Around the dial

Let's kick things off this week with one of my favorite British detectives, Frank Marker, as played by Alfred Burke in Public Eye. But this isn't about either Frank or Alfred; it's the finale of the "Sylvia Coleridge Season" at Cult TV Blog, and I'll forgive John for ending the season since he's chosen well: the episode "No Orchids for Marker."

At Comfort TV, David looks at some of our classic shows to see what they have to say about the ubiquitous computer, which was a thing to behold back then—and something to be feared. The question that these shows posed: can the computer be trusted? 

The Broadcast Archives celebrated Game Show Wednesday this week with a look at the "Golden Age" of game shows, at least in number: the 1970s. They were everywhere, and I'm willing to bet you're going to recognize at least one or two of the hosts pictured.

Jack's Hitchcock Project returns at bare•bones e-zine with "Act of Faith," a seventh season episode written by Nicholas Monsarrat, starring George Grizzard and Dennis King. It is, as Jack says, a curious choice for a Hitchcock episode; you'll have to see whether or not it works.

At The View from the Junkyard, Roger continues to survey The A-Team, and points out that this week's episode, "The Out-of-Towners," keeps a trend going: that of the team taking on missions to right wrongs, rather than purely as mercenaries. It's part of what makes the show fun.

Television's New Frontier: The 1960s is back with the 1962 episodes of The Danny Thomas Show, and I'm always amazed that a show as successful as this was, with a star as big as Thomas was, can become so obscure today. Or maybe it's just me, I don't know.

At A Shroud of Thoughts, Terence bids farewell to Pippa Scott, a frequent presence on classic TV over the years, who died last month at the age of 90. If you had a favorite show back in those days, the chances are excellent that she was on it.

Better twice than never: at Drunk TV, Paul reprises a piece from Mavis Movie Madness on NBC's 60th anniversary show in 1986. I think it's safe to say that both Paul and I have our doubts about how well it worked, and what it may augur for the 100th anniversary show coming up. TV  

How classic television foresaw the future

Xx  Unless you're a complete stranger to this website—and if so, what took you so long?—you know that for years, I've been beating the drum for the value of classic-era television as a primary document of sorts, a glimpse into not just the history of television itself, but of our culture: the trends, the influences, how it reflects our national and cultural history, and how, in turn, how it has been influenced by it. 

However, if you require any further proof of this, my new book Darkness in Primetime: How Classic-Era TV Foresaw Modern Society's Descent into Hell gives you a precise look at our current world—as it was envisioned by the writers of television shows in the 1950s and 1960s. With remarkable foresight, these writers applied the lessons they'd learned from history—the French Revolution, the rise of Communism, the McCarthy era of the Blacklist—to a view on what the world might be like twenty, thirty, fifty years from now. It was, in many ways, a depressing look, filled with totalitarian images, widespread consumerism, constant surveillance, oppressive governments, and a purposeless society that had descended into an endless quest for pleasure. By then, many people had abandoned God altogether, content with their reinvention as their own gods, masters of the environment, controllers of the mind, arbiters of the soul. In place of the individual, there was only the monolith: the State, the collective, the society in which all must look alike, think alike, be alike, in order to avoid confronting our worst fears.

If we'd paid more attention to these programs at the time, and what they were saying—ah, but that ship has long since sailed. As cultural historians, we can only look back at the themes of these shows and what they reveal about the world that helped spawn them. These programs served as more than simple entertainment, though entertaining they often were; the problem was that even the television industry didn't take them seriously enough. My efforts to track down some of these programs were ample proof that when it came to preserving its own history, television took itself no more seriously than many of its critics did. It was, as I write, as if "painters were to throw out their canvases following an exhibition, or playwrights burned their manuscripts after a performance." Hopefully, in addition to informing readers about the fascinating history of these programs, it will serve as a reminder that television can do more than produce cheap laughs, real-world exploitation, and dramas that carry no moral weight.

Many of you have probably seen this already, but for those of you who haven't, this is the trailer for Darkness in Primetime. Please take a couple of minutes to watch it, and feel free to share with others who have an interest in classic-era television.

Darkness in Primetime will be available in August; you can sign up for updates on when you can preorder, as well as information not only about this book but the others that I've written. I feel confident that after you've read Darkness in Primetime, you'll have a new appreciation for the value of classic-era programs, and the light they can shed on our history: who we were and who we are. TV  

What's on TV? Sunday, June 11, 1972

A little something for everyone today, especially in the sports arena: baseball (two different games), tennis, track and field, judo, even roller derby. It's hard to complain about that. You'll notice what's missing, though: basketball and hockey, both of which have their finals series going on at the time that I'm typing this. In 1972, the NBA Finals ended on May 7 (!), while the Stanley Cup playoffs skated to an end on May 11. Those really were the days weren't they? Today's listings are from the Eastern New England edition.

This week in TV Guide: June 10, 1972

In the midst of television's infatuation with Upstairs, Downstairs, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, Elizabeth R, and other prestigious British costume dramas, it seems appropriate to remind viewers that "British television is not all kings, queens and high-flown drama." There is, for example, science fiction, an example of which is the long-running (now in its ninth season) series Doctor Who, about to make its debut in American syndication this fall. 

The episode in question in this week's article is "The Sea Devils," and with its over-the-top story of sea monsters trying to reconquer the Earth. It's a prototypical Who story for those of us in the know, but for readers whose idea of British television was Masterpiece Theatre, I can only imagine what they must have thought of the article's attempt to explain the storyline, not to mention the various eccentricities of the Doctor. At this point in the show's history, the Doctor's ability to travel in time and space had been disabled by the Time Lords; I'm sure that time travel would have pushed some of these readers over the edge.

Doctor Who made its premiere the day after John F. Kennedy's assassination; by 1972 it's on its third actor to portray the Doctor, Jon Pertwee. Pertwee will play the role for five seasons, to be followed by the man who brought the series its greatest fame in the United States, Tom Baker. And it won't be until Doctor Who becomes a staple of local public television stations throughout the nation that the show develops its cult following, one that continues to this day.

From left: the Third Doctor (Jon Pertwee), the Master (Roger Delgado), a Sea Devil, the Doctor and companion
Jo Grant (Katy Manning)

For old-time Whovians like yours truly, it's been difficult to watch the show's decline since its revival many years (and many Doctors) ago. I stopped watching it several years ago, and I've got no particular desire to return to it—if, indeed, the show returns from the hiatus the BBC is reportedly preparing for it. We've been watching the classic episodes from the very beginning over the last year or so, and it's been a pleasant reminder of how much fun it used to be, and how much moral power it carried. I haven't made any secret of my disappointment with the turn it's taken in its reincarnation, so I won't tread the same ground here. Suffice it to say that, back in 1972, there was little indication that the program would still be airing in 2025, through 40 seasons and 15 incarnations of the Doctor. If only we had known!

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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. 

Cleveland Amory's last column of the season is a look at the mailbag, and in typical Amory fashion, the pithy answers to the questions from readers are just as entertaining as the letters themselves. 

Typically, we hear from those who felt Our Critic was a little too hard on their favorite shows and/or stars. For instance, Alan Thomas, of Macon, Georgia, asks Cleve why he was so down on the Tony Curtis-Roger Moore adventure series The Persuaders!, a show which I found quite entertaining, by the way. "I do not like you one bit," Mr. Thomas says. "They are good actors. They have their faults. So does everybody." In defense of the Curtis-Moore duo, Amory replies, "In this show the fault, dear Brutus, was not in the stars." Meanwhile, Donald Parker, of Madison, South Dakota, suggests that Amory's review of McMillian & Wife proves that "Cleveland Amory has a severe case of the cynics." "Yes," Amory responds, "but that's the show that gave it to us." And E. H. Scheckler Jr., of Elizabeth, New Jersey, is more blunt about it all. "I wish that someone would review one of Cleveland Amory's reviews and have him canceled, as so many of these programs have been." Not so fast, responds Cleve: "But wouldn't you get tired of the reruns?" Erika Ela (no address) suggests that Amory have a panel of reviewers to review shows. Ah, but as Amory retorts, "Who do you think we is?"

Not everyone has a bone to pick. Alexander McCormick, of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, wasn't impressed with NBC's coverage of the Winter Olympics in Japan, and wonders what Amory thought. "[T]he announcers and experts were dull and the '[Jack] Perkins Pieces' overrated. I still remember the time they cut away from a terrific fight at a hockey game to a downhill ski race which you couldn't see anyway on account of a snowstorm. And I also remember spending hours on the distance skating, with the same guy [probably the great Dutch triple-gold medal winner Ard Schenk] going around and around. For all we know, he's still going around." Jeannie Adlon of New York City wondered about Cleve's opinion of the recent Emmys telecast. There were too many awards given for single performances, Amory thought; as for the Emmy show itself, "it was awful. It would be easy to produce it right, too—just give us more and longer scenes from the nominations and less junk, bad jokes, long, dull thank yous and bad taste."

Not everything is so negative, though. Mrs. D.E. Woods of Richmond, Indiana says, "I'm 50 years old and I'm in love with three men—my husband, Peter Falk and Cleveland Amory." "Dear Sis," Amory responds, "we thought your letter would never come."

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Movies form a big part of this week's highlights, beginning on Saturday with a repeat of the political thriller Seven Days in May (8:30 p.m. ET, ABC), starring Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, Fredric March, Ava Gardner, and Edmond O'Brien, directed by John Frankenheimer, and with a Rod Serling script that uses large sections of the Fletcher Knebel-Charles Bailey II novel verbatim. If it shakes your faith in government, it reinforces your faith in Hollywood's ability to tell a terrific story that's far more than just a political potboiler. On the more lighthearted side, Once upon a Dead Man (9:00 p.m., NBC) is the pilot for the aforementioned McMillan and Wife; I wonder what Cleveland Amory thought of this? And at 11:30, it's Compulsion, a fictionalized version of the Leopold-Loeb case, with Dean Stockwell and Bradford Dillman as the youthful killers, and Orson Welles brilliant as their Darrowesque attorney.

The features continue Sunday with the "angry young man" drama The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (noon, WBZ), directed by Tony Richardson, with Tom Courtney as the reform school student who finds fulfillment, of a sort, through distance running. At 1:00 p.m., it's Jacques Demy's jazz opera The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (WKBG), with the music of Michel Legrand (the movie's biggest hit: "I Will Wait For You"), and starring Nino Castelnuovo and the luminous Catherine Deneuve. In primetime, the great actor of our lifetime, William Shatner, stars as the heavy in Cade's County (9:30 p.m., CBS), as Glenn Ford tries to prevent him from setting off a nuclear warhead. Forget the county; no scenery is safe in this scenario. 

If you thought that we were done with opera after The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, guess again. On Monday, it's the movie For the First Time (7:00 p.m., WTIC), with opera star Mario Lanza, in a nice bit of casting against type, playing—surprise!—an opera star who falls in love with a deaf Viennese girl. If you want something a little more serious, turn to NET Opera Theatre's presentation of Benjamin Britten's magnificent "Peter Grimes" (8:00 p.m., PBS), one of the greatest operas of the 20th century, starring Peter Pears, Heather Harper, and Bryan Drake. But if you want to get back to the movies, I can't think of anything better than the documentary Hollywood: The Dream Factory (8:00 p.m., ABC), an hour-long retrospective of Hollywood's Golden Age, narrated by Dick Cavett.

Tuesday begins with a perceptive episode of The Mod Squad (7:30 p.m., ABC) that looks at the difficulty Vietnam veterans have adjusting to civilian life, as Robert Pine plays a vet who looks at domestic dissidents as "the enemy." There's no telling how he would have treated Cannon's adversary (9:30 p.m., CBS): a cult leader with "an almost satanic influence" over his followers, who include Arthur Rubenstein's son John, June Lockhart's daughter Anne, and Dennis Weaver's son Rick. And Dick Cavett's sole guest tonight (11:30 p.m., ABC) is none other than Jack Paar. 

I always enjoyed the British import The Persuaders! (Wednesday, 9:30 p.m., ABC), starring Roger Moore and Tony Curtis; a pity it only lasted one season. In this week's explosive episode, Tony's walking around with an attache case attached to his wrist, little knowing that while he tries to prevent the "Other Side" from getting it, he's putting his own life in danger: the case is loaded with explosives that could go off "at the shake of a wrist." If you'd prefer something a little more macabre, try out tonight's Night Gallery (10:00 p.m., NBC), which includes "Green Fingers," with Elsa Lanchester as the little old gardener who isn't all she seems.

On Thursday night, NBC kicks off Adventure Theater (8:00 p.m.), one of those summer quasi-anthology series that were so common back then, either failed pilots or, in this case, "a series of dramas from the Sixties," specificially reruns from Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre, swhich works out well since that show was filmed entirely in color. In this case, it's "The Lady is My Wife," first shown in 1967, and it's notable not only for a fine cast that includes Bradford Dillman and Jean Simmons, but because it's directed by Sam Peckinpah. Expect something that's a little toned down from what we're used to seeing from him in the theaters. Over on PBS, it's NET Playhouse on the '30s (8:30 p.m.), with Dustin Hoffman and Orson Bean in Maxwell Anderson's time-travel comedy "The Star Wagon," which also features Eileen Brennan.

Since we started with movies, we'll finish the same way, with Antonioni's L'Avventura (Friday, 8:30 p.m., PBS), the story of a missing woman that becomes a series of "metaphors for spiritual listlessness." Judith Crist isn't particularly a fan—she describes it as "a difficult, slow-paced film, marked by uneven acting and stolid characters"—but acknowledges the movie's reputation as a "masterpiece." Monica Vitti and Gabriele Ferzetti star in what has subsequently been listed as one of the top ten greatest films ever made.

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I sense something of an underlying theme in this week's features. First, we have Cleveland Amory's second appearance in this week's issue, authoring the cover story on Doris Day. The focus, not surprisingly, is on Dodo's involvement in the animal rights movement, her love of dogs, and her efforts to rescue them from cruel treatment. There's some mention of her personal life, virtually none of her CBS sitcom, although it's hard to imagine that anyone would be turned off from the show based on this very flattering portrayal.

That's followed by a brief story on Eric Knight, the author of a Saturday Evening Post story that's spanned even more years than Doctor Who: "Lassie Come Home," which originally appeared in the Post in 1939 before being expanded into a novel the following year. The book inspired a movie that catapulted its two child actors, Elizabeth Taylor and Roddy McDowall, to a stardom that endures to this day. It also inspired a series, Lassie, that has been a presence on television for 17 years. Lassie Comes Home has recently been reissued by Holt, Rinehart and Winston, at the request of Knight's widow, Jere. It is a timeless story, that of a boy and his dog, isn't it? 

Finally, an animal story that's probably less of a favorite with Cleve: Melvin Durslag's look at the upcoming Belmont Stakes. (Saturday, CBS) It's the longest and most grueling of the three Triple Crown races, and six potential Triple Crown winners (including last year's Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner Canonero II) have failed the test. The challenges are many: the distance, the timing (the three races are run over the course of six weeks), and the excitement of the Triple Crown. It's one of the rare times when horse racing takes center stage on the American sports scene; considering the ratings the races generate, it's often asked why one of the networks doesn't splurge on a weekly Saturday racing show. The answer, says Durslag, is that trainers and owners of the best horses spend too much time avoiding each other to guarantee audience-generating matchups. By the way, this year's Belmont does not carry the potential of a Triple Crown winner, but Riva Ridge, the year's best three-year-old, dominates the race, adding to his Kentucky Derby victory. No need to worry, though; Riva Ridge's stablemate will take the Triple Crown next year. His name: Secretariat. 

(In-between these stories is a form-fitting fashion layout featuring two-time Emmy Winner Susan Hampshire, but that's a different kind of animal altogether.) 

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MST3K alert: The Crawling Eye (English; 1958) In a radioactive cloud lies a tentacled monster, awaiting its victims. Forrest Tucker, Laurence Payne, Jennifer Jayne. (Saturday, 9:15 p.m., WKBG) One of Forrest Tucker's finest roles (and I'm not being sarcastic) sees him as a UN consultant investigating mysterious goings-on at a village in the Alps. Two of the most notable members of the supporting casts aren't listed here: Janet Munro, who enjoyed a very successful film and television career, including three Disney movies; and Andrew Faulds, who goes on to star in the UK series The Protectors before serving more than 20 years as a Labour member of Parliament. TV  

Around the dial

Let's see; this week, I think we'll start with The Twilight Zone Vortex and season five's "You Drive," written by Earl Hamner Jr., and starring the great character actor Edward Andrews. As Brian says, it's "not terrible," but not the best, either. 

You can also read a nice remembrance of Swit by Terence at A Shroud of Thoughts. And while you're at it, check out his 21st anniversary post. I thought I'd been at this awhile, but he's got seven years on me!

It wouldn't be Friday without the "Sylvia Coleridge Season" at Cult TV Blog, and this time John is looking at the sci-fi series Out of the Unknown and the episode "The Dead Past," featuring a research tool that looks suspiciously like AI, especially in its trustworthiness and reliability.

In honor of the late Loretta Swit, RealWeegieMidget takes a gander at "Hail to the Chief," an episode of Supertrain, which manages to work in some improbable presidential political intrigue with Roy Thinnes playing a dual role. It's either very bad or very fun; find out which it is!

We haven't heard from Garroway at Large for awhile, but Jodie pops in this week to give us a portrait of "Garroway at peace": in this case, the peace of Laurel Hill Cemetery, where the great man was laid to rest. A short but moving piece.

At The Horn Section, Hal's back for another round of F Troop and the second season episode "Reach for the Sky, Pardner," with O'Rourke scheming to increase the amount of convention business coming into Fort Courage. As delightful as it is goofy.

A couple of classic pictures make the Broadcast Archives well worth checking out: first, a terrific picture of William Boyd in character as Hopalong Cassidy; second, an equally great picture of Bob Keeshan as Mister Mayor, a single-season Saturday morning show that took the place of Captain Kangaroo.  

At Drunk TV, Paul looks at the terrific third season of The Odd Couple, which captures the series at his creative best, including one of the great episodes of any sitcom: Felix and Oscar appearing on the game show Password, with Allen Ludden and Betty White as themselves.

Paul is back at Mavis Movie Madness with a plug for one of my favorite TV blogs, David Hofstede's Comfort TV, which you'll recognize from my many links to his site. If you don't make this part of your regular reading, you should. (He also gives yours truly a nice shout-out; the check is in the mail.)

Cult TV Lounge reviews the Mike Hammer telemovie Murder Me, Murder You, starring Stacy Keach as the world's most violent private detective. I recently wrote about how TV never really gets Hammer's essence, but Keach is almost always worth a watch.

The View from the Junkyard takes us to The A-Team and the episode "The Rabbit Who Ate Las Vegas," and you'll want to find out from Roger whether or not this episode can possibly live up to its title.  TV