift-horse in the mouth—as long as it was revolutionary. [. . .] I was lucky not to be born German say in 1913. I would have been a Hitlerite because the recruitment method was the same." "The Police" was published in 1958, bearing the marks of his growing skepticism of totalitarianism. I wonder what he'd think about the world of today? TV  

The best of worlds, the worst of worlds

(left to right) Stephen Young, Luke Halpin, and Carl Betz

One of the things I most like about Judd, for the Defense (along with the powerful performances each week by Carl Betz) is how the scripts take on controversial issues without necessarily being polemical, demonstrating through misdirection and unexpected plot shifts that things are not always as simple as they seem. (You could argue that there's a little too much misdirection, but that's how good mysteries work.) Combine this with the occasional episode that stubbornly refuses to wrap everything up in a bow at the end, and you get a series that probably should have lasted more than two seasons. (But then, not being a network executive, what do I know?)

Something else that Judd has in common with the best shows of its era is the ability to illustrate, unironically and without the filter of contemporary mores, how society has changed over the decades—sometimes evolving, frequently devolving, but seldom remaining static. Case in point is the first-season episode "The Worst of Both Worlds," a story that's both timeless and subject to a completely different interpretation than it would have had when originally broadcast on March 8, 1968.

The Cliff Notes version of the plot: Judd and his associate, Ben Caldwell (Stephen Young) are called in to defend 17-year-old Kenny Carter, Jr., who was sentenced to 3½ years in the county juvenile home for stealing and wrecking a sports car belong to a family for which he'd done odd jobs, the wealthy and influential Merritt family. The man driving the car that Kenny hit was seriously injured in the crash. 

At first, it seems a straightforward case of injustice being done to the boy; talking to Ben at the county home, Kenny (Luke Halpin) insists that "I didn't admit anything because I didn't do anything," and that "because of the way they ask you the questions in court, if you answer 'no,' it turns out you're a liar; if you answer 'yes,' you're guilty." At the hearing, he was without benefit of counsel (a lawyer wouldn't have been available for three weeks, and upon suggestion of the judge, Kenny waived his right), and no transcript of the hearing was kept, due to cost. The juvenile officer, Frank Austin (Frank Marth, so we know he's going to be the bad guy), whose duty is to act in Kenny's best interests, maintains that the boy's rights were always kept in the forefront of the investigation. 

Convinced that the boy's rights were denied, Judd applies for a Writ of Habeas Corpus to get Kenny out of the home, and seeks a new hearing for him. Based on the circumstances, a judge agrees to both. It's then that the first complication occurs, when Austin reveals to Judd that Kenny had assaulted Mrs. Merritt prior to stealing the car. Austin's motive in acting as he did in the first hearing was to prevent this from coming out--"holding back the kind of charge that could ruin his life"; as it was, he would have been a delinquent in the juvenile home, "but you had to come along and open Pandora's Box." Kenny denies the assault, but Judd and Ben know he's holding back. After Mrs. Merritt (Pippa Scott) testifies in court and confirms that an assault happened, Kenny finally, reluctantly tells them the truth: he and Mrs. Merritt had been having an affair, she had tried to prevent him from leaving the house because he wanted to go on a date with a girl his own age, and (because she'd been drinking) she fell and hit her head, sustaining the injuries that Kenny was supposed to have inflicted. He then took the car to get a doctor for her, and wrecked it because the brakes were faulty. All this time he'd been trying to protect her, but now that she's turned on him, he has no choice. After undergoing a withering cross-examination from Judd, Mrs. Merritt finally breaks down and admits the truth, and the charges against Kenny are dismissed.

After the judge has ruled, while Kenny is being comforted by his family, Judd confronts Austin in the corridor, and we come to the plot point around which everything revolves:

Mr. Austin, you owe me an explanation. Didn't you know what was going on between Kenny and Mrs. Merritt?

She told me about their struggle. When she was still upset enough to be telling the truth. Later on, I could see she carefully did not tell her husband. So I could make a pretty good guess.

And you didn't say a thing in your official capacity?

My official capacity was to protect the kid, n ot to let him get smeared the rest of his life. Of course, I didn't know the whole story, particularly that brilliant council would take over the case.

Mr. Austin, I did nothing more than any competent lawyer would have done. The point I wish you would see is the injustice of trying so many of these kids in juvenile court without lawyers and calling that 'protection of the young.'

Well, how would you protect them? By feeding kids into the machinery of the ordinary criminal courts, where nobody cares what happens to them? Look, do you really think you did this kid any favors by getting him off scot-free? Without any disciplinary correction? 

He's not legally guilty of anything.

He was carrying on with a married woman. He lost his head, he took a car he couldn't handle properly, and he caused a very serious crash. Now, let me ask you this, Mr. Judd. How would you feel about seeing some other lawyer get him off, if you were the man he ran into?

Judd wins again—or does he?

This is how the episode ends, with Judd left to ponder how the legal system works, and us to ponder what it all means. As I mentioned, us viewers have been conditioned over the years to connect Frank Marth with the heavy, so we're only too willing to accept Judd's version of justice as the correct one. And yet, likely with this in mind, writers Paul Monash (series creator) and Norman Borisoff take pains to suggest that Austin did have the boy's interests in mind. Perhaps he didn't handle it correctly, but he's not a one-dimensional pantomime villain. In the end, though, you still have to think he's wrong—flat wrong, about Kenny, and about the legal system in which he acts as an officer. 

If one were to air this episode, unchanged, on a contemporary program, we'd probably be shocked. First of all, Mrs. Merritt, having seduced a minor, would be considered a sexual predator, and even if she didn't do any jail time, she'd go into the sex offender registry for sure. (What would that have done to a socially prominent family?) Kenny would be seen as a victim, not someone carrying on an affair with a married woman. His name would be kept confidential; even though word would spread in a small town like the one in which the story occurs, it's not going to follow him around on his record. Far from recommending "disciplinary correction," a judge would probably order counseling for him; as for taking the car, under the circumstances he acted not out of malice or criminal intent, but as a confused and abused boy who didn't know what else to do. In short, he's not a delinquent, but a boy taken advantage of by an older woman who should have known better. Austin likely would have been sacked had he proceeded the way in which he did and would have left both himself and the city wide open to civil charges. The entire denouement would have flipped, and Judd would have had an even stronger case for demanding that the legal system do more to protect juveniles from adult predators. 

That's the way it is. That's not the way it was. At the risk of identifying myself once again as old, I can say that when I was in high school, none of us boys would have considered Kenny a "victim"—we'd have called him lucky, and each one of us were probably hoping the same thing would happen to us—minus the accident, of course; it's never any fun doing something you aren't supposed to be doing unless you get away with it. And we wouldn't have seen him as having been taken advantage of, he scored. Of course, that's what happens when you think with your hormones instead of your head, and that's why teenagers (or those who've never matured beyond their teens) shouldn't be running the world.  

I'm certainly not suggesting that things were better back then, nor am I saying we're wrong to view things differently today. It probably suggests we should look at situations like this on a case-by-case basis. But "The Worst of Both Worlds" functions not only as entertainment, but as that time capsule I'm always talking about, presenting us with a look at how society was—not in retrospect, not seen through 21st century-tinted glasses, but the way it actually was at the time. If you want to study societal evolution, you can certainly do worse than this. TV  

A time capsule moment: Petticoat Junction, 1970

When people ask me what this blog is about, I sometimes struggle to answer in such a way that I don't come off as a nerd or a kook, or make people give me sidelong glances as they edge slowly away. That's not to say I don't have that effect on people, but I'd just as soon this blog not be one of the causes.

Anyway, we know that this blog is about classic television, but what about it? It occurs to me, in thinking about it, that the best way to describe what I do is to return to a term I coined back at In Other Words. Back then, I used to refer to myself as a "cultural archaeologist," one who looked at the remnants of a particular time in television history and drew conclusions from it that I could relate to our own times, much as an actual archaeologist looks at artifacts and bones and tells us what life was like in 100 BC. It is often said by historians that it can take decades before one can accurately assess the overall effect of a particular era; therefore, the time should be ripe for us to look at the classic television era (for our purposes, primarily the 1950s through the 1970s) and find out what it tells us about life, and how it's changed (or hasn't changed) in the interval. Television, as much if not more than other contemporary sources (history books, newspapers, Time and Life and Newsweek and other topical magazines) functions as a sort of time capsule, a description of what life was like then.

This week, what we have on tap is what I like to call a "time capsule moment." It's when we come across something - a clip from a television show, an article from a magazine - that teaches us a fundamental truth about the era. I'm sure I've written about such moments before; the one that leaps to mind is this piece about the 1950s medical show Medic. The particular example to follow isn't the only illustration of what I'm going to point out, of course, but it's a representative one.

It happened one morning last week. As is my wont (and that of most people, I suspect), when I go to bed I usually leave the TV on the station I've been watching, even though that might not be the station I'll want to when I get up in the morning. It's not a surprise, therefore, that I always see a minute or so of Petticoat Junction* on MeTV first thing in the morning, since I usually watch Hogan's Heroes last thing in the evening.

*Petticoat Junction is, I think, one of those shows that I tend to be embarrassed to admit having ever watched. I can remember it from when I was a kid, and I suppose I enjoyed it in the same way I enjoyed Gilligan's Island and The Beverly Hillbillies and other sitcoms of the era. It doesn't interest me today, but I'd never criticize anyone who does watch and enjoy it. 

The moment in question comes from the series' final season in 1970, an episode called "Susan B. Anthony, I Love You." In it, "Billie Jo returns from Chicago with a visionary zeal for the women's liberation movement, and enlists her sisters in 'the cause.' " It's a product of its time; women's lib is all the rage, no-fault divorce was passed by California the year before, Ms. will start publication the year after, the Equal Rights Amendment is already in the works and will be passed by Congress in 1972. At the point in which I joined the episode, Billie Jo is in high dudgeon, reciting various statistics illustrating the various states of inequality that exist between women and men, and urging her sisters and Dr. Janet Craig (June Lockhart) to fight. (When Betty Jo says that doesn't sound very "ladylike," Billie Jo reminds her that they're women, not ladies, and that "ladies" is a term coined by men to subservient women.)*

*Lest you wonder how I was able to amass this kind of detail while only catching a glimpse of the episode, I won't lie to you: I looked it up.

The key line - the one that insures this episode a spot in the time capsule - is when Billie Jo insists that the way to fight back is to have nothing to do with men, including "complete segregation" from men, including sex and marriage. In response, the doubtful Bobbie Jo, replies  "If we're not going to marry men, who else is there?" The line gets a huge response from the laugh track, and Billie Jo assures her sister this isn't going to happen, that they're just going to let men know that "we're invading their world."

If anything, the episode is probably a Hooterville (i.e. G-rated) take on Aristophanes' famous play Lysistrata, in which Greek women withhold sex from their men to force them to stop warring. It's an old and venerable story, one which has been adapted endlessly, and I suspect this had to be at least in the back of the minds of writers Charles Stewart and Dick Conway. (As perhaps a concession to the sign of the times, Dr. Craig asks Billie Jo about what happens to "sex and marriage," subtly suggesting the two might exist separately.)

Now, you have to keep in mind that by this time in the series, Bobbie Jo has come to represent, as the always-reliable Wikipedia puts it, the "humorous scatterbrain," In other words, someone who often states the obvious. And in this case, the obvious is reduced to: duh, women marry men. Billie Jo's answer is equally obvious; she doesn't suggest that women marry each other, or live together communally in a community that excludes men. No, it's to get men to accept women as equals, to redefine the relationship rather than eradicate it.

There's no doubt that the institution of marriage had already been battered by the revolution of the '60s; remember the joke about "who wants to live in an institution"? It's an era of free love, of shunning the shackles of marriage in favor of open relationships. Gay rights protests are hardly unknown at the time; Stonewall happened just the year before.

As a companion piece to the episode in Medic, this episode of Petticoat Junction gives us yet another look at how marriage is seen in its time. While Dr. Craig's comment does suggest sex can exist outside of marriage, Bobbie Jo's question about who else they could marry - well, it certainly shows that same-sex marriage isn't on anyone's radar screen at the time. It's a punch line, a statement so utterly obvious that it's put in the mouth of the resident scatterbrain to prove its point. It's a perfect representation of popular culture at that moment in time, far more so than pictures of a lavish wedding in Life. Secondarily, it tells us something about the fight for equal rights in 1970, the thought that such a revolutionary idea could even come to Hooterville. Even while presenting serious statistics, however, it leavens the moment by leaning heavily on the naivete and earnestness of the equality movement's less dogmatic members. It is, after all, a comedy - not a dramedy.

Again, this is not an essay about politics, or moral beliefs. As a writer on television, I couldn't care one way or the other what you think about the issue - what I'm interested in with this time capsule moment is what it tells us about the culture that conceived and aired it. And in this episode, "Susan B. Anthony, I Love You," Petticoat Junction presents the perfect time capsule moment, the clip that I'd show someone if they asked me what we thought about marriage way back in 1970. TV  

Medic, 1955 - the calm before the storm

Last night as we were watching an episode of Richard Boone's mid-50s medical drama Medic, I was struck once again by how much society has changed during the television era, and how helpful TV can be at seeing - if not understanding - those changes.

The episode in question, "A Time to Be Alive," was originally broadcast on January 31, 1955 on NBC. Medic has long been considered one of the first "realistic" medical dramas on television*, and so it's no surprise that this episode would deal with some fairly weighty subjects.  In this case, an 11-year-old hemophiliac boy lies in critical condition in the hospital, as doctors attempt to stop the bleeding from a fall and save his life.  Now, as far as television goes, there's only so much action you can wring out of doctors administering transfusions and hoping that the blood begins to clot, so the focus of the story quickly moves to the boy's family.

*No surprise, since its creator, James E. Moser, went on to create Ben Casey.

His mother blames herself for the boy's condition, since the hemophilia gene is passed through the female, and ever since he was diagnosed with the disease - in the first few weeks of his life - she has awakened every day in fear that something would happen to him.  His father talks of the difficulty of telling a young boy that he can't live the same active life as his classmates, and that he's so fragile you're afraid he might break when you hold him.

But it's the older sister's dilemma that is most interesting.  Contrary to what you might expect from a TV drama, she's not resentful of the attention her little brother gets; she doesn't feel left out or ignored, she loves him and worries about him.  No, there's something else at work here.  We learn that she's engaged to be married, and after witnessing her brother's latest medical crisis, and listening to the anguish it causes her parents, she's terrified that she, too, might pass the gene on to any children she has.  Moreover, she worries that her fiance will no longer want to marry her because of the possibility of giving birth to a hemophiliac.

Fortunately, her young man seems to be level-headed; he tells her that he loves her and wants to spend the rest of his life with her, no matter what the future may bring.  If that means running the risk of having a hemophiliac child, with its attendant burdens and fears, so be it.  That's part of being an adult - to face the world as it is, and to do so together.  Her brother comes through this medical crisis, and despite the uncertain future the family is prepared to move forward, with hopes that a cure for hemophilia will eventually be found.*

*Note: it hasn't yet, though more effective treatments have been developed.

Richard Boone as Dr. Konrad Styner in Medic

I was struck by several things in this episode, and the dramatic contrast they provide to our times.  First is the idea that a marriage without children is somehow incomplete, and thus undesirable.  There's no thought that children are inherently a burden, no suggestion that the young couple wouldn't want to have kids, and a real concern that the man might seek a different mate because of the uncertain future.  To the contemporary ear, the idea that a woman might be less attractive to a man because of this might sound completely foreign, but this episode treats the subject as a completely natural one, worthy of serious discussion.

There's also no talk about birth control, about simply choosing to not have children, and this marks "A Time to Be Alive" as an episode rooted in a very specific point in time.  The Pill is already in development and will be widely available within the decade.  We're only three years away from the Lambeth Conference in which the Anglican church called for "respect for the consciences of married couples who use birth control," and when Pope Paul VI issues Humanae Vitae in 1968, it will upset many who'd assumed the Catholic Church would accept birth control.

This isn't to say that "family planning" was a foreign idea at the time.  Many married couples, especially those just starting out and with limited means, would discuss the best time to start a family, and might well wait for marriage until they were financially able to take on children.  There were forms of "natural" family planning - condoms, the rhythm method, and other forms of birth control were around, and often appeared in popular fiction.  But we're not quite to the sexual revolution just yet. Were this episode to have been made even just a few years later, there would be an entirely different conversation being carried on, likely with completely different sensibilities expressed by the participants - probably on a show like Peyton Place.

The world we see in this episode of Medic shows us how radically the family has changed, as well as our own thoughts and values.  Were we to attempt to replicate that era in a contemporary program, a la Mad Men, it would suffer from our contemporary knowledge, and the inability to filter it out and restore an original context. Likewise, as Andrew Fielding points out in his book The Lucky Strike Papers (review to come shortly!), it is impossible for us to watch an episode like this today and view it through the context of its original setting, and how it was viewed by an audience that hadn't experienced the changes of the last 60 years.

Lacking that ability, to see Medic in the same way as the original viewers did, we are left with an original document, as it were, set within the context of a very different time.  I find something like that priceless, in the same way as the original coverage of the JFK assassination does something for us that no contemporary history can do.  It gives us something - if not complete realism (for we all know that dramas of the 50s and early 60s lacked the freedom to be completely "realistic" in certain areas), then at least something that in context would be accepted as plausible by the viewer, not asking for a suspension of disbelief.  And in its own way, that tells us much more about what things were like back then - what people thought, what they said, what they did.

It's one of the many reasons I appreciate classic television as a window to our world.  To a self-styled "cultural archaeologist," programs like these become artifacts which, when studied from the perspective of their "native habitats," provide us with a mirror of the times that may not have been ours and never will be, but which must be understood nonetheless.