This week in TV Guide: April 1, 1967

Here's something you're not likely to see on television nowadays.  Thursday, April 6, ABC presented its latest episode of its anthology/variety show Stage 67.   This week: "A Time for Laughter: A Look at Negro Humor in America," produced and hosted by Harry Belefonte, and featuring Sidney Poitier, Godfrey Cambridge, Redd Foxx, Richard Pryor, Dick Gregory, and Diahann Caroll - to name a few.  I wonder what this show was like?  One sketch features Pryor as a nervous undertaker forced to deliver the eulogy when the clergyman doesn't show at the funeral, while another has Gregory as a civil-rights marcher discussing "Black Power."  Would we see this today as an example of ethnic African-American humor, or cheap racial stereotypes?

In all likelihood, it's a moot point: since the show was up against Dean Martin (this week's guests: Phil Harris, Sally Ann Howes, Paul Winchell, comedian Bob Melvin and the singing Kessler Twins), it's likely nobody saw it at all.  It was successful in one way though, winning an Emmy nomination for best variety special.

"Television Fights the War of Ideas," is one of the feature articles in the issue.  When I first saw that, I figured the author might be talking about how TV fights to keep ideas off the air, but in reality it's an examination of the United States Information Agency, the government's propaganda arm, and how it beams the American ideal into living rooms around the world.

The comely cover girl on the right is Cheryl Miller, one of the stars of CBS' series Daktari.  Her co-star on the right is Judy the Chimp, who was apparently quite the scene stealer (along with Clarence the Cross-Eyed Lion, who had a stand-in lion for tough stunts).  I don't remember a whole lot about this show, nor do I remember Cheryl Miller.  In fact, until I ran across this issue, the only Cheryl Miller I knew of was the former basketball player.  She does not seem to have had a long career, and whenever TV Guide does a piece like this touting someone I haven't heard much of (for example, Laurie Sibbald, who played Sammy Jackson's girlfriend in the TV version of No Time for Sergeants*), I wonder if they were expected to become the next big thing, or if they were just actors and actresses filling a role.

*Not to be confused with the televised version of the play, which appeared on the U.S. Steel Hour, starring Andy Griffith and adapted by Ira Levin, who later would write something a little less gentle: Rosemary's Baby.

Dean Rusk, the U.S. Secretary of State, appears on an hour-long NBC news special which looks a lot like its Sunday morning regular, Meet the Press.  The main topic, of course: Vietnam.   CBS presents a repeat showing of its acclaimed production of Death of a Salesman, starring Lee J. Cobb and Mildred Dunnock.  It's one of the rare TV plays of the 60s that is available on DVD, and it's well worth watching.  CBS also reruns Frank Sinatra's special A Man and His Music: Part II, which is also on DVD and well worth watching, except for the part with Frank's daughter, Nancy.  And TV Guide's resident critic, Cleveland Amory, reviews Tim Conway's Western comedy Rango.  Ever heard of it?  Says Amory, "[I]f you've seen one episdoe, you've seen them all.  And although this is, in such a show, by no means bad news, the fact remains there are men still alive who claim to have seen several episodes.  They are not many, though, and they are fading rapidly."  That explains a lot.

Finally, does anyone other than me remember when CBS used to run what they called "National Tests"?  There was the "National Citizenship Test," the "National Driving Test," and on April 4 of this week, the "National Science Test."  Each of these shows came complete with an answer sheet for you mark your answers if you're scoring at home - or if you're just watching the show. TV  

Eisenhower's State Funeral, 1969

About Dwight D. Eisenhower, three distinct memories:

1. In his acceptance speech at the 1968 Republican National Convention, Richard Nixon starts off with mention of Eisenhower in the hospital, and that nothing would make him feel better than a Republican victory in November. “So let’s win this one for Ike!” The crowd roars.

2. In March 1969, Eisenhower is now gravely ill. Across the street from the South Minneapolis fourplex we live in is one of the regional headquarters of Northwestern Bell . (It has a large, rolling lawn that was just made for kids to have fun on, and we used to play football there on Saturday afternoons. This is, mind you, in the days before corporate buildings are fenced off from the rest of the neighborhood, or hidden within business parks.) I’m eating lunch (no school, it being what was at the time called Easter Break), and as I’m sitting at the table, we look out the kitchen window and see the flag on top of the Northwestern Bell building falling to half-staff. My mother nods; Eisenhower must have died.

3. Eisenhower, like Churchill, was quite the amateur painter, and many of his paintings were reproduced and sold in sets. We had one of those sets, along with a portrait of Ike – it wasn’t, as I recall, that we had an overwhelming affection for Eisenhower, but as Supreme Allied Commander he had won the war in Europe, and as the GOP nominee in 1952 he had ended 20 years of Democrat control of the White House, so in a Republican household like ours that was enough to generate some admiration, at least. At any rate, my grandparents worked at a department store just off Lake Street in Minneapolis , and they borrowed the Eisenhower portrait, which was framed. It was put in a front window of the store, which was otherwise bare except for yards of black fabric which had been draped along the bottom of the display. There may have been roses in the window as well; I can’t remember now. But this is the kind of thing that businesses used to do, at times of national mourning.

Eisenhower was given the choice, after his term ended, of the honoraria to be used - president or general.  He chose the later, which is why you'll often hear him referred to as "General Eisenhower" after his presidency.  Such is the case in much of the footage here.

Eisenhower’s funeral was, unless I'm wrong, the first American state funeral to be televised in color.  JFK had, of course, been in B&W; RFK's and MLK's hadn't been state funerals.  The procession to the Capitol took place on a rainy, cool Palm Sunday; the fact that people would have been in church probably accounted for the afternoon start.  CBS's coverage starts here, but we'll pick up the coverage with the Sunday procession.  You can follow the coverage with the succeeding segments.

An interesting footnote is that Eisenhower was also the center of attention in what has been referred to as the earliest surviving color videotape footage, as he appears at the dedication of NBC's new Washington facility in May 1958.  The color here is just brilliant; it would be completely realistic to assume that this event had been televised earlier today.  It also gives us another look at Ike, at the time the oldest man elected president.  We think of him as a figure out of the history books, but here he seems very much alive and relevant.  In many respects, he is more alive than the grainer, B&W footage of his successor a few years later. 
 

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This week in TV Guide: March 20, 1971

By and large, I find the TV Guides of the 70s less interesting than those of the 50s and 60s. Part of that has to do with me having been around for all of the 70s, which might make the contents somewhat less exotic and more familiar. However, I think much of it has to do with the aesthetic value of the magazine itself. By 1970, TV Guide had adopted a new print format. They probably considered it cleaner, more streamlined, more modern looking, and I suppose that's true. But I never liked it, not even at the time. It looked dull, ordinary, vanilla. Looking back at it from the distance of over 40 years, I haven't found anything to change my mind. The days of the week—Monday, Tuesday, etc.—are small and insignificant. The little "C" logo next to a show broadcast in color seems puny compared to the "Color" label that used to adorn such a show. And so on. Oh well. It's the content that counts, right?

That glum man on the cover is Harry Reasoner, formerly of Minneapolis, and four months clear from having quit CBS to become co-anchor (with Howard K. Smith) of the ABC Evening News. Reasoner was always one of my favorite newsmen, and I probably watched the ABC news more than NBC or CBS. Don't know why; maybe the opening graphics, or maybe it was just that I liked the underdog. Reasoner always had a way with words, and I've written in the past on some of his wry commentaries. (One of my favorites: "Be highly suspicious of any political or social group which never under any circumstances thinks there is something funny about itself and its program."

Anyway, Reasoner has some interesting things to say in this interiew. For example, on the question of the influence of the news anchor: "I don't think he should be [as important as the news he transmits]. It's a tremendous responsibility if people feel more comfortable getting their news from Walter Cronkite than from David Brinkley or vice versa. But it's the same kind of responsbility that an editor has who has a paper that people like, and who can then manipulate the way he places his stories and how they are written. And it's a responsibility perfectly within the capability of journalists to fulfill without corruption—not that they won't make mistakes." And he likes that responsbility. "I enjoy doing it. I like having that influence. I have confidence in how I use the influence."

Asked about whether or not viewers have a right to know his political views: "I don't think they have any right to know what my personal politics are unless my personal politics are interfering with my commentaries. I am not doctrinaire. I think it's fairly well known that I have been a dove on Vietnam since 1954. But it might be quite conservative on something else. . .I suppose if you looked over everything I've said or done publicly in 25 years, I'd be called a liberal. But there are a lot of funny kinds of liberals."

And I found this perhaps the most interesting: "A surprising number of people who watch television news want to be told what to do, want to be led. I think this is terribly dangerous for journalism, just as it is for psychiatry. And I won't do it." The whole interview is well worth reading.

Let's see, what else. Well, as you can see on the cover, TV Guide has its All-America college basketball team. Are there any notables on that list? Austin Carr had a great career with the Cleveland Cavaliers, and Artis Gilmore was a monster in the ABA. But on the district All-America teams, there was a kid from UMass who had a pretty good career, name of Julius Erving.

The Doan Report muses that the huge success of the Frazier-Ali closed-circuit fight on March 8 "may doom big sports events on free TV. . .'within five years' pro football's Super Bowl may be for paying viewers only." That last bit hasn't come to pass yet, but as for the rest. . .

Other sports news—the NCAA tournament is in high gear. Saturday afternoon features a doubleheader—two of the four regional finals that send the winners on to the Final Four in the Astrodome. But a warning, you won't be seeing the kind of coverage you're used to now. In addition to only seeing two of the four regional finals, you'll only see one of the two national semifinals, on Thursday night. The championship game (which pitted UCLA against Villanova) will air the following Saturday afternoon.

NET Playhouse (the forerunner to PBS), has what looks like an interesting presentation on Friday, March 26—Marya Mannes' "They." The premise: "The year is 1990, and America's youth-oriented government has proclaimed that middle-aged people are a drain on society. At age 55, citizens are carted off to detention camps—and given a maximum of 10 years to live." Does this remind you of Logan's Run—or Obamacare? Here's an interview with Marya Mannes from the 70s.


On Monday, Met Opera stars Eileen Farrell and Marilyn Horne guest on The Carol Burnett Show—hard to imagine that now. The Bell System Family Theatre has George C. Scott and Susanna York in "Jane Eyre," and the Hallmark Hall of Fame countered with Paddy Chayefsky's "Gideon" with Peter Ustinov and Jose Ferrer. CBS has the pilot for William Conrad's detective series Cannon on Friday night as well.

Finally, the TV Teletype: Hollywood carries a note that Oscar winner Jack Albertson will join Sam Groom in the syndicated series Simon Locke. This show, which became Police Surgeon, was one of the first and most infamous examples of the syndicated dreck that same to overwhelm the "public access" time slot that the networks were forced to cede to local stations a year or two later. That time, as foreseen by the FCC, would be devoted to local programming that would serve the public good. Instead, it ushered in game shows, Hollywood entertainment programs, and all other kinds of strip programming. Which goes to show, once again, that the best-laid plans of bureaucrats seldom come to fruition. TV  

This week in TV Guide: March 11, 1967

Every once in a while, you have a week where nothing much happens.  Such was the week of March 11, 1967.  Oh, there's a very nice picture of Dorothy Malone of Peyton Place on the cover (although I think the picture of her on the inside is better).  There's a profile of Noel Harrison, the male lead in The Girl from U.N.C.L.E.  Harrison is probably better known for his hit "The Windmills of Your Mind," because let's face it - when you're sharing screen time with Stefanie Powers, you are not the one people are going to notice.  Trust me on this one.

No, this time I think the programming section itself is going to tell us what we want to know about the week.  And what struck me in flipping through these pages was the heavy amount of what Terry Teachout might agree would have been thought of as "middlebrow" programming.  They're the kind of shows that you seldom see on TV anywhere anymore, let alone the major networks.  Maybe Ovation, possibly PBS once in a blue moon, but otherwise your chances of seeing a documentary on Arturo Toscanini, as viewers would have seen Sunday afternoon on NBC, are nil.  Furthermore, the average person back then probably knew how Toscanini was - after all, he'd conducted the NBC Symphony from 1937 to 1954, and he'd only died ten years before.  Would have liked to have seen that show.  I might well have been watching the Black Hawks vs. the Maple Leafs on Channel 11, though.

If classical music wasn't your bag, though (speaking in the vernacular of the time), you might have dug CBS's special "Saigon: The City Behind the Headlines," on Tuesday at 9pm.  Considering the state of the war at that point, and the climate at home, I wonder how positive a report it was.  Might have still erred on the side of the military; I think the real rebellion from the media was about a year away.

Back to Sunday for a minute - CBS had three great cultural programs on Sunday morning: the religious shows Lamp Unto My Feet and Look Up and Live, and the arts show Camera Three.  I was always irritated that we didn't get these in Minneapolis, since our CBS affiliate saw fit to substitute Bowery Boys and Laurel & Hardy movies.  Fortunately, since my copy of the March 11 edition is the Minnesota statewide edition, I can tell you that Camera Three featured a discussion of the English artist Aubrey Beardsley.  ABC countered with Discovery '67, which visited Moscow to find out what life is like for little Russkie kids.

On Wednesday, the local independent (the aforementioned channel 11) had the conclusion of the Royal Shakespeare Company's War of the Roses, with Ian Holm as "Richard III."  The local NET (educational) station was not to be outdone, with its own Shakespeare programming - the epic An Age of Kings.  No word on which episode they were showing.  Later on NET continues with a one-hour profile of the director John Huston.

Project 20 was an acclaimed documentary series on NBC, and on Thursday at 6:30* they presented "End of the Trail," with the western character actor (and three-time Oscar winner) Walter Brennan narrating the story of the American Plains Indians.  Surprisingly, this program is available on DVD.  After that, NBC continued with Roy Rogers and Dale Evans hosting the annual telecast of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus.

*Remembering that at the time, network prime-time programming began at 6:30.  It wasn't until the very early 70s that it was moved to 7pm, so that local stations could present programs of interest to the community - like Entertainment Tonight and Wheel of Fortune.

No documentaries on Friday night, but more prestige programming - the once-great Hallmark Hall of Fame, which presented Lynn Fontanne and Julie Harris in "Anastasia," the story of the woman who claimed to be the sole surviving child fo Czar Nicholas II.  I have to believe that with that cast, it was pretty good, but could it possibly compare to the movie version with Ingrid Bergman?

And then there's the classic middlebrow show - Ed Sullivan, who probably did more to bring culture to the masses than anyone this side of Alexander Fleming.  Ed's show features Lou Rawls, Nancy Ames, and Stiller and Meara, among others.  Mind you, for every program of this type, there were ten times the number of Green Acres, Beverly Hillbillies, and the like.  But ask yourself - how many of these shows would you be able to find on your 250 channels today? TV  

Small world

Lost in the stories about the untimely death last week of conservative activist Andrew Breitbart was the note that his father-in-law was none other than Orson Bean.

TV viewers of a certain age will have no problem remembering Orson Bean.  He was, for many years, a panelist on To Tell the Truth, and a frequent guest on many other shows, mostly from the Goodson-Todman stable.  You could see him often with Johnny Carson and other talk show hosts, guest-starred on the anthology shows that were so prevalent on TV in the 50s and 60s, and was a regular on shows as disparate as Mary Hartman, Dr. Quinn, and Desperate Housewives.  Some will even remember him as the voice of Bilbo Baggins, and later Frodo, on the Rankin-Bass animated versions of The Hobbit and The Return of the King.  

He was a Broadway star, appearing in the original Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? and received a Tony nomination for Never Too Late.  He's the author of four books.  And as if that weren't enough, according to Wikipedia he also helped found the Laurel and Hardy fan club Sons of the Desert, and he's a first cousin twice removed of Calvin Coolidge.

He also holds the distinction of having been blacklisted in the entertainment industry not once or twice, but three times - first in the 50s by the right, when he got mixed up with a Communist girlfriend and was targeted for his apperances with leftist groups; then in the 60s by the left, when he supported Richard Nixon as the best hope for ending the Vietnam War; and most recently for his support of California's Prop 8, the amendment that defines marriage as between a man and a woman.  (I refuse to call it the gay marriage ban; you can't ban something that wasn't legal in the first place.) I say that anyone who can fall victim to both the right and the left at various times must be doing something right.

In this clip from a few years ago, he discusses another transformation - that of becoming a Christian.  And I trust it will be that faith that will strengthen and guide both him and his family as they deal with their loss in the coming weeks and months.



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