John Glenn's orbital flight - 50 years ago today

Regular readers know I'm a big space buff, and so it didn't escape my attention that today is the 50th anniversary of John Glenn's first flight into space - the first American to orbit the earth.  It's hard today to imagine what an effect this had on the nation - Tom Wolfe, in The Right Stuff, writes about how New York poliemen actually wept during the tickertape parade the city held for Glenn. 

The great site Television Obscurities has the story of the television coverage, along with footage from CBS' telecast.  The issue of TV coverage is a significant one; the Russians, leading the space race, were extraordinarily secretive about the whole thing (what a surprise).  A major factor in the American space program was its openness - this flight, like all others, would be done not in secret, but out in the open, on television.  Its success, or its failure, would be there for all to see.  And there were failures, in the early days, with many of the unmanned launches.  People saw rockets exploding on the launch pad, failing to reach orbit, spinning out of control - and the Russians laughed.  (Khruschev called one failed attempt "Kaputnik," a pun on the successful Soviet satellite Sputnik.)

But on February 20, 1962, the world saw Glenn's success.  It may have been insignificant compared to Soviet accomplishments (Gherman Titov, the second cosmonaut, orbited the earth for an entire day, far more than Glenn's three orbits), but it showed that the Americans were players in the space race.  As UPI noted, "merely recording the event in a free and open way, the United States scored an enormous propaganda victory."

You can see archival footage of Glenn's launch here. TV  

This week in TV Guide: February 17, 1968

On the cover this week are the two stars of The FBI, Efrem Zimbalist Jr. and William Reynolds, although judging by the background one would be forgiven for thinking that they were starring in a series about Grand Prix racers.  (By the way, for an excellent review of The FBI and the role played in the series by director J. Edgar Hoover, check out this series from our friends at TVParty.)

Across the top of the cover is a blurb for "The Most Outlandish Game Show Yet," which turns out to be ABC's Treasure Isle.  Not only did the show take place outdoors, it was staged on a one-and-a-half acre man-made lagoon in Palm Beach.  Probably the most interesting item we find out is that the show was financed and packaged for $800,000 by John D. MacArthur, who's probably better known as the founder of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, supporter of many programs over the years on public television.  MacArthur's brother was Charles MacArthur, playwright and co-author of The Front Page  Charles MacArthur was married to the actress Helen Hayes, and his son James MacArthur played Danno on Hawaii Five-0.  When your geneology is more interesting than the TV show you created, you know you're in trouble.

The most notable program that week, although nobody knew it at the time, was an NBC made-for-TV movie on Tuesday called Prescription: Murder.  Judith Crist, TV Guide's longtime movie critic, noted that the movie had not been made available for preview by NBC, meaning that she'd have to stick to the facts without being able to advise potential views of the "wonders you may or may not behold."  She reported that the movie "stars Gene Barry as a doctor who murders his wife."  And that's true, as far as it goes.  What she didn't mention is that the murder is investigated by a detective named Columbo.  The listing doesn't even suggest that the movie's a pilot.  But the rest, as they say, is history.

Although made-for-TV movies were really making an impact by 1968, the big movies were still the ones coming from the theaters.  This week, the big news was the network television premiere on ABC of Shane, the landmark western starring Alan Ladd and Van Heflin.  As Crist pointed out, Shane was "the original source for many of the cliches of subseuent Westers - cliches that in the original are matters of inspiration, of genius and of art."  But that wasn't all, as CBS countered with Steve McQueen's WW2 hit The Great Escape, "offered again uncut in two installments, each supplemented by equally pleasing short subjects."  Although it's hard to imaging having to wait two nights to see a single movie, that was pretty common back in the day: running a long movie in two parts over two nights if it wouldn't fit into a two-hour time slot, except for Saturday and Sunday, when networks were more willing to let a movie run into the local news slot.  And those short films that the nets would use to fill up the rest of the time slot.  Sometimes TV Guide would note what the films were - in this case, part 1 was followed by a short cartoon, part 2 by "'Rainshower,' a 15-minute featurette honored at the Chicago Film Festival."  Quaint.  I probably wasn't watching it though; the state high school hockey tournament was on Channel 11, the independent station, on both nights.

What else?  On Saturday, ABC pre-empted the Pro Bowlers Tour for the penultimate day of the Winter Olympics in Grenoble, France.  The last day, including the closing ceremonies, would be shown Sunday afternoon from 1-3pm, followed by pro basketball - a little different than the saturation coverage we get today, hmm?  And then there were these two curious items: on Tuesday afternoon, CBS presented "the 19th annual Busy Lady Bake-Off."  Now, I've heard of the Pillsbury Bake-Off, but the Busy Lady?  Turns out a Google search suggests they're the same thing.  I wonder if this was a way for TV Guide to avoid the commercial mention for Pillsbury, or if the company itself billed the contest this way.  And then there's a musical version of Robin Hood airing on NBC Sunday night (in place of Walt Disney and The Mothers-In-Law).  It has a great pedigree: songs by Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen, and featured a who's who of familiar 60s names - Noel Harrison, Roddy McDowall, Steve Forrest, Walter Slezak, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Arte Johnson and Victor Buono in supporting roles.  But in the starring role of Robin Hood - David Watson.  Who?  I'd never heard of him until checking him on Wikipedia, and it turns out that he had a pretty good pedigree on the legitimate stage and was one of the apes in Beneath the Planet of the Apes (taking Roddy McDowall's place, it should be noted), but his TV career seems limited to guest roles in various shows.  Well, you learn something new every day.

And one final note, just a small one.  "Communications experts seem increasingy agreed that closed-circuit TV (CATV) will gradually replace the over-the-air kind,"  Richard Doan writes.  And what would this new, "cable" TV mean besides the end of ghostly reception and the ability to beam signals into remote rural locations?  "It would mean the view would pay for his piped-in TV, much as he now pays for lights and phone service."  Not everything that TV Guide predicted came true - but this certainly did.  But many thought that three networks constituted a vast wasteland - could they have possibly foreseen the scorched earth that the future would bring? TV  

A real Mickey-Mouse broadcast

The cultural historian Karal Ann Marling (a fellow Minnesotan, by the way) wrote a very good book back in 1996 called As Seen on TV: The Visual Culture of Everyday Life in the 1950s.  It's not really about television, at least not in the way that we often talk about it here.  For the most part, rather than talking about television in the 50s, Marling is referring to the cultural mileposts that we would have seen on television - things such as fashion, cars, and Elvis.

It really is a fascinating book, one that I'd like to write about at more length sometime.  For today, though, I'd like to call your attention to a television broadcast that Marling does write about at some length - the grand opening of Disneyland on July 17, 1955.



The opening was broadcast live on ABC from 7:30 - 9:00 that Sunday evening, hosted by Art Linkletter, Bob Cummings and Ronald Reagan.  It was fitting, since ABC had helped to underwrite the construction of the park through its contract with Disney, signed in 1954, in which Disneyland agreed to produce a weekly television show in return for ABC's financial support.  Cleverly, Disney called his program Disneyland, which by sheer coincidence just happened to also be the name of his budding amusement park.  Hey, the man wasn't a business tycoon for nothing, you know.

However, as Marling recounts, the broadcast was in many ways a disaster.  The park was still under construction, traffic was backed up for over seven miles (at dawn!), there were gas leaks, food ran out, and the park was massively overcrowded (6,000 by-invitation-only guests, but 22,000 extra people arrived with counterfeit tickets). And there were technical snafus galore: women walking out of their shoes, presenters being drenched by sprinklers, cameras showing one thing while announcers talked about something else - you name it.  Linkletter, Cummings and Reagan were old pros though, smooth operators who managed to handle the adversity without losing their wits. 

The day was known around Disney HQ as "Black Sunday," and the reviews of the program were universally bad.  In addition to the glitches, the show was so heavily scripted that it lacked any sort of spontaneity, and was filled with hype, such as Cummings comparing the opening of Disneyland to the dedication of the Eiffel Tower, and the slickness that Disney has always been known for.  All was not lost, though, as Sheila Graham, the Hollywood columnist, assured her readers "Walt has always been a smart trader and I’m sure there will be some changes made.”  There were, and Disneyland wound up working out pretty well, one would have to admit - it took only seven weeks for the one-millionth visitor to pass through its gates.

More than anything, that opening broadcast points out the risks - and sheer fun - of live television.  It's hard to imagine today's television dedicating 90 minutes to the opening of an amusement park, but after all ABC had helped bankroll Disneyland, and Walt Disney was responsible for the young network's first commercial credibility. TV  

This week in TV Guide: February 12, 1966

One of the ways I justify my modest TV Guide collection is to cite it as "research," that is, to take what is in reality a relaxing diversion and turn it into a scholarly enterprise.  But of course there is something to it: as I've mentioned before, one can do far worse than use TV Guide to provide a snapshot of popular culture at any given time.  Since I started this blog, I've been intending to take an issue from my collection every week, and just open it at random: see what's inside, whether or not there was anything important going on, and whether or not something in it wound up being pretty special.  So let's take a look at this week in TV Guide from 46 years ago, the week of February 12, 1966.  And since TV Guide always started the week on a Saturday, we'll do the same.

***
On the cover are two of the stars of Peyton Place, Ryan O' Neal and Barbara Parkins.  O'Neal, of course, went on to have a pretty successful career, highlighted by his Oscar-nominated role in Love Story.  Parkins was big in the late 60s and early 70s, with her starring roles in PP and Valley of the Dolls.

Inside we have a profile of James Drury, star of The Virginian, by that up-and-coming young writer Peter Bogdanovich, five years before writing and directing The Last Picture Show.  There's also a teaser for an upcoming National Geographic* special, The World of Jacques Cousteau.  The TV critic Cleveland Amory reviews Batman.  ("The whole show, on first impression, may not be as great.  It is, after all, trying to be all things to all men.  Still, it is the season's most talked-about offering.")

*Apparently National Geographic wasn't extreme enough back in those days to be called "NatGeo."


There was a section in the front and back of TV Guide issues, printed on yellow paper, called "TV Teletype."  The front usually covered TV news from Hollywood, the back from New York.  The Teletype often referenced shows that were never made, underwent name and/or cast changes, or wound up in substantially different shape from original plans. The New York version carries a note on an upcoming pilot for a show called The Time Tunnel.  That show did made it, as did its two stars, James Darren and Robert Colbert.  There's also an announcement that Truman Capote's short story "A Christmas Memory" is going to appear on ABC next season - it did, and won an Emmy.  On the other hand, Hollywood reports on a pilot for Li'l Abner, featuring Robert Reed.  The show didn't make it, but Reed would be back two years later, in The Brady Bunch.*

*Reed was said to be the second choice for the show, after Gene Hackman turned it down.  Imagine it for a moment: Mike Brady hunting down the French Connection.  Kinda makes you pause, doesn't it?

Inside, in the program listings, there's not  a whole lot to talk about.  CBS Reports features "The Divorce Dilemma," wherein we learn of "one of the major social problems in the U.S." - the divorce rate having hit an unthinkable 25%.  It's a bit higher now.  Bob Hope has a comedy special on NBC, and CBS has "An Evening with Carol Channing."  There's also a teaser for next week's TV Guide, featuring a profile of Lee Majors.  "Seven years from now . . . I'll be getting an Academy Award nomination," Majors is quoted as saying.  Well, he didn't - but he did go on to a long and pretty successful career in television.*  The Rolling Stones and Wayne Newton appear with Ed Sullivan, and ABC's Hollywood Palace counters with Donald O'Connor and Paul Anka.  

*A bit of irony there, if you're looking for it.  Consecutive issues of TV Guide presenting us with Ryan O'Neal and Lee Majors, the future companion and husband (respectively) of Farrah Fawcett.  What, I wonder, are the odds?

There's really nothing that jumps off the page though, no hockey or basketball game that everyone talked about the next day, no show that went on to set a viewing record or introduced us to a new star or caused the controversy of the season.  In short, it was a perfectly ordinary week in television, the kind that gives one a snapshot of how things were, the week of February 12, 1966. TV  

Notice anything strange about this?

In case you're thinking that I just can't get enough of old football video, you're probably right.  Today's clip is from a 1963 game between Nebraska and Oklahoma, who were forming a bitter rivalry that would captivate the football nation for probably close to thirty years, and is pretty much dead now that the teams aren't in the same conference.




Now, while the game itself was interesting enough (Nebraska wins 29-20, clinching an Orange Bowl birth), what is most interesting about the whole thing is the date.

November 23, 1963.

In the wake of the Kennedy assassination, it's hard to believe that anyone's minds could have been on the game that day. As a matter of fact, considering that most games that day were cancelled (including the Harvard-Yale game, as well as the entire AFL slate of games on Sunday), one wonders why it was even played. Was this an example of insensitivity to the Kennedy name?*

*I believe that William Manchester mentions that Dallas high schools went through with their regular football schedule that Friday night.  That seems beyond insensitive.  But then again, it was Dallas.

According to the fine Nebraska football site Huskermax, the decision to play was not an easy one and came with significant misgivings:

Friday night, university officers and officials in both states conferred at length. They were counselled by the NCAA and the Big 8 officials. Neither state nor school wanted to play the game because of the national tragedy — but Oklahoma had a game the following week, and Orange Bowl officials were on hand and needed to know about a representative, the game was a sell-out and thousands of people had traveled into Lincoln, TV staffs were on hand.

Finally, late Friday night, it was the decision of all officials concerned that the game be played. However, all pre-planned festivities were canceled and the huge crowd stood in silent tribute to President Kennedy prior to the kickoff. Flags were at half-staff.

There are a few things I don't know about this game. For one thing, was the telecast shown live or was it taped to be shown at a later date? I don't suggest that the commentary was dubbed later - I'm sure that the game was at least taped live. But one of the reasons I ask is that there seem to be no references whatsoever to what had happened the day before (DISCLAIMER: I haven't watched the entire broadcast, so I could easily have missed something). We don't see the moment of silence prior to the kickoff, so it may have been edited out of the broadcast or it may just be missing from the exerpt we see here.  We don't see a close-up of the flag flying at half-staff, and the announcers don't seem to be wondering if the players have been distracted by the continuing events in Washington and Dallas. Again, it may be in a part of the broadcast that I haven't seen.

Regardless, I think this is an interesting piece of cultural history. In a weekend that was marked, in terms of television, by massive disruption, here is an example of people trying to carry on as if everything was normal. Whether or not that was the right decision, the ghosts in the stadium are overwhelming. TV