This week in TV Guide: February 10, 1973

On January 28, 1962, NBC broadcast a White Paper called "The Battle of Newburgh," Newburgh being "a tiny, declining upstate New York city." The story that emerged was of a town run by a city manager, Joseph Mitchell, who had launched a "crackdown on chislers," which among other things denied welfare benefits to unwed mothers who continued having children, provided free bus tickets to send welfare recipients back to their home states, placed all able-bodied welfare recipients on the city's work crews and required welfare recipients to register at the police station." Jack Gould, the influential New York Times columnist, called it a "scorching indictment" of Newburgh's policies. And, eleven years later, residents claim the city still suffers from the effects of its night on national television.

I don't bring this up to discuss whether or not Newburgh's policies were correct (although I can't believe anyone named Mitchell could be that bad). No, what I find interesting about this is how different things might be if it happened today.

I'm thinking specifically about a couple of instances, although there are more. In 1982, nine years after this article appeared, former U.S. Army Chief of Staff General William Westmoreland brought a $120 million libel suit against CBS over a CBS Reports documentary entitled The Uncounted Enemy: A Vietnam Deception. The documentary, which aired on January 23, 1982—five days short of 20 years after the original broadcast of "The Battle of Newburgh"—claimed that "Westmoreland had contributed to the public reaction to Tet by manipulating intelligence about enemy strength in order to create the impression of progress." Westmoreland countered that there had been no political motivation behind the intelligence reports. The case went to trial in 1984, and the following year, with jury watchers predicting Westmoreland would lose, the two sides settled out of court. You can read more about Westmoreland v. CBS here.

The second case this calls to mind happened in 1992, when two producers for ABC News went undercover at Food Lion grocery stories in the Carolinas. (Full disclosure: we shopped at Food Lion the year we lived in Raleigh. Not that it comes into play here.) The report that emerged from this undercover work, which aired on the network's Prime Time Life (remember that?) alleged that "Food Lion’s meat department at those stores required employees to engage in unsafe, unhealthy or illegal practices, including selling old meat that was washed with bleach to kill odor, selling cheese that had been gnawed by rats and working off the time clock." As part of the report, the network used hidden camera footage taken by the reporters. Food Lion sued in July, 1995, arguing that ABC used "illegal newsgathering methods." including falsifying information on the producers' job applications, to obtain their information. This case also went to trial, and in December 1996 a jury ruled in favor of Food Lion, awarding the grocery chain $5.5 million in punitive damages for fraud. It all wound up in the U.S. Court of Appeals, where the fraud claim and damage award was overturned; however, they also ruled that the ABC reporters trespassed in that they didn't have permission to videotape secretly. That case you can read about here if you're so inclined.

As I said, there are other cases; the always-reliable Wikipedia mentions General Motors' successful objection to an NBC report in 1993 (NBC fired the news director and reporter and publicly apologized); Philip Morris's lawsuit against ABC in 1994 (settled out of court); and Brown & Williamson's threat to sue CBS over a planned interview with whistleblower Jeffrey Wigand (CBS pulled the segment, but the movie version did earn Russell Crowe an Oscar nomination). The point I'm making here is that, in another day and time, Newburgh probably would have hauled NBC into court. I'm thinking specifically of this quote from George F. McKneally, former mayor of Newburgh, who says of writer-director Arthur Zegart (who'd become a good friend during the making of the report), "Zegart warned me the White Paper on Newburgh would not be particularly helpful for Newburgh or anyone who would be appearing in it. Zegart told me that NBC had made most of the people look like bad guys, so he decided to leave me out of the show." Now wouldn't that have looked good in a court document? Zegart, of course, denies he said that, but this probably would be best left for lawyers (and a jury?) to decide. Then, of course, there's the power of social media, alternative media, Fox News ("it's not uncommon," writes author Michael Krawetz, "to hear about 'those Communists who run ABC, NBC and CBS back in New York City.'")—well, as I've said so often, the possibilities really do write themselves, don't they? Yes, times—and news gathering—really have changed since then, haven't they?

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.Throughout the 60s and early 70s, TV Guide's weekly reviews were written by the witty and acerbic Cleveland Amory. Whenever we get the chance, we'll look at Cleve's latest take on the series of the era. 

Friends, you're going to have to help me out a bit this week. The subject is M*A*S*H, in its first season, which Cleveland Amory, our man in action, says, "was one of those movies that was adjusted a bit much for television. So instead they made it into a television series, the idea apparently being that what will corrupt us if we see it once will not corrupt us if we see it every week. They've got a point, too. Anyone who sees this program every week is, from a corruption standpoint, around the bend." He praises good performances, especially from Alan Alda, McLean Stevenson, and Gary Burgoff. You'll notice that he does not praise the writing and plots; while the doctors toss off joke after joke while "hacking away" on anesthetized patients, "[t]he rest of us do not have the advantage of being anesthetized." He also looks askance on what we would see as the sexual harassment of the nurses by our heroes.

As for the plots—well, "[o]ne plot begins with Hawkeye acting strangely, another with Radar acting strangely, a third with Colonel Blake acting strangely. That produces, you see, a lot of suspense. Acting strangely is very hard to diagnose here." There's also a tendency to rely on chloroform as a plot mechanism, e.g. Hawkeye and Trapper John putting it in Major Burns' after-shave. It is, Cleve seems to be telling us, the only way in which we can sit through the outrageous developments that confront us in every episode.

And this is where I need your help. Obviously, I'm not unaware of M*A*S*H (Amory adds that when it comes to shows with asterisks in their titles, "[p]roceed at your own risk—or, in this case, at your own risque."), and it's not as if I've never seen an episode of it. I know that it's really an allegory for Vietnam, and that over the years the show became increasingly serious, until it becomes what we'd today think of as a dramedy. I never liked it, though, never—not the show, nor the smarmy Alda (a younger version of Robert Vaughn) nor, later on, the equally off-putting Mike Farrell, so I'm not in a position to be objective here. Was the early series really, as Amory suggests, tough to watch? Was the humor of suspect taste, and did it improve in future seasons when it became more serious and character-driven? Or was it better when it took itself less seriously, when it was content to simply be a comedy rather than to try and take itself so very seriously? I don't know, through there are strong opinions on both sides. Here's your chance to have your say on the matter.

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Let's take a really deep dive into the week's programming and see what we come up with.

Don't "strain" yourself, James Olson.

Saturday's highlight is the television premiere of director Robert Wise's literate science-fiction thriller The Andromeda Strain (NBC, 9:00 p.m. ET). Judith Crist praises the qualities of the movie that I like myself: "its propinquity to fact rather than fantasy; its consistency of theme without the usual sex-schmaltz trappings that so often reduce sci-fi to soap opera or slickery; its high-class production values; and its terrible significance in relation to the truths of germ warfare and miltaristic puropse in space exploration." It's a faithful adaptation of Michael Crichton's "chilling and complex best-seller," with Arthur Hill very good as the lead scientist, and James Olson in an extremely effective turn against type as one of the good guys.

If sci-fi's a little plebeian for your taste, you'll probably want to go to Jean Cocteau's bizarre, wildly imaginative "fairy tale for adults," 1946's Beauty and the Beast (8:00 p.m., PBS). which Crist calls "an exquisite realization of the children's fairy tale that all ages can savor on a variety of levels." And if you happen to be living in Philadelphia this week, you've got a late-night choice: The Innocents (11:30 p.m., WPHI), a very creepy adaptation of Henry James' The Turn of the Screw, with Deborah Kerr. At the same time, on WCAU, Jason Robards is Al Capone to Ralph Meeker's Bugs Moran, in The St. Valentine's Day Massacre, which for the genre is a pretty good movie. It just goes to show that Saturday really is movie night, isn't it?

On Sunday, CBS gets down with the star-studded Duke Ellington . . . We Love You Madly (9:00 p.m.), a brilliant tribute to the jazz great, with a glittering lineup including Count Basie, Ray Charles, Sammy Davis Jr., Louis Bellson, Roberta Flack, Aretha Franklin, Sarah Vaughan, Peggy Lee, Chicago, Billy Eckstine, Paula Kelly, and Joe Williams. Later, it's the premiere of a Jack Webb series that, frankly, I don't remember. It's called Escape (10:00 p.m., NBC), and it's a four-episode anthology series about "people caught in life-and-death situations." It's on right after Columbo, and we were living in the World's Worst Town™—is it possible that KCMT didn't carry it? After all, they used to show Sanford and Son on Sunday nights to show Lawrence Welk, so anything could happen. But that's getting beyond the point, isn't it? We were talking about Escape, and tonight Ed Nelson is a World War II submarine captain being hunted by a Japanese destroyer. At 10:30 p.m., a time that the nets ceded back to the locals, WOR has the syndicated revival of This Is Your Life with Mrs. Spencer Tracy as the surprise subject. (I'll bet Katharine Hepburn isn't one of the guests.) There's another episode of TIYL on earlier in the day where the subject is Anne Baxter; I don't know about you, but I think there was something more interesting about it back in its original run, when it was live and TV Guide didn't list who the honoree would be.

Does Ed Nelson look like a talk-show host to you?

Monday's Laugh-In has a pretty good guest lineup (NBC, 8:00 p.m.), with Ernest Borgnine in a Sherlock Holmes spoof (he's Watson; don't ask me who's playing the lead), plus appearances by John Wayne, Don Rickles, Arthur Godfrey, and Slappy White. And no, Hogan's Goat (8:00 p.m., PBS) isn't a story about Sergeant Carter forgetting to set the timers for the bombs on the Adolf Hitler Bridge—instead, it's a television adaptation of William Alfred's 1965 play about Irish-American politics in late-1800s Brooklyn, starring Robert Foxworth and Faye Dunaway. And you remember Ed Nelson as captain of that sub? Well, he must have made good on that escape, because he's playing a radio talk-show host whose wife is murdered in Tenafly (NBC, 9:00 p.m.), the pilot for the private detective series starring James McEachin. I always liked McEachin's character; there was, in fact, something very likable about both him and his character, and the show was created by Columbo's Levinson and Link; too bad there were only four other episodes as part of one of NBC's Mystery Movie nights. For something completely different, go to NET Opera Thetare (PBS, 9:00 p.m.), and Thomas Pasatieri's rending opera The Trial of Mary Lincoln, based on her 1875 insanity trial. Mezzo Eliane Bonazzi stars as the widowed First Lady, with Wayne Turnage as her son Robert, the plaintiff.

Just between you and me, I've got a great idea for a movie—let's take a guy, say, William Shatner, and put him in an airplane flying at 37,000 feet, see? And something weird happens on that plane, see? Strange voices, strong winds, funny things, you know what I mean? Waddya think? (Pause) You mean it's already been done? With Shatner? No problem! We'll just change a few things in the script, have it be some supernatural thing in the cargo hold instead of a gremlin on the plane's wing, throw in anyone who's been on the last ten years (Roy Thinnes, Chuck Connors, Lyn Loring, Buddy Ebsen, Tammy Grimes, Jane Merrow, Paul Winfield, Will Hutchins, France Nuyen), and call it The Horror at 37,000 Feet (Tuesday, 9:30 p.m., CBS). What more can you ask for? Per Judith Crist, it was unavailable for preview.

Wednesday is St. Valentine's Day, which I guess explains the Jason Robards movie on Saturday, and what could be more fitting than the lineup on The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour (8:00 p.m., CBS): Joe Namath, a dozen Playboy centerfold playmates, and a cameo appearance by their boss, Hugh Hefner. No? OK, let's go back to the movies; how about Sammy Davis Jr. as "a bumbling disciple from hell" trying to lure Jack Klugman to the land of fire and brimstone in Poor Devil (NBC, 8:30 p.m.) As was the case with Horror at 37.000 Feet, this was unavailable for preview, and, speaking as a fan of Sammy, it's probably for the best. The late movie on ABC's Wide World of Mystery (11:30 p.m.) is The Screaming Skull, with David McCallum in "an eerie tale about a murderer whose victim (his wife) returns to avenge her death. Dick Cavett's wife Carrie Nye plays the wronged woman. Though there are differences in the plot, it has at least a passing resemblance to another Screaming Skull, made in 1958, known and loved from MST3K.

An American Family continues Thursday on PBS (9:00 p.m.), and, according to The Doan Report, Dick Cavett will be devoting his entire February 20 show to an interview with the now-divorced Louds and their five children, to try and figure out why a family would choose to lay bare their lives on national television. And PBS can use all the publicity it can get; Doan also reports that President Nixon has slashed the Corporation for Public Broadcasting's $70 million request in half, leaving the funding level as it has been for the past two years. Too early to tell what the effect will be on the CPB, but the worst-case scenario is that "the money crimp might force CPB to wipe out the PBS network."

Come Friday, we've got a little In Concert vs. The Midnight Special action going. In Concert (11:30 p.m., ABC) has the Hollies, Kenny Loggins and Jim Messina, and Billy Preston, while The Midnight Special (1:00 a.m., NBC) counters with Mac Davis as host, and guests Helen Reddy, the Hollies, Waylon Jennings, Billy Preston, and Billy Paul. Now, I think you can see where this is going, so let's think about it for a minute: both programs have the Hollies (performing different songs; "Amazing Grace" and "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother" on Concert; "Magic Woman Touch" on Special), and both have Billy Preston ("Blackbird" and "Outa-Space" on both, plus "That's the Way God Planned It" on Concert). That leaves us with Loggins and Messina vs. Mac Davis, Waylon, Billy Paul, and Helen Reddy. Even with the numerical advantage that Special has, we'll have to go with In Concert this week. Or you could skip them both and watch Monterey Pop, which follows In Concert on WABC; that features a few stars of its own, including Jimi Hendrix. If your taste runs more to the classics, then you can't go wrong with Bogie and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (11:30 p.m., WNEW).

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In an otherwise uneventful sports week, there's one event that I think deserves to be singled out. This weekend NBC carries the final two rounds of the Bob Hope Desert Classic (Saturday and Sunday, 5:00 p.m.) from Palm Springs. It's one of the most popular tournaments of the year, with a cast of celebrities that might rival that Duke Ellington special. But that's not what's noteworthy about this tournament. No, even though the Hope isn't a major championship, neither I (watching on television) nor anyone else watching the tournament will ever forget it. The tournament is won by Arnold Palmer, shooting a 3-under-par 69 in the final round to edge Jack Nicklaus and Johnny Miller by two strokes. The win breaks a two-year victory drought for Palmer, who last won at the 1971 Westchester Classic, and it is the 62nd and final regular tour victory of The King's illustrious career. It is, indeed, a hell of a day.

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Things being what they are nowadays, I suppose pornography is as good a way as any to end this week's issue. What am I talking about with that provocative statement? Well, don't blame me; it's all the fault of CITY-TV, the small-budget, community-oriented UHF station operating out of Toronto. Jack Batten tells us the story of how this cable station (which is still around, and isn't so small anymore) has created a niche for itself with its avant-garde programming: there's Free for All, "a live, two-hour show on Sunday nights that invites anyone with a beef or a cause to air it in the Hyde Park soapbox style"*; The Money Game, a nightly investments show; Greed, a live Saturday night amateur talent show; and a full two and a half hours of news and public affairs every night in prime time from 8:00 to 10:30 p.m.

*Sounds a little like the inspiration for Johnny LaRue's Street Beef, doesn't it?

And then there's the late night movie show on Fridays. It's called The Baby Blue Movie, and its fair includes I Am Curious (Yellow) and All the Loving Couples—unedited and uncensored. "When we cooked up the idea of running restricted movies," says the station's managing director, Moses Znaimer, "we figured it as a loss leader something that'd attract attention to us but wouldn't necessarily make money because advertisers would hardly want to be associated with the smut." But, surprise! The Baby Blue Movie is the station's most popular program, and ad space is so hot that the stations can force sponsors to advertise on weaker programs in order to get on the movie.*

*Commercials in a pornographic movie? Commercium interruptus, I suppose.

As for how the station was able to get the movies past the censors, that's another story. "The head of Morality phones us the day before we went on the air," the station's lawyer, Jerry Grafstein, says. "He sounded very heavy, very threatening, and he told us he didn't like what he'd heard about our plans for the Baby Blue." The station cut 100 seconds from I Am Curious (Yellow) ("I thought it was tragic to interfere with a director's work that way," Granstein comments, "but our backs were against the wall.") The station heard nothing from the police department's Morality Squad. Later, they ran the movie again, with the cuts restored. Still later, there was the movie How to Succeed with Sex (directed by MST3K fave Bert I. Gordon), which Grafstein describes as "real hard-core pornography"—crickets. "We're beginning to feel safe," he says.

So viewers love it, advertisers love it, and the Morality Squad doesn't seem to care. In fact, there's only one group out there that seems upset about The Baby Blue Movie: bowling-alley operators. "They're mad because on Friday nights their customers are packing it in early to get home for the Baby Blue." TV  

Around the dial

It's a good week for retrospectives here at the old homestead. Let's start at The Last Drive-In with a comprehensive look back at the career of Piper Laurie, featuring some wonderful pictures. We think of her in movies, but she's done a lot of TV during her long and glorious career.

Next up is James Garner, who claims his share of movie and TV credits as well. He's the subject of the James Garner Blogathon at Reelweegiemidget, and you'll want to click through to a week's worth of enjoyable essays on this most enjoyable actor.

William Holden is an actor I've always liked, and of course, he features in one of the greatest of all time movies about television, Network. But at Classic Film and TV Café, Rick reminds us of a movie that's not nearly as heavy, and has a lot of action besides: The Devil's Brigade.

Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) is one of those shows I read about and hear about all the time, but I've never checked it out, sad to say. But if anyone can talk me into it, it's Fire-Breathing Dimetrodon Time; see what's what with "The Glorious Butranekh."

Gene Reynolds, whose credits as a television creator and developer include M*A*S*H and Lou Grant, died this week at the age of 96, and at A Shroud of Thoughts Terence has a retrospective on the many, many series that he was involved in over the years. What a career.

Speaking of careers, what a career Kirk Douglas had. What a life! I always think of him as a dangerous actor, full of fire and energy and capable of anything at a moment's notice. He mostly appeared on television as himself, promoting or spoofing his movies, which themselves are on TV all the time. At The Lucky Strike Papers, Andrew has a short but sweet appreciation that ends with a quote on death that we should all keep in mind.

Short but sweet this week, but you know what that means: even more to look at next week. And, of course, a TV Guide to keep you entertained tomorrow. TV  

What I've Been Watching: January, 2020

Shows I’ve Watched:	Shows I’ve Bought:
The Eleventh Hour Playhouse 90 Perry Mason Hogan's Heroes	Star Trek: The Original Series Batman  Columbo: The Complete Series

There's a thin line in the writing business between inspiration and plagiarism. One day you think you’ve come up with a great idea; the next day (or month or year) you discover not only that it wasn’t original, it also mirrors very closely something that someone else had already written—and better than yours. Sometimes when you run across a particularly good idea, you forget to put it in quotation marks, and the next thing you know somebody’s lawyer is on the line claiming you stole something from their client. Fortunately, that’s something I haven’t had to worry about during my writing career, primarily because I haven’t sold enough books to give anybody a chance to accuse me of theft.

That’s plagiarism. Inspiration is what we’re onto today, though, and I’ll be completely honest in admitting to stealing a brilliant idea from one of my favorite writers, Nick Hornby. Hornby writes a regular column for the magazine The Believer in which he reviews both the books he’s read in a given month, and the books he’s bought. Sometimes they’re the same books, and you’ll be fascinated to find out how one book from an author can lead you to another, and another, until you find you’ve read four or five of their books in a row. Other times, the books he’s bought but hasn’t yet read get no mention at all; rest assured, however, that they’ll probably be popping up in a future column.

It occurred to me the other day that there’s no reason why this can’t be done with television shows as well as books. (That, plus the fact I didn’t have anything else ready to post this week.) It requires a few adjustments, of course; considering how many television shows exist as streaming options, why, I figured, should I limit myself simply to shows I’d purchased? Why not include those that I’ve become aware of, even if I haven’t viewed them yet? That is, after all, why the “Watch Later” button was invented. And since the shows we watch often stretch out over months, if not years (we haven’t fallen into the binge mode yet), it might be appropriate to revisit a show I’ve already written about when it starts another season, or takes a particularly wicket plot twist.

That’s a wordy way to introduce you to what I hope will become a regular feature here, “Shows I’ve Been Watching.” It might appear monthly, or every other month, or whenever I feel I’ve got enough material to write something. Depending on the reactions of you, the readers, it might have a very short shelf life, or it might provoke intense and stimulating discussion. Rebuttals are welcome, of course, as well as suggestions—if you’ve got something you think ought to be on the futures list, the comments section is the place for you to make your case. Some of my favorite shows, ones I might never have thought of watching on my own, came from recommendations. I can’t promise I’ll take you up on them, but I can guarantee I’ll take them seriously.

(Talking about wordy, that added a few dozen more words, didn’t it?)

The golden TV Guide, the one that introduced me to the pleasures of reading about old TV shows, gave me the first hint I’d had to a psychological drama on NBC, The Eleventh Hour. The episode I read about in that issue came from February 1964, the show’s second, and last, season, when Ralph Bellamy was the lead. Unfortunately, that season hasn’t yet come out on DVD, but the first season, in which Wendell Corey starred, has. (Jack Ging, the young doctor to Corey and Bellamy’s wizened veterans, a la Dr. Kildare, the series from which The Eleventh Hour was spun off, co-starred in both seasons.) Having watched and liked all the available episodes of a similar ABC program, Breaking Point (which in turn was a spin-off from Dr. Kildare’s television rival, Ben Casey, complete with the young doc/old doc dimension), I figured this was my thing, and after a couple of years of deliberation, it found itself under the Christmas tree in December.

Wendell Corey (far left), with Steven Hill (center)
in "There Are Dragons in this Forest"

In The Eleventh Hour—the title comes from the decisive point at which a patient either breaks or starts on the road to recovery—Corey plays Dr. Theodore Bassett, a psychiatrist in private practice whose cases often involve patients brought to him by the legal system. In the first episode, for instance, Vera Miles plays a woman who’s killed her husband; Bassett’s job is to discover whether or not she was legally insane at the time. A second episode features Steven Hill as an American soldier accused of desertion in the final days of World War II, who has been apprehended after 17 years and returned to America to face court-martial. Bassett, working with attorney Lloyd Bochner, tries to uncover what caused Hill, a decorated soldier, to leave his unit and marry a German woman, despite already having a wife back home. It’s a fascinating character study of a man struggling with what he perceives as the life that has been chosen for him, all of which is exposed by Bassett’s insistence that he and his (German) wife recreate the events surrounding their initial meeting.

Given Wendell Corey’s tortured personal life, including a long and unsuccessful battle with alcoholism, it’s understandable that he was replaced by Bellamy for the second season, but it’s unfortunate as well. I quite like his character, who exhibits a strong belief in the power of psychiatry (offset by a healthy cynicism), and combines both a deep sympathy for his patients and the necessary distance he has to maintain to be objective. He’s also not afraid to admit to his colleague, psychologist Dr. Paul Graham (Ging) that he isn’t always sure he’ll be successful. This is particularly evident in an episode starring Barbara Rush and David Janssen as a formerly married couple; Rush’s character, Linda Kincaid, was previously hospitalized for a nervous breakdown after attempting suicide, and a series of recent events (an auto accident, leaving the gas on, etc.) appears to suggest the same thing could be happening again. In the climactic scene Dr. Bassett drops his sympathetic demeanor to coldly demand that Linda confront the evidence of these things she’s supposed to have done. In a robotic manner, she says that she must have done all these things; what else could it be? Baloney, Bassett snaps at her. You don’t believe you did any of these things, do you? Stunned, Linda starts to fight back; no, she says, I didn’t try to kill myself. I wouldn’t do any of those things, I wouldn’t hurt my daughter that way. To which Bassett, softly and warmly, replies, “I know.” In breaking her, he has forced her to stand up for herself, and prove to herself what Bassett has already figured out: there is nothing wrong with her; her ex-husband, Janssen, was behind it all in an effort to get her committed and win custody of their daughter. (Janssen’s performance, full of gestures, tics, and repression, is masterful; you can easily imagine this marital drama evolving into murder without Bassett’s intervention. Oh, wait…)

There’s something stirring about one man standing up for someone in trouble, a lone individual insisting in the face of unanimous opposition that things aren’t always what they seem. It’s the kind of appeal that, as I’ve pointed out in the past, fuels a series like Perry Mason. If there’s one quarrel I have with the show, and it may be rectified in subsequent episodes, it’s that, unlike Breaking Point, the resolutions to each episode seem to be pretty conclusive, rather than the frequently ambiguous endings of the former series, in which a patient is presented with a road map to recovery, but the ultimate outcome is often left in doubt. It may be a little more than a nit, but not enough to dissuade my opinion that The Eleventh Hour has been, so far, a wise investment.

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Who knew that there’d be a treasure trove of Studio One and Playhouse 90 episodes on YouTube? Well, yes, we know that you can find almost anything on YouTube; still, it’s not that common for drama series from the 1950s and ‘60s, especially ones that were often broadcast live, to still exist. And while we’re a long way from having access to all of these episodes (at least through the public domain), it’s a pleasure to go back to a time when the claustrophobic atmosphere provided by small sets and dark lighting contributed with the pressure of a live performance to give television an energy that rivaled that of live theater.

Last week, we watched an episode of Playhouse 90 from 1959, “Judgment at Nuremberg.” Like “Twelve Angry Men,” “Judgment at Nuremberg” started out as a teleplay before moving to the big screen; unlike “Angry Men,” writer Abby Mann added a substantial amount of material to the movie version of “Nuremberg,” perhaps due to the influence of producer-director Stanley Kramer, who never met a social cause he didn’t feel could be expanded to three hours—twice as long as the TV version, and not nearly as tightly written.

Maximillian Schell as Hans Rolfe

The star of the Playhouse 90 version, as was the case in the subsequent big-screen iteration, is Maximillian Schell, in the role of Hans Rolfe, attorney for one of four German judges accused of perverting justice by upholding Nazi laws against Jews. (Although he represents only one of the defendants, Ernst Janning, he speaks for the other three defendants and their lawyers.) Schell is nothing short of brilliant, raising disquieting points about the moral equivalency regarding the acts for which the judges (including a much more Germanic Werner Klemperer than who you see on Hogan's Heroes) stand accused. In one uncomfortable instance, Rolfe reads from a judicial opinion upholding the enforced sterilization of mentally handicapped people, lest they produce more “defects” that the state will be forced to take care of. Only at the conclusion does he reveal the author of the opinion: Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, in the case Buck v. Bell. You can’t have it both ways, Rolfe repeatedly insists: if we Germans didn’t know what Hitler and his cronies were up to, you can’t very well hold us responsible; on the other hand, if we did know about the concentration camps, then what about you, the Allies, who knew about them as well,  and yet did nothing? I’ve always had doubts about the morality of war crimes trials and the issue of post facto law; this story does nothing to dissuade those doubts, although Abby Mann might not have intended to do so. (I should note here that actual footage of the concentration camps, including the countless dead bodies of inmates, is included—perhaps the first time many in the viewing audience had seen it.)

Claude Raines, in the Spencer Tracy role as the American chief judge Dan Haywood, does a fine job, although his character isn’t nearly as fleshed out as in the movie. Paul Lukas, as Janning (in the role played by Burt Lancaster), shows a nobility to accept his fate, even as he fails (at least in Haywood’s eyes) to provide a convincing rationale for what happened. The replica courtroom, which serves as the setting for most of the drama, is filled with period detail, including the men providing simultaneous translation for both Germans and Americans (a detail ingeniously incorporated in both the television and movie versions). As I said, there’s a snap and crackle to this production that keeps it from dragging; one can debate which version better tells the story, but as my wife remarked when it was over, how often does television today provide such well-written, literate, adult dramas?

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Since cutting the cord, we no longer have MeTV, which means we have to resort to watching our DVD versions of shows such as Hogan’s Heroes and Perry Mason, and after doing this for a while, you notice just how much you're missing when you watch them on Me (or any other network). The syndicated cuts over the years are bad enough, but you get the feeling that MeTV has removed even more, rendering some plotlines virtually incomprehensible. Watching the uncut episodes on DVD makes the Mason and Hogan episodes seem brand-new, filled with scenes not seen (by us) in years, giving the overall story a completely different feel. It's not quite like finding loose change in your couch after a party, but it's still pretty cool.

That's one reason why the "Shows Bought" column contains titles like Columbo and Star Trek,  shows that you can see for free on over-the-air channels. There's another reason, one that we picked up on last week, when we noticed that Perry Mason had disappeared from Prime Video, having become the property of CBS All-Access; The Twilight Zone is another series that's headed for CBS. I don't have a problem with his; after all, CBS owns the rights, and I can understand perfectly why they need reliable, commercially attractive properties to convince viewers to spend money on their subscription service. This is probably going to become more and more common, until the streaming business reaches a critical mass and begins to collapse upon itself like a black hole; what happens after that is anyone's guess, unless you're Neil deGrasse Tyson.

The point is that if you really, really want to make sure you've got access to watch your favorite TV shows whenever you want, your only choice is to own them. Even YouTube isn't safe, whenever they undertake one of their periodic reviews of copyright holders. No, you have to have them in your possession, on some sort of physical media or hard drive, if you want to enjoy that luxury. Is it worth it, though? Can you be sure you'll watch them often enough to make owning them pay? Can you take the chance there will still be a resell market if you don't? Perhaps we'll have some answers next month. TV  

What's on TV? Thursday, February 4, 1960

Here's something I haven't encountered in a TV Guide before: the stations are listed in descending order. Maybe some of you collectors have seen this, but it's a first for me, and let me tell you, it's a bit disconcerting when it comes to keeping track of things. We persevere, though. Part of the reason I chose to spotlight today is that it gives us a chance to see some programs we don't ordinarily run across; in addition to the Chevalier show I mentioned on Saturday, we've got Johnny Staccato, the jazz detective series starring John Cassavetes, Betty Hutton's eponymous sitcom, and Pat Boone's prime time show, when he was the youngest star ever to host his own variety show. And speaking of sitcoms, at 7:00 p.m. on WHEN, The Phil Silvers Show features one of the most famous episodes in TV history: Bilko being called upon to defend a chimpanzee in a court-martial.

The listings come from the Binghamton issue.

This week in TV Guide: January 30, 1960

What are we to make of this week's cover story, "Can Ratings Be Fixed?" Does it imply that the ratings system is broken, that networks and advertisers pay far too much attention to them, sacrificing admirable but low-rated programs at the altar of profitability and popularity? Or do we understand "fixed" to have the same meaning as "rigged," that the integrity of the ratings system has intentionally been breached so the  figures reflect something other than the truth, all to profit an unknown someone in position to tamper with the numbers? Oh, the uncertainty of it all.

As it turns out, according to Bob Stahl, it's a little bit of everything. In addition to those choices above, the overriding question, one on everyone's mind, is: "How can electronic gadgets in only 1050 homes measure accurately what 112,000 viewers are watching?" A Senate investigating committee is looking into it (yes, they don't have anything better to do than that), for as Oklahoma Senator Mike Monroney says, "[t]he struggle for rating supremacy led to rigging of TV quiz programs." Put that way, compared to the constant threat of nuclear war, I guess it is an important question.

The fact is, as is the case with alcohol, guns, technology, and, well, television, the ratings are neither good nor bad, but neutral. "They serve a useful and necessary purpose in the business," Stahl points out. "The fault lies in the way ratings are constantly misused." Max Banzhaf, advertising director of the Armstrong Cork Co. (sponsors of Armstrong Circle Theater), says that ratings are "designed to serve only as a guide in making program judgments," but that "too often [they're] used as a substitute for judgment. ABC President Oliver Treyz says ratings are "only one factor in any program decision." Answering critics who claim networks are too eager to jump on the bandwagon and copycat successful shows, NBC Vice President Hugh M. Beville Jr. replies, "Is it wrong to give the people what they say they want?"

Counters historian (and Kennedy confidant) Arthur Schlessinger, "The television industry must see its job, not as that of catering to the worst or even the average taste of its audiences, but in part as that of elevating taste." And Marion B. Harper Jr., president of the imposing McCann-Erickson ad agency, says that networks "must telecast more shows of quality than the ratings indicate the public wants to see." (We touched on this question of who decides what quality is last week.)

Garry Moore, who's been on TV long enough to know a thing or two about ratings, raises this question: "Is a comedian any funnier when he gets a 30 [rating] than when he gets a 20?" As an example, "[s]uppose the comedian gets a 20 when he has a really good show. His audience will talk up the show to friends; more people will tune in the following week. So he may get a 30 rating that second week and not have as good a show. Wouldn't that mean he was funnier with a 20 rating than with a 30?" Yes, the ratings are necessary, but they "don't show whether viewers buy the sponsor's product." As to the question of whether or not the ratings are rigged, Sen. Monroney says they aren't. "[W]e concluded that rating samples are inadequate, that ratings receive far too much emphasis in the industry, [but] we never charged that ratings were rigged." It's possible that television could see something akin to the payola scandals that rocked the radio world, but unlikely.

Unsurprisingly, reports Stahl, "There is no clear-cut answer to all of this." Broadcasters and advertisers need to be taught how to use the ratings correctly, and, says Beville, since the press aren't experts enough to write about them, "ratings should have no place in the press." Dr. Frank Stanton, president of CBS, offers the final word: beyond ratings, the networks need to know something more: what people want to look at. "We need constantly to know what the audience things we ought to be doing." To that end, they're conducting their own public-opinion polls, but I'm not sure that's necessary, because we all know what the audience thinks the networks should be doing: putting on better shows.

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If you think we're done with Garry Moore because of that little quote above, you've got another think coming. He's looking pretty satisfied on the cover, and for good reason: his Tuesday night variety show has more than held its own against NBC's heavily promoted Startime specials despite the latter's massive budget advantage ($250,000 per show, as opposed to Moore's $100,000), and I've Got a Secret, the panel show he's emceed all these years, is doing "quite all right" against NBC's Perry Como Show. (You'll notice ABC's not even in the discussion, which is par for the course in these days.)

"You can't run scared," Moore says of the doomsayers predicting disaster for both of his prime-time shows at the hands of well-funded competitors. Of his Tuesday night show, he says that "we expected very rough competition and we were prepared for it." It's true that Showtime got off to a good start, but Moore credited the loyalty of his viewers for his show's success. "People were familiar with our show from last year and I guess a lot of them liked it." It doesn't hurt either that the supporting cast includes Durward Kirby, Allen Funt and his Candid Camera, and Carol Burnett. "I guess the most important thing is to have faith in what you've all learned over the years and not start running around scared when the ratings slip a point or two."

Regarding that $100,000 per show budget, Moore provides an example of how that money doesn't really go very far. "Nine years ago if we wanted a smoke effect for some kind of a skit, somebody would borrow a bucket from the janitor and get 40 cents' worth of dry ice from the drugstore. Today you've got to have three special-effects men and a hand-forged bucket and the tab is $40. That's the way it goes." Multiply that by thousands, and now we know why simple things cost so much nowadays.

Moore closes with a great take on the quiz show scandals. Asked if they were embarrassed, he says, "Of course we were embarrassed. Embarrassed because no one bothered to investigate us." Apparently giving away $80 per show doesn't attract much attention. But Moore wouldn't have it any other way. "I turned down a job as host on a big-money quiz show because I figured that, on it, I wouldn't be a host at all. I'd be a croupier."

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Invariably, one of the programming victims of the ratings game is the cultural/educational genre. These shows haven't disappeared from TV completely, but with few exceptions they've been relegated to the Sunday ghetto, This week is a good example, beginning with CBS's famed trio of Sunday morning religious and cultural shows. At 10:00 a.m. ET, Lamp Unto My Feet presents "Far God and Country," a documentary on the role of religion and the Scriptures in American politics during the Revolutionary War. At 10:30 a.m., it's Look Up and Live, with "The Betrayal," the final episode in the five-part series "Images of the Bible." Finally, at 11:00 a.m., Camera Three has scenes from Colette's novelette The Vagabond, interpreted in dramatic and dance sequences. Following that bloc, CBS continues with the CBS Television Workshop, an hour-long anthology series that ran on Sundays throughout 1960. This week's presentation is the drama "Heart of a King," but the program also utilized Afredo Antonini and the CBS Symphony Orchestra for opera and classical music programs.

Speaking of, the culture continues at 3:15 p.m. on NBC (following the NBA game of the week between Detroit and Boston), with NBC Opera Theatre's live, color special of Mascagni's one-act opera Cavalleria Rusticana. The title might not be familiar to you, but this might be: the Intermezzo, one of the most famous orchestral pieces in opera, used in all kinds of movies including Raging Bull.


Following the opera, it's back to CBS at 4:30 p.m., with Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic, on Ford's Sunday Musical Showcase. While Bernstein is famous for his Young People's Concerts,* he's also a frequent teacher and commentator on classical music; in this program, "The Creative Performer," guest Igor Stravinsky conducts the Philharmonic, with pianist Glenn Gould and Met soprano Eileen Farrell. And after that, it's NBC, with G-E College Bowl at 5:30 p.m. (Case Western Reserve University of Cleveland vs. Purdue; the Boilermakers win, 260-15).

*He's also famous for having written the music for On the Town and West Side Story. Well, it didn't hurt.

None of these shows—none—would be on television today, save some niche cable station, and I'm not even sure about that. Nor am I sure that there's any network television on Sundays outside of prime time, save the political talk shows and sports. And where are those "public affairs" programs? Well, Meet the Press is on at 6:00 p.m.—prime time!

Bernstein is just fortunate that in Ford, he has a big sponsor supporting his show. Hallmark is another big sponsor, which is why Hallmark Hall of Fame airs in color on NBC Wednesday night at 7:30 p.m. It's not one of those saccharine pieces of drivel you see on the Hallmark Channel, either; it's Shakespeare's The Tempest, starring Maurice Evans, Richard Burton, Lee Remick, Roddy McDowall, and Tom Poston. Don't worry; I promise I'm not going to go off on one of my toots about this. I'm saving that for a Wednesday piece of its own.

What else? Well, there is sports this weekend, though not the volume we have today. At 2:00 p.m. Saturday, the NHL game of the week has the Detroit Red Wings vs. the Bruins at Boston Garden, while at 2:30 p.m. NBC counters with the NBA matchup between the Philadelphia Warriors (before they moved to San Francisco) and New York Knicks from Madison Square Garden. Sunday night, CBS presents a two-hour retrospective on "The Fabulous Fifties," hosted by Henry Fonda, with an all-star cast including Jackie Gleason, Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews, Mike Nichols and Elaine May, Betty Comdon and Adolph Green, and news highlights with Arthur Godfrey, Roger Bannister (the first sub-four-minute mile), Navy Captain William Anderson (who sailed his submarine, the Nautilus, under the polar ice cap), and Edmund Hillary (conqueror of Mount Everest). Eric Sevareid provides commentary.

On Thursday night, the great French star Maurice Chevalier stars in a one-man show on CBS (10:00 p.m.), performing all his favorites, including "Thank Heaven for Little Girls," which he sings to some special members of the audience, including the daughters of Joan Crawford and Jack Paar. Friday, it's a one-man performance of another kind, as Art Carney stars in three one-act plays: Sean O'Casey's "A Pound on Demand," "Where the Cross is Made" by Eugene O'Neill, and "Red Peppers" by Noel Coward. (8:00 p.m., NBC, and in color, of course.) Elaine Stritch guest stars in "Red Peppers," doing a couple of song-and-dance numbers with Carney. Carney's singled out for praise in one of our Letters to the Editor as well, for his recent performance in "Cal Me Back." Anyone who thinks he's just Ed Norton has another think coming. Also on Friday, Robert Conrad makes a brief cross-over appearance as Hawaiian Eye's Tom Lopaka in "Who Killed Cock Robin?" on 77 Sunset Strip. WB's always good that way.

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Interesting note in Burt Boyer's column about how Robert Young wants this to be the last year for Father Knows Best. When you figure that Young started out on the show in 1949 when it was on radio (he was the only member of the cast to make the transition to television), he's already been Jim Anderson for 11 years. Not only does Young want to do something different, his TV daughter, Elinor Donahue, is getting other offers herself. It's said that Young is looking for $11 million to sell a network the show's inventory of close to 250 episodes. As it turns out, this is Young's final season, and while I don't know how much he wound up getting, Father Knows Best ran for another three years in prime time; two seasons on NBC, and a final season on ABC. Think about that: three years of reruns in prime time, and additional years as part of ABC's daytime schedule.* The only similar example I can think of is Marshal Dillon, the name for the half-hour episodes that CBS ran on Tuesdays from 1961 to 1964 (while Gunsmoke was still in first-run), and then in syndication.

*It was an episode of Father Knows Best that was running on ABC affiliates in the Mountain and Pacific time zones at 1:30 p.m. ET on November 22, 1963, when President Kennedy was assassinated. The ABC footage on YouTube shows a follow-up voiceover bulletin interrupting the next to last scene of the episode, "Man About Town," before returning for some commercials and the wrap-up. Knowing what we do now about what the post-JFK years are like, it's actually kind of poignant. I do wonder what happened with Bud and the illusionist, though. 

Then, there's Dwight Whitney's note on Edd Byrnes, one of the stars of 77 Sunset Strip. Byrnes has joined the impressive ranks of Warner Bros. talent, past and present, who've been engaged in contract disputes with the studio, and consequently he's on suspension. In the meantime, he's taken a job as a greeter at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas. He's making $400 a week, which equals what he made playing Kookie. (No wonder he's upset with his contract!) Says Byrnes of his temporary career change, "The bills were piling up. I need the money."

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"Introducing Pat Crowley" in
the role of the Kookie.

Finally, this week's starlet is Pat Crowley, who, aside from her good looks, is known as someone who doesn't pine for her own TV series. She likes being a free-lancer, she explains; comparing it to a gym, she says it allows her to "work out on a different kind of bar bell every week." She's already been a success on the Great White Way, selected as "one of Broadway's most promising new personalities," and after a brief stint with movies ("The timing wasn't good," she explains. "Kookies weren't fashionable.*), she tried her hand at the small screen, and with appearances on Wanted—Dead or Alive, 77 Sunset Strip, and Maverick, she hasn't looked back.

*Except, as we've seen, on Sunset Strip.

She can afford to be choosy, since she's married to a Los Angeles attorney named Gregory Hookstratten. He's better known as Ed "The Hook" Hookstratten, and as one of the biggest legal names in Hollywood, he boasted of clients including Johnny Carson, Elvis Presley, Vin Scully, Joey Bishop, Bryant Gumbel, Tom Snyder, and Dick Enberg. He was general counsel for the Los Angeles Rams, fixed a DUI for Fred Silverman without it getting in the papers, and negotiated contracts for many a celebrity. All that, and Pat Crowley too (even though they wound up getting divorced). Quite an adventure, wouldn't you say? TV