Idon't generally make a point of offering an extensive commentary on one of this week's links, but I'm going to make an exception for this excellent article by David at Comfort TV in which he discusses how Aspire TV recently censored an episode of Room 222 by blurring an image of a derogatory term scrawled on a locker, a term that they feared some viewers might find objectionable today. What I find objectionable is this quite deliberate campaign to apply today's standards to situations that occurred in the past.
I've made this point many times, but it's quite dangerous to start down that road; after all, who's to say that something you say or do today might be censored by someone who comes along a few decades later, when society has supposedly become even more "enlightened" than it is today? Besides which, none of us today can know with absolute certainty what we may or may not have done in a different time and environment. I don't want to make too fine a point of this last part, but isn't it funny how some people of a particular political viewpoint find it quite easy to make excuses for a criminal based on the environment in which they may have grown up, but that same person will fail to give that same consideration to someone else because of what they may have said or done in the past, even though that might have been entirely consistent with the environment they grew up in?
(This is also why I look warily at period pieces made today; no matter how hard they try, or how good their intentions might be, it's almost impossible to replicate the past without filtering it through the sensibilities of the present.)
Well, down off the soapbox, and I'm sure that after reading Wednesday's entry, some of you might be thinking to yourselves, it's about time! I aim to please, so let's talk about television cameras instead. Every once in a while during a discussion of television's early days, we'll run across the term "compatible color" (and the obvious joke "incompatible color"). However, at Eyes of a Generation, we get a richly illustrated look at RCA's earliest compatible color cameras, which date to the late 1940s.
I think we can all agree that a story called "The Last Dark Step" doesn't promise much in the way of laughs. In the hands of William Fay, it becomes a clever story of murder and betrayal. You can see it on Alfred Hitchcock Presents,and read about it in this piece by Jack at bare-bones e-zone.
At Cult TV Blog, John introduces us to the 1972 British series Villains, a show with a simple but unique premise, following a gang of bank robbers individually after they escape prison. It's another series I've not heard of, which shouldn't be surprising considering it wasn't shown over here, but it has two very familiar faces, in Bob Hoskins and Martin Shaw.
Shadow & Substance recalls the pleasant "Eureka!" moment you get when you discover that someone from one of yourfavorite TV shows also appeared in one of your favorite movies, and you didn't recognize it until now. That someone: Kenneth Haigh, from The Twilight Zone and A Hard Day's Night.
Did you ever wonder why a whole season of TV episodes of The Lone Ranger had someone else playing Our Hero? Wonder no more, as Martin Grams tells the true story of why John Hart replaced Clayton Moore for that one season. TV
Producers' Showcase was one of the prestige anthologies that aired on NBC in the mid-1950s. It was a monthly, rather than weekly, series, which added to the gravitas it projected, the idea that its stories were distinctive, high quality, special. Over the course of three years and 37 episodes (all broadcast live and in color), Producers' Showcase won seven Emmys and presented acclaimed stories such as Peter Pan (with Mary Martin), The Petrified Forest (Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall and Henry Fonda), Our Town (Paul Newman and Eva Marie Saint), and Mayerling (Raymond Massey and Audrey Hepburn).
On May 2, 1955, as its tenth production, Producers' Showcase aired Darkness at Noon, an adaptation of Arthur Koestler's chilling 1940 novel about persecution in the Soviet Union during Stalin's Great Purge. Darkness at Noon was directed by Delbert Mann from a script by Robert Alan Aurthur (based in turn on the stage play by Sidney Kingsley), and starred Lee J. Cobb as Rubashov, a former high-ranking Party official now in prison, charged with treason for betraying the cause.
Claude Rains (left) in the 1950 stage production
In the Gulag, where prisoners communicate via tapping in code on the walls of their cells, Rubashov recalls through flashbacks his early involvement in the party as one of the so-called "Old Bolsheviks," those who were part of the movement prior to the revolution. "The party cannot be wrong," he tells his secretary Luba (Ruth Roman). "You and I can make mistakes—but not the party." Over the years, Rubashov commits many acts in the name of the party, acts which now cause him to doubt himself— particularly how he betrayed Luba (with whom he is in love) into taking the blame for the low productivity of the factories, rather than using his influence on her behalf. Because of this, Luba is imprisoned and eventually executed.
Next, Rubashov is visited by his old friend Ivanof (Oscar Homolka), who urges him to confess to the trumped-up charges in return for a reduced sentence. By doing so, Rubashov will save his own life, and the two of them may yet be able to achieve the goals for which they originally worked. Rubashov admits the doubts that have overtaken him since Luba's execution, and how they have caused him to view the party differently.
Rubashov is interogated by Gletkin (David Wayne) a guard who epitomizes the next generation of party leadership. He tells Rubashov that Ivanof has been executed, and reads him the transcript of Luba's interrogation, in which she pleads for those being persecuted. Hearing this, Rubashov finally comes face to face with the consequences of his actions and what they have meant to his country. Accepting his fate, he is taken to his execution as the story ends.
The production boasted an impressive cast in addition to the leads, with Joseph Wiseman, Nehemiah Persoff and Henry Silva. Writing in The New York Times, Jack Gould praised Darkness at Noon's "provocative power" and Lee J. Cobb's "most impressive performance as the dedicated Red who is devoured by communism." Koestler's book remains one of the most praised political novels ever written; the Modern Library would rank it #8 on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th Century
ttt
That Darkness at Noon was intended to be a Cold War message piece could not be doubted. Immediately following the broadcast, Vice President Richard Nixon appeared in a brief film, commending the network for having aired the program. "NBC, the television industry and Producers' Showcase are to be congratulated for presenting this program to the American people, because in these times it is essential that we know our potential enemies, and the great moral of this play which you have had the opportunity to see is that we in the free nations must be eternally vigilant against the enemies from abroad and those from within," Koestler, Nixon said, had helped provide the answer to "one of the most intriguing questions which confronts the free world today": what makes a Communist tick?
For Arthur Koestler, himself a former Communist, one of the fundamental questions at the heart of Darkness at Noon was why so many victims of the Great Purge, like Rubashov, had refused to defend themselves against these fabricated charges. Had they simply been worn down by the constant interrogation and torture they faced in the Gulag? Were they worried about the safety of family members who faced retribution at the hands of Stalin? Or was there something more to it, something dark and sinister, as Adam Kirsh described in a 2019 New Yorker article. "[D]id they feel that, in some obscure way, they deserved punishment for crimes they hadn’t committed?"
Central to the understanding of communist philosophy is what Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels saw as the "historical imperative," socialism’s inevitable triumph. Any action which served to bring about this inevitability, no matter how ruthless, could be excused on such grounds. As Koestler put it, the member of such a movement "is forever damned to do what he loathes the most: become a butcher in order to stamp out butchery, sacrifice lambs so lambs will no longer be sacrificed." Indeed, as Rubashov says at one point, "Whoever proves right in the end must first be and do wrong."
Koestler believed, in Kirsh's words, that "every political creed must eventually face the question of whether noble ends can justify evil means." Communism's stated goal was "the permanent abolition of social injustince throughout the world." Would any price be too high for such a goal? "Maybe a million or ten million people would die today," Kirsh writes, "but if billions would be happy tomorrow wasn’t that worth it?"
This is the language of what the philosopher Eric Hoffer called the "True Believer," one for whom core beliefs have become “dogma and absolutism” replacing everything else in life. Hoffer was fascinated by the propensity of mass movements to promote such single-mindedness, which served to foster, perfect and perpetuate a facility for united action and self-sacrifice”. For such a true believer, there is no such thing as the individual, only the overall good of the whole. As Rubashov tells Luba, the very concept of the individual was a way of thinking "that had to be overcome in order to achieve justice for the many." The very terms “I” and “me” were, he said, were nothing more than a “grammatical fiction.”
Mass movements often begin with what Hoffer termed “men of words” who identify a need to reform the social order. As such movements grow, however, the men of words are crowded out by fanatics, those who, initially attracted by "doctrines and slogans of the new faith", eventually evolve “an extremism against the social order.” Hoffer distinguished the fanatic by “his viciousness and urge to destroy. The fanatic feels fulfilled only in a perpetual struggle for power and change.” Such stridency typifies a philosophy known as "currentism," a philosophy whose leaders "arrogantly believe they have the keys to the perfect society; they regard as evil only those thoughts or things which impede their will." As one professor astutely noted, "Such leaders are, they think, gods; but they are, in fact, mountebanks who, directly or indirectly, mutilate and murder, paying homage to the ubiquitous idols of the day."
Eventually, says Hoffer, as the movement becomes institutionalized, “the focus shifts from immediate demands for revolution to establishing the mass movement as a social institution where the ambitious can find influence and fame.” The movement develops a hierarchy of classes, a bureaucracy, a structure of leaders and followers, and the consolidation of power in the hands of a select few at the top—in other words, it becomes the very thing it sought to overthrow. And when they themselves fall victim to a party purge, the true believers accept their unjust punishment as a necessary act, believing to the end that it somehow confirms the authority of the movement, and the advancement of the cause. They die because of a lie, which ultimately means they die for a lie.
And then there are those, like Rubashov, who realize how the movement has crushed the humanity of the people, and come to view their punishment as a form of atonement for their crimes. The fact that the charges against them are lies is not just ironic but appropriate. Everything about it is a lie.
At first glance, you might be tempted to see Darkness at Noon as an archival story of the Cold War, but it really isn’t so different from our own time, is it? You read about it every day: silencing dissent, censoring content, monitoring opponents, talking about reeducation, spreading fear, all in the name of the cause. It sounds so, so familiar, doesn't it? As is so often the case, the present is simply the past, dressed in slightly different costumes, spouting slightly different rhetoric, using slightly different terms. To those who point out such similarities, the response may be that today’s ideas have never really been tried before, that what one thinks they saw in the past was in fact something else, something that people weren’t quite ready for back then. This time things will be different. This time the purity of the cause will not be diluted; ideas will be fully formed, plans will be fully implemented.
This time things will be different. This time. This time.
In fact, no matter what time it is, it’s always “this time.” Same as the last time, same as the next time. It never works, and they never stop trying. TV
The last time we looked at an Iowa edition of TV Guide, almost five years ago, I made some most unflattering comments about our neighbors to the west. These "jokes" portrayed the state in a very unfavorable light, and for that unwarranted and completely uncharitable action I admit my guilt. Indeed, upon discovering that this week's issue would mark a return to the state, I could barely bring myself to look at it, let alone write about it, and there were late nights when I could be heard in my dimly-lit nook, mumbling in anguish that this chalice might pass from me. But I have learned my lesson—turned a new leaf, so to speak. So no more will you hear such jokes pass my lips as "What do you call an IQ of 76? Des Moines." or "Did you hear that the governor's mansion in Iowa burned down? It almost took out the whole trailer park." No, I must admit that a resident of Minnesota has no call to be making jokes about any other state. After all, the only reason Iowa doesn't have a professional football team is because then Minnesota would want one.
Remember a few weeks ago when I referred to the week's programming as "putting the classic in classic TV"? Well, we've got another example of that this week, and so why don't we start things off with NBC's Kraft Theater and its encore showing of Rod Serling's Patterns. (Wednesday, 8:00 p.m. CT)
I think everyone would agree that Patterns made Rod Serling famous overnight, or at least close to it. It's spellbinding drama, an intense, forceful story about the cutthroat world of business, and three men caught in it: the ruthless corporate boss, the aging executive being phased out, and the junior executive unwittingly brought in to replace him. When it was first broadcast. live on January 12, it won nearly universal praise for its writing, production (directed by Fielder Cook), and especially the acting of the three leads: Everett Sloane, Ed Begley and Richard Kiley. Jack Gould, the New York Times television critic (perhaps the most influential in the country) called Patterns "one of the high points in the TV medium's evolution," comparing it favorably to the movie Executive Suite (Executive Suite "might be Babes in Toyland without a score."), and urging a repeat performance of the live broadcast "at an early date."
Of course, in these days before videotape, you can't just pop a cassette in the machine and show it again. There's only one way to repeat a live broadcast, and so this week, in an unprecedented move, NBC takes up Gould's suggestion and stages Patterns a second time, live and with the original leads. This performance is recorded on kinescope, and it's the one you can watch for yourself today.
The fact that network repeats the broadcast less than a month after the original is testimony to the impact that Patterns makes. Serling wins the first of his six Emmys for his writing, and to this day Patterns is considered one of the great television dramas ever aired, often mentioned with Serling's next big TV triumph, Requiem for a Heavyweight, which would air the following year. (Serling could really write, couldn't he?) The live performance crackles with energy, creating a dynamic atmosphere that, Gould says, "underscore[s] how little the TV artistic horizons really have been explored." There was a tangible excitement within the industry at the suggestion that a new form of drama, combining the environment of live theater with the intimacy of live television, had been born. The prospects were unlimited!
And then, of course, videotape came along and film became a way of life; the intensity of live television took a backseat to the ability to tweak and perfect a performance, doing a scene over and over until it was just right (not to mention the economy of being able to repeat a show an unlimited number of times), and before anyone knew it, the new era of television was over. But what a time it was!
ttt
Speaking of classics, that's Edward R. Murrow on the cover, "whose slow, pedantic voice is as familiar to Americans as that of the President of the United States." It was only last year that Murrow took on Senator Joseph McCarthy, and the resulting brouhaha left Murrow both tarred as a communist and hailed as "the greatest champion of freedom since Patrick Henry."
Murrow is neither, but he is a believer in freedom. However, with freedom comes responsibility, and one thing he's adamant about is his belief that "TV is [not] a pulpit from which to preach his own 'prejudices'." "If we snuck our own ideas in," he says, "it would be an abuse of a monopolized opportunity." (I wonder what he'd have to say about today's newspeople?) Not that you have to be completely void of opinions, though; "Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices—just recognize them."
Murrow has no time to waste on trivial things like ratings; "If I got involved in ratings I might be tempted to 'hot up' the copy. And I never want to do that." Neither does he have time for those in the press who are free with their opinions. "The basic obligation of anybody of the press is not to say, 'This is what I think,' but 'These are the basic facts which led me to this conclusion.'" Crucially, though, he doesn't think you should take what he and his colleagues say as the last word. "If their conclusion is different from yours, that's okay, too."
Although Murrow's greatest achievements are in the newsroom, his most popular program is his Friday night show Person to Person, where he gets to visit "the homes of the great, the near-great or the well-known." Murrow attributes the show's success to people's natural curiosity, the urge to "look into open windows." Says Murrow, "we decided to show unordinary people doing ordinary things. The show is dramatic only because people are dramatic." And while there are some who complain that Murrow's interviews on P to P are softball, he replies, "I always act like a guest in the house. I wouldn't dream of throwing anyone a curved question." He loves the contrasts he's able to present by matching unlikely interview subjects on a particular show; in the past he's had comedienne Martha Raye and Pakistani President Mohammad Ali, Washington hostess Perle Mesta and Cowardly Lion Bert Lahr, and Archbishop Richard Cushing and fashion designer Lilly Dache.
For all of his professional accomplishments and personal hobbies (he considers himself an outdoorsman), he thinks of himself first and foremost as a reporter. It is, he believes, a fleeting fame. "A reporter is always concerned with tomorrow. There's nothing tangible of yesterday. All I can say I've done is agitate the air 10 or 15 minutes and then boom!—it's gone."
ttt
Don't change that dial; we've got more classics in store this week, starting on Saturday with The Jackie Gleason Show, tonight featuring The Honeymooners! (7:00 p.m., CBS) Remember, this is prior to The Honeymooners airingas a weekly series, so the listing is particularly descriptive. "Jackie plays the burly bus driver, Art Carney plays his upstairs neighbor and Audrey Meadows and Joyce Randolph portray the long-suffering wives." That's about it in a nutshell, isn't it? No word on what tonight's story was about.
At 4:00 p.m. on Sunday, CBS's Omnibus show a feature film culled from the various Abraham Lincoln segments presented on the show over the years. Royal Dano stars as Lincoln, with Joanne Woodward as Ann Rutledge and Joanna Roos as Mary Todd Lincoln. The Lincoln stories were written by James Agee, and were inseperable from the political climate of the times; a few years ago, I took a closer look at them here. Later, on Ed Sullivan's Toast of the Town (7:00 p.m., CBS), it's a salute to the history of Columbia Pictures, with an Oscar-worthy montage of clips, and stars including Eddie Fisher, Teresa Brewer, Marge and Gower Champion, Tyrone Power, Maureen O'Hara, Kim Novak, Jack Lemmon, and others.
In 1945, Ray Milland won an Academy Award for his magnificent performance as an alcoholic writer in the movie The Lost Weekend, which also won Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director (Billy Wilder) and Best Adapted Screenplay (Wilder and Charles Brackett). On Monday night's Robert Montgomery Presents (8:30 p.m., NBC), the story comes to the small screen, with Montgomery himself portraying Don Birnam, the man who'd do "anything for a drink." The cast includes Leora Dana, Edward Andrews, and, in one of his early television apperances. Walter Matthau. The hour-long production caps off a quality night on the Peacock Network, one which started with Producers' Showcase (7:00 p.m.), featuring a production of Clare Booth Luce's biting comedy "The Women," with an all-female cast headed by Shelley Winters, Paulette Goddard, Ruth Hussey and Mary Astor. If your tastes run more to music, then check out the great American mezzo-soprano Rise Stevens, star of the Metropolitan Opera and one of the most popular singers of the day (that's her playing the opera star in Going My Way) on Voice of Firestone (7:30 p.m., ABC).
A show we haven't talked about here is the anthology series Fireside Theater (not to be confused with Firesign Theatre, which is a horse of a different color), which ran on NBC from 1949 to 1958 and, according to the always-reliable Wikipedia, was the first successful filmed serieson American television, debuting two years before I Love Lucy. It's also known as The Jane Wyman Show, probably because the longest-running host of the show was Jane Wyman. It doesn't have the prestige (or the critical acclaim) of other, better-remembered anthologies, but it did well enough for NBC; it was never out of the top 25 during the six seasons it ran. The point of all this is Tuesday's story, "Mr. Onion" (8:00 p.m.), starring William Bendix and Dorothy Malone, and you certainly can't complain about that cast. It's one of a number of similar anthologies tonight, including Ford Theater, Armstrong Circle Theater, The Elgin Hour and Danger.
Wednesday's feature is CBS's Pabst Blue Ribbon Bouts (9:00 p.m.), tonight featuring a middleweight showdown between #1 ranked Joey Giardello and Al Andrews. This is a rematch of a fight that took place, believe it or not, just two weeks ago. (No wonder so many of these guys wound up punch-drunk.) Boxing happens to be the subject of an article by Frank De Bois, who laments the effect television is having on the sport. Part of the problem, De Bois says, is that today's fighters don't stand in there and slug it out; instead, they "mug, posture, strut, telegraph their punches and dance before the camera." (Cassius Clay, call your manager.) Some old-timers even complain that today's fighters "don't even want to be fighters. They want to be TV actors—like Rocky Graziano." On the other hand, there's agreement that "bleeders" aren't popular now, what with the "millions of women converted to fight fans by TV." And flamboyant fighters have always been big with the public—so maybe this is just a case of "back in my day" syndrome, something you never see at this website.
There are some nice guest star turns in Thursday's programming; Ross Bagdasarian, minus his Chipmunks, appears on an episode of The Ray Milland Show (7:00 p.m., CBS), Robert Young stars as a Navy skipper in the mystery anthology Climax (7:30 p.m., CBS), Gary Merrill is the guest in the legal drama Justice (7:30 p.m., NBC), character actor Charles Coburn features in Ford Theater (8:30 p.m., NBC), and a very young Dennis Hopper appears in the Public Defender episode "Mama's Boy." (9:00 p.m, CBS) I wonder if David Lynch saw that episode. . .
We should stop in at Ed Murrow's Person to Person on Friday, since we talked about it earlier; Ed's guests tonight (9:30 p.m., CBS) are actress/swimmer Esther Williams (complete with tax-deductible pool) and New York restaurateur Toots Shor. Meanwhile, Steve Allen and the Tonight gang—Steve Lawrence, Eydie Gorme, Andy Williams, Pat Marshall, Skitch Henderson and Gene Rayburn, along with their guests Lulu Belle and Scotty from the Grand Ole Opry—are taking the show on the road, to National Cash Register Theater in Dayton, Ohio. (11:00 p.m., NBC)
ttt
I don't know if these were a thing back in the day, but it's a great idea nonetheless: a TV Guide theme party, sponsored by WMT, the CBS affiliate in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where you dress up as your favorite character from the magazine. The pictures and text might not be too clear, but my point in including this is to show how pervasive television—and TV Guide—have become in a very short time.
ttt
Finally, talking as we have been about anthologies, there's this note from New York in the Teletype: "Alfred Hitchcock, ace director of suspense-type movies, close to a deal to produce a half-hour telefilm mystery series. It would take over the Sunday night CBS period now occupied by Stage 7."
Alfred Hitchcock Presents does indeed premiere on October 2, 1955. By the time the last first-run episode of airs on NBC on June 26, 1965, ten seasons and 361 episodes later, Alfred Hitchcock Presents and its successor, the hour-long Alfred Hitchcock Hour, will be tied as the third-longest running dramatic anthology series in the history of American television. I'd say that deal worked out pretty well for everyone concerned, especially the viewers. Wouldn't you? TV
Let's start off the week with a question from one of our readers. Mark is a fan of Mission: Impossible, and wonders if there's any information about the music from the first season episode "The Short Tail Spy," which has Eric Braedon (who was then going by Hans Gudegast) romancing Barbara Bain's Cinnamon Carter. "I love it, but can't find it anywhere. Can you help?" I don't see a separate music credit for the episode, which means either than it was done by Lalo Schifrin or, more likely, was from CBS's music stock. It's possible that it could be on this boxed set of music from the show, but I'm throwing it out there to my knowledgeable readers to see if one of you might have further information, and I know you won't let me down. Now, on to this week's features.
No sooner did I wrap up last week's feature, musing about the legends who'd recently passed on, then news kept coming about more of them: Cicely Tyson, the trailblazing actress; Allan Burns, writer for some of television's best shows; and the legendary Hal Holbrook, who was Mark Twain and a whole lot more. At A Shroud of Thoughts, Terence has thoughtful appreciations of them all. The toll this year just keeps rising, doesn't it?
I don't know why, but I've always had a fondness for banks, and that's even before I started keeping my money in them. To a kid, there's something very impressive about them: clean, institutional. And, of course, money. It's not quite the same now with ATMs and direct deposit and online banking, but the fascination with banks continues. That's the focus of this week's Comfort TV, as David looks at classic TV episodes that take place where you keep your cash.
It's taken awhile, but at The Horn Section, Hal's taken us all the way through the 17 episodes of Hondo, and now it's time to take stock and rank those episodes in order, along with other links of note regarding this short-lived but enduring series and its star, Ralph Taeger.
At Garroway at Large, Jodie shares a wonderful hour of conversation that resulted when Dave stopped by to talk with his old friend Studs Terkel on his Chicago radio series back in 1974. They don't make 'em like that anymore—either the shows or the people on them.
When I started slumming around YouTube channels like FredFlix, I ran across all kinds of shows I'd never heard of before. One of them was It's A Man's World, starring Glenn Corbett, Ted Bessell, Mike Burns and Randy Boone. To learn more about it, I went to the some of obscure TV shows, TV Obscurities, where Robert tells me all about it.
At Shadow & Substance, Paul revisits one of the most beloved Twilight Zone episodes, "Night of the Meek," and revisits his interview with Larrian Gillespie—the elf who welcomes Art Carney's Santa to his sleigh for a return to the North Pole. TV
