This week in TV Guide: November 5, 1955

I'm not quite sure that "Operation Hush" is the best way to describe the process by which quiz shows like The $64,000 Question (Tuesday, 10:00 p.m., CBS) keep their questions secret from the public and the contestants appearing on their programs. After all, when I hear the word "hush," I think of hush money, which is what you pay in order to keep secret something that you'd rather other people not know about. Often, that something happens to be illegal. Do you suppose my years in politics have made me suspicious, cynical, hard-boiled when it comes to things like this? Or is it just that, nearly 70 years later, all of us benefit from hindsight in knowing that most of these shows were rigged?

Frank De Blois describes how the process works on Question, beginning with the questions themselves, which originate with college professor and TV personality Dr. Bergen Evans. They're then passed through for approval by the production team, after which they're sealed in a box which is locked in a vault at Manufacturers Trust bank. On the night of the broadcast, two bank executives, accompanied by a pair of guards, unlock the vault, remove the sealed box, and take a cab to the studio, arriving just before showtime. Once a contestant enters the famed soundproof "isolation booth," all he can hear is host Hal March's voice, and all he can see is March's face.

De Blois relates the efforts made by other programs, ones that offer considerably less than $64,000: I've Got a Secret, Masquerade Party, What's My Line? They're whimsical enough (how do you get someone to refrain from boasting that they're this week's Mystery Guest?), but it's the big-money quiz shows we're interested in. The scandal didn't start with Question, of course; Dotto and Twenty-One were the first programs to be implicated, but eventually, in September 1958, the truth catches up. 

According to the always-reliable Wikipedia, "The $64,000 Question was closely monitored by its sponsor's CEO, Revlon's Charles Revson, who often interfered with production, especially attempting to bump contestants he himself disliked, regardless of audience reaction. Revson's brother, Martin, was assigned to oversee production, including heavy discussions of feedback the show received." One of the show's gimmicks, an IBM sorting machine that supposedly selected lower-dollar questions at random, was just a prop; all of the cards, with the questions on them, were identical. Teddy Nadler, one of the show's most famous winners, had been shown some of the questions beforehand, but the producers maintained that he already knew the answers.

One of the things you'll see as we go through this week's issue is the importance that sponsors play in 1950s television. Today, sponsors seldom even choose the programs in which their commercials appear*, but at one time it was the sponsors that created the programs themselves, and even if they simply signed up to pay the freight, so to speak, they insinuated themselves into the program in ways we'd probably find completely unacceptable.

*One reason why sponsor boycotts are often of little practical value is that commercial time purchases are often determined by brokers whose jobs are to fill the available slots. A sponsor withdrawing from a particular show might make the broker's job more difficult, but it doesn't necessarily mean the sponsor endorsed the program in question, nor does it always produce the cause-and-effect that the boycott organizers hope for.

In the case of the quiz show scandals, the desire was to manipulate the winners (whether at the sponsor's whim, as with Question, or to attract larger viewing audiences, as was the motive with other programs). In other instances, sponsors tried to manipulate the content of individual programs. I'll get to that in a tick, if you'll just be a little more patient.

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A couple of weeks ago, we saw the dramatic entry of Walt Disney into the weekly television business, and while Disney may have been the first major studio to take the plunge, they won't be the only one. This week, the focus turns to two of the giants of Hollywood, Warner Brothers and M-G-M, and their entries into the television sweepstakes (both, incidentally, on ABC). The early verdict: while Warner may know how to make movies for theaters, the studio "still has much to learn about producing movies for TV." Meanwhile, M-G-M may have taken "the easiest way out," they also may have produced "the most entertaining show" of all the movie studios this year.

Warner Bros. Presents is a "wheel" series, consisting of three hour-long dramas rotating on an every-third-week schedule. All three are based on, and bear the titles of, past WB movie hits: Kings Row, Casablanca, and Cheyenne. Looking at them in order, Kings Row features Jack Kelly (the role played in the movie by Robert Cummings), Nan Leslie (the movie's Ann Sheridan), and Robert Horton (played memorably by Ronald Reagan), in "soap opera-ish stories" about a young psychiatrist battling the superstitions of the early 1900s; Casablanca, which perhaps has the toughest legacy to live up to, has Charles McGraw as Humphrey Bogart (a thankless task), "who seldom has a chance against heavily written scripts"; and Cheyenne, the most loosely based of the three, which stars Clint Walker as a cowboy who gets into "standard scrapes with bad buys, Indians and cattle rustlers in a rather immature Western." 

There's a feeling, expressed elsewhere as well as in this article, that Warner felt all they had to do is show up with their name, and the viewers would follow. Indeed, all three shows are "well-produced and competently acted," and sport both a "lavish budget and technical skill." What they don't have are quality stories; as the review says, "the play's still the thing." That's a lesson that M-G-M seems to take to heart in their offering, M-G-M Parade. Unlike WBP, Parade attempts no new programming, but instead dips into the studio's massive library of hit movies, offering clips and short subjects, along with previews of coming attractions. 

George Murphy (L) interviews Robert Taylor

It's a smart idea; "Most viewers have fond recollections of old movies." So who'd be able to resist, for example, Judy Garland, at 12, singling "You Made My Love You," or clips from past and present stars such as Barrymore, Astaire, or host (and future U.S. senator) George Murphy? Unlike WBP, Parade, for the most part, delivers on its potential. True, the writers haven't given Murphy much to work with as host, sticking him with remarks that are often "deadly dull." He's a pleasant presence, though, well-suited to his role. Having seen some episodes of Parade myself—TCM showed them a few years ago; since we've cut the cord, I don't know if they still do—the most disconcerting thing about it might be seeing the black-and-white clips from those great technicolor movies. It just doesn't look right.

Warner Bros. eventually gets it right, of course. Cheyenne, the only surviving element of Warner Bros. Presents, runs for seven successful seasons, and the studio becomes an assembly line for PI and Western dramas on ABC. M-G-M, meanwhile, has a more checkered history, but has several hits in co-production with other companies, and has its share of successes. It just goes to show, I guess, that television is your friend.

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No matter where we turn, stories about sponsors keep coming up, and in the New York Teletype, we learn about a recalcitrant sponsor: Pontiac has withdrawn as sponsor of the upcoming Project 20, an occasional series of documentaries which will run on NBC into the 1960s. According to Bob Stahl, speculation is that "the auto company felt it unwise to be associated with the first in the series, 'Nightmare in Red'—even though the show is anti-Communist." The network has another sponsor lined up, and now the episode is scheduled to air sometime in January. Don't worry; the Cold War isn't going anywhere.

Meanwhile, Dan Jenkins reports that the sponsors would like some changes to the format of none other than: M-G-M Parade. Those elements that TV Guide thought made the show successful—clips of old movies and short subjects—apparently aren't as popular with the sponsors, who want "more new film, less old; more attention to commercials, less to picture plugs." Oh well.

Also in the Teletype, Ernie Kovacs has gotten fine reviews for his recent pinch-hitting on Tonight in place of Steve Allen, and the talk is that television's most creative force may get his on show on NBC as a result. He does, eventually; he hosts a summer replacement series for Sid Caesar next summer, after which he becomes the regular Monday-Tuesday host for Tonight, remaining until Allen leaves the program in 1957. 

And here's something that sponsors are sure to appreciate: NBC and its affiliates now cover "90 percent of the Nation's TV homes with colorcasts, and are doing so with 10 percent of the network's programming schedule." The motive is to push sales of those RCA color televisions. 

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We'll continue with our look at sponsors, but first this message about what's on TV this week. (When's the last time you saw a program interrupt a sponsor?) 

Believe it or not, there used to be a time, before it joined the Ivy League, when the University of Pennsylvania used to be a significant player in college football, winning the national championship as recently as 1924. There were even concerns, when television started to affect the sport, that Penn might cut its own TV deal. This, however (and unfortunately for the university), is 1955, not 1924. Nonetheless, the Quakers are on the game of the week this Saturday (1:15 p.m., NBC), although it might be due to their opponent: sixth-ranked Notre Dame. The Fighting Irish rout Penn 46-14, but the news is not all bad: it's the only time this season that Penn scores in double digits, en route to an 0-9 season and a 22-game losing streak. 

Sunday sees a genuine television first: the American premiere of the British movie The Constant Husband, the first time that a theatrical movie has ever appeared on American television before being shown in theaters. (Due to the distributor's bankruptcy, the movie hadn't even premiered in London until the past April 21.) The farce stars Rex Harrison as an amnesiac who turns out to be married to six different women. (7:30 p.m., NBC, in color.) In the meantime, while we don't have anyone to match up with Ed Sullivan, that doesn't mean we can't check out his lineup: Liberace, Phil Silvers, opera star Rise Stevens, British singer David Whitfield, and Belgian circus clown Linon. (8:00 p.m., CBS)

Abby Mann, who will win an Oscar in 1961 for writing Judgment at Nuremberg (and later on creates the TV series Kojak) is the author of "The World to Nothing," Monday's Robert Montgomery Presents (9:30 p.m., NBC), the story of a movie star (Eddie Albert) who realizes that his movie success has cost him everything important in his personal life. The night's second prestige anthology, Studio One, opens its eighth season with a tense submarine drama, "Shakedown Cruise," starring Richard Kiley, Lee Marvin, and Martin Brooks. (10:00 p.m., CBS)

The new, more refined Milton Berle Show features a musical revue on Tuesday (8:00 p.m., NBC), directed by and starring Uncle Miltie, with the Will Mastin Trio starring Sammy Davis, Jr., Gloria DeHaven, and Gogi Grant. If you want to see it from the beginning, though, you'll have to pass up the last half hour of this week's Warner Bros. Presents, Casablanca, with guest star Maureen O'Sullivan as a woman whose newspaperman husband was recently released from four years in a Soviet labor camp. (7:30 p.m, ABC)

On Wednesday, Lillian Roth makes her television dramatic debut in the U.S. Steel Hour episode "Outcast." (10:00 p.m., CBS). She plays "a once-successful Hollywood writer who is driven to drink by her husband's infidelity and the tragic death of her only child. Her friends try to help her and even get her a chance to resume her career. But she is afraid." Although "Outcast" is based on a story by Frank Gabrielson, the life of Elaine, the character she plays, is remarkably similar to Roth's own life and her battle to come back from alcoholism, which she frankly shared in a memorable appearance on This Is Your Life in 1953, and later detailed in her 1954 autobiography, I'll Cry Tomorrow (turned into a 1955 movie starring Susan Hayward). Roth, one of the first celebrities to publicly discuss struggling with alcoholism, is credited with helping facilitate the public understanding of alcoholism as a disease. As for her performance in "Outcast," the New York Times TV critic Jack Gould calls it "magnificent," and adds that "In its understanding, in its poignancy, in its sensitivity, her performance was one that can only be called memorable."

I mentioned Dr. Bergen Evans in this week's lede, and he hosts the panel show Down You Go* (Thursday, 9:30 p.m., ABC), with panelists Fran Coughlin, Sherl Stern, Patricia Cutts, and John Kiernan, Jr. And your first question might be: who are these people? Well, they were all personalities, having written for or appeared on panel shows in the 1950s. They were probably quick-thinking, witty, conversant, and good conversationalists, essential in the era of live television, and at a time when television has to create its own stars. 

*Down You Go, which someone resembles Wheel of Fortune, ran for five seasons, and is one of only six series to appear on all four broadcast networks—ABC, NBC, CBS, and DuMont. The others: The Arthur Murray Party, Pantomime Quiz, Tom Corbett, Space Cadet, The Ernie Kovacs Show, and The Original Amateur Hour.

If you're feeling lost these days, it could be worse: you could be "The Man Without a Country," the classic by Edward Everett Hale, about an American accused of treason who curses the United States during his trial and is sentenced to live the remainder of his life about ship, never to see or hear of his homeland again. Cliff Robertson played Philip Nolan in the 1973 telemovie, but in this week's Matinee Theater colorcast (Friday, 3:00 p.m., NBC), but in today's presentation he's played by Peter Hansen, who as Peter Hanson will star as Lee Baldwin on General Hospital for nearly 30 years. 

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Finally, our look at how sponsors get involved in the content of the shows they broadcast. 

Most of you are familiar with the many stories that Rod Serling has told about sponsor interference, but this week's article, "Why Producers Get Gray," will provide you some additional examples that might make you, in Tom Wolfe's words, shake your head like the Fool Killer, "frustrated by the magnitude of the opportunity." 

• In Judy Garland’s TV “spectacular,” the New York skyline abruptly underwent a spectacular change. Someone eliminated the familiar Chrysler building, because the show was sponsored by Ford.
• Publicity pictures for CBS’ Crusader series were hastily scrapped. They showed the hero smoking a cigar. The sponsor is a cigaret company.
• When Eartha Kitt sang "C’Est Si Bon" on Ed Sullivan’s show, the lyrics were hastily revised, so that Eartha would yearn for a Lincoln (Ed’s sponsor), instead of a "Cadillac car."
• The CBS daydrama, The Secret Storm, was originally titled "The Storm Within." That title seemed too descriptive of the sponsor's product—Bisodol.
• Two network newscasters ran the same films of a man being lowered to safety from a bridge. CBS’ Doug Edwards pointed out that the man was given a cigar. NBC’s John Cameron Swayze, whose show is sponsored by a cigaret firm, called it "a smoke."
• There was confusion last season over a show’s title. Was it Hey, Mulligan! or The Mickey Rooney Show? The first was widely publicized, until one of the sponsors, Green Giant Peas, recalled a competitor's mulligan stew.
• When Perry Como was ill, Eddie Fisher commented, at the end of one of his Coca-Cola telecasts, "Get well, P.C." His sponsors, constantly vying with Pepsi-Cola, hurriedly advised him never to use those initials again.

I suppose we could just say that they're protecting their turf. Psychiatrists would probably say they're demonstrating a latent insecurity, and prescribe something for them. But first they'd better check to make sure that prescription isn't for a rival pharma company's product. TV  

Around the dial

Thanks for indulging me last week when I preempted this feature to participate in the Donald Pleasence blogathon (and if you haven't read my review of the Twilight Zone episode "The Changing of the Guard," you can do so here). This week it's back to normal, and we'll start off at ReelWeegieMidget, co-sponsor of the Pleasence blogathon, with Gill's recap of this year's entries. Read through some very good articles on a very good actor.

Next, it's the latest Hitchcock Project entry by Jack at bare-bones e-zine: "The Baby-Blue Expression," Helen Nielsen's nasty little story about infidelity and foolishness, with Sarah Marshall, Peter Walker and Richard Gaines. The satisfaction factor in this one is high.

David continues his "journey through 1970s TV" at Comfort TV; he's into the second year now, looking at Sunday nights in 1971. Remember The Bold Ones? Bonanza? The Jimmy Stewart Show? They're all there, along with Cade's County, the underrated Glenn Ford contemporary Western that ran for two seasons. Let David bring back some memories. 

At Cult TV Blog, John has been reviewing a number of interesting documentaries, and the latest is "Cromwell Street," about the infamous serial killers Fred and Rose West, and particularly on the role Cromwell Street itself played in the commission of these murders.

At Classic Film & TV Cafe, Rick reviews the 1954 romantic drama Three Coins in the Fountain, which, as I've mentioned before, was based on the novel Coins in the Fountain by future ABC news correspondent and documentarian John Secondari. It's also the only time Frank Sinatra sang the theme for a movie that he didn't appear in. 

We're still thinking about the late, great Angela Lansbury, and since Halloween was just a few days ago, it's appropriate that at Silver Scenes, the Metzingers look back at the 1987 Murder She Wrote episode "Night of the Headless Horseman." And this one isn't in Cabot Cove!

Keeping with that Halloween theme, at A Shroud of Thoughts, Terence takes us back to The Beverly Hillbillies and the show's only Halloween episode, "Trick or Treat," the sixth episode of the show's first season, and the first (of many) to hit #1 in the ratings.

For F Troop Friday at The Horn Section, Hal revisits the first-season episode "Too Many Cooks Spoil the Troop," with O'Rourke and Agarn up to their tricks again, this time taking on guest stars James Gregory and Jamie Farr.

At Shadow & Substance, Paul tells us about the expanded edition of Scott Skelton and Jim Benson's book Rod Serling's Night Gallery: An After-Hours Tour. And when he says "expanded," he means it; check out what he has to say, and you've got until tomorrow to get in on the Kickstarter and get a copy.

Finally, at The Lucky Strike Papers, Andrew shows us what can happen when you're doing live television, with this look at Buddy Holly and the Crickets and their 1957 appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. We wouldn't have it any other way, though. TV  

TV Jibe: Don't worry, it's almost over

TV  

What's on TV? Friday, November 3, 1967

Happy Halloween, everyone! We've arrived in late 1967, and you can see that the penetration of color into network programming is almost complete. There are still a few daytime shows, mostly on ABC, that continue to be made in B&W, as are some reruns of series from earlier in the decade, but for the most part the transition has been completed. From now on, the only shows not in color are the aforementioned reruns, occasional live news remotes, and local programming. I'm not quite sure when the majority made the move to color broadcasting their locally produced shows (like the news), and you'll notice that some stations lack the ability to replay color programs that were recorded from a different time or network. These stations would probably be shocked at how much more advanced the equipment is in today's home than what they had. That's progress, at least in the quality of broadcasting if not the quality of programming. This week's guide is the Minnesota State Edition.  

This week in TV Guide: October 28, 1967

We've got a Cleveland Amory 2-for-1 this week, and that's a hard offer to pass up, especially when Cleve has the cover story. Your level of interest will vary depending on how you feel about Hollywood society. 

Our story begins with Hollywood itself, which Amory says is "only a dream," and like other mythical dreams, it was discovered more or less by accident, but most certainly by D.W. Griffith, who'd been sent by the Biography company to make the movie In Old California. Griffith had settled in downtown Los Angeles, but soon found everything he needed in Hollywood. He was soon joined by Cecil B. DeMille, who wound up in Hollywood after having tried to film a western in Flagstaff, where he had found "a raging blizzard and not a single Indian, for free, for hire or for reservations." Like Griffith before him, DeMille found Hollywood to his liking, and soon, "month by month, year by year, the dream factory grew." Anyone could give it a try; as Lewis Selznick once said, "The motion-picture business takes less brains than anything else in the world." (A statement that has yet to be disproved?)

Amory goes on to relate the stories of the stars who made Hollywood glamorous, "the boys who would be gods and the girls who would be goddesses." There was Mary Pickford, who at age 16 had been discovered by Griffith for $5 a picture; "Several years later she herself drew up her contract, which called for $10,000 a week, plus half the profits of her pictures." No wonder she was in at the beginning of United Artists. Clark Gable arrived in a train from Portland, "with four handkerchiefs, two clean shirts, and $2 in cash." He married up, and ten years later he was a star. So did Lucille LeSueur, who waited on tables at age 9, did homework for classmates at 14, did some time in the chorus line, and wound up being Joan Crawford. Greta Garbo was, according to Louis B. Mayer, "too fat," but she made it anyway. Gloria Swanson took baths in a solid gold bathtub, Dolores del Rio drank from a golden chalice, Tom Mix had a drawing room with a fountain that sprayed water in all sorts of colors. I guess, if that's your thing.

Mansions were all the rage. Marion Davies had three, including a 14-room bungalow. Harold Lloyd's boasted the world's largest Christmas tree, with 50,000 ornaments. (Now that's my kind of guy.) At Pickfair, home of Pickford and her husband, Douglas Fairbanks, practical jokes were in; Fairbanks had the dining chairs wired so visitors (even royalty) could be given the "hot seat." And the excess wasn't limited to architecture, either; in promoting an upcoming picture, Sam Goldwyn's advertising department came up with the tag line that We Live Again combined "The directorial genius of Mamoulian, the beauty of Sten and the producing genius of Goldwyn [naturally]" to make "the world's greatest entertainment." Said Goldwyn, "That is the kind of ad I like. Facts. No exaggeration."

Part two of Cleve's chronicle, to appear in the following week's issue, promises to reveal how the Hollywood giants saw themselves and others. They can't do any better than Fred Allen, who once observed acidly that movie stars even wore sunglasses to church. "They're afraid," he said, "God might recognize them and ask them for their autographs."

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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.

Sullivan: Scheduled: actress-singer Polly Bergen; pianist Peter Nero; dancer-choreographer Peter Gennaro; ventriloquist Senor Wences; comedians Myron Cohen and Richard Pryor; the Cowsills; and juggler Jean Claude.

Palace: Host Bing Crosby presents comic pianist Victor Borge, singers Roger Miller and Gail Martin, comedian Paul Lynde, Fred and Mickie Finn's ragtime group, and the United Nations Children's Choir.

Unlike many weeks, the lineups here are light on vaudeville acts; the only listed one belongs to Jean Claude on the Sullivan show. Otherwise, things look pretty evenly matched; I've never been a particular fan of children's choirs, especially the UN choir with the kids all in their "native" costumes (I always enjoy how they put the Arab states next to Israel, no doubt hoping to help create peace for future generations). On the other hand, all that really does is offset the Cowsills. And with Roger Miller, Dean Martin's daughter Gail (who can really sing), and Victor Borge, the Palace has a crowd-pleasing lineup—enough so that it gives Palace the win by a phonetic exclamation point.

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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 shows of the era. 

Cleveland Amory's second appearance this week takes us to the world of the television sitcom, and the new CBS series He & She. It's become fashionable over the years to regard He & She as a sitcom that was ahead of its time, a witty and sophisticated precursor to such adult shows as those starring Mary Tyler Moore and Bob Newhart. It's kind of surprising, therefore, that our man Cleve is not so bullish on He & She, viewing it as one that "at best is mildly amusing high camp—and, at worst, is wildly confusing low bunk." 

For Amory, He & She is farce, played completely and entirely for laughs, but for farce to be successful, "you must give your audience such a steady rolling barrage of laughs that they forget you are robbing them of all that is nearest and dearest to them—which is believability." To accomplish this, the producers have surrounded our winsome starts, Dick and Paula (Richard Benjamin and Paula Prentiss) with a supporting cast of "supposedly screamingly funny regulars," each of whom, according to Amory, is at best a one- or two-joke caricature doing the same one or two jokes each week. "By the 15th time they have done the same thing, we are ready to scream—but unfortunately not with laughter."

Amory picks out Jack Cassady as the worst offender, "directed so far over [the top] that he is actually fascinatingly infuriating." Cassidy's character, the egotistic actor Oscar North, has of course widely been considered the template for MTM's egotistic anchorman Ted Baxter (Ted Knight), one of television sitcom's iconic characters. As for the leads, he views Benjamin as fine, although "his nasal voice is a pretty harsh irritant," while Prentiss, whose character is one of the first working wives on television, is "a lovely sight, but she is obviously an acquired taste." Apparently, if He & She was ahead of its time for viewers, it was also ahead of its time for Cleveland Amory. But sometimes Cleve reassesses his reviews at the end of the season; I wonder if he did here as well?

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Before reality television, before daytime chatfests, before Barbara Walters asking you what kind of tree you would be, there was a somewhat more demure, now mostly forgotten program called Personality, a game show which ran on NBC from 1967 to 1969 and, according to Edith Efron, caused its celebrity guests to "park their inhibitions." 

Personality, with host Larry Blyden

Created by Bob Stewart, who's brought us such successful shows as To Tell the Truth, Password, The Price Is Right and Eye Guess, Personality "is based on several solid premises: (1) that the public is curious about what celebrities are 'really' like; (2) that celebrities are curious about what other celebrities are 'really' like; and (3) that celebrities are curious about what the rest of the public things they are 'really' like." Each show has three celebrity panelists. First, they try to guess the answers to questions posed to other celebrities, who appear on tape. Second, they try to guess how their fellow panelists answer questions. Third, they try to guess what the public thinks about each of them. Hopefully, that makes sense. 

The questions come from a master questionnaire written by Stewart, consisting of hundreds of questions "of a personal nature," and they come across as something of an existential Dating Game. Many of them are about sex: "What do you think about sex?" "What's the best way to keep monogamy from turning into monotony?" Others are ethical or fanciful: "If you slept during the next 10 years, what's the first thing you'd like to know when you woke up?" "What do you think is man's greatest weakness?" Finally, there are what Efron terms "intensely personal questions": "What causes you to feel weak in the knees?" "If you had to describe your own personal kind of hell, what would it be like?" I knew things would get interesting!

Although I tend to be one who looks at these celebrity confessionals and shouts "TMI!" there's no question that the format seems to deliver on what it promises. The questions "force people to use their imagination, they force them into deep self-expression. They make people express things they have on their minds and hearts which they don't ordinarily express," Stewart says. "They often say after an interview, 'My God, it's like going to a psychiatrist!'" That may sound like hype, but the answers are surprisingly self-revelatory. When asked, if reincarnation was real, how she would like to come back, Zsa Zsa Gabor replied, "Like I started but without all the mistakes I made." Robert Vaughn, asked the quickest way for a woman to reach his heart, said, "adulation toward me and total silence." And, perhaps most revealing is Henry Morgan's answer when asked if anything is a fate worse than death: "Living."

Efron is impressed by the insight shown by some panelists when asked to guess how the celebrity answers. Skitch Henderson, for instance, correctly deduced Sammy Davis Jr.'s definition of love from the three options given him by reflecting on Davis's relationship with wife Mai Britt: "I think the sort of thing he would say about love would be associated with Mai, so he would say: 'Looking across the room at your wife and just smiling.'" He was right. And when it comes to guessing how the public viewed them, the celebs were split; Henry Morgan was delighted to find he'd correctly predicted that the public, when asked if Morgan were president of a bank, would demand heavy collateral on all loans. On the other hand, Bill Cullen was disappointed when he was told that the public, given the choice of casting him as a clever lawyer, a mad scientist, or the fellow who doesn't get the girl, chose the last option. He'd hoped they'd see him as the clever lawyer.

As far as I could tell, there are a couple of Personality episodes on YouTube; you can see one of them here, with Jack Cassidy, Joan Rivers, and Flip Wilson on the panel. (The other episode, which is uploaded in two parts, appears to be from the same week.) Take a look at it and see if you think something like this would work today.

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There's plenty more to watch this week, starting with Saturday's rematch of last season's college football Game of the Century, as Michigan State travels to Notre Dame to play the Fighting Irish. (1:30 p.m. CT, ABC). Unlike last year's showdown of undefeateds, each side has lost twice coming into this year's matchup. The difference in the two teams' fortunes: after Notre Dame wins 24-12, they run the table and finish the year 8-2, ranked #5 in the nation; Michigan State, on the other hand, will win only once more, en route to a disappointing 3-7 record. As integration eliminates the pipeline that brought black players to northern schools, it will be decades before Michigan State is a national contender again.

Sunday's highlights include the TV premiere of Hud (8:00 p.m., ABC), which Judith Crist calls "extraordinary," featuring a towering performance in the title role by Paul Newman, "the soulless man who not only remarks that he doesn't give a damn—but doesn't." Patricia Neal (Best Actress), Melvyn Douglas (Best Supporting Actor) and James Wong Howe (Best B&W Cinematography) won Oscars, and the movie has been considered a classic almost since its 1963 debut. If that sounds a little too intense for you, you might prefer the delightful Hayley Mills in Pollyanna, spread over three weeks on The Wonderful World of Color (6:30 p.m., NBC).

Next, it's a Monday Night Football trial run, with the Green Bay Packers and St. Louis Cardinals facing off from St. Louis (8:30 p.m., CBS). It's established TV history that CBS turned down the rights to MNF in 1970, leaving ABC to pick up the pieces; I've often wondered how much CBS regretted that move over the years.

Tuesday's Jerry Lewis Show (7:00 p.m., NBC) features what sounds like a truly atrocious premise: a trio of Jerry, Don Rickles. and Dorothy Provine singing "Bosom Buddies." Maybe it isn't as bad as all that—I'm a fan of Dorothy's going back to The Roaring '20s, and she can do it all—but it's probably best to keep one's expectations low. Better yet, check out tonight's episode of The Invaders (7:30 p.m., ABC) in which David Vincent tries to infiltrate a conference of world leaders that may mask an alien plot. This would explain a lot about our world today, wouldn't it? And at 8:00 p.m., NBC presents its first made-for-TV movie of the season, Stranger on the Run, with Henry Fonda as a murder suspect being hunted for sport by a sheriff and his two deputies. 

Jack Benny is the host on Wednesday's Kraft Music Hall (8:00 p.m., NBC), with an eclectic lineup: Liberace, singer Astrud Gilberto, concert violinist Michael Rabin, rock band the Blues Magoos, and two comedians who can also play musical instruments: the aforementioned Henry Morgan on violin, and Morey Amsterdam on cello. I started to wonder why Don Rickles wasn't included, but have no fear: he's Ben Gaszara's client on tonight's Run for Your Life (9:00 p.m., NBC). Don plays a comedian charged with assault, and we'll leave it at that.

We've seen numerous examples of how Golden Age dramas were fleshed out into theatrical films—Requiem for a Heavyweight, Marty, Patterns, 12 Angry Men—and this week we see another, with the TV premiere of 1962's Days of Wine and Roses (Thursday, 8:00 p.m., CBS), which Judith Crist calls "a grim and graphic depiction" of alcoholism, and boasts top performances from Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick. Speaking of top performers, I don't know how good tonight's episode of Cimarron Strip (6:30 p.m., CBS) is, but you can't beat the heavyweight guest cast, which includes Richard Boone, Andrew Duggan, Robert Duvall, Morgan Woodward, and Ed Flanders. And on F. Lee Bailey's interview show Good Company (9:00 p.m., ABC), Lee visits with Nobel Prize-winner Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

On Friday, the Bell Telelphone Hour (9:00 p.m., NBC) travels to England for highlights from the Aldeburgh Festival, hosted by one of the 20th century's most notable composers, Benjamin Britten. Later, on WTCN's 10:00 movie, James Stewart stars in The Spirit of St. Louis, the story of Charles Lindbergh and his famous flight. I mention this only because I'm fairly sure I watched this when it was on back then; I've seen it again since, but when you're a kid, you don't forget the feeling of being able to stay up late watching TV because it's not a school night, and the 10:00 movie was, if I'm not mistaken, sponsored by the auto dealership Downtown Chevytown, which of course used Petula Clark's song as its theme. Ah, the things that stick in your mind.    

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As I've said before, we're all about linkage here, and since Cleveland Amory brought up Paula Prentiss earlier, it would be very, very wrong to ignore the fashion layout she does in this week's issue. Here's, she's displaying four fall outfits designed by Viola Sylbert for Albert Altus. not that you'd notice, but the plastic and Lucite chair was designed by Phil Orenstein for Mass Art. Paula Prentiss and Richard Benjamin were married in 1961, and often performed together. They're both still around, still married, 61 years later.

What was it Cleve said about her being an acquired taste?

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This week's MST3K alert: Kitten with a Whip (Friday, 11:10 p.m., KDAL). "A young girl who has escaped from prison threatens the career of a politically ambitious man." Ann-Margret, John Forsythe, Peter Brown. The only MST3K episode that I wasn't able to finish watching even once, not even to see them give this movie its well-deserved scorn. 

Honorable mention: Attack of the Mushroom People, a 1964 Japanese sci-fi flick, never made it but should have. "A yachting party, cast ashore on an uncharted island, encounters a horrifying fungus." Anybody for a horror reboot of Gilligan's Island? That'll really give the Professor something to do. TV