Around the dial

There's more than a hint of fall in the air this week here in Texas, which has nothing to do with the following links, but, hey - TV and fall just kind of go together, don't they?

Scott Carpenter, one of the original seven Mercury astronauts, died earlier this week, and Television Obscurities has a nice piece on how television covered his Aurora 7 flight, one of the most dramatic of the early space shots.

A couple of fun pieces on the original Hawaii Five-O (which I'll be watching here in about 20 minutes as Thursday's DVD theater night: at The Hits Just Keep on Comin,, jb points out how the show's self-contained format differs from today's serialized programs (and that doesn't begin to cover the show's disco flavor), while at Classic Film and TV Cafe, Rick goes all the way back to the beginning with a look at the pilot and first episode.

I've seen many of Gilbert Seldes' reviews in older (i.e. pre-Cleveland Amory) issues of TV Guide, but I'd never seen him until I ran across this great ad courtesy of the Broadcasting Archives at the University of Maryland.

Can't remember if I've linked to this before, but this article by Billy at TVParty shows why a telethon (remember them?) should never announce their goal ahead of time.

That's all for tonight, boys and girls, but be back here on Saturday for a look at another classic TV Guide! TV  

Mitchell's Top Ten, #6: Hogan's Heroes

I've never understood, frankly, the hostility some people have toward Hogan's Heroes. If it's that they just don't like the show, that's one thing; I don't like I Love Lucy. As some wise philosopher once said, your mileage may vary.  

There are, however, some people who seem intent on making a cottage history out of hating on Hogan. For some, it might be discomfort with Bob Crane's personal life, which is actually worthy of sympathy more than scorn, and, in any event, has little to do with the merits of the program. Others claim that the show is silly, or, even worse, stupid; in fact the funniest of the episodes, and there are many, are far from that: they're clever, literate, and witty in addition to being laugh-out-loud funny. Presumably, the show's just not sophisticated enough for them.

The biggest bone of contention, though, seems to be from those who consider the show to be in bad taste because it deals with a POW camp in World War II. Some of them confuse POW camps with concentration camps, an error that's easily rectified for those who take the time to research the difference. Others believe there's nothing funny about Nazis (notwithstanding that not all German soldiers were Nazis) or prisons or wartime, even though it's all part of the human condition, and therefore the human comedy. 

Most of these critics presume to speak for the two groups who would most have the right to be offended by Hogan's Heroes: World War II veterans and Jews. They conveniently overlook the fact that some of the show's biggest fans were veterans (Bob Crane refused to accept the role unless the concept was first vetted and approved by vets), and many of the principal actors, including all of the regulars playing Germans, were Jews who well knew the difference between POWs and concentration camp survivors; Robert Clary, who played the French POW LeBeau, was himself a survivor of Buchenwald. If anyone had that right to be offended by the content of Hogan's Heroes, it was the men of these two groups, yet they weren't. 

Moreover, the Nazis aren’t glorified; in fact, Schultz and Klink show more than a trace of humanity. Hogan’s Heroes owes less to shows like M*A*S*H, and more to another military comedy: The Phil Silvers Show, and the incorrigible Sergeant Bilko. At heart, it’s a show about a bunch of guys working together, trying to pull one over on the none-too-bright boss. It’s just that in this case the guys are soldiers who happen to be working together as part of the underground, and the boss is the camp commandant.

All that has nothing to do with how a kid views Hogan's Heroes, though, and when I was growing up I enjoyed the show in first-run immensely, before kind of forgetting about it while living in the World's Worst Town™. By the time I returned to civilization, the show had long been off of CBS, but it had continued in syndication, and in 1978 it was a constant presence on Channel 5 at 5:00pm, just before the national news. It was back in my life, and it hasn't left since.

Considering the number of times I've written on this blog about Hogan's Heroes, this shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone.  Few sitcoms have displayed its cleverness, combined with almost perfect casting, to achieve a show that can simply be enjoyed on its own merits. There are no "very special episodes," no attempts at dramedy, no underlying message. It's just a show that manages to be both very entertaining and very funny. There aren’t that many shows that can make me laugh out loud—the only two I can think of off the top of my head, Top Gear and MST3K, are both on this list as well—and Hogan was constantly able to do it.

What I’ve always liked about this show over the years is what lies just under the surface. Hogan is the glib, cocky colonel, the quintessential American who has a way with the one-liners as well as the ladies with the curvy lines. Make no mistake, though: the writers gave Hogan a dimension that many sitcom characters lacked. When push came to shove you knew Hogan meant business, and he’d do whatever was necessary to make the mission a success. In one story, pointing a pistol at a reluctant turncoat, he warned that "You can go to England my way, or you can die my way," and though I’m not sure you ever saw him actually kill someone in that manner, enemy soldiers did die as a result of those successful missions. That could have been a major flaw in some series, but the way the role had been written and acted, it was completely plausible. The show never came close to drifting into pious dramedy, but there was a serious context in which it existed, and the war itself was never taken lightly.

You can’t say enough about the cast, starting with Bob Crane and the rest. And imagine the challenge that was presented to Werner Klemperer and John Banner as Klink and Schultz. To make Nazis funny, to make them real characters, rather than cardboard buffoons, while still enabling the audience to look at them affectionately, is quite the job. Not one that you’d ask, say, Dabney Coleman to undertake. Unlike Burkhalter, who may have harbored some doubts but was nonetheless a loyal lieutenant of Hitler, or the SS colonel Hockstetter, who probably did believe the party line, I don't think Klink was really that dedicated to Nazi ideology, and I'm almost positive that Schultz wasn't; they were soldiers doing their jobs, but at heart they weren't killers. They were, however, very funny.

Hogan’s Heroes was the first complete TV series I collected on DVD, and one of the few that I can watch repeatedly. The only reason I tend not to watch it on broadcast TV nowadays is because the prints are faded and cut up, while the DVDs are the real deal, crisp and uncut. Having said that, though, there have been times when a Hogan marathon would pop up on one of the oldies stations. Running across it, I’d pause to see how the Heroes’ latest scheme turned out; I already knew the answer, of course, but the payoff is always in the punch line. And, of course, the next thing I knew it would be two hours later, and I’d sat through four episodes and was well into a fifth.

*Although who knows? I wouldn’t have thought you could make a sitcom about Hitler, either.

Hogan’s Heroes is one of the few comedies on my favorites list, as I tend to be more of a sucker for the heavy, existentialist stuff. But, as Agent Cooper once said in Twin Peaks, you have to treat yourself every day, and Hogan’s Heroes is one of my favorite treats. One that I don’t feel guilty about. TV  

This week in TV Guide: October 3, 1959

Lee Marvin is, according to this week's cover, "TV's Angry Man," but he sounds more like a character from a Paul Auster or Don DeLillo novel, or maybe Ernest Hemingway.

I can't really call Bob Johnson's article an interview or a profile, because aside from the first and last paragraphs, there's no evidence that Marvin actually answered any questions.  Instead, he conducted a very entertaining two-page stream-of-consciousness monologue.

The article begins with Marvin (and, presumably, Johnson) leaving the set for the lunch break.  "'It's moving,' he said, stomping and muttering through smaller billows of the claylike material he was brushing out of his crew cut with both hands.  'If it's moving, baby, I say grab it. Look at this filthy mess.  Let's go.'"

The topic is, naturally, M Squad, which Marvin starred in for three seasons. I promise you, these are actual quotes from the article, not taken out of context.

"Who knows?  You tell me.  It's a cop series, what else?  The guy's a cop.  Who wants the truth? It's like an artist.  He's got this painting.  He says, 'But don't you see, it's yah-foo-lah-lah-lah.  You notice how that yellow shines?

"I dunno, it's moving.  Lieutenant Ballinger - who knows - he's a cop.  You tell me.  We took Chicago.  It was all that was left.  I know Chicago cops.  Rough.  They have to be.   The whole city would explode.  It's like a bomb, Chicago.  I know.  Look at the setup."

After talking about Chicago police politics, he continues.

"We shoot locations, twice a year.  No permit, no co-operation.  They don't want any part of us.  We're going next week again.  Shoot and run.  It finally came down to: 'Okay, any public building, but nothing else, no stopping traffic.'  I stay back, out of sight.  Hat pulled down.  Director says okay, walks through what I do, says, 'Like that, Lee.'  I do it, we shoot it and blow.  Kids come along, see the crowd, it's always the same thing in Chicago.  Right away, 'Who got killed?'  That's what a crowd means to most Chicago kids.

"One time we're up on a roof.  On the edge over the sidewalk.  Me and this actor, struggling over a gun.  I thought I'd hoke it up a little.  We can't carry sound equipment, have to move too fast.  Dub it later.  I saw these two gals walking along.  Right under us.  I yelled, 'Gimme that gun, I'll kill you!'  They looked up, yah, hoo, whu, hmm?  Two men on a roof, killing each other.  And these girls went right on.  They didn't even break stride.

i"Lieutenant Friday, Dragnet, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Lineup.  What's their problem?  No problem. It's routine.  It's static.  But not Chicago. They stop it before it happens.  They have to.

"Chicago'd go like a bomb, the whole place.  I know.  I spent a year there, going to secretarial school.  After the war, out of the Marines, wacked up, shot near the spine, whoo lah, hero.  I couldn't do anything.  Nothing.  I didn't know ho.  High school, no training.  Navy ROTC school in New Jersey, 14 years old and they pulled rank on me.  This old admiral, 61, still in uniform, and a kid 14 years old.  I cut out and sold my uniform.

"Yeah, typing, shorthand, I didn't know.  And then back to New York, digging ditches.  Septic tanks.  A guy digging ditches or a plumber wiping a joint, you know?  It solves problems.  Says, 'Dig this hole, so wide, so long, so deep,' you dig it.  That's it.  You climb out and say, 'Boy, I don't know what it was,  and loo-foo-fah-foo, but I solved it today.'  Good therapy for my back.  Plumber in New York, fixed pipe up in Woodstock.  They were doing a play, who knows?  Said why didn't I give it a try.  So?  I tried it.  One line, walk on, walk off, deep voice, big shoulders, and back the next night.  And so on.

"It's like M Squad.  The M doesn't stand for anything.  It's any dirty job.  Let's face it, we're the Storm Troops.  A lone cop, Chicago, what else?  M Squad.  I liked The Loop.  That's what somebody wanted to call it.  I wanted to do a lot of things.  I talk to myself, driving along, who doesn't?  You come out of a conference, you sit there at a stop light, say, 'Yeah, fah-loo-dee-doo, BUT, you say."

There's more to the article, but you get the idea.  It's easily one of the most entertaining pieces I've ever read in TV Guide, and you wonder if Bob Johnson had to do anything other than take notes.  My wife thought he must have pieced together the article from answers to various questions, but I'm not so sure.  After starting Marvin off, Johnson doesn't return again until the final paragraphs, when the two men return to the set, ("Three steak sandwiches later.")  Marvin talking all the way.  As they part, he says, "If it's moving, baby, grab it."

***

The World Series continues this week, though we don't know quite when or where.  If the Milwaukee Braves won the National League pennant, Saturday's Game 4 will begin at 12:45 pm CT, and will be in black-and-white.  If the pennant went to either the Los Angeles Dodgers or San Francisco Giants (and how strange those names must have seemed), the first pitch will be at 2:30 pm, and the game will be colorcast.  All we know for sure at this point is that the opposition will be the American League champion Chicago White Sox, playing in their first World Series since the Black Sox days.  The Series continues Sunday (if necessary; same time choices), before returning to the Windy City* for the final two games (noon, in color).  

*I wonder if they saw Lee Marvin while they were there?

In fact, there was no game on Saturday - the Dodgers and Braves finished in a tie for first place, and the resulting three-game playoff (won by the Dodgers two games to none) delayed the start of the Series to Thursday.  The Dodgers and Sox split the two games in Chicago, before the Dodgers won two out of three in Los Angeles and closed out the Series with a 9-3 victory in Game Six in Chicago.

If you had your heart set on sports on Saturday, you'd have to make due with NBC's telecast of California at Texas in the college Game of the Week, or the NFL Saturday Night tilt on ABC between the Colts and Bears from Baltimore (with a live starting time of 10:30 pm ET, if the TV Guide is to be believed).

***

Let's pick a random night of programming to look at.  Sunday night, for example. Lots of series premieres this week.  After Lassie, CBS presents the debut of Dennis the Menace, based on the popular comic strip, starring Jay North as Dennis.  The comic strip itself is something of an acquired taste, which I had only intermittently, and the sitcom lacked that much charm, although it survived for four years.  Dennis is followed by Ed Sullivan, who's got an all-star lineup: Danny Thomas, live from Chicago*, while joining Ed in New York are singers Eartha Kitt, Julius LaRosa and Jane Morgan, comedian Joe E. Lewis, European novelty act Trio Rayros, and the winners of New York's Harvest Moon Ball.

*Where he was probably watching the World Series with Lee Marvin.

At 8, General Electric Theater presents a provocative title: "Hitler's Secret," starring Robert Loggia as Alfred Hitchcock Presents, now in its fifth season, and the return of Jack Benny, maintaining his every-other-week schedule (his alternating partner this year is George Gobel).  The night concludes with the venerable What's My Line? with guest panelist Mort Sahl.

No, not that secret!

Hitler, and hosted by Ronald Reagan.  What was Hitler's secret?  As far as I can tell, it was that President Paul von Hindenberg (Raymond Massey, more famous for playing Abraham Lincoln) had second thoughts on his deathbed about Hitler succeeding him, which I suppose makes it more Hindenberg's secret than Hitler's, since we all know how that turned out.  "Hitler" is followed at 8:30 by

NBC's schedule begins with Darrin McGavin and Burt Reynolds in Riverboat; a mark of how difficult McGavin could be to work with was Reynolds' later comment that McGavin would be in for a disappointment on the first Easter Sunday after his death.  Opposite Sullivan at 7 is Sunday Showcase presents part two of "What Makes Sammy Run?", Budd Schulberg's bitter look at the dirt under Hollywood's surface, starring Larry Blyden, John Forsythe and Barbara Rush.  It's not a great story, but it is very good, and was later made into a Broadway musical starring Steve Lawrence*.  Oddly enough, it's never been made into an actual big-screen movie; perhaps it cuts too close to the bone.

*And co-starring Sally Ann Howes, who also features in the premiere of Bell Telephone Hour Friday night on NBC.

At 8, Dinah Shore returns for another season of her musical variety series, The Dinah Shore Chevy Show. Here's Dinah urging us all to "See the U.S.A. in your Chevrolet" as if her life depended on it.


Oh, by the way, Dinah's guests are singer-dancer Gwen Verdon, comedian Carl Reiner, and heavyweight boxing champion Ingemar Johansson.

Following Dinah is another episode of The Loretta Young Show, the popular anthology series.  I've always liked Loretta Young, but I have to admit, having seen several episodes of this series, that it doesn't do much for me.  I can't remember now if it was the writing, the acting, the story, or a combination of the three. Whatever, it just goes to show that not every popular show from the 50s is a classic.  Interestingly enough, the network goes dark after that, returning control of the airwaves to local stations.*

*Sorry for the Outer Limits lingo there; must have been because Joseph Stefano, the series' original producer, was the writer of that "Hitler's Secret" episode.

That leaves ABC, which leads off with Colt .45, the story of Christopher Colt (Wayde Preston), creator of the Colt .45.  Makes sense, I guess.  Then it's their own ace in the hole, the Western classic Maverick, this week starring Jack Kelly.  The Western motif continues at 7:30 with The Lawman, starring John Russell and Peter Brown.  It's not one of the most famous TV Westerns, but it was good enough to run for four seasons and 156 episodes.  And after that it's the debut of yet another oater, The Rebel, starring Nick Adams as Johnny Yuma, "a young Southern veteran of the Civil War," and the premiere of The Alaskans, which isn't quite a Western but is set in Alaska during the gold rush of the 1890s, and stars Roger Moore, who'd later go on to share lead duties on Maverick.  The Westerns, and the evening's programming, end with the world's oldest teenager, Dick Clark, in yet another of his network programs, Dick Clark's World of Talent.  All in all, far from the worst night of television one could imagine. TV  

Around the dial

Some quick hits on the best from the week in classic TV:

I love this post from Captain Video - Burke's Law in comic book form!

Halloween doesn't mean as much when you live in a complex without trick-or-treaters, but Comfort TV has a list of five horror-themed episodes "more frightening than a Miley Cyrus video."

Classic Sports TV and Media previews the latest ESPN documentary on one of the most colorful teams in pro sports history - the ABA's Spirits of St. Louis.

And how great is this - Vincent Price on F Troop!  Thanks, How Sweet It Was.

TV Gems lists TV Guide's "60 Greatest Animated Shows of All Time."  Tom's got some doubts - and I have to ask: where's Alvin?

If you've commented lately and I haven't responded, don't take it personally - I'm scrambling on a few projects right now, which means I don't spend nearly as much time here as I'd like.  But don't let that stop you from coming back on Saturday for another great look at another great TV Guide! TV  

Mitchell's Top Ten, #4: Doctor Who (Classic)

It's just possible I may have told this story before, so if I have bear with me.

It was many years ago now, over 25 at least, and I was spending a Friday night at a friend’s house. Around about 10pm or so, he flipped on the TV to the PBS channel, to a show he wanted me to watch with him. “I think you’ll like it,” he said, or words to that effect. The show was a British import, as so many of the local presentations were (and are), a science fiction series called Doctor Who. I’d seen the show listed in the TV Guide before, but hadn’t paid any attention to it. As the episode unfolded ("The Face of Evil," my episode guide informs me), my friend briefed me on the basics: the show’s hero was an alien with the ability to travel in both time and space. His space ship was a blue box, normally used by British police to phone the station, which was bigger on the inside than it was on the outside. His personality was outsized, a man who met challenges with an impervious humor, and something of an Enlightenment attitude toward religion. He often traveled with attractive women, but there was no hanky-panky involved. And there was one other thing, though it wasn’t germane to this particular episode, but he thought I should know about it because Doctor Who was on twice a week—Friday and Saturday—and a different actor was playing the role on each night. That was because whenever the hero was seriously injured, on the point of death, he had the ability to regenerate into a new person, or rather the same person, but with a new body, appearance, and personality. Right.

Watching Doctor Who was an agreeable-enough experience, although I’ve always struggled when it came to watching programs that weren’t my idea to watch, especially when I’ve been assured that it was a show I would like, so I tolerated the show for the 90 minutes that it ran, assured my friend that I’d have to keep an eye on it, and then promptly forgot about it.

Fast-forward a few weeks, to another Friday night. In these pre-cable days (for us, at least), there weren’t many viewing choices, perhaps six or seven channels in all, so when all three versions of the 10pm news led with the same story (the Jordan child-abuse scandal, which was a staggeringly big deal in the Twin Cities), a story I was sick to death of, I stretched out my arm, desperately flipping the dial in search of the first channel to have something on besides the news, at least until they were done with the Jordan story. I landed on Channel 2, which was airing Doctor Who.

It stayed there, every Friday (and Saturday) night, for the next five years.

At first I watched it because it was fresh and new. Later, after I’d fully enveloped myself in the Doctor Who universe, I watched it because I couldn’t not watch it. It was maybe the second show that had ever had that effect on me, where I became so fully a part of the world of the show and its inhabitants. I even became a member of the local PBS station, since they were offering a Doctor Who picture-disc as the pledge-break premium. I don’t mean to say that I ventured into the territory of the Trekkers and role players, although Doctor Who has its fair share of those.  

No, it was the desire to learn as much about the program as I could, its history and continuing storyline, the actors who’d played The Doctor, the rules governing Time Lords and time travel, the whole thing. As the BBC released more episodes from the early days of Doctor Who, dating back to the first episode in 1963, I was enthralled. To find that there were others aware of this TV show with the cult following, not typical sci-fi nerds but people such as the man who maintained the plants in the office in which I worked, was thrilling. I attended the conventions at which actors who'd played The Doctor appeared (Peter Davison, Patrick Troughton and Colin Baker, to be precise; but not, alas, my favorite, Tom Baker). I celebrated the show's twenty-fifth anniversary in 1988. I even took up eating jelly babies. And when the newest episodes came over, with only a few months’ delay, my dedication to the show was complete.

*Don't pay any attention to the 12-foot scarf I have hanging in the library at home.

    Sylvester McCoy: the last real Doctor?

I came to know and appreciate each Doctor for his own personality quirks: William Hartnell's overarching imperiousness, Patrick Troughton's innocent playfulness, Jon Pertwee's suave swashbuckling, Tom Baker's bohemian unpredictability, Peter Davison's reluctant heroism, Colin Baker's anti-hero rudeness, and Sylvester McCoy's mysterious omniscience. And for the cheesiness of of some of the monsters and special effects, there were stories with a remarkably deep insight into the human condition; in "Planet of the Spiders," the Third Doctor risks his life against overpowering odds because it was more important to him to confront his fears than to simply "go on living"; in "The Sunmakers," the Fourth Doctor reminds a group of slaves that "you're human beings, and humans always have to fight for their freedom," and in "Genesis of the Daleks," he asks if he has the right to destroy another life form—even if it happens to be the most evil of adversaries, the Daleks. For what was putatively a children's show, it dealt with some heavy ideas.

Then the BBC, after twenty-seven seasons, pulled the plug. It wasn’t cancelled, they insisted —only on hiatus—but as the years went on, the show became less and less of a presence, both on television and in my life. I still had the books and that scarf, and as the show began to come out on video I enjoyed the episodes, but somehow it wasn’t the same, knowing that what we had was all we had and that there wouldn’t be anything more.

Until there was. Doctor Who reappeared, first in a Fox movie that briefly rekindled the hope of a regular series; and then, following years of rumors and false starts, in a revival that picked up where the old series had left off, one that, for the first few years at least, did a remarkably good job of integrating itself with the original, so that was easy to believe that each of the actors who'd played The Doctor had all inhabited the same universe, even though the special effects were fancier and the monsters weren't as cheesy and the show itself is less campy and more dramatic.

And then the show went off the rails, getting too much into gender identity and woke politics, and it forced me to reassess my thoughts abou the new version. One could make the case that there was still a line of continuity, at least up through Peter Capaldi, the Twelfth Doctor, but there the show ended for me. And when it came to my love for the series, I was forced to concede that there were, after all, two versions of Doctor Who: the original, and the new. Which meant that, for me, the last Doctor was really the Eighth, Paul McGann, who had played the Doctor in the TV movie. But since he'd only played the role once (not including the many audio adventures he'd done since), the last "classic" Doctor was Sylvester McCoy, who'd also appeared in the movie, and who, during his time on the show, had really grown on me. 

So when it comes to considering the Top Ten, I have to make a distinction: Doctor Who 1.0 belongs, Doctor Who 2.0 does not. It isn't, when all is said and done, much of a concession to make. Those initial 27 seasons provided more than enough pleasure to guarantee a place on the list. Perhaps I don’t have the same passion for Doctor Who that I once did; after all, the blaze from the spark that ignites any love affair eventually lessens, and the thrill of discovery can’t last once everything’s discovered. But, in rewatching the series from the start, from that very first presentation of William Hartnell's the crotchety old man living in a battered police box sitting in a junkyard, I find that my enjoyment of the series continues—not as something new and different, but something familiar and comfortable.

It’s a show that I can look back on with a deep and abiding affection, and I'm not embarrassed to display my fandom. No list of my favorite television shows can exist without it. TV