This week in TV Guide: February 25, 1967

OK, so this isn't really for the first week in March - but this is the closest I could come. Besides, today's the 3rd, and this TV Guide runs through March 3. That's close enough, isn't it?

On second thought, looking through the pages of this issue, I can perhaps understand why I don't have anything for the first part of March - because there's nothing on. March Madness was only a glimmer in the eye of some as-yet born television marketer; the NCAA finals weren't even on network television in 1967.

In the headlines: "Night Falls on Panel-Quiz Shows" tells us that time's up for What's My Line?, I've Got a Secret and To Tell the Truth, CBS' triumverate of celebrity panel shows. The reason: "favorite fare of older viewers, and TV is determinedly for the younger ones, who presumably are more acquisitive." It is a similar mindset, I believe, that leads to CBS' "Rural Purge" that takes out still-popular programs such as Hee Haw, Green Acres, and Mayberry RFD. With Candid Camera likely to also come to an end at the end of the 67 season, Ed Sullivan would be the last remaining prime time entertainment show broadcast from New York.

But probably the best thing about this issue is something I know I always look for in TV Guide - a fashion shoot.

The blonde is the lovely Meredith MacRae, who at the time was one of the three daughers in Petticoat Junction (she was the third actress to play Billie Jo Bradley, following Jeannine Riley and Gunilla Hutton).  Her mother, Sheila MacRae, was playing Ralph Kramden's wife Alice in Jackie Gleason's revival of The Honeymooners.  Her father, Gordon MacRae, was a great musical star of the 50s, in Oklahoma and Carousel.  Great voice.  At this time, Meredith is 23, and surely a welcome andidote to the cover shot of the cackling Phyllis Diller.

Boy, do those outfits scream "Sixties" or what?  Like, groovy, man.  Geez.

These fashion shoots pop up in TV Guide from time to time - I can recall at least three more, with model Salome Jens, newscaster Nancy Dickerson (boy, how times have changed!), and Oscar nominee Julie Harris.  Culturally, this is kind of a mixed bag - today you can find actresses as sex symbols in all kinds of magazines, but there's something about a fashion layout in a non-fashion magazine that still seems a little - well, not sexist exactly, but certainly dated.  Yes, that's the term I'm looking for - dated.  I don't remember running across any fashion shoots featuring male actors of the day, but at this time it's still OK to admire female pulchritude without feeling like a total cad.

And you know - that's not necessarily a bad thing. TV  

America's television opera composer

Today would have been the 101st birthday of the composer Gian Carlo Menotti, one of the major figures in the early days of television. Menotti is probably best known for Amahl and the Night Visitors, the first opera commissioned and composed for television, but there were other television milestones: his 1939 opera The Old Maid and the Thief (written for NBC radio) was the first production of NBC Opera Theatre in 1949, The Medium (1946) was the third broadcast on CBS's Studio One in 1949, a second NBC commission, Labyrinth, was broadcast in 1963, and Martin's Lie (1964) made its American debut on CBS in 1965.  Other of his operas, including his Pulitzer-Prize winner The Saint of Bleecker Street (1954) and Maria Golovin (1958) were presented through the years on NBC Opera broadcasts.

But there’s another TV link that I wanted to focus on today. It's from 1952, when Menotti took a break from opera writing to answer a commission for a violin concerto from the director of the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia.  The work made its debut in December of that year, after which Menotti went back to his operas.  I listened to it earlier today; it's an interesting piece; although it doesn't really have what I'd call the distinctive Menotti sound (it actually reminds me in many ways of Erich Korngold, who not coincidentally did a lot of movie music as well as writing operas), I could hear the playfulness of the Shepherd's Dance from Amahl in the final movement.

Oh, and the TV tie-in?  Well, the director of the Curtis Institute, the man who commissioned the Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, was none other than Efrem Zimbalist.  No, not Efrem Zimbalist Jr., the star of 77 Sunset Strip and The FBI, but Efrem Zimbalist Sr., who in addition to his job at the Curtis was one of the world's great concert violinists.  Talent ran in that family; Zimbalist Jr's mother was the famous soprano Alma Gluck,

Here's the Concerto for Violin and Orchestra:


A well as a clip from Amahl:


And now, as Paul Harvey would say, you know the rest of the story. TV  

When the government was the "good guys"

One of the stated goals of this blog is to analyze how television interacts with American culture - the ways in which it forms it, and the ways in which it reflects it.  This is one of those times when we look at the later.

It's all prompted by the death earlier this month of the actor Peter Breck, who was probably best known for playing Nick Barkley in the 60s western series The Big Valley.  But prior to that, on November 4, 1963, Breck starred in an episode of The Outer Limits entitled "O.B.I.T."  The opening narration presents the premise:

In this room, twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, security personnel at the Defense Department Cyprus Hill's Research Center keep constant watch on its scientists through O.B.I.T., a mysterious electronic device whose very existence was carefully kept from the public at large. And so it would have remained but for the facts you are about to witness…

And there's a very good reason why O.B.I.T. is kept secret: the machine "allows the observation of anyone, anywhere, at any time."  Breck enters the story as U.S. Senator Jeremiah Orville, whose committee is on the scene to investigate the murder of the center's administrator.  During the course of the investigation, Orville uncovers the truth about O.B.I.T. - that the machine is in reality controlled by "imperialistic inhabitants" of another planet, who are using their human pawns (as aliens from other planets so often do) to gain control of the planet.

Now, what I find interesting about this story - and the point I'm trying to make here, although I may not be doing it very well - is that there is no question about Orville being the protagonist of the story, as the dogged senator determined to get to the bottom of things and find out the truth about the strange goings-on at the facility.  His presence presents the clear message that one doesn't screw around with the United States Government.  At the end of the episode, the government smashes the conspiracy, and we are assured that "Agents of the Justice Department are rounding up the machines now."  There is, in fact, something charming about this idea - that a U.S. Senator, and the government in general, are "the good guys."  Today it's far more likely that the government itself would be portrayed as instigating the development of such an all-pervasive surveilance machine, and that the senator (or the military, at the very least) would more likely than not be involved in a cover-up of the whole thing.

That's what I like about "O.B.I.T." - it's taken for granted that the government is there to find out the truth, and once accomplished they'll see to it that the threat is destroyed.*  The assassinations of the two Kennedys and Martin Luther King, the Vietnam War, Watergate, and a host of other events have yet to occur, and the general cynicism with which the government is observed today has not yet become all-encompassing.  In fact, as author James Pierson notes in his book Camelot and the Cultural Revolution, in the early 60s the government enjoyed a high approval rating from the public, who also had a great confidence that the government knew what it was doing.

*Author Mark Holcomb, in his excellent summaries of Outer Limits episodes, points out the McCarthy-era subtext in the story, which certainly isn't intended to show the government in the best light.  However, he also notes the evolution of Orville "from publicity-seeking sham to deeply concerned crusader."  This is, in fact, quite a nuanced episode in many respects, but I think the larger point remains: that Orville is from the government and is here to help.

And it's through this lens that one has to view this episode.  It reminds me a great deal of one of my favorite series, The FBI.  If you remember that show, you might recall that each week the series opened with the mission of the FBI.: "[T]o protect the innocent and identify the enemies of the Government of the United States."  That, combined with the images used in the opening (the Washington Monument, the Capitol, the Supreme Court and Treasury buildings) was enough to make any red-blooded American race out and sign up to be an FBI agent, even though it was Sunday evening and the offices were closed.

Today, we'd probably see the show for what it was, in part - a piece of Hoover-era propaganda designed to put the Bureau in the best possible light.  Just as we'd expect O.B.I.T. to be a product of a conspiracy involving the government and the military.  If anyone was to uncover it, it would probably either be an intrepid newspaper reporter, an intrepid group of high school civics students, or perhaps both.

We're right to be suspicious of government, for in many respects it has evolved into something the Founding Fathers would scarcely recognize, an invasive, intrusive, often malignant presence in the lives of Americans.  However, for better or worse we didn't always feel that way.  This episode of The Outer Limits, I think, accurately reflects how we saw the government back then - as a force for good, protecting us from threats to life and limb.  It's hard to imagine we could see an episode quite like this today. TV  

This week in TV Guide: February 24, 1968

The Doan Report, TV Guide's industry-insider column, surveyed the landscape of the coming television season.  What would the fall of 1968 bring?  "Variations on the familiar," was the verdict.  Since television was dominated by westerns, cop shows, science fiction and sitcoms, the future would bring: westerns, copy shows, science fiction and sitcoms. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, as the French say. 

In those early weeks of 1968, one thing was clear: television had to appeal to "the uninvolved young."  And so there were shows like ABC's The Mod Squad, "about a group of Los Angeles cops who police the hippies."  Or at least TV's idea of hippies.

Anyway, you get the picture.  And, surprisingly, many of the shows that were previewed in The Doan Report actually made it to air, and some of them stuck around for more than a cup of coffee.   The Mod Squad ran for five seasons.  NBC's effort to illustrate cops dealing with the young was Adam-12, which made it through seven seasons.  CBS offered Hawaii Five-O (the original, not the cheap remake), and that was the most successful of all, running all the way until 1980.*  Not everything came to pass; CBS was looking at an auto-racing drama called The Big Prize, and a sci-fi show entitled Man of the 25th Century.  If you've heard of either of those, please call me.

What else?  Well, on Leap Day, Carol Channing starred in an ABC special that had originally been set to air in November but was postponed by an industry strike.  Peter O'Toole and Honor Blackman (Pussy Galore!) starred in Noel Coward's play Present Laughter.  (Imagine that on network TV today.)  Joan Crawford guests on The Lucy Show.  That's Lucille Ball, for you kids out there.  And there's an argument in the Letters to the Editor section about the relative patriotism of the Smothers Brothers.

*Ronald Reagan, then governor of California, would run for president in 1968.  As he would in 1980.  That should tell you something about the lifespan of Hawaii Five-O.

And on each day, from Monday through Friday, there's a small ad featuring a resigned-looking Joey Bishop.  "The Joey Bishop Show.  Live in color, from Hollywood."

There was more to Joey Bishop than the Rat Pack, of course - otherwise, he wouldn't have been on the cover of TV Guide for February 24, 1968. He was a successful nightclub comedian, a not-so-successful sitcom star, and a longtime talk show host. For a generation, in fact, he was probably best known as Johnny Carson's perennial substitute, pinch-hitting for him over 200 times. And, in fact, from 1967 through 1969 he went head-to-head five nights a week as Carson's competition, hosting his own talkfest on ABC. (Fact number one: Joey's sidekick was the young Regis Philben. Fact number two: the first guest on Joey's show was none other than Governor Reagan himself, who due to a scheduling snafu was 14 minutes late to the live telecast.)

This issue of TV Guide offers a profile of Bishop that provides us with a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at the talk show. However, it also gives us a portrait that is at odds with the conventional wisdom surrounding Bishop's show. For the conventional wisdom is that Carson was insurmountable, that Bishop's show was merely one in a long line of failed attempts to challeng the King of Late Night (preceded by Crane, soon to be followed by Cavett, Griffin, Thicke, Sajak, Rivers, Hall, et al). Brooks and Marsh, in their indespensible Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows, state that "Joey limped along for more than two years, never posting much of a threat" to Carson. According to CNN's 2007 obit, "despite an impressive guest list and outrageous stunts, Bishop couldn't dent Carson's ratings." And that, as I said, has become the established school of thought.

Except, according to Richard Warren Lewis' story, it wasn't necessarily so. It was true that Bishop premiered on April 17, 1967, and that it wasn't met by a great deal of enthusiasm. (One-third of ABC's affiliates chose not to air the show at its premiere.) The critics of the time pronounced it a "turkey."

But, slowly, it started to turn around. As Lewis notes, "Six months after that shaky start, Bishop was seriously challenging Carson both in the battle for ratings and late-night advertisers' dollars." (Emphasis added.) According to the industry experts, Bishop had found a unique niche, a "totally different audience" that the urbane Carson (who, ironically, was thought to face the same challenge when he replaced Jack Paar, who at the time was seen as far more urbane than Carson). While Carson appealed to the sophisticated viewer, Bishop's audience resided in the outlying areas, the Bible Belt, flyover country.

Big names of the time such as Gregory Peck and Omar Sharif appeared on Bishop's show. Paar himself came out of semiretirement to trade jokes for an hour. When David Janssen, on the night of The Fugitive's final episode, appeared live with Joey, the ratings topped Carson's in New York for the first time. The picture painted by Lewis' article is an optimistic one, of a show on the rise, a show to be taken seriously as a threat to Carson's five-year run of supremacy.

But it didn't last.  Carson, reacting to any possibility of competition, put pressure on potential guests.  As TVParty's Billy Ingram told me, "Anyone booked on Bishop's show would find themselves persona non grata at the Tonight Show - unless they were a gue star, and in that case they would be temporarily sidelined or had to promise not to appear on the Bishop show for some period of time after a Tonight Show appearance."  By the end of the next year Bishop was gone, replaced for 1970 by the intellectuals' favorite, Dick Cavett.

Now, Lewis' story itself is not without its flaws; he makes a point of referring to Bishop's custom of wearing a black tie for every show since a priest had presented it to him on opening night, yet on the cover of the issue, Bishop is pictured behind the host's desk, interviewing a guest, wearing a red tie. So I suspect that, as is so often the case, the truth lies somewhere in between.

One thing is sure, however. Bishop's show was not the unmitigated disaster, the eternally ratings-challenged program that many make it out to be. And so perhaps we should be a bit kinder to the memory of Joey Bishop's talk show, and smile as indeed we do whenever we remember his presence with the Rat Pack, and remember what it feels like to be young again. TV  

Hogan's Heroes: the final episode

I do have a point to this piece, although it takes me a while to get to it - just bear with me.  It starts, unlikely enough, with the Isaac Asimov Super Quiz.  I don’t know how many of you have the Isaac Asimov Super Quiz in your newspapers, but a while back there was one that that dealt with final episodes of TV series. You might think that this would be a quiz in which the Cultural Archaeologist would have excelled; if you’d had that thought, you’d have been wrong. I owe it to the abundance of questions featuring series from a year starting with 2. (Frankly, it’s been about twenty years since I’ve watched any current series with any kind of regularity. I don’t say this boastfully, except to note that most of what passes for TV nowadays is crap. I still prefer the oldies but goodies, which is another reason why I get down on my knees every night and thank God for the DVD. 

Anyway, back to the quiz - none of us sitting around the table that day did very well, but it did instigate an interesting question – what TV series do you think should have had final episodes? The phenomenon known as the “final episode” is a fairly new innovation, relatively speaking. Can you think of the final episode of I Love Lucy? Gunsmoke? The Beverly Hillbillies? Does Lucy leave Desi, is Matt gunned down on Main Street, does Jed hit rock bottom as oil prices collapse? These series didn’t require any kind of resolution; they left you with the impression that things would continue more or less the same forever. 

Today, it’s almost obligatory that a long-running series gets to call it quits with a finale, often taking up two or three times the length of a normal episode.  Some, like St. Elsewhere and Newhart, end in a delightfully surrealistic manner.  M*A*S*H ended with the end of the Korean War, albeit a few years overdue.  Seinfeld’s final episode was, to many, disappointing.  The last episode of Cheers was probably better known for the drunken afterparty. 

One of the first major series to introduce a final episode was, if I’m not mistaken, Route 66.  In that final story, shown in March 1964, Tod Stiles (Martin Milner) calls it a day after four years of crisscrossing America behind the wheel of a Corvette.  Having finally found that place where he belongs, he pulls off the road for the last time and settles down in Tampa with Barbara Eden. (And if you remember Barbara Eden from I Dream of Jeannie, then you’ll agree that this is not such a bad way to settle down.) And that’s a nice way to end the series – logical, low-key, and inevitable 

The most famous final episode is probably that of The Fugitive, in which Richard Kimball finally catches up with the One-Armed Man. (Sorry if I’ve ruined it there for you.) This made sense; the whole series was about Kimball’s dual quests to clear his own name and to find the man who actually killed his wife, all the time while escaping from the relentless Lt. Gerard. The final episode of The Fugitive was the highest rated program ever seen on television at the time, and remained so for many years. The lesson for television executives and producers alike: final episodes could be profitable as well as fun.

One series that definitely deserved a final episode was a 1967 mid-season replacement called Coronet Blue. It starred Frank Converse as an amnesiac trying to find out who he was and why people were trying to kill him. (Think The Bourne Identity, which once again proves there’s nothing new under the sun.) Converse’s only clue was a piece of paper he was found clutching, with the words “Coronet Blue” written on it. Coronet Blue was thrown on almost as an afterthought by CBS, with little publicity or notice, and only after it had been sitting on the shelf for months. It went on the air and immediately became the smash hit of the summer. By that time, however, all those involved with the show had gone on to other projects, since there’d been no particular reason to think they’d be needed again. Despite best efforts, they were never able to pull everyone together to continue the series, or even offer a one-shot episode resolving the loose ends. Today, they’d probably get together for a big-screen movie.

But the series I’d most have liked to see come up with a final episode was the long-running sitcom Hogan’s Heroes. I’ve never been ashamed to admit that Hogan was, and remains, one of my all-time favorites. It was the first series I got in its entirety on DVD; the acting was superb, the writing often brilliant, the plots usually literate and clever and frequently downright hilarious. The cast – Bob Crane as Hogan, Werner Klemperer as Klink, John Banner as Schultz, Klink’s nemeses General Burkhalter and Major Hochstetter (Leon Askin and Howard Caine) and the whole cast of heroes (Robert Clary, Richard Dawson, Larry Hovis, Ivan Dixon and Kenneth Washington) were uniformly great. 

The last episode, airing on July 4, 1971 could have been any particular episode from that final season, and in fact there’s no reason to think it was conceived any other way. The show had been around for six years and, like most extended-run shows, was beginning to show its age, the ratings had begun to fade, and the cancellation was not particularly unexpected. In other words, a perfect candidate for a wrap-up episode. 

So what would that final episode have been like? Well, many of the major events of the war had come and gone during Hogan’s run, including D-Day. The Allies might have come to liberate the camp, or they might simply have terminated Hogan’s assignment (the POWs, you recall, were stationed at Stalag 13, posing as prisoners but in reality operating a massive underground commando and espionage ring). Myself, I prefer to think of the series concluding with the end of the war; Burkhalter and Hochstetter, being true believers in the Nazi regime, probably would have been taken prisoner themselves by the Allies. (In reality, they might have committed suicide, but let’s not make this too realistic.) 

Hogan and his men probably would have vouched for Schultz, who really was just a working man at a job he didn’t particularly like, and possibly even Klink, who when all was said and done didn’t really bear the POWs any real malice; he was too incompetent to have done too much harm. The men would have been lauded as true heroes for their daring behind-the-lines escapades, none more so than Colonel Robert Hogan himself. Already a full colonel, it’s reasonable to assume that Hogan would have come out of the war at least a Brigadier General, with a brilliant future should he decide to stay in the service. The Army, recognizing what it had on its hands, would have made the most of the photogenic, dynamic Hogan. (An earlier episode had actually involved the brass bringing Hogan back home, cashing in on his accomplishments by having him lead bond drives throughout the country.) 

And where do things go from there? There certainly would have been a book about such an audacious assignment, just as there was with A Bridge Too Far, A Man Called Intrepid, The Great Escape and other true war stories, probably called, simply, Hogan’s Heroes, by General Robert Hogan as told to David Halberstam. In due course, a movie would have been made based on the book, and it’s fun to speculate on who would have played Hogan in the movie. (Greg Kinnear, anyone? Probably more likely Kirk Douglas.) Hogan might have served in Korea, flying the same kinds of bomber missions he flew in Europe during WWII; on the other hand, he probably would have already been back in Washington, with a high-level job in the Pentagon. 

Come the early 60s, Hogan would still have been only about 50. JFK, who also recognized talent when he saw it, might have made Hogan his Air Force aide, working directly out of the White House. (I'll bet they would have had some adventures together.) Our co-blogger Steve suggests that Hogan might have been in charge of the Bay of Pigs invasion, which would have meant that the fiasco would have been averted, Castro toppled, and Cuba liberated. Without Castro and the CIA working behind the scenes, JFK doesn’t meet his death at the hands of conspirators in Dallas, and as we all know that means no expanded war in Vietnam. (Yeah, right.) 

See how easy this is? The world as we know it changes completely! Kennedy goes through with his plan to dump LBJ from the ticket in 1964, choosing instead the charismatic Senator from Minnesota, Hubert Humphrey. Bobby lives, not being shot in the ballroom of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, because it is JFK’s loyal Vice President Humphrey who becomes the unanimous choice to continue the legacy of the New Frontier. (Bobby continues as Senator from New York, even providing consultation with that young Clinton fellow from Arkansas who’d had his picture taken with JFK that time. Bobby and Bill fly to Hollywood often and hang out with friends. 

The Republicans, of course, turn to Richard Nixon as the best bet to unseat Humphrey and end eight years of Democratic dominance. In a peaceful campaign prosperity becomes the number one issue, and the voters decide to give the Republicans and their tax breaks a chance, electing Nixon as president. True to form, Nixon immediately sees an opportunity to wreak havoc on his enemies, even authorizing a burglary at Democratic headquarters at the Watergate. (What was that about history changing?) The country in a shambles, being led by the president who pardoned the man responsible for it, the people turn to someone they can trust: Robert Hogan, the now-retired military hero, the man who has always stayed above politics, the most trusted man in America (next to Walter Cronkite). And with him, the charismatic former actor and governor of California, Ronald Reagan. What a match! Hogan and Reagan – or is it Reagan and Hogan? Whatever. Happy days are here again. 

All that from a simple half-hour sitcom. See why it’s so important for series to have final episodes? You can never tell how history could turn out differently. TV