Around the dial

It's been a couple of weeks since I've been able to do this, so there should be plenty of good stuff to go over, right?

Terry Teachout takes an affectionate look at the TV commercials of his childhood. It's interesting, considering that when we were young we were as eager to skip through the commercials as we are today (but lacked the ability to do so, there being no such thing as fast-forwarding), but of course these are the same commercials we enjoy nowadays on YouTube. And he's right; in retrospect, they were often better than the shows they interrupted.

Cult TV Blog takes an equally affectionate look back at one of the great Simpsons episodes of all time: their version of The Prisoner, complete with an appearance by Patrick McGoohan.

I've often turned to bare-bones e-zine for its wonderful Alfred Hitchcock summaries, so it's no surprise that Peter has come up with a Hitchcock-themed winner: an interview with mystery author Kevin Egan, whose latest, A Shattered Circle, began life as a short story in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine.

David at Comfort TV takes a fond look back at the '70s-'80s staple Battle of the Network Stars, and explains why it won't work today. Of course, whenever I think of these, this is what comes to my mind:


Some  nice memories of days gone by in Child of Television's look at this week in television history, including Dick Cavett's appearance in Alias Smith and Jones.

I was always intrigued by the name of television writer William F. Nolan, since there was a famous doctor named William Nolan,*who also wrote books and appeared with Johnny Carson. I knew they weren't the same person, but still - Anyway, this week The Twilight Zone Vortex has a birthday tribute to Nolan the TV writer, who penned many a memorable episode of The Twilight Zone.

*AKA "The Great White Father," according to my mother, who actually had him look in on her once when she was at U of M Hospitals.

Carol at Vote for Bob Crane has a very neat demo reel featuring Bob with Mel Blanc in a project that Blanc had created called "Superfun." Enjoy!

The Last Drive-In takes a closer look at the two movies leading up to the classic Night Stalker series with Darren McGavin: The Night Stalker and The Night Strangler.

I think that should hold you until tomorrow, don't you? TV  

Robert Osborne, R.I.P.

I've written in the past about the big-game sports announcers, the ones who made you stop what you were doing and listen, because you knew if they were calling a game it had to be a big one. Well, Robert Osborne was able to accomplish the same thing with movies – if he was introducing it, you knew it was a classic. Robert Osborne wasn’t part of classic television, at least not in the way we might think of it, but he was able to turn classic movies into classic television, thanks to TCM.

He was nothing if not authoritative; it’s hard to believe there was anything he didn’t know about the movies he showed, and he probably knew a lot about the ones he didn’t show. And his smooth, warm voice was just what you needed if you were settling down to watch Clark Gable or Humphrey Bogart or Katharine Hepburn. Many of the obits referred to him as “genial,” and that’s probably as good a word as any to describe him. He didn’t lecture us from some faraway studio – it was as if he was right there in the living room with us, having a friendly conversation peppered with “did you know” tidbits that he took pleasure in telling. (His knowledge of the industry and its history wasn’t something to brag about, but something to share, to enhance our viewing experience just a little more.) He gently led people to movies they wouldn't otherwise have been interested in, just because of what he said. His appeal knew no age group; he even made black-and-white hip, and couldn't we have used him to do that with classic television as well.

Some people might say that there are more important things to master than a knowledge of movies, but I’m not sure about that at all. For one thing, movies – like television – tell a story beyond that portrayed on the screen. They tell us about the times in which they were made, the people who wrote, directed and acted in them, and the people who watched them when they were released*. In short, movies tell us about us, and few people were better at articulating that than Robert Osborne. He lacked the defensiveness and abrasiveness that epitomize many movie critics, because he wasn’t a critic. He was a fan, like the rest of us, and in that sense he might have had the best job in the world, because he got the chance to share his passion with others: those who shared it as well, and those to whom he might be able to introduce something new and exciting, something that would change their lives in a small but sure way.

*If a movie was a hit, that tells us something about ourselves. If it wasn’t a hit, that says something as well.

For a long time he was the sole voice of TCM, and even after he was joined by Ben Mankiewicz and others, he remained the king of the hill, top of the heap. Not that they weren’t good (though they weren't as good), not that they didn’t know what they were talking about (though they never seemed to know quite as much as he did), but they had to prove themselves, and even if they succeeded, they still couldn’t lay claim to being the definitive host – they weren’t Robert Osborne.

He died on Monday, at the age of 84. It wasn’t a terrible surprise; he’d seemed to be fading in the last few years, and his appearances on TCM became less and less frequent. Like the movies he loved, though, his work will stand the test of time, and he’ll be fondly remembered by those who’d watched with him since 1994. He may not have been the star of the show, but Robert Osborne shared one thing with the movies he presented: they were both classics.

What's on TV? Saturday, March 6, 1965

One of the reasons I enjoy looking at Saturday listings, aside from the fond memories it produces, is that it gives us a little more variety than weekdays. The afternoon programs are rarely the same from week to week, and local movies abound. Will the same hold true this week? Let's find out!

Note that KTCA, the educational channel, doesn't broadcast on weekends - after all, school's out of session.

This week in TV Guide: March 6, 1965

The Fugitive was the big story when we looked at this issue back in 2013; back then, the focus was on star David Janssen, but in this encore look I think it'd be appropriate to recall the series itself, and its position in the cultural history of America.

It’s often been assumed that the series was based on the true-life story of Dr. Sam Sheppard, who in 1954 was convicted of the murder of his wife, and wasn’t cleared of the crime until 1966. It’s a claim that’s always been denied by the show’s creator, Roy Huggins, who said he was actually inspired by Victor Hugo’s novel Les Misérables. Maybe that’s the case, maybe he was simply trying to avoid any entanglements with the Sheppard family. The idea of a doctor murdering his wife isn’t exactly uncommon, after all – I personally knew one who faced such an accusation myself – so we’ll probably never really know how the show got its start, not that it matters in the long run. As I wrote a few years ago, it’s a delicious irony that Susan Hayes, the “other woman” mentioned as a possible motive in the Sheppard murder, wound up being married to a music editor who worked on – you guessed it – The Fugitive. It’s true that you just can’t make this kind of stuff up.

Leaving aside the inspiration for The Fugitive, I’ve mentioned in the past that the concept of the series was controversial to begin with; a number of people, including some executives at ABC, were uncomfortable with the idea of basing a weekly series around the premise that the American criminal justice system had successfully convicted an innocent man who, but for the intervention of Fate, would have been executed. That ultimately fell by the wayside in the critical and popular acclaim that greeted the series, but it’s an interesting point to ponder nonetheless. The show ended in September 1967, a time in which the counterculture was already well under way. As far as I can remember, the idea of Richard Kimble as a persecuted folk hero, along the lines of someone like Reuben “Hurricane” Carter, about whom songs were written and movies were made, was never broached, although we do understand that there is a strong if small claque of people familiar with the case who strongly believe in Kimble’s innocence.

Suppose, however, that The Fugitive had continued for a couple more seasons, or at least through the year 1968. Would it have become a different series then, one in which Kimble becomes a full-fledged symbol of oppression by “The Man,” someone unjustly persecuted by the same establishment currently conducting the war in Vietnam? Would he have been embraced by the counterculture and put into some kind of underground railway that would have enabled him to more safely travel across the country while still continuing his search for the one-armed man? And how would Kimble himself have reacted to this? From Janssen’s portrayal, he appears to be a quiet, conservative man by nature, not given to drawing attention to himself even when he’s not on the run for his life. My suspicion is that he would have been quite uncomfortable with being embraced as a symbol; it was much more important to him that people believe in his innocence, hence his determination to track down his wife’s real killer rather than simply disappearing in, say, Argentina or Brazil, where he could live without Lieutenant Gerard breathing down his neck, but by the same token would have given up his best chance to clear his name and reputation.

Regardless, it would have been interesting had The Fugitive been confronted with such a choice: to follow the course of the folk-hero Kimble (perhaps even becoming part of the counterculture himself as he came to view its inhabitants as misunderstood misfits, not unlike himself), or to continue the series as was, pretending that this segment of America didn’t exist. The challenge for Quinn Martin would have been that The Fugitive took place not in an isolation booth, where reality seldom intervened, but out there in that great, sprawling America. Although the show’s production didn’t travel the land as did Route 66’s, it was nonetheless a travelogue of sorts, and it would have been difficult to pretend that a culture that had even infiltrated such an icon of middlebrow America as Ed Sullivan would never come into contact with a man on the run from the police.

I make no pretense to having the right answers, of course, but you must have some thoughts you’d like to share, right?

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During the 60s, the Ed Sullivan Show and The Hollywood Palace were the premiere variety shows on television. Whenever they appear in TV Guide together, we'll match them up and see who has the best lineup..

Ed Sullivan: Scheduled guests include singer Ella Fitzgerald; Duke Ellington and his band; singer Rita Pavone; singer-dancer Roy Castle; comics Stiller and Meara; the two Carmenas, balancers; and comedian John Byner.

Hollywood Palace: Host Eddie Fisher welcomes actress-vocalist Connie Stevens, comedian Jack Carter, the Marquis Chimps, the Arirang Korean ballet troupe, comedy pantomimist Ben Wrigley and the Kuban Cossacks, dance team.

This contest was pretty much over at the start.  With Ella and Duke headlining the Sullivan show, Palace was going to have to come up with something big to top it.  Eddie Fisher, Connie Stevens and Jack Carter are OK, but the royalty that the Palace needed was already spoken for.  Crown Sullivan as winner for the week.

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Some interesting articles this week, the best of which is a story on The Three Stooges, who are going strong as ever since their fueled-by-TV comeback. The emotional peak is a moving story about a 12-year-old girl being treated for emotional troubles. The girl spoke and wrote only in numbers, and when she became angry she "cried out numbers ending in 4." The stunned doctors eventually discovered that the numbers she used corresponded to the numbers on Three Stooges trading cards. The cards depicted "moods of violence" that the troubled girl herself was unable to articulate without the emotional release offered by the Stooges; in recounting the story, Moe Howard tears up.

It's interesting to note that although the Stooges (which at this point consist of Moe, Larry Fine, and "Curley Joe" DeRita) don't receive any financial compensation for their old movies, but the features and personal appearances sparked by the renewed interest in the movies more than make up the difference. Ah, the Stooges - loved 'em as a kid, love' em just as much now.

Let's see - there's also an article about CBS's series The Nurses, which has just been retooled with the addition of a couple of doctors; it's now called The Doctors and the Nurses.  The nurses (Shirl Conway and Zina Bethune) are now supporting players to the doctors (Joe Campanella and Michael Tolan).  According to producer Herb Brodkin, the move was made to improve ratings and dramatic potential: since nurses can't diagnose patients, there just weren't enough stories to carry the show. Says Brodkin, "Part of the problem was that, in making things happen in a story, nurses are handholders."

There's also Malcolm Muggeridge's article on how The Beverly Hillbillies explains your salvation; that was such an intriguing story, I wrote an entire piece about it.

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How about some sports?

It's March, so you'd be well within your rights to wonder where March Madness is. But, as we've pointed out many a time in the past, things were much different back then. There's a grand total of one college basketball game, and that is the result of the Big Ten* Game of the Week (WCCO, Saturday at 3:30 p.m. CT) pitting Minnesota against Michigan. If you're looking for conference tournaments, the ACC is the only major conference to have one, and you're not going to find that on Minneapolis television. Nor the NCAA tournament, for that matter; it doesn't make its network debut until 1969, and the term "March Madness" doesn't come along until Brent Musburger coins it in 1974.

*Back when the Big Ten actually had ten teams. Yeah, that was a long time ago.

If you insist on sports, though, there's the Pro Bowlers Tour at 2:30 p.m. Saturday afternoon on ABC, followed by Wide World of Sports (figure skating and ski jumping). On Sunday, it's the latest renewal of the epic rivalry between the Philadelphia 76ers and Boston Celtics on ABC's Game of the Week Sunday afternoon, followed on WCCO by the final round of the Pensacola Open golf tournament,

And if that isn't enough for you, check out the Sports Awards on Wednesday night - you can read about it below.

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It's only been 20 years since the end of World War II, and the impact of that war endures in American culture - and the week's programming.

It starts on Saturday with "Battleground." acclaimed as one of the most realistic war movies of the time (and winner of two Academy Awards) on NBC's Saturday Night at the Movies, starring Van Jonson, John Hodiak and Ricardo Montalban, and reaches a peak with the 1962 epic "Judgment at Nurenberg" on ABC's Sunday Night Movie, featuring a dynamic, Oscar-winning performance by Maximillian Schell as defense attorney for four Germans accused of war crimes. Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, Judy Garland, Richard Widmark, Marlene Dietrich, and Montgomery Clift round out the cast.

On Monday Jerry Lewis does a rare dramatic turn on Ben Casey, as well as directing the episode, "A Little Fun to Match the Sorrow." Lewis plays a resident hoping to move into neurosurgery, but his clownish antics clash with the humorless personality of Casey. A better choice might be The Alfred Hitchcock Hour on NBC, a story of a mechanic scheming to get into show business, starring James Farentino, Vera Miles, and John Carradine.

NBC presents a news special Tuesday night entitled "The Pope and the Vatican," covering the concluding days of the Second Vatican Council and the radical changes (termed aggiornamento, or "bringing up to date") coming to the Catholic Church. Compared to the turmoil sweeping the Church today, aggiornamento seems like a walk in the park.

The most notable event to air on Wednesday: the "first annual" Grand Award of Sport, airing at 8:30 p.m. on ABC, presented live from the New York World's Fair, and hosted by Bing and Kathryn Crosby.  The format: "Panels of outstanding sportsmen have selected 20 winners" from a list of 83 nominees representing "the world's top athletes".  The nominees included football stars Jim Brown and Johnny Unitas, boxer Cassius Clay, baseball's Sandy Koufax, basketball greats Wilt Chamberlain and Oscar Robertson, and hockey stars Bobby Hull and Gordie Howe.  At the show's end, one of these winners will be chosen to receive the "Grand Award," presented by former astronaut John Glenn.  I can't find another listing for the "Grand Award of Sport"; it's my guess that it was either replaced or folded into the Victor Awards, which began (coincidentally?) the very next year, 1966.

The World War II theme continues Thursday night with a pair of programs: first, NBC's Kraft Suspense Theatre (9:00 p.m.) presents Barry Sullivan and Glenn Corbett in a drama about an OSS major and his inexperienced demolitions man who threatens to jeopardize the mission. If that isn't enough history for you, take a break for the local news and then come back for the KMSP 10:30 movie, The Diary of Anne Frank with Millie Perkins and Joseph Schildkraut. By the end of the week, we should all be reminded about the horrors of war.

SOURCE: HADLEY TV GUIDE COLLECTION

Finally, Friday offers as the most interesting item not a program, but an ad: for McDonald's new "main dish," the Filet-O'-Fish. (Well, it is Lent.) I've often thought that if it was invented today, it probably would have been called the McFish. In other news, the syndicated Have Gun - Will Travel (7:30 p.m., Channel 11) gives us a wonderful image: Paladin (Richard Boone) as the bodyguard to Oscar Wilde. And later on Channel 11, James Garner stars in yet another World War II adventure, Darby's Rangers. I expect it's not quite as grim as some of the other offerings this week.

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Speaking of which, we'll finish up by coming full circle from Nuremberg to the note in TV Teletype that on April 11 the ABC program Discovery '65 will be telecasting David Amram's Holocaust opera The Final Ingredient, commissioned by the network and based on the teleplay by Golden Age writer Reginald Rose. "Set in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, The Final Ingredient relates the story of a group of inmates who attempt to hold a secret Passover Seder inside the camp, and their quest for the final ingredient, which lies just outside the camp walls."  Interesting, as this article points out, that ABC conceived of this as a "Passover Opera" that might be presented annually - almost a Jewish counterpart to Menotti's Christmas opera Amahl and the Night Visitors.  But it didn't become an annual broadcast - at least, as far as I know. It's available for viewing at the Paley Center - might have to check this out someday. TV  

TV Jibe: The cutting truth

SOURCE: JONNY HAWKINS, CAT CARTOON A DAY CALENDAR