This week in TV Guide: January 1, 1972

If you want a quick but trenchant history of politics in the later half of the twentieth century, you could do worse than to look at two pictures in TV Guide's review of the year 1971.

The first picture, from August 15, shows President Richard M. Nixon delivering his speech in which he announces a 90-day freeze on wages and prices.  The second, from one month earlier, is of Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's secret groundwork preparing Nixon's historic trip to China.  The story told by these two seemingly unrelated events could fill a book, but even a brief overview can go a long way to explain the evolution of the conservative political movement and the eventual election of Ronald Reagan.

As always, the purpose here is not to take sides, nor to express strong opinions on ideological issues, though I certainly have those.  But these two issues play a central role in the events that follow, and it's critical to understand them in order to make sense of what will follow.

Nixon had been a bane of the liberal establishment ever since his role in the investigation of Alger Hiss while in the House in the 1950s, and in his role as Vice President, many conservatives had more confidence in him than they did in the President, Dwight Eisenhower.  That confidence was never extremely deep though, and it began to erode when Nixon engaged in detente, if you will, with the liberal governor of New York, Nelson Rockefeller, at the 1960 GOP Convention.  By 1968 Reagan, the governor of California, had inherited the conservative mantle from Barry Goldwater, but Nixon had enough establishment support to win the Republican presidential nomination, and the election. In 1971, however, some conservatives were already in rebellion against Nixon, discussing the possibility of running Vice President Spiro Agnew against him.*

*Agnew, you'll recall from last week, had made big headlines with his accusations of liberal bias against the media.

Which brings us to the issues at the top of the page.  Nixon's detente with Red China is anathema to Cold War conservatives who are outraged at the abandonment of America's long-time allies on Taiwan.  The wage-and-price freeze strike a similar discord with economic conservatives, who see Nixon's adoption of centralized economic policy as an alarming concession to Keynesian interventionist policy.*  In fact, this discontent is visible in a special edition of PBS' Firing Line on Friday night, as host William F. Buckley Jr. welcomes his brother, U.S. Senator James Buckley, conservative economist Milton Friedman, Ohio Representative John Ashbrook, former congresswoman Clare Boothe Luce, and Reagan, to discuss the topic "American Conservatives Confront 1972."  "Conservative reaction to Administration policies" is a focal point of the program - interesting since the guests and the Administration are, more or less, members of the same party.

*"We are all Keynesians now."

In the end,  Ashbrook will challenge Nixon in the Republican primaries, and though his run doesn't gather a lot of traction, it shows the toll that Nixon's policies are taking on his conservative support.  And while Nixon wins a landslide victory in 1972*, Watergate percolates in the background.

*Footnote: on Tuesday at 7:40 p.m. CT, Senator Ed Muskie, the Democratic candidate for Vice President in 1968, purchases 10 minutes of airtime on CBS, where it is expected that he will formally announce his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination.  The early front-runner, he is damaged by smaller-than-expected victories in Iowa and New Hampshire, and never recovers.

Politically speaking, many liberals will privately express the opinion that it's necessary to get rid of Agnew before going after Nixon, lest he become president if Nixon were to be impeached, and the revelation of corruption charges against Agnew while he was governor of Maryland will take care of that.  And as the net begins to close around Nixon, his conservative support was less than unanimous - first Ashbrook, then the brothers Buckley, and finally Barry Goldwater himself, call for Nixon's resignation, which becomes inevitable.  The ascension to the presidency of moderate Gerald Ford prompts the challenge by Ronald Reagan in 1976, and Reagan's eventual victory in 1980.

(Left) Nixon announces wage/price controls; (Right) Kissinger after his secret trip to Mainland China

Again, I'm not trying to take sides here, but to suggest that these pictures tell a lot of the story of what was, and what would be.  Whatever Nixon's crimes may have been, there's no doubt that the long-standing liberal hatred - dating back to the Hiss affair - propelled many liberals, while conservative passion for backing Nixon was far less charged.  And so it could be said that the year 1971 and the two issues pictured in TV Guide - wage and price controls and detente with China - personifies the transition of conservatism from Nixon in 1948 to Reagan in 1980.  It's likely that few people looking at this issue would have been able to predict how it all would turn out.

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As this might suggest, we're looking at another New Year's edition of TV Guide.  (And it seems as if it were only last week that we were going from 1969 to 1970.  I guess it's true that the older you get, the faster time seems to fly.)  We probably don't have to rehash all the New Year's programming available to viewers - you know the drill,  Parades, football, repeat.

The Orange Bowl, on New Year's night, does pose an interesting matchup - the second #1 vs. #2 game in a little over a month.  It's not the Game of the Century, as was the Thanksgiving game between Nebraska and Oklahoma, but this showdown for the national championship between undefeateds Nebraska and Alabama promises to be epic.  Unlike that Thanksgiving game, however, this one fails to live up to its billing, as Nebraska takes its second consecutive championship, beating Alabama 38-6.  The Sugar, Cotton and Rose Bowls fill out the day.


On Sunday, the NFC and AFC championship games are held (on CBS and NBC, respectively), with the winners to meet in the Super Bowl.  In the second year of the post-merger NFL, the Dallas Cowboys and Miami Dolphins defeat, respectively, the San Francisco 49ers and Baltimore Colts.  Two weeks hence, the Cowboys will win their first Super Bowl, defeating the Dolphins 24-3.  ABC presents a prime-time NBA game on Monday, while Channel 11 has a Minnesota North Stars hockey game on Wednesday.  And that's all the sports for the week in this pre-ESPN era.

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I've mentioned Virginia Graham before.  As the host of women-oriented talk shows (Girl Talk, The Virginia Graham Show), she's a fixture on television.  But she hits the trifecta on Friday, appearing all over the place.  On her own syndicated show (3:30 p.m, Channel 5) she welcomes George Burns and singer Jane Harvey as her guests, in a tribute to singer-songwriter Johnny Mercer.  She's also a guest on the syndicated daytime talk show Mantrap* at 9:30 a.m. on Channel 9, discussing Peter Marin's book Understanding Drug Use, and she winds up the evening appearing on the syndicated show Juvenile Jury (6:30 p.m., Channel 4), defending the right of grandmothers to wear miniskirts.

*Hosted by Canadian television personality Alan Hamel, the future husband of Suzanne Somers.

Three different shows on three different channels, all in one day.  Quite an accomplishment.

***

And now, the cultural portion of the week, with a couple of common themes. - PBS and Russian writers.

First, on Monday night, PBS presents a rerun of NET Opera Theatre, Tchaikovsky's Pique Dame (The Queen of Spades), with a cast that - I'll be honest - I don't recognize.  I would have enjoyed seeing this harrowing opera, though.

Then on Thursday, live television drama returns, at least for one night, on PBS' Hollywood Television Theater, as husband-and-wife Rip Torn and Geraldine Page star in a pair of short dramas by Chekov.  Live dramas seem to come back every few years as a novelty, but with the exception of NBC's live musicals from the past two years, they haven't made a lot of traction.  More's the pity.

Finally, the Jerome Kern-Oscar Hammerstein musical Show Boat has begun to pop up in opera theaters over the last few years, but it took until 1972 for this 1951 movie classic to make it to the small screen.  It debuts on NBC's Monday Night at the Movies, starring Kathryn Grayson, Howard Keel and Ava Gardner, and featuring Gower and Marge Champion's dance routines, which TV Guide critic Judith Crist says "have a brilliance of their own."

It certainly doesn't take 20 years for theatrical movies to premiere on television nowadays; sometimes they appear on TV so quickly, it's hard to remember whether they were ever in the theater or not.  But there's no question that PBS has fallen down on the job when it comes to providing cultural programming.  I think I've covered this before, but let's be honest - PBS isn't any different from the commercial networks nowadays, and if they have to choose between serving the public and bringing in the ratings, we know which way they'll go.  I've got a book about that somewhere on my shelf, and I'll get to it one of these days.

***

Some random notes to close out the week.

A classic segment of Rod Serling's Night Gallery on NBC Wednesday night: Elsa Lanchester in "Green Fingers," one of the better stories in the series, with a great payoff.

Also on Wednesday, the last episode of Anthony Quinn's only television series, The Man and the City, in which he plays a big-city mayor.  It never stood a chance, going up against Night Gallery and CBS' Mannix.

Henry Fonda's final television series, The Smith Family, is also going off, at least for the fall season, though it will come back in the spring.  That was a show that never really was able to figure out what it wanted to be - family comedy, police drama, family drama, police comedy.  Then again, it only had 39 episodes with which to work.

Channel 11 has a surprisingly gritty movie in its late-night slot on Monday- the 1962 British kitchen-sink drama The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, starring Tom Courtenay and directed by Oscar-winner Tony Richardson.

Opposite the movie is David Frost's late-night chat show, and one of his guests - long before the fame of the movie A Christmas Story - is humorist Jean Shepherd, who was funny a long time before that movie came out.

And last but not least, a letter to the editor from Margaret Marshall of Monroe, Michigan (try saying that five times fast), who wants to know "why on most topical series seen weekly in street scenes there is usually an abundance of gorgeously clad girls on hand."  It seems, according to Margaret, that "there are no ordinary-looking folks in TV land."  To which the editor replies, "You mean it's not that way in Monroe?"

Great answer.  Of course, living in Dallas, we're used to seeing sights like that every day. TV  

Ringing in the New Year - it's Around the Dial!

Happy New Year, everyone! It's the first day of 2015, the fifth year of this blog, and while it's a day when everything is new, there's nothing new about the high quality of the classic TV blogosphere.  Let's get started!

Betty White was a mainstay on NBC's coverage of parades from the '50s to the '70s (as you might remember from some of the TV listings you've read here), and the Broadcasting Archives at the University of Maryland remembers this with vintage pictures of Betty hosting the Rose Parade.  A classy presence compared to some of the parade hosts of today.

TV Gems takes a moment for Dick Dale, one of the featured performers on The Lawrence Welk Show for almost 30 years, who died recently.  As Tom points out, Dale's passing didn't get much attention, presumably because most media sources don't think anyone remembers the Welk show anymore.  Well, we remember it here - it was a standard in my grandparents' house on Saturday nights when I was growing up.  I can't say I was ever a big fan, but it's a pity television doesn't have any room for shows like it anymore.

Time travel is always an appealing theme on television and in movies, and this week Rick at Classic Film and TV Cafe flashes back to the best time travel movies.  A very good lineup, and you can catch many of them on television from time to time, although I'm appalled that he doesn't include Dr. Who and the Daleks or Daleks – Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D.  Just kidding - I have a fondness for them as bastard children of the Doctor Who series, but that's about it!

Classic TV Sports combines two of my favorite things - sports and television - and it's been a great read this year.  In fact, Jeff's final post of 2014 gives some highlights of the blog's third year, and if you haven't read all of these I'd suggest you take a moment to do so.

I didn't know that Mary Tyler Moore started out as a dancing elf, did you?  Happily, Michael's TV Tray corrects this defect in my knowledge, with a vintage clip of MTM playing the elf in a commercial for Hotpoint appliances, in commemoration of her 78th birthday.  I thought that was familiar - our cooktop is a Hotpoint.  And it only looks as if it might have been in a MTM commercial.

Comfort TV points out that New Year's Day isn't really fertile ground for television shows, and in fact the day has always - to me - meant parades and football more than anything else.  But it is a time for new beginnings, which is the theme of David's 2015 project - looking at classic television series in which the main characters start out in their new lives in the first episode.  That should be fun!

Robert at Television Obscurities continues his tremendous series on TV Guide, week by week, for the 1964-65 television season, with the issue that closes out 1964.  I've got this issue in my collection as well, and earlier in the year I'd scheduled this for my year-end review as well.  But after seeing how great Robert's recaps are, I thought I'd wait for a year so I wouldn't have to compete!  He also was very kind to link to one of my TV Party! articles, which I'd be pleased to have you check out.

Finally, Television.au has a very interesting article on the advent of pay-TV in Australia, back in 1995.  It may have taken awhile to get started but once it did, it expanded quickly.  It's getting harder and harder not only to remember the days before pay-TV, but to remember how different the culture of that time was.

I think that's good to get you started for the new year, don't you?  But come on back Saturday, and we'll look at the first new TV Guide review of 2015! TV  

What's on TV? Thursday, January 1, 1970

It's the end of the '60s and the beginning of the '70s, and in commemoration I thought we'd take a look at the broadcast schedule for that first day of 1970.  For many people New Year's Day means parades and football and the listings confirm this.  By the way, one year to the day, January 1, 1971, tobacco advertising in the United States would end; the date was chosen because of the industry's advertising on the parades and games.

One other thing, which I neglected to point out on Saturday; because CBS has joined the late-nite talk show wars with The Merv Griffin Show, there is no national broadcast of Guy Lombardo's New Year's Eve concert.  The always-reliable Wikipedia mentions that during these years, Lombardo's show was broadcast live on a syndicated hookup, but otherwise there's no New Year's Eve special broadcast on any of the networks.  Dick Clark's show is still three years away.

And now, on with the shows!

This week in TV Guide: December 27, 1969

The images on the cover only begin to tell the story of the end to one of the most tumultuous decades in American history, and the finale to one of the most remarkable years of that decade.  A man whose political career was left for dead is sworn in as president, a children's fairy tale comes true on live television, and the World Series is won by a team that didn't even exist at the start of the decade - that, and more, is what 1969 is all about.

***

I remember the end of the '60s, primarily because there was something about the idea of the '70s that just didn't feel right.  Perhaps it was because the '60s were the only years I'd ever known, or maybe it was because the '70s formally stylized the graphic elements that had taken root in the later '60s.  It could, I suppose, even be due to the shape of the numbers, the roundness of the 6 that was missing in the angular lines of the 7.  Whatever the reason, I never really did get used to the '70s, and even to this day there's a superficiality about it that I don't particularly feel in the '60s and the '80s.  TV Guide also changes its primary font for the programming listings, which I suspect they hope will give it a less cluttered, more modern and streamlined look.  To me it seems, I don't know, too minimal, insubstantial.  Never liked the look of it then, don't like it today.

Be that as it may, the end of the decade is a time for looking back, and CBS does that through Walter Cronkite's one-hour interview with former President Lyndon B. Johnson on Saturday night, the second of several occasional specials.  In this installment, LBJ discusses his decision not to run for reelection, and the factors that went into the decision.  Other programs offer a look back at the news of the past year (KSTP, Sunday afternoon) and a look ahead to what 1970 may bring (NBC, earlier Sunday afternoon).

TV Guide's look back at 1969 is filled with some stunning pictures, from Joe Namath leading the New York Jets to their shock Super Bowl victory over the Baltimore Colts to Richard Nixon being sworn in as 37th President.  There are the pictures of coverage of the death and funeral of Dwight Eisenhower, the formal investiture of Charles as Prince of Wales (a title he still holds, and I wonder how many people watching that broadcast could have predicted that), and mass protests over civil rights and the Vietnam War.  There's Ted Kennedy attempting to explain Chappaquiddick, the Miracle Mets winning the World Series over the Baltimore Orioles*, the debut of Sesame Street on NET, the end of the Smothers Brothers show on CBS, and Vice President Agnew's blistering attack on network news commentaries, carried by all three networks.  And, most remarkably, there's the picture of Neil Armstrong putting the first footprint on the moon.  Quite a year, wouldn't you say?

*Meaning that New York defeated Baltimore in both the World Series and the Super Bowl.

The closing weeks of December also brought forth retrospectives on everything from the decade in sports (ABC's Wide World of Sports, Saturday afternoon) to the big, fat mess that was the '60s.  I remember seeing pictures of the dead in Vietnam, the three astronauts killed in the fire on Apollo 1, the deaths of the two Kennedys and Martin Luther King, Woodstock, the riots in Watts and Chicago, the drug culture, - well, you name it.  I suppose the whole of the '60s could be summed up in Dickens' phrase about it being the best of times, the worst of times.  It was the first decade that TV had really covered from start to finish; sure, TV was around in 1950, but neither its capabilities nor its penetration were anything like what they were by 1969.  The decade was there, for us to see, in living black and white as well as color.  Every nuance, every victory and defeat, every triumph and tragedy, and some that we didn't find out about for years to come.  It was all there, in our living rooms, every day.  An incredible year to bring to the end an incredible decade.

As I've said - remarkable.

***

It's also the end of college football's centennial year, and this week everything come to a head in Dallas, as the top-ranked Texas Longhorns take their undefeated record to the Cotton Bowl, where they'll play the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame, making their first bowl appearance in over 40 years.  In the increasingly competitive atmosphere of the college game, Notre Dame coach Ara Parseghian has convinced the school that the Irish will no longer be able to compete for national championships if they don't abandon their long-standing no-bowl policy,* and the result is this dream matchup, one that doesn't disappoint.  Notre Dame, trying to spring the upset, leads late in the game but can't hold off the Longhorns; a fourth-down pass from James Street to Cotton Speyrer with barely two minutes to play gives Texas a 21-17 victory and the national championship.  A sign of the times: this Texas team is the last all-white squad to win the national title.

*Mostly because of the AP's recent decision to base their final poll after the bowl games, rather than at the end of the regular season. 



Fear not, though.  Just because the champion has been determined doesn't mean there aren't still some good football games out there.  For example, on Saturday it's the Gator Bowl from Jacksonville on NBC, followed by the East-West Shrine Game in Palo Alto, California.  Then, we have the second-ever Peach Bowl, a syndicated broadcast Tuesday night on Channel 11, and the following night the same channel carries the Astro-Bluebonnet Bowl* from Houston.  And on New Year's Day itself, in addition to the Cotton Bowl on CBS, it's the Sugar Bowl on ABC (moving over from NBC) and the Rose and Orange Bowls on NBC.  Not all of these games were meaningful; everyone knew that if Texas won the Cotton Bowl, the national title would be settled.  Nonetheless, they were fun to watch - more fun, quite possibly, than what we have today.

*One of the more cumbersome bowl game titles of the day; it was the plain Bluebonnet Bowl before and after the years it was played in the Astrodome.

There's pro football, as well.  Saturday the Minnesota Vikings take on the Los Angeles Rams in the NFL's Western Conference Playoff, and on Sunday it's the Dallas Cowboys and Cleveland Browns to settle the Eastern Conference title.  Both of these games are on CBS.  The AFL is off this week, after its opening round of playoffs last weekend.  Next week the Oakland Raiders and Kansas City Chiefs will meet in the 10th and final AFL Championship.  The Chiefs will win, advancing to the Super Bowl the following week, where they'll defeat the Vikings in the last NFL-AFL matchup, marking the end of a great era in professional football.

***

And, of course, what would New Year's Day be without parades?  What's that, you say?  Isn't the Rose Parade the only show in town on New Year's?  It may seem that way now, but back in the day, there were televised parades everywhere.  They start on New Year's Eve, with NBC's live broadcast of the King Orange Jamboree in Miami, hosted by Lorne Greene and Anita Bryant.  Then, on the big day, CBS covers the Cotton Bowl Parade from Dallas, with Jack Linkletter (Art's son) and former Miss America Marilyn Van Derbur, while ABC covers the Sugar Bowl Parade from New Orleans, with Chris Schenkel and Karen Valentine.  When the granddaddy of parades begins, it's broadcast on two networks, with Bob Barker and June Lockhart covering the action on CBS, and Raymond Burr and Betty White hosting on NBC.  As you may have noticed, with the exception of CBS' Rose Parade coverage each parade is broadcast on the network that also carries the corresponding football game.

***

During the 60s, the Ed Sullivan Show and The Hollywood Palace were the premiere variety shows on television. Whenever they appear in TV Guide together, we'll match them up and see who has the best lineup..

Palace: Hosts George Gobel and Vikki Carr welcome the Edwin Hawkins Singers, comedian Pat Cooper, Algerian singer Enrico Macias and the Mecners, Polish acrobats.

Sullivan: Guests Robert Merrill and Roberta Peters of the Metropolitan Opera; Joan Rivers; singers Jerry Vale, Thelma Houston and Dana Valery; the Music Hall of Israel; comic Charlie Manna; Your Father's Mustache, Dixieland band.

If I were trying to keep things short this week, I'd just say Sullivan and leave it at that, because this is one of the easiest choices I've ever had to make.  I wondered at first why the Palace had co-hosts, until I looked at the rest of the lineup and found out that Pat Cooper was the only other act I'd ever heard of.  On the other hand, Ed has a big-name lineup to wind down the year, and that has nothing to do with my bias toward opera - Merrill and Peters were two of the biggest American stars in opera, no strangers to either Sullivan's show* or television variety shows in general, Jerry Vale and Thelma Houston were very popular singers, and Joan Rivers was in the process of becoming a big star.  I rest my case.  But don't worry, Palace - there will be better days ahead.

*Peters, who made her Met debut when she was only 20, was in fact the most frequent guest on the Sullivan show.

***

I don't know if you'd call this a Golden Age of variety shows, but besides Sullivan and the Palace there are a lot of others still on - more than you might remember, hosted by some very familiar faces.

Andy Williams - and Christmas just isn't the same without him - is on NBC Saturday night, with Johnny Cash, Jonathan Winters, the First Edition, and Claudine Longet (who never did get to be a big enough star that she escaped being identified as "Mrs. Andy Williams"). Following Ed on CBS Sunday night, it's The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour (the replacement for the Smothers Brothers), this week a rerun featuring singers Tom Jones and Jackie DeShannon, and comedienne Totie Fields.  Of course Tom has his own variety show on ABC Thursday night, appropriately titled This Is Tom Jones, this week with Victor Borge, British comic actor Harry Secombe, and singer-dancer Paula Kelly.  You can catch Tom right after Jim Nabors' show on CBS; Jim's guest is comedian Jerry Van Dyke.  Hee Haw is continuing to bring in big ratings for CBS (unfortunately, in the wrong demographic), and Wednesday night's show has Hank Williams Jr. and Dotty West.  And, of course, we can't forget Monday night, where NBC has Laugh-In with guest Nancy Sinatra and new regular Lily Tomlin (!), and Carol Burnett on CBS, with Donald O'Connor and Nancy Wilson.  Preempted this week (by a prime-time NBA game) is ABC's Jimmy Durante Presents the Lennon Sisters, which sounds as unlikely as it was; the show is off the air by next July.  There's a very nice article about Durante in this week's issue, though; I swear that you never read or hear anything bad about Durante, who can steal any scene he appears in.

***

There's one very big debut this week, and it comes in the late-night area with the premiere of Dick Cavett's new talk show, replacing Joey Bishop on ABC.  Actually, it isn't really a new show; Cavett's been on the network for awhile now, starting with a morning show in 1968, and then moving to prime time earlier in 1969, before being recruited for the time slot opposite Johnny Carson on NBC and Merv Griffin on CBS.

The Close-Up accompanying the premiere describes Cavett's forte as "an articulate way with an interview, plus approaches to comedy that range from youthful innocence to the cynicism of a W.C. Fields."  ABC's publicity machine rolls out a clever ad campaign for "The 1970 Cavett," reminiscent of the car ads that flood the airwaves at the new year.  Of all the Carson competitors over the years, Dick Cavett is, in some ways at least, the most successful.  Despite middling ratings, the show hangs on in a weekly timeslot for three years before moving to an irregular schedule in 1973, and Cavett maintains a presence on television for many years thereafter.

I always had mixed feelings about Cavett; on the one hand, I felt he talked too much about himself, occasionally making his guests play second fiddle to his own commentary.  That's not a unique criticism against Cavett, and it's been satirized often.  It's balanced, however, by the literate nature of his program, and his willingness to engage guests in actual conversation, instead of simply setting them up for one punch line after another.  A few years ago TCM ran a series of Cavett's single-guest programs, many of which are out on DVD.  Watching Cavett go 90 minutes with a guest like Robert Mitchum or Alfred Hitchcock was fascinating, the epitome - at least to me - of what sophisticated late-night television ought to be about, as opposed to the chucklefests we get today.  I supposed you could say the same thing about Charlie Rose, but I've always viewed him as someone to watch while you're trying to go to sleep, whereas Cavett is someone you want to stay awake to watch. TV  

From All of Us to All of You

Merry Christmas!