True story: it was Wednesday, August 7, 1968, and my mother and I were sitting on the couch in our apartment, watching the Republican Convention on television. She was a very savvy political junkie dating back to before I was born, working for the company that did the printing for Minnesota's Democratic party (even though she was a Republican), and she knew several of the state's most important politicians: Humphrey, Mondale, Frasier; and so that night, as we sat on the couch, my mother explained the art of politics to her precocious eight-year-old son.
The candidates were in Miami Beach (Jackie Gleason's favorite city), and as they arrived to rally their supporters, she gave me the 411. That's Ronald Reagan, she said as he appeared on the screen. (I don't remember for sure, but I imagine he was smiling and waving to the cameras.) He's the governor of California now, but he used to be in the movies. I always did like him; he's very handsome.
He was followed on-screen by Nelson Rockefeller, governor of New York. My mother did
not like him; she thought he was arrogant, and besides, he was much too liberal for her. Finally, there was Richard Nixon. He used to be Vice President, my mother explained. He's the candidate I'm supporting. We watched late into the night, past midnight, as Richard Nixon won the nomination on the first ballot, on the way to the presidency.
Thus was my introduction to politics.
It's convention week again, and as was the case when we looked at the 1964 convention last month, the stars of this week's issue are the men bringing us the coverage (minus Edward P. Morgan). They talk about the challenges of covering a national convention; Walter Cronkite, back on top of CBS's coverage, prepares a pair of loose-leaf binders, though he won't refer to them during the convention because "I plan all these facts in my mind by the act of writing them out." He adds that it's important to make the correct identification of people on the floor; it's bad when something important happens and he doesn't recognize who's doing it. Howard K. Smith, anchoring ABC's new-look coverage (more on that in a minute), prepares "two or three hundred pages of notes" into 75 post-card-size cards, one on each state and special ones for the candidates. He doesn't rely on them on air, though; like Cronkite, he has it all memorized by convention time. Chet Huntley, part of NBC's anchor duo, warns against planning too far in advance—"If you read for six months to prepare for a convention, you'd do all the wrong reading." David Brinkley, Huntley's partner, doesn't want to get trapped by rumors unless they sound reasonable; "I'd rather get beating on a story than be wrong." Being based in Washington, he knows most of the big players, but it's "very awkward" when a face appears at the podium and he doesn't know who it is.
You'll recall seeing John Chancellor hauled off the floor during the 1964 GOP convention, so naturally the question of floor coverage comes up. Brinkley thinks keeping reports off the floor is silly, and wouldn't help clear up the congestion; "The fat cats would still stand in the aisles, smoke their cigars and scratch their bellies." The important point, though, is why the media is at the convention in the first place. "Are we a conduit, or are we there to cover the story?. . .Our job is to dig and to analyze, not make free time available for the delegates to use as they see fit." Smith doesn't think it would hurt to get rid of them, though; "We could have camera setups just off the floor and invite any delegates we wanted to interview to come over there." Cronkite thinks the presence of television has changed conventions: "I regret that they've swept some procedures under the rug for television's benefit. They now make many more decisions in the back rooms to prevent acrimony in public." Huntley agrees: "The committees are always talking about streamlining the convention process itself, but it might be damned dangerous to do that," since it would just wind up concentrating more power in the hands of fewer people.
They all enjoy the convention process—Huntley calls it "fun," and Smith says it's untidy but that "it sure does work." Part of the excitement is that the convention is where news is made; Cronkite calls it "a news medium to inform the Nation about what's going on." Would that this were the case today, but you can see from the comments of Cronkite and Huntley that they're already concerned about political parties turning their conventions into staged events for television, which is exactly what they've become. (Had the term "infomercial" existed, they probably would have used it.) And nobody watches them now anyway, which means anchors might have to resort to what Huntley said when asked how anchors could improve ratings: "There's not much an anchor man can do to change them, unless maybe he stands up and takes off his pants."
The Republican Convention of 1968 is a typical convention of the time, with a dozen candidates having their names placed into nomination, with the concurrent demonstrations, balloon drops, marching bands, and dancing girls in the aisles. The roll call vote that nominated Richard Nixon ran fairly tame exercise in comparison to what happens in Chicago two weeks later at the Democratic Convention. My mother wouldn't let me watch that one, but it wasn't because she was a Republican—she just thought it was too violent for an eight-year-old.
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One of the new wrinkles in this year's political coverage is ABC's decision to abandon the traditional gavel-to-gavel coverage in favor of a 90-minute wrap-up at the end of each evening's session. Howard K. Smith hosts the report from just off the convention floor, where he can snag interviews. Bill Lawrence will then chair a roundtable discussion featuring the network's political correspondents sharing the latest information, and Frank Reynolds will follow with sidebar stories.
And then there's the most novel part of ABC's coverage, as Neil Hickey reports:
Conservative journalist William F. Buckley and liberal novelist/playwright Gore Vidal, who—the network hopes—will add a dash of spice to its coverage. "We want these guys to be irreverent," says ABC's convention boss, Wally Pfister. "They don't have to be objective. We're expecting humor, too."
Did ABC get what they wanted? I guess you'd have to say they did, since people still talk about it over 50 years later. This isn't where the infamous "crpyto-Nazi vs. queer" exchange that most of you probably know about happens; that's in Chicago at the Democratic convention. Buckley and Vidal face-off eight times; four at each convention, and
this segment from the final night of the Republican Convention is pretty typical of the other episodes.*
*
The documentary The Best of Enemies,
which came out in 2015, purports to tell the story of these encounters, but Politico's
Michael Lind says it doesn't even come close.
Now, was this all for real, or was it just a publicity stunt? Buckley, years later, would say that when he signed the contract with ABC, it was with the understanding that Vidal was the one person with whom he would
not appear; when ABC proceeded to sign Vidal anyway, Buckley chose to appear rather than break the contract. After that Nazi-queer bit, when the two men had left the set, Vidal supposedly said something to Buckley along the lines of, "Well, we really gave them their money's worth tonight, didn't we?" Buckley, disgusted, turned away.
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And now a word from the editor in "As We See It," which
all the news organizations could stand to follow:
In this political year it is especially important that broadcasters avoid any indication of bias in news reports. And in the case of newscasters whose political leanings are well known, it is especially important that they clearly label editorial opinion as such.
Yeah, I know. Fat chance.
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Is there anything non-political on TV this week? On Saturday,
The Prisoner (5:30 p.m. MT, CBS) offers one of the most existential episodes of a decidedly existential series, "Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling." The premise: "Put yourself in the Prisoner's shoes: You wake up, look in the mirror, and discover that the face and body you see are not your own. You learn that you have bee missing for a year—and have no idea where you've been. Which identity would you believe in? The person your mind remembers—or the stranger you see in the mirror? Even if you could be sure of who you were, how would you convince anybody else?" Simply brilliant.
No
Hollywood Palace this week due to ABC's pre-convention report on Saturday, but Ed's around on Sunday (6:00 p.m., CBS), with a pretty good lineup: Gordon MacRae and Carol Lawrence, performing scenes from their current musical,
I Do! I Do!; Ray Charles, with Billy Preston and his orchestra; Bill Dana, as "track star" Jose Jiminez; the Grand Music Hall of Israel; comic Jackie Kahane; singer Frankie Fanelli; the Blue Comets, a Japanese rock group; and the Mecners, a pole-balancing act.
Also on Sunday, ABC's
Sunday Night Movie presents the TV premiere of
Tokyo Olympiad (7:00 p.m.), the acclaimed story of the 1964 Tokyo Summer Olympics, and one of the great sports documentaries ever made. It's directed by the young Japanese moviemaker Kon Ichikawa, and was perhaps a bit too artistic for the International Olympic Committee, as no Olympic film since has so stylishly portrayed what Ichikawa calls "the glory of man as a living creature." It's been edited from it's runtime of over two hours to fit the 90-minute timeslot; even so, Judith Crist says that "what remains is filled with moments of great excitement and sequences of beauty." Were it not for the fact that the Mexico City Olympics are scheduled for ABC later in the summer, I can't imagine an art-house film like this playing in a network primetime slot.
Speaking of Judith Crist, one movie she
can't recommend is
Around the World Under the Sea (7:00 p.m., CBS), with TV stars Brian Kelly (
Flipper), Lloyd Bridges (
Sea Hunt), David McCallum (
The Man from U.N.C.L.E.), and Marshall Thompson (
Daktari). They appear with Shirley Eaton, who, according to Crist, "had it much better in
Goldfinger when she was covered with gold rather than television personalities."
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And amid all the political articles, a couple of profiles that stand out. First is Robert Musel's interview with Diana Rigg, who talks about why she left
The Avengers. It was fun, "but I had no idea when I followed Honor [Blackman] that it would make me a name like this. I began to feel claustrophobic. I began to feel
The Avengers was taking over. The degree of success it was getting made it more and more difficult to leave as the weeks went by." Better to leave on a high note, she says, than to become "stale."
She is a night person, touring dinner parties, the theater, and discos; her only hobby is reading; she takes an avid interest in the current political climate in the United States, sharing the general European skepticism about Vietnam. She thinks that the American racial situation is a harbinger of the growing color conflict in Britain. As far as her career goes, she hasn't ruled out a return to television if a play attracts her, but hopes for something more emotionally demanding; for now she's concentrating on her new movie career—and
On Her Majesty's Secret Service hasn't even come along yet.
Meanwhile, Edith Efron visits Bob Crane, in the midst of his stardom in
Hogan's Heroes. Efron recognizes the difficulties in using the Nazis as a source of comedy, even though the concerns of those who thought it would trivialize their atrocities has been shown to be unfounded. The fact that it works at all is because of "lively scripts, brilliant comedic acting—and Crane." Bob credits producer Eddie Feldman, who "made it clear to me that I absolutely must not play Hogan as a buffoon. I play him seriously, as a hero, as a leader who can inspire other men to keep fighting, even when behind bars."
Efron talks about his very successful radio career (film director George Cukor says, "You honestly became
addicted to him"), his struggle to be taken seriously as an actor ("They had me typed. I'd beg for jobs, and they'd give me bits, a few lines"), and his success on
The Donna Reed Show. He's well aware of his faults: thin-skinned, an inferiority complex around those he sees as intellectuals, a tendency to come on strong. He also has guts; he's determined to succeed in movies, and he knows his character. "You have to be a
hero," Feldman told him. Think John Wayne; as Crane says, "He'll rescue you every time!"
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By the way—it occurs to me that many of you may never have seen a political convention with a role call vote for president, or at least one where there was some suspense involved. Thankfully, we have
a radio recording of that 1968 Republican role call vote, thanks to our home radio station, WCCO. Take a listen to it when you've got a chance; it'll give you an idea of the excitement that the conventions used to be.
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