This week in TV Guide: June 20, 1970

We're continually assaulted, if that's the right word, with controversy over violence on television. In 1968, on the heels of the King and Kennedy assassinations and the general level of discontent in the country, there had been a wave of revulsion over the perception that television programs were saturated with violence. The result, as we looked at here, was a sudden self-censoring of violent content, at least temporarily, along with a promise to be more responsible in the future. We're now just over two years since that spasmodic response, and the bill for nonviolent television is coming due.

As Joseph Finnigan reports, the stakes are high for television producers, who face losing "thousands of dollars in some cases because a show with too much violence—or even a show which somebody suspects has too much violence—simply doesn't get on the air." And it doesn't matter how big the stars, or how popular the shows. An unaired episode of Bonanza illustrates how ridiculous, in my opinion, it has gotten: the episode has remained in limbo for almost a year, at a cost of $200,000, because of a storyline involving star Michael Landon being attacked (and a prison guard killed) by "vicious prison dogs." "The action took place off-camera," Finnigan points out. "Not a single fang was bared. Still, it all proved too much for the network censors, who apparently never saw a Rin Tin Tin movie." The show's producer, Dick Collins, says the episode was nixed by Standards & Practices "because the dogs worried and bothered them."

To say the least, the crackdown has put a crimp in storytelling. Many producers look upon the restrictions as a form of "arbitrary censorship [that] is not only dishonest but debilitating to the medium." This isn't the first time we've read about such frustration, but even though the specific issues may have changed, the result is the same. An anonymous spokesman for Universal describes the effect: "The Virginian was hurt the past season by a lack of violence which was part of the life of those times. The problems that existed then were emotional, violent problems. In that period the problem was not how well you did your job, or what your boss thought of you, the problem was keeping alive. Today you have other things which support drama—international problems, dope, pollution." But, says Finnigan, "they won't help The Virginian tell his story."

One way around this is to appeal to the conscience of the character involved in committing the violent act. "Ray Burr's Ironside series had a classic example in an episode depicting a policewoman shooting a suspect and feeling remorse over her act." If you don't enjoy the violence, Finnigan observes, this seems to make it OK. Another tactic, especially useful with shoot-outs, is "to keep the camera rolling" on a scene until the shooting victim moves. "Later, if the censor objects to the dead body," the scene can be inserted in the cutting room to demonstrate he isn't dead after all. Writers can ramp up the complexity of the episode, using mystery and detective work to keep the drama going in lieu of a violent scene; and a censor for one of the networks talks of reading a script over and wondering, "Is there any other way to show that Joe Blow is a bad guy and John Blow is a good guy? Is there a nonviolent way to do it?" They even look at the music, to see if it "heightens the violent attitude of the story."

The networks have a good reason for this seemingly childish behavior, of course, and the reason is called Congress. "They're looking for anything that might make waves," leading into one of those "sex and violence" probes that senators like, when someone like John Pastore asks "What are you doing about all that violence?" The next time that happens, they just pull out the scoresheet saying how many murders they've eliminated, how many dog attacks they've prevented, how many sour notes they've nixed. A CBS spokesman says "the incidence of violence is reduced 50 per cent compared with two years ago." I wonder how long that attitude lasts.

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Cleveland Amory's off this week, probably readying his quill for a go at the new summer shows coming our way, but all is not lost, as we still have Judith Crist to look at the week in movies. She starts with Tobruk (Saturday, 9:00 p.m., NBC), a World War II story set in North Africa. Rock Hudson is the star, but Crist's praise is for George Peppard, "at his best" as the leader of German Jews fighting with the Allies; his performance is the movie's "prime distinction." The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (Friday, 9:00 p.m., CBS) is Tennessee Williams' "Soap-operatic survey of decadence," enlivened only by the luminous performance of Vivien Leigh, who provides "a credibility that neither Warren Beatty, as a foppish gigolo, nor Lotte Lenya, as a vile procuress, do much to sustain."

Patrick McGoohan, "another invariably good performer, gives a certain amount of class to Koroshi" (Monday, 8:30 p.m., ABC), a movie made up of the two color episodes of McGoohan's pre-Prisoner series Secret Agent, with McGoohan as the indefatigable John Drake. And in Libel (Thursday, 9:00 p.m., CBS), Dirk Bogarde is "at his invariably excellent" in a courtroom drama in which he plays three separate characters; it's helped "splendidly" by Robert Morley and Wilfrid Hyde-White as the two barristers. Unfortunately, there's nothing good about Rock-a-Bye Baby (Sunday, 9:00 p.m., ABC); "Not even his fans," says Crist of Jerry Lewis's minions "could flip for the tired slapstick buffoonery of this one. Last, and quite possibly least, is Did You Hear the One About the Traveling Saleslady? (Tuesday, 9:00 p.m., NBC). The verdict: "You don't have to hear it or even see it. You can smell it."

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Speaking of the summer: lots of reruns (and a farewell or two), combined with some of the new summer shows. Ray Stevens takes over for Andy Williams (Saturday, 7:30 p.m., NBC), and Andy's on-hand to hand over the keys. Cass Elliot and Lulu are regulars, and Tom Smothers, Jonathan Winters, Jo Anne Worley and Bill Dana are around for brief cameos. Don't worry; Andy's back this fall. G-E College Bowl (Sunday, 1:30 p.m., KYW) isn't, though: the series finale actually aired on the network last week, but it's just making it to Philadelphia today. In the final match, Old Dominion defeats last week's champion, Albright College, 300-100. Later on Sunday, an Ed Sullivan rerun (CBS, 8:00 p.m.) features impressionist David Frye; country music's Chet Atkins, Floyd Cramer, Bobby Goldsboro and Boots Randolph; Connie Stevens; comics George Carlin and Richard Pryor; Sam and Sammy, balancing act; and a production number from "Promises, Promises." That's followed by Glen Campbell at 9:00 p.m., who welcomes Tony Randall, Lulu (fresh from Ray Stevens' show), and Jerry Reed.

Monday's highlight is one of NBC's occasional broadcasts of Monday Night Baseball (8:00 p.m.), with the Baltimore Orioles in Boston to take on the Red Sox. And for those Jerry Lewis fans out there (among which I count myself), don't despair over that Judith Crist review; Jerry's hosting The Tonight Show all week ► (11:30 p.m., NBC). Tuesday's Red Skelton rerun is the CBS farewell for the redhead, as he goes to NBC for a final season in the fall; his guests tonight are Duke Ellington and his orchestra, and comedienne Pat Carroll. At 10:00 p.m., Anne Baxter stars on Marcus Welby, M.D. (ABC), while a CBS News Special looks at how businesses recruit on college campuses, where they often get hostile receptions from students accusing them of social irresponsibility. Country variety show reruns dominate Wednesday, with Hee Haw (7:30 p.m., CBS) featuring Charley Pride, Loretta Lynn and Jerry Lee Lewis, while Johnny Cash (9:00 p.m., ABC) counters with Merle Haggard, Brenda Lee, and—the very busy Charley Pride. And let's not forget Engelbert Humperdinck (10:00 p.m., ABC), with Lena Horne, Joel Grey, Tricia Noble, and "the rocking Vanity Fare."

Happy Days—no, not the one with Richie and The Fonz—premieres Thursday (8:00 p.m., CBS). The summer series is out to recall "the music and comedy of the '30s and '40s" with regulars including Louis Nye, Bob & Ray and Jack Burns; it opens big tonight, with guests Buddy Rich, Helen O'Connell, Bob Eberle, and Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy. For more conventional fare, Tom Jones (9:00 p.m, ABC) welcomes Leslie Uggams, Joe Cocker and the Grease Band, and Guy Marks, while Dean Martin (10:00 p.m., NBC) has Phil Harris, Lou Rawls, Arte Johnson and Nancy Kwan. And we'll round out the week on Friday starting with The Name of the Game's venture into spy territory; reporter Darren McGavin investigate a report that a missile scientist thought to have defected to Cuba (James Whitmore) is actually in hiding to protect his life. A superior guest cast includes Strother Martin, Dane Clark and Jan Sterling. (8:30 p.m., NBC) Hogan's Heroes (8:30 p.m, CBS) gets its Bilko moment in a great episode involving a chimp, and classic TV fans will know what I mean.

Finally, since we're working with the Philadelphia edition this week, we'll take a moment with this ad for "The Big News" on WCAU, with legendary anchorman John Facenda, better known to those of us outside the area as the legendary voice of NFL Films. (It's always interesting to see the day jobs of our heroes.) Whether you recall the "frozen tundra of Lambeau Field" and "the Autumn Wind," or remember him simply as The Voice, there's been nobody like him on NFL Films since; I can only imagine how authoritative he must have been on the news. In fact, here's a great sound clip of him from 1958, and it's about what you'd expect.

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My interest in golf has waxed and waned over the years (up in the days of Arnie and Jack and anyone not named Woods; down in the days of the aforementioned Woods), but it first starts here, with ABC's telecast of the final two rounds of the U.S. Open (6:00 p.m. Saturday, 5:00 p.m. Sunday), live from Hazeltine National Golf Club in the Minneapolis suburb of Chaska, Minnesota. In these simpler days, it was rare when a sports event being played in the Twin Cities was available on television; home football games were always blacked out and the baseball and hockey teams televised about three home games per season, so it was a big deal when we could sit at home and watch something being played, as it were, in the neighborhood.

There had been major golf tournaments in the Twin Cities before; the great Bobby Jones won the 1930 U.S. Open here, and there used to be a regular PGA tournament in St. Paul, but this was probably the first major played here in the television era. And what a tournament it was, starting with the golf course. Through some influential lobbying, Hazeltine was awarded the Open even though it had only been built eight years before, and might not have been ready for the big time. It was constructed pretty much in the middle of nowhere, and the winds whipped around the former farm land, driving the players crazy. The best score after Thursday's opening round was a mere 71, one under par, and some players thought a final total of 300 (+12) would be good enough to win. In particular, one player emerged as the most vocal critic of the course: Dave Hill. Hill was fined $150 for saying the course lacked "about 80 acres of corn and four cows," and that he'd love to "plow it up." In our gentle Minnesota fashion, the galleries responded (in an era when golfers weren't heckled) by mooing at Hill all through the rest of the tournament.

◄ Tony Jacklin, the British Open champion who'd won us over early by saying that, as an Englishmen used to challenging conditions, he didn't have any problem at all with the course, was the only player under par after the first round. By Sunday's final round, he has a five-shot lead, and as he comes to the final hole, with the crowd cheering him on, he leads by six, then sinks a 30-foot birdie putt to finish at seven under par, the only player to break par for the tournament. Hill finishes in second place at even par, the closest he'll ever come to winning a major. Watching it all unfold on TV, I'm hooked.

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Finally, The Editors—Merrill Panitt, in other words—have an interesting idea. I'm using the plural, by the way, since the weekly editorial is called "As We See It," so I'm assuming Merrill is using the royal "we" here, though if anyone's entitled to speak on behalf of the staff of TV Guide, it's Merrill Panitt. Either that, or he's channeling Cleveland Amory. At any rate, they, or he, or whichever pronoun we want to use, are essentially advocating the creation of "Nick at Nite" about 25 years before the fact.

This all came about because of CBS's decision to air reruns of He & She, the critically-acclaimed but ratings-deficient sitcom from 1967 starring Richard Benjamin, Paula Prentiss and Jack Cassidy. on Friday nights over the summer. It's long been thought that He & She might have been just a little ahead of its time, and with this move CBS now signals its decision to join NBC and ABC in programming for the "right" demographic audience, in this case, young marrieds. Considering this predates the network's infamous rural purge by about a year, this seems about right. And if the move is successful, they wonder, what other series might be resurrected?

One such series is It's a Man's World, "a delightful story of some nonconformists living on a houseboat" starring Glenn Corbett, Michael Burns, Ted Bessell and Randy Boone. (A number of episodes exist on YouTube, so if you're interested, you can start with Episode One, here.) There's also George C. Scott's gritty East Side/West Side, which anticipated ghetto problems before they were a big deal; Roger Miller's 1966 TV series ("overproduced as well as before its time"); Bob & Ray's 1950s series ("flopped—some felt—because it was premature"); and My World and Welcome to It, which we might catch up to someday.

Two things you might have noticed about these shows: they were all, to one extent or another, "ahead of their time"; and many of them are available on YouTube, which says a lot about their enduring popularity, even if it's just a cult audience. I wonder if any other classic programs might have been saved if this idea had come to fruition sooner? The editorial concludes by noting that "Some of the best new ideas in programming may be old ideas whose time has come," to which I'd add only that other ideas, and programs, are timeless—if only we take the time to find them, and appreciate them. TV

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This week in TV Guide: December 29, 1973

Of the four traditional major college football bowl games—Rose, Sugar, Cotton, Orange—the Sugar was often cast in the role of the red-headed stepchild. It was frequently the fault of the Sugar Bowl organization itself, in that it was the victim of its own racial policies, for instance, in refusing to invite integrated teams to play schools from the South. (Louisiana State, the team that has played in the Sugar Bowl more than any other, was actually prohibited by state law until 1961 from playing integrated teams; even after that, the ban existed informally. I wrote about that whole situation here.) As a result, the quality of teams participating in the game often suffered, falling significantly behind that of the other three. In 1972, in an effort to separate the game from the rest of the New Year's Day games, the Sugar Bowl was moved to New Year's Eve, where its only competition came in the form of serious drinking and debauchery.

In 1973, however, the Sugar Bowl presented the sport with a game for the ages, an underrated gem that tends to get lost amongst the other contenders for "Game of the Century": a matchup between the #1, undefeated Alabama Crimson Tide, and the #3, undefeated Notre Dame Fighting Irish, with nothing less than the mythical national championship on the line.* (Monday, 7:00 p.m. CT, ABC)

*Oklahoma, ranked #2, was on probation and ineligible to play in bowl games. It wouldn't prevent the Sooners from winning the crown the following year, though.

It had been dark and rainy during the day, with tornado warnings in the area, and at one point, ABC Sports head Roone Arledge allegedly wondered out loud if he might be able to persuade the two schools to postpone the game for a few days, so that the weather wouldn't play a factor. Absurd, I know—even he didn't have that kind of power back then. (It wouldn't be until 1987 that television had that kind of clout, when NBC "persuaded" the organizers of the Fiesta Bowl to move a similar #1-vs-#2 matchup from New Year's Day to January 2 for greater exposure.) At any rate, the moment passed, the weather dried up, and the game kicked off as scheduled. The two teams traded the lead into the fourth quarter; then, with Notre Dame nursing a one-point lead, the Fighting Irish found themselves staring at third and long from inside their own five-yard line. In a daring bit of play-calling—the kind that wins national championships—Notre Dame quarterback Tom Clements, from his own end zone, completes a pass to Roben Weber for 35 yards and a first down. Notre Dame holds on from there for the 24-23 win in this first-ever meeting between the two college giants, and claims the national title. 

Today's college football playoff system may be better at choosing a national champion (although I think the jury's out on that, too), but it's come at the expense of the New Year's bowl games. It's also greatly lessened the entertainment value of New Year's Day television, and I"m not sure we'll ever get that back. 

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On special occasions, we get to take a simultaneous look at three of the great rock music shows of the pre-MTV era: NBC's The Midnight Special, ABC's In Concert, and the syndicated Don Kirshner's Rock Concert. Let's look at this week's listings and see who's better, who's best.

Kirshner: Johnny Winter and Argent perform at New York's Palace Theatre. Music: Johnny Winter (band) - "Rock and Roll Hoochie Koo," "Stone County," "Jumpin' Jack Flash," "Johnny B. Goode" and "Silver Train." Argent - "God Gave Rock and Roll to You," "I Am the Dance of Ages," "I Don't Believe in Miracles," "It's Only Money" and "Hold Your Head Up."

Concert: We're not given much information other than that the performers are Seals & Crofts, Jessie Colin Young, Eddie Kendricks, and Walter Heath.

Special: Every gues sings a million-selling hit on this show, which includes the Edgar Winter Group ("Frankenstein"), the late Jim Croce ("Bad, Bad, Leroy Brown), Loggins and Messina ("Your Mama Don't Dance"), Al Green ("Call Me"), Curtis Mayfield ("Superfly"), Billy Preston ("Will It Go Round in Circles?"), Gladys Knight and the Pips ("Midnight Train to Georgia"), Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show ("Cover of Rolling Stone"), the O'Mays ("Love Train"), Gilbert O'Sullivan ("Get Down"). 

It's quite the red-letter day here, as this is, by my count, only the fifth time we've had the chance to compare all three of these shows at the same time. For all that, it's kind of an uneven playing field this week, as Special counters the regularly-scheduled episodes on the other two series with a compilation show featuring nothing but million-sellers. Practically every song on this lineup is part of the soundtrack for anyone who grew up in the 1970s (or listens to 70s on 7 on SiriusXM). However, we deal with what we have, and this week there's no question: the clock strikes midnight for In Concert and Kirshner, which makes it a special night for The Midnight Special.

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From 1963 to 1976, TV Guide's weekly reviews were written by the witty and acerbic Cleveland Amory. Whenever they appear, we'll look at Cleve's latest take on the shows of the era. 

We are, Cleveland Amory points out, in the era of alternates. Some series, such as The Name of the Game, alternated leads from week to week; others, the best-known of which is NBC's Sunday Mystery Movie, alternated the series themselves, a concept known as the "wheel" series. Shaft, the focus of this week's review, falls into that category, alternating with Hawkins (starring James Stewart) and The CBS Tuesday Night Movies. Next season, Cleve suspects, we'll see even more alternating, perhaps between offense, defense, and special teams. 

At any rate, Shaft is a rarity among television series spun off from movies, in that the star of the movies, Richard Roundtree, reprises his role on the small screen. That is a plus as far as things go, and that's about as far as it does go, because otherwise Shaft is pretty much as run-of-the-mill as every other private detective series on TV: there's the PI, his frienemy on the police force, and his client, plus the assorted baddies that are out to get the client. The result, Amory points out, is that "each episode must rely almost entirely on the guest stars and the plot. And so far the plots have been, at best, only fair to muddling." And this leads almost directly to another problem the series faces: its 90-minute running time, which is why the Tuesday Night Movies can be part of the format. "Ninety minutes is movie length, and only a very exceptional TV episode can carry it without dragging. And when a detective show drags, make no mistake, it is a real drag." 

Even when the plot clicks, as it did in the premiere, it requires a certain suspension of disbelief that may be a bit too much for the average viewer. The premiere revolved around a kangaroo court set up to retry "guilty" defendants who had escaped punishment through one means or another, along with the guilty party's lawyer. The story was fast-paced and exciting, aided by fine performances from Richard Jaeckel as the bad cop (naturally), Dean Jagger as the corrupt judge, and Robert Culp as the ringleader of the entire operation. Now, a cast like that is movie quality. However, for this to work, you had to accept the concept that such a court could continue to operate in New York City without getting caught. If you could, great. If not, well, as Cleve says, "join the club." He also has trouble with what he views as gratuitous and unnecessary violence, not to mention the use of slow motion and stills. In another episode, a pimp's brother takes a slow-motion dive out a window, "and kind of stays up—well, the only thing left to believe was that the 90 minutes too, must be up." 

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Since we're on the subject of comparisons, there was something else on Monday night besides the Sugar Bowl: the battle of the network New Year's Eve programs. It's easy to forget that Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve premiered not on ABC, but NBC, appearing in the timeslot usually occupied by The Tonight Show (10:30 p.m. CT). This year, the show comes from the ballroom of the Queen Mary in Long Beach, CA with host George Carlin, Billy Preston, the Pointer Sisters, Tower of Power and Linda Ronstadt—and, of course, live coverage of the ball drop with Dick in Times Square. (Ironically, ABC's Wide World of Entertainment counter-programs that night with American Bandstand's 20th Anniversary Show, starring—of course—Dick Clark.) Beginning in 1974, New Year's Rockin' Eve adds Dick's name to the title and moves to ABC, where it remains to this day.

Meanwhile, on CBS Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians make their 18th consecutive New Year's Eve appearance on television, having started on CBS radio in 1929. (10:30 p.m., CBS) Guy's sole guest was singer Barbara McNair. Among the pieces the Royal Canadians would play that night, besides "Auld Lang Syne," is "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown," and if you've ever seen Sinatra sing this song, you'll appreciate that it can be a painful thing to see and hear. When I was growing up, the local CBS affiliate in Minneapolis-St. Paul, WCCO, always tape-delayed this broadcast to begin at 11:30 p.m., in order for the balldrop celebration to occur at midnight local time. In the interests of broadcast accuracy, I'll note that most stations in the Central time zone probably carried it at 10:30 p.m.

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A great lineup for New Year's Day. CBS kicks things off at 9:00 a.m. with the Rose Parade preview, featuring hosts Bob Barker and June Lockhart and Grand Marshal Charles Schulz. NBC counters with the Junior Orange Bowl Parade at the same time (the King Orange Jamboree Parade had been shown the previous evening), followed by their own parade preview show, hosted by Doc Severinsen (9:45 a.m.) At 9:30 a.m. CBS is off to Dallas for the Cotton Bowl Parade, while the independent WTCN carries KTLA's coverage of the Rose Parade preview.  At 10:30 a.m., everyone's on hand for the Tournament of Roses Parade, and the fitting theme, "Happiness Is . . . " We could all use the suggestions. 

With the move of the Sugar Bowl to New Year's Eve, the bowl scene is a little less cluttered, with each game having its own block of time: the Cotton Bowl (1:00 p.m., CBS), with Nebraska defeating Texas 19-3; Rose Bowl (3:45 p.m., NBC), with a final score of Ohio State 42, USC 24; and Orange Bowl as the nightcap (7:00 p.m., NBC), Penn State beating LSU 16-9. Back then college football games didn't run four hours; NBC even scheduled a recap of the day's coverage for 9:45 p.m., before the local news.

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For no particular reason, we'll take this opportunity to look back once again on CBS's murderer's row of Saturday night shows, starting with All in the Family at 7:00 p.m., and continuing through to M*A*S*H, Mary Tyler Moore (in which Phyllis discovers her husband is having an affair with Happy Homemaker Betty White), The Bob Newhart Show, and The Carol Burnett Show (with guests John Byner and Helen Reddy). It's still unequaled for star power, as far as I can see.

Sunday belongs to professional football, with the NFC and AFC championships.  In the NFC, Minnesota takes on Dallas (noon, CBS), with the Vikings coming out on top, 27-10. In the AFC, the defending Super Bowl champions, Miami, defeats Oakland by the same score (3:00 p.m., NBC). Two weeks later, the Dolphins will overwhelm the Vikings in the Super Bowl, the last win for Miami and the second of four defeats for Minnesota. By contrast, this year the NFL's regular season won't even be done on December 30. For something a little different, Malcolm Muggeridge, the British humorist and journalist whom you've read many times here at the blog, is William F. Buckley Jr.'s guest on Firing Line (9:00 p.m., PBS).

On Monday, Gunsmoke (7:00 p.m., CBS) presents a backdoor pilot for an upcoming series, Dirty Sally, starring Jeanette Nolan. When this was originally shown in 1971, it received more mail on than any other episode in the series' long run. Despite Nolan being nominated for an Emmy, the series will disappear after the obligatory 13 weeks. After that, our favorite private detective, Joe Mannix (Mike Connors) visits Lucy on a Here's Lucy tale that has the redhead being chased by two bank robbers (8:00 p.m., CBS). 

I suppose the only thing that can compete with football on Tuesday is a disaster flick, and ABC has the answer with a rerun of the telemovie Short Walk to Daylight, with James Brolin starring in this tale of New York City earthquake survivors stranded in the subway system. (7:30 p.m.) Judith Crist says "The plot's as incredible as the characters are stereotyped." Better to stick to the football. 

Wednesday, The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour welcomes Tennessee Ernie Ford and Lyle Waggoner to the first show of the new year. (7:00 p.m., CBS) Late night, Rod Serling travels to Los Angeles International Airport for a talk with people involved in the air travel business, including pilots and stewardesses, airport security personnel, and nervous travelers (10:30 p.m., ABC). Is there any resemblance at all between air travel then and now, besides the idea that you're flying through the air in a metal tube?

On Thursday, an NBC News Presents special entitled "The College Money Crunch" (9:00 p.m.) goes to show that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Edwin Newman's report focuses on the middle-class, caught between the poor, who receive all the financial support, and the wealthy, who don't need it. I can't imagine how the amount of debt back then would compare to what it is today. 

One more bit of sports rounds out the week on Friday: a rare regular-season prime time appearance by the National Hockey League, as the Boston Bruins take on the New York Rangers from Madison Square Garden; it's the kickoff (to mix a metaphor) of NBC's NHL coverage for the year. (7:30 p.m.)

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And now the news. In The Doan Report, Rhode Island Senator John Pastore is again calling for hearings on television violence—something that seems to come around every so often, like malaria, only to have it recur again a few years later. There's also a movement afoot to curb the proliferation of network reruns. In favor: unions, who hope that more episodes will increase studio employment.  Opposed: the networks, who claim that cutting back on reruns would pose a significant financial hardship. Now, we've got "seasons" that barely last more than a dozen episodes, and a proliferation of "unscripted television" that renders the whole point of employment moot. I may complain about television in the 1970s, but there's a reason why we still include the decade when we talk about the "good old days." 

Speaking of episodes, the new year used to introduce what was called the "Second Season," when the networks introduced their first wave of replacements for their failed shows, and so a number of series make their swan songs this week: Tenafly and the anthology Love Story on NBC, and Roll Out! on CBS. Roll Out! was, some thought, the Tiffany Network's attempt, to copy the success of M*A*S*H, transferred to a World War II setting, while Tenafly was notable for being one of the first series to feature a black actor in the lead role, with James MacEachin starring as a former police detective-turned private eye. You'll notice, between Tenafly and Shaft, that it was a bad season for black private detectives. I suspect this has more than a little to do with how television turned potentially unique characters into bland copycats of those that were already on the airwaves.

Back to the subject at hand, though, which is the upcoming Second Season. With the shifting of the schedules, a few favorites are preparing for new timeslots: ABC's Toma, which will take a circuitous route to become Baretta next season, will be moving from Thursday to Friday to make way for two new series, Chopper One* and Firehouse; neither new series will make it past the Second Season. Arthur Hill's legal drama, Owen Marshall, Counselor at Law is also on the move, from its Wednesday time to Saturdays. 

*A type in TV Guide rendered this series "Hopper One."  Perhaps that's why they weren't able to find an audience; the audience wasn't able to find the show.

And then there's a series that did make just a little splash. At the conclusion of the final episode of "The Little Farm" on PBS's Masterpiece Theatre, the TV Guide notes that "Next week: 'Upstairs, Downstairs,' a 13-part drama about life in Edwardian England" will begin. As I recall, that went over a bit more than those other series...

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And that kid on the cover? That's "Mason Reese, 7-year old huckster." Back in the early 70s, Reese was ubiquitous on television, appearing on commercials for Ivory soap, Post Raisin Bran, Perdue chicken, Underwood chicken spread, the Zayre store chain, and more. If he wasn't pitching products, he was chatting it up with the likes of Dick Cavett and Mike Douglas.

When asked how he liked the business, he replied, "It's fun. You get to travel around and meet lots of important people and shoot crap with the cameramen."

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MST3K alert: The Undead (1957) Experiments in reincarnation hurtle a scientist back to the dark ages. Pamela Duncan, Richard Garland, Allison Hayes. (Saturday, 11:30 p.m., WTCN) "I've never known more about what isn't going on in a movie," Mike says about this melodrama featuring shape-shifters, imps (played by Billy Barty!), witches, and the Devil, all directed by Roger Corman. If that isn't nightmare fuel, I don't know what is. TV

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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: December 6, 1975

Television is a lot like the weather: people complain about it, but nobody does anything about it. In this week's cover story, Neil Hickey looks at one of the most controversial attempts to do something about television: "family viewing time." 

Family viewing time—defined as the hours between 7 and 9:00 p.m. Eastern time—was written into the National Association of Broadcasters' Television Code for the beginning of the 1975-76 season, in response to growing alarm over the amount of violence on television. Now, this is nothing new, as faithful readers will testify; concern over TV violence has been around almost as long as TV itself, and tends to spike in the wake of any traumatic national event. However, the most recent TV Guide poll, conducted by Opinion Research Company, shows that such worries have risen markedly, with more than seven out of 10 Americans convinced that "television programs, overall, are much too violent." Under family viewing time, no program deemed "inappropriate for viewing by a general familiy audience" would be aired during those two hours.

Almost immediately, however, a hue and cry arose that this amounted to "censorship," that the ruling was the result of buckling to pressure from Congress, and that it wouldn't work anyway, since children themselves don't limit their viewing to early evening hours. (More than 20 million children between the ages of 2 and 17 are watching TV at 9:00 p.m., and 5.3 million are still watching at 11:00 p.m.) And last month, the Writers Guild, Directors Guild, and Screen Actors Guild, brought suit against the FCC, the NAB, and the three commercial networks, charging that family viewing time was "the product of political coercion" and a violation of the First Amendment. Defenders of the policy have been equally adamant that family viewing time was, at the very least, a step in the right direction, a guarantee that there would be at least two inoffensive hours of television a day, and an aid to parents attempting to oversee their children's viewing. But what does the public think about it all? 

Well, as Richard Dawson might say, here is what the survey says. Not surprisingly, a little more than half the public had either never heard of it at all or was uncertain as to what the details were. However, once the details were explained to them, the publicsx 's opinion starts to come into focus. Asked if they were in favor of such a rule or opposed to it, 82 percent replied yes, with only seven percent opposing it. Households with children were more strongly in favor than those without, and the approval rate for women was slightly higher than men, 85% to 77%. Seniors and those without a college degree were also more likely to support it. Eight out of ten respondants said they did not feel as if family programming standards were being forced on them, and 56% replied that they were hopeful television might improve as a result of the rule. 

Some other trends to notice: while 54% felt there was too much sex on television, 71% said there was too much violence, and 44% felt violence was more objectionable than sex, while 22% felt the opposite. However, when asked whether or not there should be stricter controls on programming, seven out of 10 felt that the family itself should make that decision, and of those who did think there should be stricter controles, more than half felt those controls should come from the industry, rather than the government. 

The conclusions, says Hickey, are broadly that the public feels there's too much violence, that the concept of family viewing time is a good one, and that 80% of the public approves of the rule designed to bring it about. 

Of course, things have changed since then. In 1976, family viewing time was found unconstitutional as a violation of the First Amendment; the NAB Code itself went away in 1983. Cable programming was never under the control of the government or the NAB anyway, and as cable grew, it became a moot point. Anyway, with the advent of on-demand programming, you can watch what you want whenever you want anyway. But then, one could argue that the definition of "family" itself is so up in the air, so maybe none of it matters. 

 

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On weeks when we can, we'll match up two of the biggest rock shows of the era, NBC's The Midnight Special and the syndicated Don Kirshner's Rock Concert, and see who's better, who's best.

Kirshner #1: Two different syndicated Kirshner episodes again this week; in the first, Steppenwolf, Graham Central Station and Emmylou Harris are guests. Music: “Mr. Penny Pincher”’, and “‘Carotine” (Steppenwolf)

Kirshner #2: Performers: Janis lan, Pure Prairie League and Chuck Mangione. Songs include “At Seventeen,” “When the Party’s Over.”

Special: Helen Reddy's guests are Glen Campbell, Anne Murray, Johnny Rivers, soul group Rufus featuring Chaka Khan, and soul artists the Whitneys. Also: James Taylor's hit “You’ve Got a Friend” and a tribute to Gordon Lightfoot. 

Well, this is a tough one. Ordinarily, I'd be leaning toward the Special, but for two things: I can't stand Helen Reddy, and I can't stand James Taylor. I particularly can't stand James Taylor singing "You've Got a Friend," which only serves to make me an enemy. Meanwhile, Glen Campbell and Johnny Rivers are just fine, but this week's songs are far from their best. And so this leaves a pair of Kirshner concerts, of which I'm going to give the edge to #2, with Janis Ian singing two of her biggest, and Chuck Mangione as the hottest horn around. This week, Kirshner takes the prize.

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From 1963 to 1976, TV Guide's weekly reviews were written by the witty and acerbic Cleveland Amory. Whenever they appear, we'll look at Cleve's latest take on the shows of the era.

There are, as Cleveland Amory sees it, four categories of shows in the 1975-76 season: "dicks, docs, damsels in distress and barrel-of-laughs ethnics." Into the last category falls this week's show, the ABC sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter, and as Cleve says, "you could do a lot worse." Kotter, as you probably know, gives us Gabe Kaplan as the teacher who returns to his former school ten years later, assigned to teach a class of "Special Guidance Remedial Academics." Although the premise may sound hokey, and it's not particularly convincing (John Travolta, as Barbarino, is "a pretty boy who looks as if someone stole his lollipop."), it is, most of the time, very funny.

Credit for much of that goes to Kaplan, "a versatile comedian who can be convincing when the occasion demands and, when it doesn’t, can break out in the wildest stuff this side of Freddie Prinze." He is, says Amory, "in many ways the best new comedy figure" of the season, who looks like he's having fun, and makes the viewers feel the same way. Marcia Strassman comes in for kudos as well, as "one TV wife whos so charming that she doesn't make you wonder what her husband sees in her." 

Amory also credits strong scriptwriting, especially in an episode that give us Kotter refusing to pass Washington (Lawrence-Hilton Jacobs) a passing grade just because he's an athlete, and another that deals with teenage pregnancy with a twist, when Hotsie Totzi (Debralee Scott) fakes being pregnant to prove to the rest that "I ain't easy. I'm a lady." It is, Cleve says, "both funny and touching," and when it comes to sitcoms, that's a pretty good combination.

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The Yuletide specials are out in force this week, particularly of the animated kind; there's still time to get the kids that present from the commercials!

For all-out value, nothing tops CBS's Friday doubleheader of How the Grinch Stole Christmas (8:00 p.m. PT) and Frosty the Snowman (8:30 p.m.). The Grinch, of course, features Boris Karloff's memorable narration and Thurl Ravenscroft's equally memorable rendition of "You're a Mean One, Mister Grinch."; Frosty has perhaps the weakest of the classic Rankin-Bass storylines, but the irrepressible Jimmy Durante helps make up for it. That's followed by a repeat of The Homecoming: a Christmas Story (9:00 p.m., CBS), the de-facto pilot for The Waltons, with Patricia Neal and Richard Thomas and a tense Christmas Eve, 1933.

Speaking of Rankin-Bass, Mickey Rooney is, for my money, the definitive R-B Santa Claus, and he gets to demonstrate it on consecutive nights, with Santa Claus Is Coming to Town (Tuesday, 8:00 p.m., ABC) and The Year Without a Santa Claus (Wednesday, 8:00 p.m., ABC). In the former, we see how an infant foundling becomes the Jolly Old Elf; the latter gives us an elf who's old but not so jolly, as a cynical, sickly Santa wonders if he's all washed up. Highlights abound, with Fred Astaire narrating and singng on Tuesday night, and Dick Shawn and George S. Irving doing the Snow Miser/Heat Miser duet to hammy perfection. Don't overlook another Tuesday night R-B special, 'Twas the Night Before Christmas (8:30 p.m., CBS), with Joel Grey, Tammy Grimes, George Gobel, and John McGiver. 

For those wanting something less cartoony, John Denver's Rocky Mountain Christmas (Wednesday, 9:00 p.m., ABC) follows The Year Without a Santa Claus, and offers Valerie Harper, Oliva Newton-John, and Steve Martin in a tuneful celebration from Aspen. Your enjoyment of this will be directly related to how well you like the participants. And from the big screen, it's the movie that, in my opinion, ranks at the top when it comes to Christmas: Miracle on 34th Street (Sunday, 4:00 p.m., KTVU in San Francisco), with John Payne, Maureen O'Hara, Natalie Wood, and film's greatest Santa, the Oscar-winning Edmund Gwynn. 

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Never mind the Sweathogs—let's take a look at a real bad boy, or at least one that's trying to turn over a new leaf: Tony Franciosa, currently starring in ABC's detective series Matt Helm. As Al Stump reminds us, Franciosa came to Helm known for two things: an undeniable talent (he was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar in 1957 for A Hatful of Rain), and a reputation for a hair-trigger temper that has seen him called "hotheaded, arrogant, spoiled, unreliable and a 6-foot-2-inch menace to coexistence on the set." He's feuded with studio executives, punched directors and photographers, and alienated many people with whom he's worked. While he doesn't deny that there have been times—"I've been called a lot of things" he says—he's also less than repentant, nothing that much of the criticism has come from "uncreative, computerized men who are typical of those who've taken over much of the industry. Weird, Kafkaesque types." But, he acknowledges, you can't fight the system, "so I've become more resigned and relaxed about it. I won’t be pushed around, but I'm fatalistic."

It's understandable that there are skeptics out there; some point to the $260,000 that ABC is paying him for 13 episodes of Helm, but others think he really has matured. Franciosa readily admits that he took the part for "three reasons—money, money and money," but he's also settled in his home life with his (fourth) wife and two children. "Five years ago I never thought I'd become a homebody, raising babies, dogs, cats and rabbits." He's also started saving money, to keep the kids from having to deal with the "dirt poor" childhood he remembers. 

His road to stardom, unlike many, started out strongly; a Tony nomination for the Broadway version of Hatful, followed by success in television and movies. Then he started falling into disfavor in some circles for criticizing scripts, going through marriages, and having a brittle relationship with the press. In The Name of the Game, many felt he outacted his co-stars, Gene Barry and Robert Stack, but he claims he was asked to take a pay cut, and had to work in insufferable conditions, including 105-degree heat in Las Vegas that had people passing out. The studio, Universal, has a different story, of course; they eventually sacked him, replacing him with guest stars. 

On the set of Matt Helm, he keeps to himself for the most part, but he's also been—again, for the most part—easy to work with. He's had several opportunities to complain about scripts, blocking, delays, injuries, and the like, but has passed them up. Matt Helm has only a 14-episode run, but Franciosa remains busy doing guest roles through the 1990s, before dying at age 77 in 2006.

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Frank Swertlow reports on change that's on the horizon at ABC, with a batch of cancellations, headed by the highly-touted Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell (thus, and most notably, freeing up the name for NBC's Saturday Night). Other casualties include When Things Were Rotten; That’s My Mama; Barbary Coast; Mobile One and the aforementioned Matt Helm. The network's second season holds some potential: among others series, we can look forward to Six Million Dollar Man spinoff The Bionic Woman, the limited-run series Rich Man, Poor Man (the term miniseries hasn't been coined yet), Laverne and Shirley, a spinoff from Happy Days, the variety hour Donny and Marie, and The ABC Monday Night Movie. Not a bad exchange, if you ask me. 

But enough of the future; let's take a look at what else is on this week, starting with Cosell's Saturday night show (8:00 p.m., ABC). Howard's guests are Orson Welles, Paul Anka, Billy Crystal, and gymnast Olga Korbut. That's a pretty good lineup, leaving one to wonder just who the week link in the show is. And on KQED, the PBS affiliate in San Francisco, it's Night of the Python (9:00 p.m.), three hours of routines from Monty Python's Flying Circus. Unless it's a pledge night, that sounds like a pretty good bet to me.

On 60 Minutes (Sunday, 7:00 p.m., CBS), former Secret Service agent Clint Hill joines Mike Wallace for a candid and emotional interview as he recalls the day President Kennedy was assassinated in 1963. I had the opportunity to ◀ meet Hill back in 2013 during one of the 50th anniversary events (back when we were all younger); a very interesting man who suffered a great deal in the years after the assassination; I'm glad that he's been able to deal with the demons that haunted him. 

Monday features a salute to Lucille Ball on Dinah! (8:00 p.m., KBHK), with Lucie Arnaz, Vivian Vance, Lucy's mother Dee Dee Ball, Zsa Zsa Gabor, and PR representative Charles Pomerantz. And in part one of a two-part All in the Family (9:00 p.m., CBS) deals with the Stivics' overdue baby; it's driving Gloria crazy and driving Mike out of the house. (Part two, which airs Tuesday at 9:30 p.m., is a flashback to Mike and Gloria preparing for their wedding.

Police officer-turned actor Eddie Egan (the inspiration for Popeye Doyle in The French Connection) works back-to-back shifts on NBC Tuesday, starting on Police Woman (9:00 p.m.), where he and former police office David Toma (the inspiration for, well, you know) play a couple of hoods who will, I'm sure, cross paths with Pepper. Who'll sneeze first? After that, he plays a cop taken hostage in a bungled robbery, who depends on Lloyd Bridges' Joe Forrester to save him (10:00 p.m.)

Joan Fontaine makes a rare television appearance this week on a special two-hour Cannon (Wednesday, 9:00 p.m., CBS) as a former film star who retains our avuncular private eye to find her missing son. Appropriately, the episode featurse a fine supporting cast, including David Hedison, Richard Hatch, Linden Chiles, Dana Elcar, John Veronon, and Jack Carter. And the old ABC documentary series Saga of Western Man takes a look at the Age of Discovery in "1492," narrated by Fredric March. (9:00 p.m., KTVU in Oakland)

Barbara Walters wasn't the first to present gossip specials masquerading as celebrity interviews; as an example, Rona Barrett hosts an hour's worth of chats with James Caan, Michael Caine, Elliott Gould, and Burt Reynolds. (Thursday 2:00 p.m., CBS) Notice the afternoon air time, rather than a prime time slot; why not, considering that's where you find the soap operas. Incidentelly, CBS plans an announcement warning that the program may not be suitable for ali family members

Friday features the Hallmark Hall of Fame presentation "The Rivalry" (8:30 p.m, NBC), the story of the Lincoln-Douglas debates, with Arthur Hill as Abraham Lincoln, Charles Durning as Stephen Douglas, and Hope Lange as Mrs. Douglas, caught between support for her husband and sympathy for Lincoln's anti-slavery message. That wouldn't quite pass muster for a Hallmark Christmas presentation today, would it? 

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MST3K alert: The Amazing Colossal Man (1957) Plutonium transforms an army colonel into a 70-foot madman. Glenn Langan.Cathy Downs. (Saturday, 1:30 p.m., KBHK in the Bay Area) Admit it; you'd be plenty teed off too if you'd been transformed, through no fault of your own, into a 70-foot giant. Unfortunately, since the rights to use the movie expired, you can no longer see the MST3K version except on YouTube. However, you can catch the unwanted, unasked-for sequel, War of the Colossal Beast, with a completely different cast. Take it from me: if you've seen one colossal man, you've seen them all. TV