What's on TV? Monday, October 9, 1967

There's a note at the beginning of today's listing that if the World Series requires a fifth game, it will air on NBC starting at 1:00 p.m., with a pre-game show at 12:30. The Minnesota Twins were eliminated on the final day of the season; had they won today's game would have been telecast by WTCN as well as NBC. In this case, I've chosen to show what TV Guide lists, rather than what actually aired. Since the game ran two hours and twenty minutes, you can probably figure out what was shown and what was preempted. Needless to say, the listings are from the Twin Cities.

This week in TV Guide: October 7, 1967

There's every reason to be excited about this year's World Series. The National League champions, the St. Louis Cardinals, are a powerful team favored by the experts. They're facing the Cinderella Boston Red Sox, they of "The Impossible Dream," who came out on top in a frantic four-team battle for the American League pennant that was called "The Great Race".

As we join the Series in St. Louis for Game 3 on Saturday, the Cards and Sox have split the first two games; St. Louis' Bob Gibson stops Boston in Game 1, and Boston's Jim Lonborg carries a no-hitter into the eighth inning before giving up a two-out single in an eventual 5-0 Red Sox victory. Things only get better from here; St. Louis wins Games 3 and 4 over the weekend and seem poised to wrap things up at home, but Boston rebounds with a win in Game 5 (Lonborg again), and Game 6 back in Boston. It all boils down to Game 7, Thursday at 11:30 a.m. CT on NBC, and the difference is Gibson, pitching on three days' rest, against Lonborg, trying to come back with only two days' rest. The Cardinals score two in the third inning and two in the fifth, and when it's all said and done, the Cardinals emerge with a 7-2 win, and their second World Series title of the '60s.

St. Louis will be back in the Series again next year, this time facing the Detroit Tigers, one of the teams that had lost out to Boston in 1967. Again St. Louis races out to a 3-1 lead; again, they miss an opportunity to clinch with a win in Game 5, again Gibson goes into Game 7 facing a Tigers pitcher going on only two days' rest. But this time the pitcher is Mickey Lolich, and the Tigers triumph where the Red Sox failed, winning the game 4-1. But that's a story for another day, and another TV Guide.

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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: Ed's scheduled guests are comedians Jack E. Leonard, Joan Rivers, and Wayne and Shuster; singers Jimmy Dean, Lana Cantrell and the Young Americans; the Muppets puppets; and Gosha the bear from the Moscow State Circus.

The Palace: Milton Berle hosts an all-comedy show with guests Kaye Ballard, Joe Besser, Irving Benson, Prof. Irwin Corey and the Bottoms Up troupe.

There's a note that if the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians (NABET) strike against ABC is ongoing, this episode of Palace will be replaced with a rerun hosted by Phil Silvers, and perhaps that's what we should have wished for. To tell the truth (and maybe we should be watching that), neither of these shows does much for me. However, I don't like to use the push too often, so for the sake of selecting a winner, I'll note that Ed has Jimmy Dean and the Muppets, and I could live with Wayne and Shuster, so on the basis that this show isn't as bad, I'll give the nod to Sullivan.

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.Throughout the 60s and early 70s, TV Guide's weekly reviews were written by the witty and acerbic Cleveland Amory. Whenever we get the chance, we'll look at Cleve's latest take on the series of the era. 

They might not have dominated television the way they once did, but in 1967 there's still room to debut a new Western series, and CBS has gone all-in with Cimarron Strip, a 90-minute extravaganza starring former Oscar nominee Stuart Whitman as Marshal Jim Crown. You know the old saying, "You never get a second chance to make a first impression?" I think this applies to Amory's opinion of Cimarron Strip; after having seen the first episode, he remarks that "they have killed everything in sight except (a) the hero and (b) the time." It only goes downhill from there.

Of our hero the Marshal, he says that "Even if at the beginning of the show you love him, and at the middle of the show you still like him, the trouble is, by the end of the show you feel married to him." It doesn't help, of course, that his dialogue consists of lines such as "I'll bet you a steak and a beer." Also, the show is 90 minutes long—have we mentioned that yet?—which means "he can't do anything too fast—even think." It's not that they haven't tried to give him some depth; he does have a past, which according to Cleve is a bad thing. "No man with the present and future he's got on this show should have to have a bad past too."

He's not helped by his co-stars either, played by Randy Boone, Percy Herbert, and Jill Townsend. If it were left to the four of them, including Jim, "there would be no show at all." Townsend's character unintentionally plays comic relief, and the chief contributions of Herbert, playing a Scotsman is to repeatedly ask for a drink, Amory's there is that "he does this because he knows what's coming."

As with other 90-minute Westerns such as Wagon Train and The Virginian, Cimarron Strip depends on guest stars, but even they wear thin. Face it, there's just no hope for this series; in the second episode, one character says, "You talk like my foot's asleep." Amory's reply applies to the entire series: "We still don't believe it, but we think we heard it."

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It's not my intent to turn this into an all-sports edition, and I don't want to get too local here for you non-Minnesotans, but there's a deceptively simple listing on Wednesday at 8:30 p.m. on WTCN, Channel 11. "North Star Hockey." It's even a bit clumsy, compared to listings for other sports—"Pro Football," for example, or "World Series."

Maybe we shouldn't be surprised, though, for Wednesday night is the inaugural regular season game for the Minnesota North Stars, one of the six new expansion teams in the National Hockey League. It may not have been the first game telecast; there might have been a pre-season game or two shown, but still, it represents a landmark occasion for what we've come to call—thanks to a marketing guru, no doubt—the "State of Hockey." The North Stars became one of the most beloved, and frustrating, franchises in the state. The meager crowds which sometimes attended the play were less reflective of interest in the team and more an expression of disgust at the team's performance, or often, that of the ownership. The team was abused twice; once when a previous ownership group was allowed to take half of the team with them to San Jose to start a new expansion team, and finally The Great Betrayal, when the league let a criminal owner move the franchise to Dallas. Neither of these things would have happened in a truly professional league (and we wonder why hockey still remains fourth of the four major sports in the United States), and the bitterness still runs deep; I lived for four years in Dallas, and never once in those four years did I root for the Stars. I don't even watch hockey anymore, a sport I used to love, but again that's another story.

That first game gave us a glimpse of what the North Stars would be like, though. They tied the St. Louis Blues, 2-2; the Blues would come to be their great rival through the years, and in the Stanley Cup semifinals that season the North Stars and Blues would go seven games, with the Blues winning 2-1 in double overtime while North Stars announcer Frank Buetel said the teams and fans were "climbing cardiac hill." The Stars never did win the Stanley Cup while they were here, and the Wild have been the local team for almost twenty years now, but there's only one first year.

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Saturday's Jackie Gleason Show (6:30 p.m., CBS) is a Honeymooners musical, with Ralph finding himself in a typical situation: needing to raise cash because he just lost $500 of the Loyal Order of Raccoons' money. Later on Petticoat Junction (8:30 p.m., CBS), it's a big, big day in Hooterville, as Kate's given Steve permission to propose to Betty Jo. Only problem is, everyone else in town knows about it before she does. And that's why I don't live in a small town.

Sunday gets off to an interesting start, with Lamp unto My Feet and Look Up and Live being preempted for an Experimental Theater presentation, "Road Signs on a Merry-Go-Round." (9:00 a.m., CBS) I've written about television and existentialism before, but this really defines it, as "an allegorical husband and wife" roam the streets of New York searching for the meaning in life through the thoughts of three philosopher-theologians: Martin Buber, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. All three of these men are contemporary to the times, familiar if not household names; Bonhoeffer was a martyr in World War II, Chardin had died only twelve years before, and Buber only two years ago.

Bing and Mary Frances

Bob Hope and Danny Thomas both lent their names to NBC drama anthologies in the '60s which featured big-name guest stars. On Monday night at 8:00 p.m., Thomas welcomes Bing Crosby, playing a rare straight-dramatic role as a fading film star, in "The Demon Under the Bed." George Maharis co-stars as the photographer who follows Crosby around, trying to capture the "core" of the former star as he faces an operation to save his voice, and possibly his career. Joan Collins is Crosby's ex-wife, and eight-year-old Mary Frances Crosby makes her TV acting debut as Crosby's on-screen daughter.

Tuesday night Don Rickles plays a physical fitness instructor on I Dream of Jeannie (6:30 p.m., NBC) who's raised Jeannie's ire by working Tony and Roger to a frazzle. Side note: the orderly in the episode is played by David Soul. He's one of a number of guest stars that stand out tonight; Barbara Feldon is Jerry Lewis' guest (7:00 p.m., NBC), while Russell Johnson finds himself in the middle of The Invaders (7:30 p.m., ABC), and Vincent Gardenia and Charles Grodin are on N.Y.P.D. (8:30 p.m., ABC). At 9:00 p.m. on CBS, Harry Reasoner goes on a tour of "Barry Goldwater's Arizona" with the former presidential candidate, looking at Phoenix, Sun City, the Grand Canyon, and Indian reservations, among other things.

At the top of the table on Wednesday is Barbra Streisand in one of her famous CBS specials (9:00 p.m.), this one presenting a salute to vaudeville, with Jason Robards, Lee Allen, John Bubbles, and 12-year-old singer Susan Alpern. If, like me, you're not a fan of the nose that roars, you might be drawn to other entertainment. In that case, Parley Baer, who played Chester on the radio version of Gunsmoke and the mayor on Andy Griffith, is a guest on The Second Hundred Years (7:30 p.m., ABC). and George Burns hosts the Kraft Music Hall (8:00 p.m., NBC) in a return to "Tin Pan Alley," with Dionne Warwick, Nancy Ames, Sergio Mendes and Brasil 66, and—Dick Cavett? Yep, he's just a comedian at this point, not a talk-show host.

On Thursday, we get a look at why Cleveland Amory was so down on Cimarron Strip (CBS, 6:30 p.m.), as "Marshal Crown must prevent a showdown between an old Indian chief and the flamboyant star of a Wild West show." Better to watch Batman at the same time on ABC (which may be another explanation as to why the show doesn't last), with tonight's guest villains the Penguin (Burgess Meredith) and Lola Lasagne (Ethel Merman). F. Lee Bailey's short-lived talk show Good Company (9:00 p.m., ABC) features the famed barrister interviewing Patricia Neal and her husband, Roald Dahl. And Dean Martin's guests tonight (same time, NBC) are George Gobel, Stanley Holloway, Jack Gilford, and Deano's daughter Gail.

Wrapping up the week (Friday), Off to See the Wizard (6:30 p.m., ABC) features an original musical, "Who's Afraid of Mother Goose?" and when they boast of an all-star cast, they aren't kidding—try Maureen O'Hara, Frankie Avalon, Nancy Sinatra, Margaret Hamilton, Dan Rowan and Dick Martin, Dick Shawn, and Joanie Sommers. If that isn't enough star power for you, try The Bell Telephone Hour (9:00 p.m., NBC), which goes "On the Road with Duke Ellington."

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I shouldn't leave without noting this week's feature on Richard Benjamin and Paula Prentiss, who play He & She, the sophisticated comedy that was perhaps just a bit ahead of its time: a couple of years later, after Mary Tyler Moore's series had become a success, I think this would have been one as well. I've always been inclined to like both Dick and Paula, but I think the most impressive thing about them is that they were married in 1961, and they remain married today. To each other, which is the really impressive part. And then there's the cover tease about That Girl, which is mostly concerned with the show's trip to Philadelphia for some location shooting, and the impression one comes away with is that Ted Bessell is very funny and very charming, and has quite an eye for American history.

Finally,

If I'm not mistaken, doesn't that look like Yvonne Craig? If so, she's just a month into playing Batgirl. TV  

Around the dial

A
t the political-industry site The Hill, Jack Lule blames television news for our increasing hatred of politics, and cites Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death (which, contra Lule, is not a novel, by the way) in it's excoriation of television news as entertainment. Obviously, coming from an era when Cronkite, Huntley/Brinkley, and Smith/Reynolds were the dominant anchors, I've got a bias that the "classic TV" era featured harder, more journalistic news than today. Questions for the house: 1) Are Lule/Postman right in their critique? 2) Was the news more incisive back in the day, given its narrower television footprint?

The Ringer's Miles Surrey savages NBC's new medical drama New Amsterdam, with 24 pressing questions that come to mind after watching just two episodes. This is one of the things about today's television shows that annoys the hell out of me: critics of classic TV often point out that we no longer live in simplistic times; if that's so, we should not tolerate contemporary programs that provide only simplistic answers to today's complex world. This serves as a dramatic illustration of why it can be so annoying to watch TV with me. There are only two differences: 1) I probably would have come up with twice as many questions as Surrey did, except that 2) I never would have made it through the first episode, let alone two. This is also why you should have great sympathy for my wife

One of the jobs of a historian is to make history come alive—to paint a picture, so to speak, to pull people into the story and let them see what things were like. At Garroway at Large, Jodie provides a graphic demonstration of this with an example of the difference it can make when you have access to the original picture rather than a poor photocopy. And, by the way, not only does this help history to come alive for readers, it helps it come alive for the historian as well.

Television's New Frontier: the 1960s looks at another of Rod Cameron's syndicated series of the era, the crime drama Coronado 9. I don't think our reviewer is particularly impressed, although I'll plead the Fifth because I haven't seen it. Incidentally, Rod Cameron made it a point to always work in syndication in order to maximize his residuals. Smart businessman.

I may have mentioned this before, but James Lileks once wrote something to the extent that watching a favorite television show should never become a chore, a grind. And I think that's a point that David makes at Comfort TV this week in writing about a completely remarkable, completely unremarkable episode of Father Knows Best, "Bud the Philanthropist." It's "smart and perceptive and entertaining" while at the same time it's just an everyday, average episode. One could say that it carries none of the baggage that weighs down a series like, say, New Amsterdam. Jim's perceptive comments on the existential aspect of doing a good dead show that, indeed, father does know best. I also want to take this opportunity to thank David for the very kind words in his review of The Electronic Mirror. I'm grateful, and also humbled.

Joanna's back at Christmas TV History with a very interesting answer to a very interesting question in her latest ask me anything column.

Finally, I leave you with this picture from the Broadcast Archives at the University of Maryland. Need I say any more? TV  

TV Jibe: You have to have your priorities

What's on TV? Wednesday, October 4, 1961

Today's listings include the opening game of the 1961 World Series. As you'll notice, it's not only played in the daytime, it begins at 11:00 a.m. CT. The official boxscore shows the start time in New York as being 1:00 p.m., which leads me to believe we're having one of those Daylight Saving Time moments again. Of course, for me the highlight would have been the premiere of The Alvin Show, except for the fact that I was only seventeen months old at the time. The listings are from the Twin Cities, but you probably expected that by now.