What's on TV? Wednesday, December 24, 1958

Well, Christmas Eve is finally here - at least in this issue of TV Guide - and let's see what people are watching when they're not getting together with family, opening presents, or going to church!

This week in TV Guide: December 20, 1958

The big day is finally here, and it's not about to escape the notice of TV Guide.  In fact, it would almost be easier to talk about the shows that don't have special Christmas themes than it is to point out the ones that do.

There's a special section devoted to Christmas programming - everything from Christmas stories of regular series to variety and drama specials.  Among those series with holiday-flavored episodes are The Lone Ranger, G.E. Theater, The Loretta Young Show, The George Burns Show, Ozzie and Harriet and The Donna Reed Show.  Christmas episodes appear in the unlikeliest places, on  series such as Naked City, Steve Canyon and Dragnet.  Even Westerns aren't immune to the trend, with The Texan, The Restless Gun, Tales of Wells Fargo, Wanted: Dead or Alive and Wagon Train all joining in the Yuletide spirit.  Syndicated reruns provide even more holiday episodes.

Variety shows, of which there are many, are made for times like this, and Perry Como, Dick Clark, Lawrence Welk, Arthur Godfrey, Red Skelton, Eddie Fisher, Arthur Murray, Milton Berle, Ernie Ford, Pat Boone and Garry Moore are making the most of it.  The Voice of Firestone and Armstrong Circle Theater present Christmas music, and Playhouse 90 shows the Nutcracker ballet, performed by the New York City Ballet Company.  Their absence today leaves a giant hole in Christmas on television.

But as far as cultural significance goes, probably the biggest difference between Christmas then and now.  All three networks will be carrying special religious services on both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, including live broadcasts from New York, Washington D.C. and Chicago, and Bishop Fulton Sheen hosts a one-hour ABC special on Christmas Eve.  In fact, there are so many of them this week - 39, by my count, on the local and national scene - there's a column dedicated to listing them, just like the sports and specials sections. Even given that the majority of them are on Sunday, that's still a lot of programming.

The Christmas broadcasting season had begun early in 1958, on December 9, with a musical version of The Gift of the Magi, and had continued with Amahl and the Night Visitors, a Hallmark Hall of Fame Christmas mosaic, and specials on Walt Disney and Dupont Show of the Month.  All in all, some great programming, don't you think?

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In addition to the national programs above, there are some nice little local shows airing this week.  For instance, Saturday morning on KDAL in Duluth, Chef Hans Freischle shows how to prepare a complete Christmas dinner, and later that day KMMT's (Austin, Minnesota) Uncle Al features a puppet show telling the story of Rudolph.  At 10:30pm (CT) Monday night, KGLO in Mason City, Iowa presents a concert by the men's choir of the Mason City Chamber of Commerce.  On Christmas Eve afternoon, KTCA, the educational channel in Minneapolis, presents a unique science fiction story on how the Nativity might have appeared if it occurred on another planet, and follows up that evening with various Christmas programs.  And on Christmas night itself, KSTP shows a Christmas night skating show featuring the Figure Skating Club of Minneapolis, an annual program that runs through the '60s on KSTP and later on WTCN.

There are some great local movies on as well.  The Saturday matinee on KROC in Rochester is The Bells of St. Mary's, Bing Crosby's sequel to Going My Way.  WCCO and KDAL both have my favorite, Miracle on 34th Street*, on Saturday and Tuesday nights respectively, while Wednesday night WTCN has the appropriately named Christmas Eve, which I hadn't heard of before.

*Not to be confused with The House on 92nd Street, airing Monday night on KDAL, about Nazi spies in the United States during World War II.

The great thing about all this is that there are other Christmas programs on this week that I haven't even touched on yet.

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The NFL is supposed to have a week off between the end of the regular season and the championship game, scheduled for December 28.  But then there's this note in Sunday's programming section:

If there is a National Football League play-off game today, it will be televised beginning at 1 p.m. and will pre-empt the programs scheduled for this time period on Chs. 3, 3M, 4, 8.  It will emanate from New York City, where the Cleveland Browns and New York Giants will play for the Eastern Conference championship.  At press time, it was not certain whether such a game would be required.

A word or two of explanation: in these pre-playoff days when only the two conference champions faced off in the championship, the NFL (like Major League Baseball) used a playoff tiebreaker - not head-to-head record - to settle ties for the conference crown.  And entering the last day of the 1958 regular season, the Cleveland Browns lead the New York Giants by one game.  Adding to the drama, that final game pitted the Browns and Giants in Yankee Stadium.  If the Browns won, the East, and a championship matchup against the Baltimore Colts, would be theirs.  A Giants victory, however, would send the two into that playoff game on the 21st.

Summerall's kick is straight and true.

At the time, it might have seemed like a long shot, given the unlikelihood that the Giants would be able to stop Cleveland's great running back Jim Brown.  Brown, then in his second season in the NFL, was in the process of shattering the league's single-season rushing record (eventually winding up with over 1500 yards in just twelve games), and the Browns were heavily favored going into the final game.

Things looked even better for Cleveland when Brown lumbered 65 yards for a touchdown on the game's first play from scrimmage.  However, on a cold Sunday afternoon with snow drifting down from the grey sky, the Giants would rally in one of the most famous games in NFL history, and Pat Summerall's 49-yard field goal on the game's final play gave New York a 13-10 win, forcing this Sunday's playoff game.

That game, which preempts a variety of local programs, is something of an anticlimax, as the Giants shut down the Browns thoroughly, winning 10-0 and sending them to next week's title clash with the Colts.  That game will become known to many as The Greatest Game Ever Played, the first sudden-death game in pro football history, the game that put the NFL on the television map to stay.  But that's a story for another week.

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In other news, an unbylined article covers the upcoming British invasion - no, not The Beatles, but British TV. So far, of the 19 series that have been shipped to America, the only truly successful one has been Robin Hood, but that's not stopping the Brits from working on more.  They have some obstacles to overcome, chief among them that the British film industry doesn't yet take television seriously.  They "just don't believe it when we demand the best there is to be had," says Donald Hyde, executive producer for Gross-Krasne, Ltd.  He's currently working on a series called The Flying Doctor, starring American actor Richard Denning.  Thirty-nine episodes of the series will wind up being produced and aired during the 1959-60 television season, but I don't see that it made much of a dent over here.  Perhaps Cult TV will know more about it.

It does point out one thing though, and that's the growing trend toward casting Americans as the leads in British shows to be exported.  In the future we'll see this more often; off the top of my head I can think of Steve Forrest in The Baron, Man in a Suitcase with Richard Bradford, and The Protectors with Robert Vaughn, but I know there are more examples out there.  As for British actors donning the American accent, Hyde's partner Phil Krasne points out, "We must watch actors constantly over here to keep them understandable to Americans."

None of the upcoming series in production were huge hits in America, although there was Ivanhoe, the first starring vehicle for Roger Moore, but the outlook for Brit imports is promising.  For one thing, "more and more" American companies are financing and producing shows in Britain, due to favorable financial conditions and exotic British locales.  So don't give up hope - Doctor Who, The Saint and The Avengers are just around the corner!

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Did I mention Ed Sullivan yet?  I often overlook him in the weeks when there's no Hollywood Palace, but Ed's here with Jose Ferrer and Lois Smith, who are doing a scene from the current Broadway play Edwin Booth, plus opera star Rise Stevens (Going My Way), Canadian comedians Wayne and Shuster (who never did hit it as big here, despite all the times Ed had them on), Olympic figure skating champion Dick Button (who was on Hallmark Hall of Fame last week if you remember)*, jouranlist Bob Considine, singers Betty Johnson, David Seville (the creator behind Alvin and the Chipmunks) and Luis Mariano, and Vic Julian and his French poodles.

*Skating on the Rockefeller Plaza rink - in the shadow of NBC, no less.

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Omnibus was a variety show of a different color.  Bankrolled by the Ford Foundation, it was television's attempt to bring a weekly cultural magazine to Sunday afternoons.  It was hosted by the wonderful Alistar Cooke, and offered a truly staggering blend of subjects - everything from classical music to jazz, comedic and dramatic performances, plays, musicals, interviews with public figures, profiles, and serious discussions of how to understand and appreciate the arts.  It's one of the rare series that appeared on all three networks at one time or another during its run from 1952 to 1961; in this case, it's on NBC.

This week's show, entitled "Dancing is a Man's Game," stars Gene Kelly, who explores the athletic as well as artistic side of dancing, and how many of the movements involved are similar to those used by athletes.  Up until the last 100 years, Kelly asserts, dancing was dominated by men, and it was considered a masculine form of art.

This particular episode is one of the rare ones available on DVD - here's a look at it:


I've said it before and I'll say it again - see what kinds of shows you can have when Sunday afternoons aren't dominated by sports?  But if that is what you're looking for, NBC also has an NBA game at 1:30 featuring the Syracuse Nationals and the New York Knickerbockers from Madison Square Garden, announced by Curt Gowdy.  In case Syracuse doesn't ring a bell with you, they're now the Philadelphia 76ers.

And a final sports note - did you notice I haven't mentioned college football?  This year, we'll have had ten bowl games played by Christmas Day, but in 1958 there were only eight scheduled, and only one - the Bluegrass Bowl - has been played.  Three more games are scheduled between December 27 and 31, with the Big Four (Rose, Orange, Sugar, Cotton) on New Year's Day.  There is a small-college game on Saturday, Northeastern State vs. Arizona State-Flagstaff in the Holiday Bowl for the NAIA championship, but don't confuse this one with the current Holiday Bowl - this is played in St. Petersburg, Florida.  In case you're curious, Northeastern State wins, 19-13.

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And with that, we'll bid a fond farewell to this Christmas issue of TV Guide.  Except - we'll be back on Tuesday for a "What's on TV?" look at the listings for Christmas Eve, 1958.  See you then!

TV  

Around the dial

Some good things in the blogosphere, so let's get right to it.

As you may remember from this piece (near the end), I've got a deep-seated antipathy toward Truman Capote's A Christmas Memory.  Joanna at Christmas TV History has a more neutral approach though, and if you're interested in an objective viewpoint of the TV adaptation of Capote's short story, this is the place to go.

The idea of an NFL game not being televised anywhere nowadays is, as Jeff of Classic TV Sports says, unthinkable.  So when did this last happen and why?  The story here.  I can't imagine this happening today either, although I think we can all agree there should be some games that are better left not being seen.

I first learned about the British crime drama The Sweeney not from a TV website, but from the guys at Top Gear.  Now Cult TV Blog gives a more proper overview of the series.  He also makes a very good point in discussing the episode "Taste of Fear," that being that you can't separate shows like this from "the troubled history of the decade in which they were made."

The idea of a "classic TV constant" is one that I hadn't considered before, and I'm glad that David at Comfort TV brings it up.  Is there one show that you can turn to as comfort food, one that's an origin point for your classic TV appreciation, a focal point for your viewing?  I guessed Hogan's Heroes, but I'm willing to bet there are others on my list if I think about it.

Television Obscurities continues the week-by-week rundown of TV Guide for the 1964-65 season, this last week looking at the December 12 issue with Julie Newmar on the cover.  I've got this issue as well, and I'm glad that Robert didn't overlook Leslie Raddatz's kind-of snarky article on Bing Crosby.  I don't comment on these articles enough, but they're sure fun to read.

At The Lucky Strike Papers, Andrew reports on the death of former CBS News correspondent Richard C. Hottelet, the last of the "Murrow Boys."  I must have seen him on TV back in the day, though I don't remember him.  I have seen and heard him on some of the old news coverage that's online.  But I definitely remember his name from many an old TV Guide.  RIP.

It's another Kliph Nesteroff interview at Classic Television Showbiz, this time with Dick Gautier, a familiar face on TV from Get Smart and When Things Were Rotten, but I didn't know until I read this that he'd also had a career in stand-up comedy.  You'll always learn something new if you're not careful, as my mother used to say.

That's it for today; tune in on Saturday when Christmas Day comes to TV Guide! TV  

What are we to make of Rudolph? (and other foibles of adults watching cartoons)

CELESTE HOLM AND GREGORY PECK IN A SCENE FROM GENTLEMAN'S AGREEMENT

We've been having a lot of fun at the expense of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer lately.  Now, we all love Rudolph, but let's face it - the script isn't going to win any kind of award.  In fact, for adults, the whole thing can be kind of, well, stupid.  Last week at the Facebook site I linked to a couple of articles pointing out the inconsistencies, if you will, of the story, not unlike the piece I wrote here last year.

And yet we watch it each year, and we're not about to give it up.  So what about people like the Hadleys - with no children to appreciate the simple treasures, as well as the fears that all kids have about being part of the "right" group, watching Rudolph is pretty much an act of nostalgia.  We marvel at the animation, hum along with the now-familiar tunes, but suffer in trying to make sense of it all.  Because it doesn't make any sense!

Some years ago I posted this piece, based on my friend Peter's ruminations about Frosty the Snowman, another cartoon that, shall we say, would fit in well at MST3K.  And yet Peter wasn't satirizing Frosty, but looking at it from another, more serious angle.  And it's true that stories can often have meanings beyond those intended by the storyteller.  So while watching Rudolph last Sunday afternoon (at 4:30pm CT, its original air time), I let my mind speculate on how one might choose to look at the story in a way that not only adds meaning to it, but puts it squarely in the context of its time.  After all, this is why It's About TV! exists in the first place.

Gentleman's Agreement, the 1947 Oscar winner for Best Picture, told the story of a journalist (Gregory Peck) who went undercover, posing as a Jew, to expose anti-Semitism in New York.  At the time, and for years afterward, discrimination against Jews was fairly widespread in certain quarters; the stories about Jews being unable to join country clubs are all the more powerful because they were true.  It didn't matter that many of these Jews were successful businessmen, pillars of the community, good and decent people - there were still landlords that wouldn't rent to a Jew, hotels that wouldn't book rooms for Jews, doctors that wouldn't treat Jews.  Oftentimes, the best evidence that someone was a Jew was simply the sound of their name.

That discrimination still existed thirteen years later, in 1964 - the year that Rudolph was first broadcast. At the same time, and even less subtly, was the discrimination suffered by many American blacks.  Based solely on an external - the color of their skin - they were forced to drink at separate water fountains, eat at separate restaurants, stay at separate hotels.  They too faced neighborhoods in which they couldn't buy homes, employers that wouldn't hire them, colleges in which they couldn't enroll, laws that were applied differently to them.  Although there's nothing to suggest that Romeo Muller, the writer of the animated Rudolph, had any of this in mind, it's inconceivable that he would have been unaware of it.  Did any of it influence what he wrote, even indirectly?

To go back to Rudolph, we know that there's no reason Rudolph should be prevented from being on Santa's sleigh team just because he has a red nose, and Santa was a jerk for going along with it.  He was like many people throughout history, basically good and decent men who were afraid to buck the majority (no pun intended).  Rudolph's father Donner was more interested in prestige and influence than he was in justice.  The other reindeer picked on him because he looked different from them, and it's always easy to hate those who are different.  Only Clarice and Rudolph's mother were able to look behind the externals and see Rudolph for who he really was.  The color of his nose was no different from the color of a man's skin, or the kind of religion he practiced.  That didn't stop people from discriminating against him, though.

To really make sense of Rudolph, therefore, it seems that one has to really understand the era from which it comes, and the cultural pressures that existed.  And indeed, it's not too hard to imagine that at least one child somewhere might have looked at Rudolph being ostracized by the reindeer community and wondered to himself why, if that was wrong, it was okay that the family of one of his classmates had such a hard time finding a place to live because of their religion or the color of their skin.

Not to put too fine a point on this, but this societal context can be seen in more than just Rudolph, of course.  Take Santa Claus Is Coming to Town, another Rankin-Bass animated special from 1970.  The story features an orphan baby named Claus being taken in by a family of elves, headed by the matriarch Tanta Kringle, who were formerly official toy makers to the king of the country in which they live, which is now under the rule of the Burgermeister Meisterburger, who lives in the capital city of Sombertown.  Now, I've often thought that this actually represented an allegory on Communism or some other totalitarian form of government, and over the weekend I deepened this thought.

Life was apparently once good in this country, until the Burgermeister came to power, so it's unlikely that the capital was always called "Sombertown."  More likely that it was renamed, in the same way that St. Petersburg was renamed Leningrad.  Also, note the atmosphere of Sombertown, all drab and gray, much as our perception of the Eastern bloc - East Germany, for example, or Czechsolvakia.  Remember, this was just two years after the Soviet army crushed the uprising in Prague.  As for the toys being thrown in a bonfire and burned, I don't know how anyone could not think of the Nazi book-burnings, or similar Soviet-era purges.  The Kringles themselves, in exile following the overthrow of the Czar - er, King - would have been outcasts in Siberia, much like other enemies of the state.

The Burgermeister and his predecessor, Stalin

You might think that I'm reading too much into these animated specials, which are merely meant to entertain kids (and sell toys), and I'm not suggesting that the makers had these allegorical messages in mind at all.  What I am saying is that you can never pull any piece of art out of its era without also looking at the context in which it was created, and the forces at work in the culture of the times.  Just as Rudolph was made in a time were people would have been well-aware of discrimination against blacks and Jews, viewers of Santa Claus Is Coming to Town were living during the Cold War, and many of the traits of the Burgermeisters would have been instantly recognizable to them as sharing aspects of Communist- or Nazi-era totalitarianism.

In other words, these shows, and many like them, are products of their times.  Look at when they were made, and you see a window into another time, another culture.  And we can often speak a truth unknowingly.  Caiaphas the High Priest, for instance, tried to justify Jesus' death by telling the Jews it was "better for you that one man should die for the people, not that the whole nation should perish." Christians clearly see the fulfillment of this prophesy in the Resurrection of Christ as the Savior, yet this is certainly not what Caiaphas meant - he denied that Jesus was the Christ.  His words, therefore, carried a truth that even he was not aware of.

So it is then, and also today.  If we're inclined to watch Rudolph and Santa Claus and Frosty and the rest, by all means.  And next time you do so, think about watching them while keeping in mind what I've written about here.  The main lesson to take from this is that we're all part of history and it will always inform whatever we read or watch, whether we know it or not.

What's on TV? Tuesday, December 15, 1959

I

've mentioned before that sometimes the most interesting things are hidden in the details; I'd like to think that it's more than just an excuse to talk about things that only interest me, and we'll test that this week. For instance, you'll note that Walter Cronkite is off the noontime news this week, and John Daly is also missing from ABC's evening news. They're accompanying President Eisenhower on his trip to Europe and the Middle East, "the most extensive foreign tour ever undertaken by an American chief executive." And then there's Art Linkletter's guest on House Party, Dr. Carlton Williams. The topic of the day's show is the flouride controversy, and if you think this has to do with different ways of fighting tooth decay, then it's time to introduce you to the Communist plot to use fluoride as a mass tranquilizer. It's worth looking into further, but I'm not sure we're ready to drag the John Birch Society into this discussion. Maybe next week. As for this week, the listings are from the Minnesota State Edition.