Around the dial

Another easy week in the blogosphere; you'd almost think that people had other things to do besides type about old television shows. But you can't go wrong with a collection that includes a Thanksgiving recipe, right?

Helen Nielsen's third and final script for Alfred Hitchcock Presents was "You Can't Trust a Man," a skillful adaptation of her own short story, starring Polly Bergen and Joe Maross; it's the subject of Jack's latest Hitchcock Project at bare-bones e-zine.

I submit that there's no way you're going to pass up a story that contains the line, "What on earth is going on with Shakespeare's tomb," am I right? That, and a lot of other interesting information, is contained in "Shakespeare's Tomb," the latest documentary that John reviews at Cult TV Blog. 

Pamelyn Ferdin was one of the most ubiquitous child stars on television in the 1960s and 1970s; as David points out at Comfort TV, she was never a regular but appeared in almost every series at one time or another. This week, read about some of her most notable roles. 

Robert Clary, the last surviving member of the original cast of Hogan's Heroes (Kenneth Washington, who was in the last season, is still alive) died earlier this week, aged 96. He might be best-known for Hogan, but he was accomplished in many other roles as well. Terence remembers his career at A Shroud of Thoughts.

Did you know that Uncle Sam had a wife? Yes, Aunt Sammy! (The things you learn on the internet.) In 1931 the USDA and Aunt Sammy put out a collection of recipes from her radio program; the Broadcast Archives has her nifty recipe for roast turkey with chestnut stuffing. Just in time for next week! TV  

The It's About TV! Interview: Talking about The Gallant Men with Brandon Hollingsworth

As you probably know, I've done a lot of interviews since this website started. For the most part, I enjoy talking with people who expand my knowledge of the classic TV world: fellow authors, classic TV buffs, people who can tell me (and, by extension, you loyal readers out there) about shows that we should know more about. This week, The It's About TV! Interview presents Brandon Hollingsworth, as we discuss the 1962-63 World War II drama The Gallant Men. I think you'll enjoy our conversation.

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It’s About TV: Even classic TV fans might not be as familiar with The Gallent Men as they are with other period war dramas, and I’m thinking of shows like Combat! or Twelve-O’Clock High. Let’s start by talking a little about the premise of the series and its origins.

Brandon Hollingsworth: The Gallant Men is the story of a core group of eight men within the U.S. Army’s Fifth Division from the amphibious landings at Salerno in September 1943 to a point north of Naples in late spring 1944. The cast is a simplified cross-section of Army personnel in the fictional Able Company, led by Capt. Jim Benedict (played by the recently-deceased William Reynolds). Almost every episode is framed at the beginning and end by the narration of newspaper correspondent Conley Wright (Robert McQueeney), who was embedded with the company.

William Reynolds as Capt. Jim Benedict

Series creator William T. Orr had come up with the concept, under the working title Battle Zone, as early as 1957, but the Big Three networks weren’t interested. It took him until 1961 to sell the show to ABC. That network was looking for a varied programming slate in the fall of 1962 that it hoped would siphon viewers away from NBC and CBS. ABC was also the Warner Bros. TV division’s best customer, so there was a relationship that I think aided The Gallant Men in landing there.

There had been a couple of World War II dramatic series in the '50s. But the big thing was Westerns (a ship that was also launched by Orr, because he created Cheyenne in 1955; its success touched off the thirst for television Westerns). I know we’re talking about The Gallant Men, but focus group data collected in early 1962 for the Combat! pilot showed that kids and adults were favorably inclined toward a World War II drama. So I think by that time, a substantial number of people could handle a war show as an exercise in entertainment.

How did you first find out about The Gallant Men? It’s not as if the show is easy to find on TV.

My spouse got me interested in World War II, and with my interest in TV history, I naturally started wondering if there were small-screen depictions of the war before Band of Brothers. That's how I found Combat! In reading about Combat!, I kept seeing references to this "other" series that debuted the same season. I naturally got curious. But when I started searching for The Gallant Men online, I could find so little about it. The series doesn't live on YouTube, like Combat! and 12 O'Clock High, and it's not in current reruns on MeTV or Antenna or Decades. It didn't have detailed, dedicated fan sites. There was just hardly anything about it, and what was available was very incomplete. And if you're anything like me, when you're interested in something and find that it's hard to get to, it only increases your interest. So I got the DVD set in December 2019 and started from there.

Besides William Reynolds, who are some of the co-stars or guest stars who we'd recognize?

Roger Davis, who played radioman Roger Gibson, will immediately be recognized by Dark Shadows fans for his role as cursed portraitist Charles Delaware Tate. In 1972, he succeeded Pete Duel as Ben Murphy’s co-star in Alias Smith and Jones.

Robert Ridgely (Lt. Frank Kimbro) hit it off with Mel Brooks and ended up in amazingly silly bit roles in a few of Brooks’ films (a flasher in High Anxiety and an executioner in Robin Hood: Men in Tights, to name a couple). Ridgely also landed a number of bit parts in television series and had a long career in cartoon voice work. Once you know his face or his voice, you see (or hear) him all over the place.

Others from the regular cast turned up in one-off roles on other series, such as Perry Mason, the ubiquitous Westerns of the era, other Warner shows of the early ‘60s and the crime dramas of the ‘70s. Davis and Ridgely were definitely the biggest "successes," at least in terms of regular gigs, to come out of the principal cast.

Recognizable guest stars include William Windom, who later played Dr. Hazlett, the town doctor on Murder She Wrote; Julie Adams, who was in Creature From the Black Lagoon; Hans Gudegast, who would go on to play Dietrich, the antagonist in Rat Patrol; George O’Hanlon, who was the voice of George Jetson; Peter Breck; Robert Conrad; and three people who would become extremely well known in another context—DeForest Kelley, George Takei and James Doohan.

What role did the other men in the unit play with regard to the overall storytelling?

It really depended on the episode. While Gallant Men had better continuity than Combat!, it still aired well before the era of the show bible and airtight continuity, in which viewers really expect an ironclad universe and ample backstory. But there are some trends that generally hold true throughout the series.

Upper row, left to right: Reynolds and McQueeney, Fontaine,
Ridgely. Lower row: Slattery, Davis, Gothie and La Starza.

Gibson is the youngest of the group and probably the least worldly. The other men of the unit typically tease him as they would a younger brother. He gets storylines about having to mature fast and to think differently in a combat zone to ensure his own survival. McKenna (Richard X. Slattery) is the by-the-book sergeant who has to learn to accept the validity of methods different than his own—which is hard for him. Hanson and Lucavich (Robert Gothie and Roland La Starza) are mostly there for comic relief. Kimbro is the character most likely to question the wisdom of the orders Able Company is given, or try to improvise if he feels like the orders he's given don't match reality and good sense.

D’Angelo (Eddie Fontaine) probably goes through the most of any regular character in the series. He’s shot, he’s captured, he accidentally shoots an old friend while on sentry duty, and he almost gets conned into losing his G.I. benefits to a prostitute. Generally, if something unfortunate is going to happen, it happens to D’Angelo.

A pattern that holds true through the series is that Capt. Benedict and Conley Wright form a strong but largely unspoken bond. Benedict, who normally keeps people at arm's length, confides in Wright more than anyone else. And though Wright is a reporter, not a GI, he's seen enough combat during the war that he can commiserate with the responsibilities, stress and grief that are inherent in Benedict's decisions and orders from farther up the chain. And of the principal characters, only Wright can usually get away with challenging or questioning Benedict, another indication of the trust and latitude present in that relationship.

How did the show compare to Combat!, which premiered the same season?

Combat! was grimmer and more naturalistic. At times, it felt more like a docudrama than a primetime network series. Orr acknowledged The Gallant Men had a fundamentally different aim, and many of its plots revolved around romance, psychology, and ethics away from the battlefield (one critic drily noted that Able Company must have arrived in Italy during a lull in the war, so few were the battle scenes).

Combat! very early on adopted its house look and tone: serious, long stretches without dialogue, lots of outdoor shooting. You can look at a Gallant Men episode and see most of it is filmed on indoor soundstages, and a few outdoor locations that appear again and again. It felt more like a standard weekly drama of the period (which reflects WB's assembly-line style of production). It's harder to suspend disbelief that these guys are in 1943 Italy when you notice they're on the same set you saw three episodes ago. Of course, it should be noted that Combat! frequently re-used outdoor shooting locations, something that became more and more obvious in later seasons.

One thing I find interesting is that, in the decades since these two shows were in first-run broadcast, an impression developed that somehow Combat! was the superior show and Gallant Men was an errant stepchild that deservedly got cancelled. Even Rick Jason (Combat's Lt. Hanley) hinted at that in his memoir, reinforcing the view. But I think a lot of that is assumption that ossified into accepted wisdom. The ratings and Q scores paint a different picture, one of more equal footing for these two freshman dramas that were each good, but in different ways.

It's worth noting that, for all the discussion about the pros and cons of these two dramas, both placed way behind McHale's Navy in the Nielsen ratings. Make of that what you will.

The Gallant Men was on the air while the Vietnam War was in its early days. Was there any attempt, a la M*A*S*H, to try and draw a parallel between what was going on in WWII and contemporary issues? I know that's probably not the case; the war had yet to become unpopular, and I don't think the show was the "social issues" type of program that you see with writers like Sterling Silliphant, but I'd be interested in your take.

You’re exactly right. The Gallant Men wasn’t so much a careful, incisive exploration of war so much as it was William T. Orr’s attempt to expand the Warner TV brand into war shows. There are glimpses of topics like PTSD and the stress of ceaseless combat duty. We get some taste of the difficulty of re-establishing government and order in towns turned to rubble. A couple of installments show us what war does to the frightened and weary civilians of the villages Able Company visits. But generally, there wasn’t the kind of clear social or moral message you would see on The Twilight Zone or Route 66.

About the closest I think the series comes to serious commentary is the episode “One Puka Puka,” in which a squad of our regulars encounters a group of Nisei from the 100th Infantry Battalion (a real unit from the Italian campaign, highly decorated and very well respected for their valor and actions). McKenna reveals he served at Pearl Harbor before the 1941 attack, and developed a strong distaste for Asians and Asian-Americans. The combined group has to defend itself against a German unit that sweeps in, and McKenna learns to trust and even embrace the unorthodox methods of the 100th Infantry guys. That episode aired in March 1963, when racism in the United States was really being challenged in education, law and politics. I feel like viewers would would see the parallel there.

What was the competition that the show faced from NBC and CBS? As far as you know, was ABC doing any kind of intentional programming to put it on when they did?

The competition was strong. ABC initially put The Gallant Men up against Rawhide on CBS (a top 25 show that season). In December 1962, ABC cancelled another of its freshman shows, a Roy Rogers-Dale Evans vehicle, and threw Gallant Men into its place on Saturday nights. And in that timeslot, the competition was even stiffer: Jackie Gleason on CBS (a top-20 show). NBC’s competing shows in the respective timeslots were the variety show International Showtime and legal drama Sam Benedict, neither of which was a real smash.

Those choices raise a question my research hasn’t totally answered yet: Did ABC put Gallant Men in those challenging timeslots because they believed in it, or because they didn’t? ABC's pre-premiere advertising expressed a hope for a broad audience. The leadoff spot on Friday night was considered a critical one to build an audience. The network further hoped Gallant Men would at least steal some viewers away from Rawhide. But the mid-season switch to Saturday nights frankly baffles me. It’s like the network started the season with a goal, then threw in the towel early and resorted to guessing. And, based on the trade publication reports, that inference may be a safe bet.

The Gallent Men runs for only one season, 26 episodes. Why do you think that was? 

You know, Bill Reynolds asked me the same question. Even he didn’t know why the show was cancelled! The show was no worse than any other drama running on TV at the time. Its Q scores, as I mentioned earlier, were pretty close to those of Combat! While ABC may have decided it was an underperformer, its ratings weren't awful. And Warners had commissioned at least a dozen scripts for additional episodes, indicating that they thought a second season was in the cards.

What I’ve gathered from contemporary accounts indicates the show was dropped because of politics between ABC and Warners. ABC had been WB television’s biggest customer, but the network seemed to lose its ardor for the studio during that ‘62 season, when the programming spaghetti it threw at the wall refused to stick. The TV division of Warners, meanwhile, entered a period of turmoil as it failed to sell new shows to the networks for the upcoming 1963-64 season.

Is there something that could have made the show more likely to be picked up for another season—say a better timeslot than Saturday against Jackie Gleason? 

I think better relations between Warners and ABC and a stronger promotional push from the network would have helped. It's likely the show would have turned out a second season comparable in quality to the first, and then ABC could have made a better decision about its future based on the show’s own merits, not the network’s bad blood with the production company.

What did critics and viewers think of the show?

There were a couple of ways to measure viewer response. One was the Nielsen ratings. In November and December 1962, Gallant Men averaged 17.9—which means one in six TV-equipped homes in the U.S. were tuned to the show. That's an amazing success in our highly-fractured entertainment environment today, but back the Big Three days, 17.9 put The Gallant Men in the lower third of the primetime pack. But get this—it did succeed in drawing viewers away from Rawhide. Not enough to beat the Western, but an outcome that was in line with ABC's original goal.

The other way was Q scores, which purported to measure how much viewers personally liked a show. And by that measure, The Gallant Men did pretty well. In late 1962 and early '63, its Q scores were a couple points behind those of Combat! It consistently was among top ten primetime shows that season. But The Gallant Men's highest Q scores were among people 17 and younger, a demographic that may not have impressed ABC or potential advertisers.

Critical response to the show was mixed. The TV critic from the Atlanta Constitution praised it; Variety yawned, and said the show "might hang on." TV ratings prognosticator James Cornell predicted The Gallant Men would win its timeslot, based on the strength of the pilot episode. Toward the end of the season, he revised his view, opining that the succeeding episodes were weaker.

Over the years I've become a fan of the Warner Bros. series from the 1950s and 60s, particularly the P.I. and Westerns.  Did The Gallant Men display any typical characteristics of WB shows, or was it more traditional? And in keeping with that, was William Reynolds the star of every episode, or did it focus on guest stars and/or other members of the cast?

To answer the last question first, each of the eight principal characters had at least one “focus” episode in which they played the central role. In a few of those, Capt. Benedict had only a peripheral role. Out of the 26 episodes produced, I’d say there was a good balance in giving the main cast something substantial to play. The guest stars usually had something interesting to do—and of course, were written out or “killed” by episode’s end to tie everything up.

I’m less familiar with the world of Warner Bros. television from this era than you, but in researching for the wiki, I noticed a lot of cross-pollination among the actors and crew. Names like actors Richard X. Slattery and William Reynolds, directors Charles R. Rondeau and Richard C. Sarafian, and writers Richard Landau and Don Tait appear in the credits lists for multiple Warners shows. If you were watching back then, you'd have noticed Reynolds, for instance, and thought to yourself, "Isn't that the guy from Pete Kelly's Blues and The Islanders?" both of which were also Warners shows. The writers had mostly turned in scripts for the private eye dramas and Westerns you referenced in your question. Lots of credits for Hawaiian Eye, Surfside 6, Cheyenne, and Maverick.

Is there a particular episode of the program that stands out for you? 

"Retreat to Concord," the show's second episode, features Peter Breck as a master sniper who became embittered and misanthropic, essentially to protect his own mind, after watching nearly all his friends die in one horror after another. It's not a terribly original plot, but Breck does such a good job playing this damaged man that the hour becomes something of a standalone "play of the week" that you get wrapped up in. I won't spoil the rest of the plot, but if all 26 episodes had been as good as that one, the show might have had a better reputation.

Is there a "message" that you think resonates from the show, or does it stand on entertainment and the performance of the actors?

I believe the show stands on its own entertainment value and the actors. Some of the folks who made Combat! said it was always an anti-war show (the same thing said about M*A*S*H a decade later), but I don’t sense that vibe from The Gallant Men. Nor was it a pro-war show. I think it’s a standard, but entertaining, melodrama set against the backdrop of the Italian campaign. Reading between the lines, it's fair to argue that plots of Gallant Men episodes point out there are some things that remain with us, even during the upheaval of war—there is romance, there is strife, there are interpersonal conflicts, and there are moments of levity.

This is also perhaps a good place to note that it wasn't just the writers, producers and directors determining what each episode would look and feel like. The show's technical advisor was Lt. Col. David Sisco, who had himself served in the Italian campaign. But Sisco wasn't just there to teach the actors how to shoot believably (though he did that as well); he had a veto power over storylines. So when he decided a particular plot didn't reflect well on the Army, he'd have it nixed, or some watered-down compromise would be written and shot. So while I mentioned a moment ago that the show wasn't explicitly pro-war, Sisco wanted to make sure it was in some way pro-Army.

Do you have any plans for writing a book? Because if you do, I’m buying it!

Kinda-sorta. What I've found is that if you're going to have a good reference book for any classic TV show, it's almost always up to the fans to research and write it. Someone like Douglas Brinkley isn't going to swoop in and do it. So my plan at the moment is to take what I've collected so far from period publications, notes drawn from the episodes themselves, databases such as IMDB, and material from the Warners archives at the University of Southern California, and write a concise history of the show and its context in the 1962-63 TV season. Something that I can make available in some way, so if a TV scholar or enthusiast of the future wants to learn about the show, they'll have somewhere to begin.

Incidentally, the Warners archives have been closed to researchers and the public for nearly three years. A finding aid indicates there's a lot to be mined there, so I can't really finish this putative mini-book until I can go through the USC holdings. And I'm very enthused about doing that.

You mentioned earlier that The Gallant Men doesn't live on retro channels—is it available anywhere right now? 

My short answer is, it ought to be! But sadly, no. The only place one can find complete episodes is on the Warner Bros. whole-season DVD set. Copies can be found on eBay and Amazon.

One final question—the world has changed a lot since The Gallant Men; do you think there's a place for a war drama on television today? I suspect that WW2 and Korea would be too old to appeal to an audience, and we're probably now at that point for Vietnam as well. Is the Gulf War too divisive, or is there something that a series could teach us?

I might quibble just a bit with the idea that a WWII or Korean drama wouldn't find an audience. Saving Private Ryan, Band of Brothers, and The Pacific helped ignite an interest in the Second World War among people who were born long after the real thing ended. At the same time, those works really raised the bar for production values and scripting. I'm not sure a Combat! or a Gallant Men would necessarily succeed today, but if you wanted to produce a version of those shows with Band of Brothers production values, I think it could succeed on cable or on a streaming service. Like with every other television genre today, you have to reset your expectation of success; a much smaller audience is a hit these days, and I think a well-done war series could meet that mark.

The question of lessons is probably better directed to a philosopher or historian, but my personal view on the matter is that, from Combat! to Tour of Duty to Generation Kill, the message is pretty clear: war is bad, and even when fought for the "right reasons," it damages people and places in many ways. Yet we still make war. So the message isn't landing with the right people, I guess.

I don't think I'm wandering out on a limb to say it's harder for people to agree on what the lessons are, the closer in time we are to the event being depicted. There's so much information, and so many perspectives, that emerge only years after the last shot rings out. I think there's a reason The Gallant Men, M*A*S*H and Tour of Duty came out 20 years after the wars they depicted. It's also worth noting there's a nostalgia factor, particularly with WWII productions, and we're a long way from feeling romantic about Iraq and Afghanistan. I am curious whether that changes two decades from now, or ever.

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Brandon Hollinsworth

That was fun! I want to thank Brandon for such an enjoyable time talking about The Gallant Men, which has moved higher up on my wish list. (And I want to know when that book comes out!) If you're appetite for the show has been whetted, I encourage you to visit this Fandom.com page and episode guide, which Brandon did a great job in creating. 

And also a big thanks to one of my partners in crime, my ol' buddy Jodie Peeler, who put Brandon and me in touch—thanks for always looking out for us! TV  

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

What's on TV? Thursday, November 18, 1954

Art Linkletter's guest on today's House Party (1:30 p.m., CBS) is the legendary film director Mack Sennett, creator of the Keystone Kops, models for many of today's world governments. He worked with many of the biggest names in Hollywood, and his contributions to the film industry earned him an honorary academy Award in 1938. Although he'd been retired for nearly 20 years, he'd appeared on This is Your Life with Ralph Edwards earlier in the year. Kind of cool to think that as early as 1954, TV could bring you a piece of nostalgia. The listings are from Chicagoland.

This week in TV Guide: November 13, 1954

I trust that by now most of you know me well enough to understand that the only time I recycle a TV Guide story is when I don't have an issue for that week (hey, it happens!) and that, even then, I try to introduce something new to what I've written. I'll admit there are times, though, when I'm tempted to dip into the archives anyway, either because I'm short of time or simply unmotivated by an issue that doesn't seem to say much. (There's also laziness, but we'll let that pass.) And then I'll run across the hook, that one thing that jumpstarts everything else, and after that it all falls into place. 

For example, if you know your history, you're bound to notice a line (no pun intended) in Sunday's listing for What's My Line? (9:30 p.m. CT, CBS) that leaps out. Following the usual boilerplate ("John Daly moderates for panelists Arlene Francis, Dorothy Kilgallen, Bennett Cerf") the magazine, as it often does, adds a promo for an article elsewhere in the issue: "The panelist covers a murder trial in Cleveland, page 18." 

For many years, the 1954 murder trial of Dr. Sam Sheppard was considered the most famous American murder trial of the 20th century, if not all the nation's history; it certainly was the most widely reported. The accused, Dr. Sam, was a neurosurgeon from a prominent medical family in Cleveland. His wife, Marilyn, was found bludgeoned to death the morning of July 4, 1954, along with her unborn child, in the upstairs bedroom. Sheppard claimed that she had been murdered by a "bushy-haired intruder" whom he had tried and failed to fight off. The prosecution claimed Sheppard had done it himself because of an adulterous affair he was having with a nurse at his hospital. Now, he's on trial for his life.

The Sheppard case had, Dorothy Kilgallen would say, "'[a]ll the ingredients of what in [the] newspaper business we call a good murder. It has a very attractive victim, who was pregnant, and the accused is a very important member of the community, respectable, [a] very attractive man. Then added to that, you have the fact that it is a mystery as to who did it." Reporters converged on Cleveland from around the country and even from Europe, and the story dominated the local newspapers.

Dorothy Kilgallen is no stranger to the crime beat; although known primarily for her Broadway column, her appearances as a regular panelist on WML, and her daily radio show with her husband, Dick Kollmar, she's also a respected journalist (as was her father), a crime reporter (a regular at the biggest murder trials, some of which she reviewed in her posthumously published book, Murder One), and confidant of politicians and celebrities alike. And she knows how to cover a story, which is why she's in Cleveland, representing the Hearst newspapers.

Even before the start of the trial, Dorothy's made her presence felt. During jury selection, one prospect was dismissed for discussing the trial with a friend; she explained the friend had asked her if she'd gotten Dorothy's autograph. (Dorothy sent a note to the dismissed juror: "Dear Betty, the reporters thought you would have made a good juror.") She was even invited to meet with trial judge Edward Blythin in his chambers; the judge told her that he and his wife enjoy her on TV, and later said, "I can understand why she is so popular." She doesn't mind the publicity; "I've been working hard since I was 17 years old to get where I am now, and although the attention slows me down, I am grateful to give autographs."

Just because she's covering the Trial of the Century, though, doesn't mean she's quitting her weekend job. She arrives in Cleveland at 4:00 a.m. Monday morning after appearing on WML, is in bed in the hotel by 5, up at 8, and at the courthouse at 9:45. She then flies back to New York to spend the evening with her family, gets up at 5:30 Tuesday morning to record two sessions of their radio show, and is back in Cleveland and at the courthouse by noon. When she's not travelling, she pounds out her daily "Voice of Broadway" column. Oh, and she also covers the trial.

And now, as Paul Harvey would say, the rest of the story. You remember that quote from Dorothy, the one about this being a "good murder"? She made that comment to Judge Blythin in his chambers, when he asked her what brought her to Cleveland; he couldn't understand why such well-known newspeople as Bob Considine, Theo Wilson, and Marguerite Parton were covering the trial. That's when she said, "it is a mystery as to who did it." 

"Mystery?" Blythin replied, "It's an open and shut case."

"Well, what do you mean, Judge Blythin?" she asked, stunned.

He answered, "Well, he is guilty as hell. There is no question about it."

She didn't reveal this story at the time, or for many years afterward; she felt she was not at liberty to do so, she explained, since the conversation was off the record. Sheppard was found guilty of second-degree murder on December 21 after a 9-week trial (a verdict with which Kilgallen was outraged; as a result, her column was dropped by Cleveland newspapers) and was sentenced by Blythin to life in prison. Blythin died in 1958, and in 1964 Kilgallen casually mentioned her conversation with him at an event attended by Sheppard's new lawyer, F. Lee Bailey. Bailey got her testimony in a deposition in May, and included it in his appeal. A judge overturned Sheppard's conviction in July on grounds of pre-trial publicity and judicial prejudice; that decision was upheld in a landmark Supreme Court ruling in 1966, which ordered a new trial. Sheppard was retried in October, 1966, in the same courthouse in which he had been convicted 12 years earlier, and was acquitted. He died in 1970. A 1975 TV-movie was made about the case; I wrote about that here.

By the time of Dr. Sam's retrial, Dorothy Kilgallen, who had so criticized the verdict and whose deposition played a role in the overturning of Sheppard's conviction, had been dead for a year, apparently of an accidental overdose. She had covered Jack Ruby's 1964 murder trial in Dallas and had interviewed Ruby, and she was skeptical of the Warren Report' conclusions regarding the assassination of John F. Kennedy. There are many to this day who think her death was murder and was related to her investigation into the assassination.

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Well, if I can't build on that, I should probably just wrap it up, and judging by the number of lines you see below this one, it's probably apparent to you that I've decided to keep going, perhaps to my detriment. (You'll be the judge of that.) Two of America's most successful comics have also decided to keep going, and according to this week's joint review (probably written by Dan Jenkins), it may be detrimental to them as well.

For five seasons, one of the Golden Age's shining moments was Your Show of Shows, starring Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca. Then they split up, choosing to go their separate ways (as did their director, Max Liebman). Everyone agrees that the three of them, separate, are less than the sum of their parts; unfortunately, the one who seems to have suffered the most is Coca. (Saturday, 8:00 p.m., NBC)

Part of the challenge for Coca, Jenkins says, is that she is "a performer who must be given an idea, rather than a script; a direction, rather than set lines." After five years, she's exhausted the bits from her nightclub act, and "everyone has seen her several times more than once"; she also "appears to have run out of writers who know what to do what her gamin-like qualities." That's not to say that every sketch is a dud; she has excelled in some of them, but too often they run too long. And as everyone knows, "Brevity is still the soul of wit."

Our other star under the gun is Red Buttons, who in the off-season moved from CBS to NBC, from Monday nights to Friday nights (7:00 p.m.), and from one writing staff to another. But, says Jenkins, "he is still Red Buttons. If one is an aficionado, he is the greatest. Otherwise . . ."

The problem is that Buttons "has no comic traits peculiar to him alone. He is not funny per se. A Jack Benny can be hilarious just standing with his arms folded, staring at an old lady in the front row. Buttons can't. He needs material." And Red's writers, "whose numbers must by now be as forlorn as they are legion," can only recycle old bits. Television is a demanding medium, one that demands staying power, "a basic talent which can rise above material and carry its own weight on off-weeks." So far, Red "has displayed very little of it."

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Is there anything interesting to report from the industry? Well, here's something; at the Hollywood Teletype, Dan Jenkins reports that "New, young CBS comic Johnny Carson will replace Jack Paar for several weeks in January." That would be Paar's weekday morning show, which airs at 7:00 a.m. on CBS. It won't be the last time; Johnny takes Jack's place again in 1962, this time permanently. As I recall, that turns out pretty well.

The first reports are in on how television covered the 1954 midterm elections, and it's described as "generally creditable," which is probably better that what we just had. NBC pulled off something of a technical coup, with a four-way split screen discussion between their commentators in New York, D.C., Chicago, and Los Angeles. And here's something: since WRCA in New York broadcasts in color (it's the NBC affiliate, now known as WNBC), it asked the parties what they'd like for their "official TV color." The Democrats choose green, the Republicans blue. Red, of course, would have been unthinkable for either party given the Cold War.

And remember how I wrote about how companies get involved with the shows they sponsor? It seems that the Campbell Soup Company, which sponsors the sitcom Dear Phoebe on NBC, doesn't like canned laughter. Therefore, they've ordered the laugh track deleted from the show. Now, that's the kind of sponsor interference I can get behind.

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Here's another one of those stories that jumps off the page. I must have read Brooks and Marsh's Complete Director to Prime-Time Network TV Shows from cover to cover when it first came out in 1979, and one of the things that stuck with me for some reason was an anecdote about an episode of CBS's Studio One—the episode that's on this Monday night at 9:00 p.m., as it happens. It's called "Let Me Go, Lover," a drama about murder and corruption in the record industry, and since producer Felix Jackson needed a song, he went to Mitch Miller, head of recording for CBS's subsidiary, Columbia Records. "Miller gave [Jackson] an obscure ballad called 'Let Me Go, Devil,' and urged that it be sung on the soundtrack by an unknown songstress rather than by an established star, in order to heighten the dramatic impact. With remarkable foresight he then saw to it that, prior to the telecast, record stores were well stocked with her Columbia recording of the song."

The song, sung by Joan Weber, was renamed, "Let Me Go, Lover" to match the title, and was used throughout the story. The next morning, "record stores were deluged with customers wanting 'that song that was on TV last night'—and 'Let Me Go, Lover' became a phenomenal hit," selling a half-million copies in the next five days (it eventually became a million-seller) and hit #1 on the Billboard charts. Mitch Miller knew what he was doing, which is why he was the success he was, and after more than 40 years, I've finally gotten to use that anecdote.

What else is on? There's Orson Welles' noirish version of Macbeth (Sunday, noon, WTMJ), with Welles in the title role, plus Jeanette Nolan, Dan O'Herlihy, Roddy McDowall, and Alan Napier in a non-Alfred role as "A Holy Father." Also on Sunday afternoon, Hallmark Hall of Fame presents "A Matter of Principle," the story of how John Adams defended the British soldiers accused of the Boston Massacre (4:00 p.m., NBC). 

The latest NBC color spectacular is the Pulitzer Prize-winning romantic comedy "State of the Union," on Producer's Showcase (Monday, 7:00 p.m.), with Joseph Cotten and Margaret Sullivan in the roles previously played on the big screen by Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. Wednesday's highlight is the World Lightweight Championship fight between champion Paddy DeMarco and challenger Jimmy Carter (no, not that one), from the Cow Palace in San Francisco (9:00 p.m., CBS). Carter, who lost the title to DeMarco in March, regains it with a TKO in the 15th round. And on Thursday, CBS presents its own spectacular, as Shower of Stars uses Betty Grable, Harry James, and other stars in sketches about entertainers traveling from gig to gig. The sponsor, incidentally, is Chrysler. Coincidence?

Before I forget, The Liberace Show airs on Wednesday at 9:30 on WBKB, and the young lady on the cover of this week's issue is Liberace's latest squeeze (pronounced "beard"), Joanne Rio, a struggling young actress who's described as "the only girl he takes home to mother." Despite the headline in one article entitled "Liberace Fiancee Tells of First Kiss," she denies that the couple are engaged, saying that "We just enjoy each other's company, that's all." 

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Finally, we'll be celebrating Thanksgiving next week with an appropriate issue, but in the meantime, the deadline is at hand to order tickets for TV Guide's Thanksgiving Day TV Party, which takes place live on WGN from 3 to 4:00 p.m. on Thursday, November 25. The tickets are free for both kids and adults, and all kids receive a free gift package.

The show will be hosted by Super Circus star Mary Hartline and features the top Chicagoland TV children's favorites: Uncle Johnny Coons; John Conrad and Elmer the Elephant; "Pied Piper" Art Hern; Two-Ton Baker, the Happy Pirate; singing cowboy Bob Atcher; and Romper Room's Miss Rosemary. There's also a contest to select two lucky kids as "Mr. Pilgrim" and "Miss Pilgrim," and in addition to appearing on the show, the lucky boy and girl each get this impressive haul of prizes:

• A 21-inch Sentinel table model television set.
• A genuine Schwinn Hornet bicycle, complete with horn, headlights and all features.
• A pedigreed cocker spaniel puppy and a month's supply of Rival Dog Food.
• A handsome 21-jewel Lady or Lord Elgin wrist watch.

Those kids are making out like bandits, aren't they? I wonder how many hundreds of them were begging their parents to let them send in their names and photos? I wonder how many parents were trading side glances about the dog? And I wonder how much the tax added up to for the winners?

Anyway, it sounds like a lot of fun, doesn't it? This whole idea of a Thanksgiving TV party, with celebrities from all the local stations—not quite like a family get-together, but something special. I know other stations did things like this, for Thanksgiving or Christmas. Of course, without local kids' shows, I don't suppose you'd see anything like it today. But then, sometimes it doesn't seem as if we have as much fun today, either. TV  

Around the dial

Today is Veterans Day, and I'd be remiss if I didn't start out with recognition for all those serving in the Armed Forces, here and elsewhere. There's no jingoism needed to thank them for their service.

Now, for this week. There are many jokes out there about associating size with quality, and I think it would be right and proper to pass on all of them now. I'll just say that even though we have a smaller set of links to share this week, the quality more than makes up for the quantity.

Earlier this week, HBO celebrated its 50th birthday. For several years, HBO was cable TV, at least as far as many people were concerned, and to this day the network has a place at the highest level of broadcasting. At The Ringer, Alison Herman looks at how it's come a long way during those years and how it keeps overcoming the obstacles.

It's been a long time since I checked out GSN, the Game Show Network. So long, in fact, that the last shows I watched there were What's My Line?, Password, and PlayMania (for obvious reasons). The Flaming Nose brings us up to date with this review of one of its most popular shows, America Says, with host John Michael Higgins.

The Broadcasting Archives links to a Washington Post story by John Kelly on the catchy music that punctuated late-night movies back in the 1950s. The best-known of these is "The Syncopated Clock" by Leroy Anderson, but there are others you'll probably recognize in this charming look back. 

John is back at Cult TV Blog with another documentary review, this time a 2015 look at Manchester's Strangeways Prison and its infamous 1990 riot. The story is interesting, the techniques used in the documentary are interesting; read all about it.

I do link to Terence at A Shroud of Thoughts for other than obituaries, but he's always on top of things, and he does them so well—the way they should be done. He has several this week that deserve your attention: Andrew Prine, Leslie Jordan, Ron Masak, and Jules Bass. Champions all.

A pretty good week at that, right? As I said, size isn't everything. TV