This week in TV Guide: July 30, 1960

Usually, we don't think of a tightrope as being particularly violent. Dangerous, yes, but when someone falls off one while working without a net, we call it tragic, horrible, many other words; but violent isn't generally one of them. And then there's the series Tightrope!, which appears to have fallen victim to precisely that—violence.

For those who aren't familiar with it, Tightrope! was a series that ran on CBS during the 1959-60 season, starring Mike Connors as an undercover agent who, each week, would infiltrate a criminal organization in order to get the goods on their leaders. He was assigned to a different case in a different city each week, assuming an identity appropriate to the situation, but nobody—not even the local police departments—knew his true identity, thus putting him in jeopardy from both the criminals and the cops while carrying out his assignment. So secret was his assignment, even viewers didn't know his real name; he was referred to in the credits as "Nick," but I think I heard I heard his boss refer to him by that name only once. I ran across Tightrope! while perusing the TV Guides of the era (it was syndicated for several years after its initial run), and, the last time I looked, almost every episode was available on YouTube or the Internet Archive. (I reviewed it here a few years ago.)

So far, so good. It wasn't the greatest show on television, but it was far from being the worst, either. The premise was different, the stories were decent, and Mike Connors is always a watchable personality; even the weakest Mannix episodes benefit from his presence. The sponsor, Pharmaceuticals, Inc., liked Tightrope!, complimenting the show's creators, Clarence Greene and Russell Rouse, with doing a "magnificent job." The show's ratings were good: going head-to-head with the successful Western The Rifleman, it had succeeded in knocking that show down from #3 to #9 in the national ratings. While the episodes consistently ran over budget, Greene and Rouse were more than willing to put aside any chance of the show making a profit in order to keep the show's standards high. In April, Pharmaceuticals, Inc. told them to go ahead and get started on the new season, causing Greene and Rouse to give up several other projects, including a "lucrative movie deal." 

However, as Dwight Whitney recounts in this week's cover story, and as so often happens in the slimy world of network television, things changed. On April 15, without any warning, Greene and Rouse "read in a trade paper that CBS had filled their time slot with The Tom Ewell Show, a new comedy." The duo got, in Greene's words, "nothing but double talk" when they talked to the network. The sponsor, while praising the show, told them that, regretfully, "network problems were such that they made continuation of our sponsorship impossible." Greene and Rouse finally went straight to the top, sending a three-page letter to CBS president Frank Stanton and television division president James Aubrey asking for an explanation. They were told that said explanation would come from Oscar Katz, VP in charge of network programming.

And those explanations, for there were very many of them forthcoming, were as follows: first, that the network "'owned a substantial financial interest in the Ewell show' and therefore gave it 'preferential treatment.'" This turned out to be more than a little B.S.; Four Star, the show's producer, claimed the network shared in less than ten percent of the show's profits, and those only when it went to reruns. A second explanation was that the network was looking to establish a comedy block on Tuesday nights, and Tightrope! was the odd man (or show) out.*

*Indeed, the 1960-61 Tuesday night schedule would be made up of comedy and variety shows: repeats of Father Knows best, followed by Dobie Gillis, the Ewell show, The Red Skelton Show, and The Garry Moore Show. However, the network chose to leave the 7:30 p.m. half-hour slot open to the affiliates. Hmm.

Whether or not either of these explanations passes the plausibility test, though, neither would preclude another network from picking up Tightrope! And that brings us to the third, and perhaps most important, factor. As Whitney recounts it, "Under the fire of Congressional investigations rising out of the quiz and payola scandals, 'violence' had become a word to be feared. And there was no denying that Tightrope! was dealing in violence. Its ratings were simply not robust enough to justify the risk." In other words, had Tightrope! been a top-10 performer for the network, its violence would have been perfectly acceptable. But the last time I checked, violence is pretty much the same wherever you go, and whatever you do. Just because it's more popular, or comes with a higher (or lower) pricetag, doesn't make it more or less acceptable. Does it?

So this seems to be the final answer. And the last word comes from someone formerly "high up in the business," who told Whitney this: "What makes a good show? This is the impossible thing to answer. So, because it's impossible, we compound the felony. You don't know what you want, but only what you don't want. Everybody looks at it from their own point of view—like the blind men and the elephant. In TV it all depends on which end you grab. You grab the tail and, if you're not careful, you end up imagining the whole elephant is a rope."

Come to think of it, that explains pretty much everything about the world we live in today, doesn't it? We don't know what we like, only what we don't like. Before you know it, the only choices you have left are bad ones, which really means no choice at all. In the end, you're left with nothing to do but complain about it. And we do a lot of complaining nowadays, don't we?

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I'd like to think that the other item on the cover this week, on how violence on television can be curbed, was meant to be ironic placement. If it wasn't, it should have been. It's a summary of an outline sent to television producers by Kenneth Adam, the controller of television for the BBC, on how said producers should deal with violence. A few highlights:

Children's Programming: The "main danger points" in which the reactions of adults and children may differ are situations "which upset a child's emotional security, arising out of adoption, desertion, cruelty in the house, unwanted children, friction between parents, especially in contemporary settings"; portrayals of injuries or illnesses; "villainous" actions that could be imitated, such as using traps and pitfalls; "bad" habits in "good" characters, such as smoking; the use of weapons that are "easily available," such as knives;* and eerie or fearful atmospheres, especially when accentuated by music. These concerns should be considered regarding any program airing prior to 9:00 p.m.

*The tool of choice for attackers in Great Britain nowadays.

Adult Programs: According to the code, violence "should arise naturally from the story, and be therefore dramatically necessary and defensible"; violence that is "extraneous and designed for depraved effect" should be rejected, and any such natural sequences should not be "unduly prolonged; as with children's programmong, dangerous instruments, other than guns, should be carefully considered to avoid imitation; sound effects should not "distort or magnify the impact of violence," and anyone engaged in fisticuffs should not use "tactics of a vicious or bestial nature"; finally, violence against women or animals "must require special scrutiny." 

Interestingly, the guidelines make a clear distinction between violence, brutality, and combat. "Brutality is not the same thing as violence. Violence is not the same thing as combat. Yet because combat, which is healthy, and brutality, which is not, both contain violence, they tend to become identified." Battle scenes can be mitigated by using long-range camera shots, and there should be no shots "which dwell upon the more gruesome and bloody physical aspects of a combat." Some of these recommendations are quite commonsensical, while others are, I think, a little spurious. I would question, however, the idea that combat is "healthy"—let's see what the soldiers involved in it have to say about it.

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And now, here's the kind of item that I search these TV Guides for. On Sunday's Chevy Mystery Show (9:00 p.m. ET, NBC), the summer replacement for The Dinah Shore Chevy Show, the episode is "Enough Rope," starring Richard Carlson and Bert Freed, and written by William Link and Richard Levinson. The description: "Psychiatrist Roy Flemming has one too many women in his life. He has a wife, Claire, and a girl friend, Susan. The solution is a simple one: murder the wife and live happily ever after with the girl friend." Carlson is the adulterous doctor, while Freed, who often plays the heavy, portrays the detective investigating the crime. The play not only airs in color, it's also broadcast live.

Now, I don't know if this description sounds vaguely familiar to you, but it should. It's based on a play, "Prescription: Murder," written by Link and Levinson. In 1968, it was remade as a TV-movie, again on NBC. This time, Gene Barry took on the role of the suave Dr. Flemming, while the detective, named Lieutenant Columbo, was played by Peter Falk. Well, you can probably figure out the rest. Technically, the movie Prescription: Murder was not the pilot for Columbo; it wasn't until another Columbo movie, Ransom for a Dead Man, aired in 1971 that the network decided to turn the concept into a series later that year. But while there are differences between Freed's portrayal of Columbo, Falk's first time in the role, and the way the character is played in the subsequent series, there's no doubt that the good Lieutenant is displaying the primary characteristics that we all know and love.

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What else? I'll admit, sometimes it seems like a chore trying to find interesting programs to watch each night. I look at them and think that if I'm not interested, being the biggest nerd around, will anyone else be interested? And then I think maybe it will be better in the fall, when we're flooded with new series, specials, big movies, and the like. We'll see about that. But in the meantime, we'll turn over to NBC on Saturday at 9:30 p.m., where Herb Shriner hosts World Wide 60's look at the Boy Scouts of America's 50th Anniversary Jamboree from Colorado Springs. I have some thoughts about the Boy Scouts, what they were and what they are, and I'll not share them at the moment, but with the Blue Angels, the Army's K-9 corps, and trained falcons from the nearby Air Force Academy, I'm sure it's a colorful pageant—or would be, at least, if the show was in color.

A show that is in color is Music on Ice (Sunday, 8:00 p.m., NBC), the summer replacement for Sunday Showcase, hosted by Johnny Desmond; and if you remember those Ice Capades specials that I've highlighted here from time to time, this weekly series will look somewhat familiar. This week's non-skating guest is singer June Valli, and she's joined by skaters Jo Ann McGowan, Peter Firstbrook, and Willie Kali; and Steve Gibson's Redcaps vocal group. At the same time on CBS, Ed Sullivan's headliners are Gordon and Sheila MacRae, Harry James and his orchestra, comics Wayne and Shuster, and singer Jane Morgan. Your choice. 

You remember Arthur Godfrey, surely; I just wrote about him last week. When Godfrey was at his peak, one of the multiple shows he hosted was called Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts. Well, the idea, if not the host, returns on Monday, with Celebrity Talent Scouts (9:00 p.m., CBS), hosted by the genial comedian Sam Levenson. The premise is simple: each week, three celebrities present their "discoveries" for our entertainment. Tonight's celebrities are Ann Sheridan, Audrey Meadows, and Phil Silvers (who introduces something of a ringer, Mickey Freeman, who played Zimmerman on the Bilko series). Another summer entry is the return of the anarchic Spike Jones and his band (9:30 p.m., CBS). Spike swears he's off the slapstick schtick for this series, although Bill Dana is on hand as one of the regulars, playing his Jose Jiminez character.

Tuesday's Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, starring Hugh O'Brian (8:30 p.m., ABC) is often credited with being the first adult Western, and rightly so. Something that's not generally recognized, though, is that it is one of the few series of the time that came to a natural end. The series did progress chronologically—perhaps it wasn't a serial in the way we think of them today, but it followed Earp from Ellsworth to Dodge City to Tombstone; in two months, it begins its sixth and final season, building up inexorably to the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral with a multi-part story that brings the series to a conclusion. If that's not a great way to go out, I don't know what is. Later on CBS, catch Ernie Kovacs in 'I Was a Bloodhound," a great private detective spoof originally seen on G.E. Theater last year, on Comedy Spot. (9:30 p.m.)

Bette Davis makes a rare television dramatic appearance on Wednesday's Wagon Train (7:30 p.m., NBC), as Elizabeth McQueeny, taking her group of girls out West to start a finishing school. Johnny Carson, not yet the Tonight host, is the guest on I've Got a Secret (9:30 p.m,. CBS), trying to stump the panel with his "secret," which is that he's answering their questions while hooked up to a lie detector. And Armstrong Circle Theater (10:00 p.m. CBS) tells the story of police narcotics squad members who go undercover in Greenwich Village to bust a drug ring on "Raid in Beatnik Village." Douglas Edwards, anchorman of the CBS evening news, narrates.

Thursday night sees the debut of Wranger (9:30 p.m., NBC), a new half-hour Western starring Jason Evers as a wandering cowpoke named Pitcairn. Tonight, he runs into a ranch owner named McQueen; alas, the perfect crossover promotion is missed, as it's not Steve McQueen from Wanted—Dead or Alive, but a character named McQueen, a "gorgeous blonde" played by Susan Oliver, who is, indeed, both. The series is the first to be created by Gene Roddenberry, who had a long history with Westerns; it runs for only six episodes as a summer replacement for Tennessee Ernie Ford, but never made it beyond that. Perhaps the other McQueen would have helped.

On Friday, a Project 20 repeat from 1956 takes a look at "The Jazz Age," in a documentary narrated by the late Fred Allen (10:00 p.m., NBC). The special chronicles "America and Americans" from the end of World War I to the 1929 stock market crash. A lot happened during that decade-plus, from the Treaty of Versailles to Prohibition to the KKK to Lindbergh's flight. I've read that the documentary was edited down from 23 hours of film; Ken Burns probably would have used it all, and it would have taken two months to tell the same story.

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Finally, you may recall a 1962 feature on Tuesday Weld that appeared last month. There's a similar article about Tuesday this week, relevant in that she's currently appearing as one of the Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. I won't recount the details, as most of it is already covered in the 1962 article. However, I would be remiss if I didn't share this rather, uh, entertaining photo spread of Tuesday, in her words, "becoming a teen-ager!" as she dances along to an Elvis record. (Funny, I don't recall knowing any teens quite like that back in the day; I clearly went to the wrong high school.)

I don't think you even try to follow that, do you? TV  

This week in TV Guide: July 7, 1962

Ernie Banks, the great Hall-of-Famer for the Chicago Cubs, was fond of saying, on a beautiful day, "Let's play two!" It's doubtful that he had the All-Star Game in mind when he said that, and yet here we are in 1962, getting ready this week for the first of two baseball All-Star Games, this one to be played Tuesday afternoon at 12:45 p.m. ET on NBC, with Mel Allen and Joe Garagiola providing the play-by-play from the brand-new District of Columbia Stadium in, where else, Washington, D.C. (The second game is scheduled for July 30 at Wrigley Field in Chicago.)

Now, you may be wondering why they're playing two All-Star Games this year, and it's a very good question. The birth of the second game came in 1959, to increase contributions to the players' pension fund, which had just started in 1947 and only paid modest amounts to retired players. However, even players who stood to gain from the increased fund were less than thrilled with the idea; future Hall of Famer Early Wynn spoke for many of them when he said that playing two games would make the game less important, less special. (Remember this argument, because you're going to see it come back in a couple of paragraphs.) League officials hated the idea of trying to fit two all-star breaks into what was already a long schedule, which had increased from 154 to 162 games per team the previous season.

But in the days when there was no interleague play, when most teams only televised a fraction of their games back to local fans, and when there were only a couple of nationally-televised games each week, the prospect of a second game, giving fans an additional chance to see the best players from both leagues, seemed like a good idea—at first. It didn't take long for problems to begin, though: in 1959, the second game was played in Los Angeles on a Monday, the day after every team in the league played a full slate of Sunday games (many of them doubleheaders). Players were exhausted by the time they arrived in Los Angeles, and attendance was "only" 55,000—pretty good until you realize the Coliseum, where the game was played, could hold over 90,000. In 1960, the games were played two days apart, one in Kansas City and the other in New York, where fewer than 40,000 fans attended in Yankee Stadium. The 1962 season would be the last in which two games were played; for 1963, the traditional single game would have to do.

But is baseball's All-Star Game—the "Midsummer Classic," as they call it—still special? Remember what Early Wynn said about diluting the importance of the game; well, today we have interleague play regularly; teams routinely televise all their games, either OTA, on cable, or streaming; and games are nationally televised on ESPN, TBS, Fox, and even Roku. The starters only play a few innings, and some of them have already jetted off before the game ends. The goal seems to be not to win, but to make sure everyone gets a chance to participate. For a few years, the league that won the game was rewarded with home-field advantage, but even that failed to really spice things up. One could be forgiven for thinking that the very concept of an all-star game of any kind, in any sport, is passe. Even when I watched baseball, and it's been about eight years since I've seen a game even on television, it had been years since I'd tuned in the All-Star Game, and I'm certainly not inclined to do it again.

But then, the game still sells out and draws a sizeable TV audience; nowhere near what it used to be, of course, but one could say that about everything on television save the NFL. It's one of those things where you can't turn back the clock; you just have to live with it—or not.

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The reason I spent so much time on the All-Star Game is that we're now officially in the dog days of summer, and most of what we've got on tap consists of reruns, summer replacements, and failed pilots. In fact, there's an entire section of TV Guide devoted just to reruns, in the same way there are sections for movies, sports, and specials—two whole pages, in fact. But, as I was mentioning to someone the other day, this is the way television used to be back in the pre-VCR, pre-DVD, pre-on-demand days: the summer rerun season was the time for viewers to catch up on the shows they might have missed when they were first shown, whether due to being out or watching someting else on at the same time. Doesn't matter now, of course, but it was very helpful back then to have a list of repeats you could check out. 

One show that isn't a rerun is The Lawrence Welk Show, and Saturday marks the Maestro's eighth year on television (9:00 p.m., ABC). Among the selections: "Say it with Music," the opening number from the opening show. Something you wouldn't have heard on that opening show is the biggest hit that Lawrence ever had: "Calcutta," which made it to Number One on the charts back in 1960. Here's Bobby and Barbara doing their famous dance routine.

On Sunday, it's the final—and one of the greatest—episodes of Maverick (6:30 p.m., ABC), "Three Queens Full," a wild parody of a certain hit show seen Sundays on "another network," that finds Bart (Jack Kelly) chaperoning three women coming from San Francisco to marry the "three idiot sons" of rancher Joe Wheelwright: Moose (Hoss), Henry (Adam), and Small Paul (Little Joe). Jim Backus is Lorne Greene—that is, Ben Cartwright—I mean, Joe Wheelwright; while the ladies in question are Merry Anders, Kasey Rogers, and Allyson Ames. A line at the end of the description notes that "Any resemblance to another TV series called "Bonanza" is purely intentional."

Speaking of reruns, The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour dips deep into the past with the 1957 episode "Lucy Takes a Cruise to Havana" (Monday, 9:00 p.m., CBS), in which Lucy tells columnist Hedda Hopper the story of how she and Ricky got together. Ann Sothern and Cesar Romero guest star, and Rudy Vallee plays himself. Of course, this episode originally aired a couple of years before Castro's takeover, and our rerun comes just three months before the Cuban Missile Crisis; timing, as they say, is everything. I wonder how many examples there are of shows like this—non-period pieces—in which a country was free when the episode originally aired, and Communist when it was reshown later. I'm sure there must be several, especially in the case of Cuba, but with tensions in the region about to get even higher, I wonder how viewers appreciated a comedy about Cuba?

A star-studded repeat on The Dick Powell Show lightens up Tuesday night (9:00 p.m., ABC); Powell and his wife, June Allyson lead the way in "The Time to Die," the story of a crime boss on the verge of death, who's given a second chance at life—but only if he can find someone, from a specially drawn-up list, to die in his place. The script is by Aaron Spelling, and it bears all the trademarks of Spelling's later series Burke's Law (produced by Powell's Four Star Productions), with appearances by Tuesday Weld, Andy Williams, John Saxon, Ernest Truex, Edgar Bergen, and Ricky and Pamela Powell, who just happen to be Powell and Allyson's son and daughter. That's followed by the anthology Alcoa Premiere (10:00 p.m., ABC), in which host Fred Astaire stars with Maureen O'Sullivan and Harry Townes in "Moment of Decision," with Astaire as an escape artist with a very disagreeable neighbor.

The aforementioned Tuesday Weld also stars in a very good Naked City rerun on Wednesday (10:00 p.m, ABC). She and Rip Torn play a thrill-seeking hillbilly couple who embark on a crime spree, beginning by shooting detective Arcaro (Harry Bellaver). We'll complete our Tuesday trifecta a bit later, with a profile of the young star and her growing career: is she turning into a real actress? Stay tuned.

Syndicated repeats of Peter Gunn begin Thursday on Boston's WHDH with "The Candidate" (7:30 p.m.), in which Gunn is hired to find out who's trying to assassinate gubernatorial candidate Adrian Grimmett, running on a no-taxes platform. I suppose we could start with accountants, tax preparers, and IRS agents to begin with; think about how many of them would be out of work! Later, on Dick Powell's Zane Grey Theater (9:30 p.m., CBS), Edward G. Robinson makes a rare television appearance, along with his son, Edward G. Robinson Jr., in the story of a family divided by the Civil War. And the Tiffany Network's morning show Calendar presents a special primetime episode (10:00 p.m.), as hosts Harry Reasoner and Mary Fickett (above) look at the daytime life of the American homemaker, with guests Vivian Vance, Bob Keeshan, and Bob and Ray.

On Friday, Jimmy Dean wraps up a week as guest host of The Tonight Show during the interim period between Jack Paar's departure on March 30 and the arrival of Johnny Carson on October 1 (11:15 p.m., NBC). The list of hosts who filled in until Carson's arrival is pretty interesting, filled with names you'd expect (Joey Bishop, Merv Griffin, Jerry Lewis) and those who might be more surprising (Jack Carter, Peter Lind Hayes and Mary Healy, Mort Sahl). Groucho Marx did a week, as did comedian Jack E. Leonard, while Merv and Art Linkletter each did four weeks, and Hugh Downs (Jack's sidekick) hosted for three weeks. Last week Jerry was up, and next week it's Arlene Francis's turn, making her the first female host of Tonight. 

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The third annual TV Guide Awards were broadcast on June 24 on NBC, wth host Dave Garroway presenting a passel of presents to deserving programs and performers, including Bob Hope, who won an award for performing for the first time in his 40 years in the business, for "Best Single Musical or Variety Program." Hope, never at a loss for words, said of the award, "I got to rush this over to my stock broker." Favorite Male and Female Performers went to Vince Edwards and Carol Burnett, Favorite Series was taken by Bonanza, and Favorite New Series went to Ben Casey. The broadcast got generally positive reviews, and for those who left empty-handed, Garroway had these words of encouragement: "Virtue is its own reward."

On the Teletype, ABC's new Saturday night series, McHale's Men, is taking shape, and it's noted that there was uncertainty as to whether the show would be "heavy drama or comedy." This uncertainty dates back to the origin of the series as an episode of Alcoa Premiere entitled "Seven Against the Sea." The story, taking place in the Pacific theater during World War II, starred Ernest Borgnine as Lieutenant Commander Quinton McHale, captain of the torpedo boat PT-73. He and his men were stranded at Taratupa base, which had been substantially destroyed by a Japanese attack. Left on their own, as Japanese patrols prevented any rescue attempt, McHale and his men had drifted into a comfortable, laissez-faire lifestyle with the island's natives. Despite these similarities, though, "Seven Against the Sea" was a drama with comedic overtones, and symbolized by a conflict between McHale and his executive officer, Lieutenant Durham, a by-the-book Annapolis man. 

When the movie was spun off into a series of its own, it was, therefore, understandable that the show could go either way, as a comedy or a drama. Borgnine would later remember that the original intent had been to use the show as a vehicle for Ron Foster, who played Durham; when that didn't work out, Borgnine became the lead, and the tone of the show was shifted to comedy. If there was any doubt, the Teletype announces that the first two supporting roles have been cast: comedian Tim Conway, and comic magician Carl Ballantine. And the series itself would come to be titled McHale's Navy. 

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Gil Seldes, TV Guide's critic, takes a look this week at Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color, which, as he says, is really "the wonderful world of Walt Disney," notwithstanding the efforts of RCA and Eastman Kodak in pointing out to us all the wonderful benefits of the world being seen in color.

Seldes's relationship with Disney goes way back; "I was," he points out, "born early enough to have seen 'Steamboat Willie,'" the first appearance of Mickey Mouse. He's been a Mickey and Donald fan ever since, and despite Disney's efforts in live-action presentations, they remain the core of the Disney appeal. On the other hand, "I think Disney's early efforts to 'humanize' animals were (and still are) a mistake." He cites an often-fascinating film on the peregrine hawk as an example of Disney at both his best and his worst; the part of the film in which we're shown how the hawk is trained "can entrance the person who doesn't know but is excited by the unknown." He then plunges us into "a wallow of pity for pigeons that get killed and boys who are crippled, and—I think this is what makes me sore—at the end I'm on his side." Let them live their lives and let us live our lives." Everyone knows what it's like to laugh at a joke and, a moment later, feel it was "pretty sour." "I like Disney," he concludes, "even when I don't like him much." 

Lest you get the wrong impression, though, he adds this: "Walt Disney is one of the very few people who has added to the enjoyment of life of virtually everyone now alive. The only single human being I know who has done more in the entertainment profession is Charles Chaplin." He doesn't know if Disney would take that as a compliment or not; I think he would. But, in it's most literal sense, "the world of Walt Disney is a part of the world we cannot live without."

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And now for that profile of Tuesday Weld that I've been promising. I've never lived in a world in which Tuesday Weld wasn't already well-known as being, if not a great actress, a star. She was once married to Pinchas Zuckerman, and if you're an aficionado of classical music, you'll know that pretty much qualifies you as being cool.* But in 1962 Tuesday Weld is in the process of transforming from a starlet to a name; it is, I think, that point in one's career where things could go either way. For Tuesday, it went in a good way, even though you can look at her career and think it could have amounted to more.

*She was also married to Dudley Moore, making her coolness quotient even higher.

Three years ago, when she was a mere 15-year-old, Danny Kaye described her as "15, going on 27." She once showed up for a TV interview "barefoot, hair unkempt, cigaret lodged in the corner of her mouth, and wearing what appeared to be a nightgown." (Nowadays, someone probably would have told her that she didn't have to dress up, and would have meant that as a compliment.) She'd been called "the Baby Beatnik," "the new Kim Novak," "the sexiest teenager since Liz Taylor," and "a disgrace to Hollywood." For her own part, she remarked that "If teen-agers are gullible enough to use me as a model, that's their problem." During a recent return to the show in which she was once a regular, Dobie Gillis (Warren Beatty was another alumnus of the show), Max Shulman said, "This was an elegant Tuesday we'd never seen before—a real professional, hair up, wearing a smart business suit. And she knew her lines! In the old days she never used to know line one."  She's turned in strong performances in recent shows: The Dick Powell Show and Naked City (both of which we read about earlier), Adventures in Paradise, and the pilot for Bus Stop, which some speculate could be the turning point in her career.

"I've had no turning point," she tells our unidentified interviewer. "All of life is a turning point. But I do feel more confident now." She sees herself as, variously, a mature actress, a child-woman, a spoiled little girl, and, "sometimes—I see nothing at all." She was born Susan Ker Weld (her parents had expected a boy and didn't have any girl names ready), but had always been called Tuesday because, her mother says, "she looked like a Tuesday." (Besides, Tuesday adds, "Thursday is a boy's name." From the Norse god Thor, you know.) A couple of years ago, she had her name legally changed, and so Tuesday it is. 

She remains a polarizing figure; one director said that working with her was like trying to get an elephant to move, while others doubt her ability to transform from a star to a true actress. On the other hand, many of her co-stars have nothing but good things to say about her, and director Ted Post says, "There's always been a deep, serious vein in this girl—it's coming out now." Those in the know say her steady relationship with actor Gary Lockwood has been a "steadying influence." And Rod Amateau, the producer-director of Dobie Gillis, says, "Nothing is going to stop this girl short of a cataclysm—and I mean nothing."

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Finally, there's no MST3K this week, but it's not for lack of trying. For example, on Saturday night's late movie on WJAR in Providence, we've got 1959's Cosmic Monsters, starring Forrest Tucker and Gaby Andre: "The world is threatened with destruction when a mad scientist sets loose huge insects." On Tuesday, it's WMTW in Poland Spring and Prehistoric Women, from 1950, with Laurette Luez, Alan Mixon, and Mara Lynn: "A group of cave women go in search of husbands. On the way, they encounter dinosaurs and other monsters." And on Friday, there's The Ghost of Frankenstein on WNAC in Boston, with Lon Chaney Jr., Sir Cedric Hardwicke, and Ralph Bellamy: "A man plans to replace the criminal brain in a mobster's head with the brain of an educated man." What, I ask you, could possibly go wrong?  TV