This week in TV Guide: October 1, 1966

For the first time, the stain of the 1960s - Vietnam - graces the cover of this week's TV Guide.

Neil Hickey, TV Guide's New York Bureau Chief and author of some of the best news features published by the magazine, presents the first of a four-part series on how - and how well - television is covering its first war. It is a war "exorbitantly more demanding, both mentally and physically, than anything those earlier newsmen faced in Europe or the Pacific." It's a guerrilla war, replete with everything from jungle disease to ambush land mines and booby traps, field telephones that barely work, and as one correspondent puts it, "pushing the cause of journalistic profanity to new horizons." As NBC's David Burrington puts it, "There are so many imponderables and ironies here that it's sometimes difficult, if not downright impossible, to explain what's happening in terms that an American audience will understand."

Cameramen lug their equipment around in temperatures approaching 130, walking over 17 km only to find that an outpost had already been wiped out or a Vietcong squad disappeared, and wind up with less than a hundred feet of footage. Newsmen tell the story of a press conference called by Buddhist leaders in Danang, in a room with 35 dead bodies piled up in the corner. Soon, it became apparent that there would be no press conference, that the newsmen themselves were being held as hostages. They were able to escape in the ensuing firefight between government and rebel forces. Other times journalists aren't so lucky, and though none have been killed yet, several have suffered serious wounds. ABC's Lou Cioffi speaks for many when he says, "You begin wondering when the law of averages will catch up with you. I'm scared all the time, but I'm more scared now than when I first came out here. TV has nothing in its history to prepare it for this kind of story."

So why does the network correspondent put himself through such hell? After all, they've all volunteered; no newsman is ever assigned to Vietnam. "Let's be truthful," a young journalist says. "We're all war profiteers. We know that if we prove ourselves here we can short-cut our careers by five to 10 years. Here in Vietnam you can get your face on the network news three or four times a week. That's more than you can do in the United States. It's risky, but it's money in the bank." CBS' John Flynn adds, "This is where it's happening, and I see no reason to be anywhere else." And soldiers like having the newsmen around, at least at this point; "To them," an ABC newsman says, "it means somebody really cares about what they're doing. They'll share their last C-ration with you, and tie down your poncho tent properly so it doesn't blow away. I have never felt more appreciated, nor more humble." That comment about "somebody really caring" - for some reason, that makes me tremendously sad. Is that Vietnam in a nutshell, or what?

As I mentioned, this is part one of a four-part series; next week's will deal with the battle between the networks for ratings and exclusives. Looking at the glorified fan-mag that TV Guide has become today, it is difficult to imagine the magazine could come up with anything this serious, this newsworthy, nor would they want to. But to the TV Guide of this era, television was a serious business, covering serious news, and deserved to be written about and covered in a serious manner. For that matter, it's hard to imagine any of today's celebrity-driven newsmagazines (or is that "news" magazines?) producing a story as substantial as this. My, times have changed, haven't they?

***

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..

Hollywood Palace: Elizabeth Montgomery of "Bewitched" makes her debut as a Palace hostess and her first network appearance as a song-and-dance gal. Guests: singer Vic Damone; comics Paul Lynde and Jackie Mason; the Baja Marimba Band; Pat Anthony's tigers; and two acrobatic acts, Sensational Parker and the Three Robertes.

Sullivan: Ed's scheduled guests are Jimmy Durante; Dame Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev, who appear in segments from the filmed version of Prokofiev's ballet "Romeo and Juliet"; comic Alan King; singer Connie Francis; Gwen Verdon and cast members from "Sweet Charity," who perform "The Big Brass Band"; ventriloquist Arthur Worsley; and the winners of the New York Harvest Moon Ball dance contest.

This is actually a pretty strong week for both shows, but Ed has, I think, just a little more class. Nureyev and Dame Margo were two of the most famous ballet dancers of the time, and their appearance - even on film - would have been a highlight for many people who wouldn't get to see them otherwise. Durante and King are always funny, and Gwen Verdon likely danced up a storm. No backing into it this week, but Sullivan's the clear winner.

***

You'll remember how last week I said that TV Guides of this era covered live events with a combination of up-to-the-minute and to-be-announced? Well, this week's edition demonstrates that in spades. The World Series begins Wednesday, with the runaway American League champion Baltimore Orioles taking on - who? At this point, your guess is as good as anyone's, with the Dodgers, Pirates and Giants locked in a three-way battle for the flag. The weak-hitting Dodgers, defending Series champions, are led by Sandy Koufax (in his last season) and Don Drysdale; the slugging Pirates feature future Hall of Famers Willie Stargell and Roberto Clemente; and the Giants counter with some stars of their own, namely Willie Mays, Willie McCovey and Juan Marichal. Awaiting them, the Orioles have Triple Crown-winner Frank Robinson, slugger Boog Powell, and a pitching staff featuring Dave McNally, Jim Palmer, and Stu Miller.

Because of the uncertainty surrounding the National League winner, who will also host the first two games of the Series, we don't even know what time the games start: noon CT if it's the Pirates, 2pm if the Giants win, and 3pm if the Dodgers come out on top. And it is the Dodgers, ultimately, who emerge from the logjam, besting the Giants by a game and a half and the Pirates by three. Little good it does, though: after Baltimore's Moe Drabowsky stops the Dodgers with 6.2 innings of one-hit, 11-strikeout relief, Orioles hurlers go on to record three straight shutouts (the final two by scores of 1-0), winning the Series in a four-game sweep. I remember this Series with great satisfaction; the Dodgers had beaten the Minnesota Twins the year before, and being a good Minnesotan who also hadn't learned how to be a discerning fan, I thirsted for revenge. The Orioles gave it to me with one of the most powerful pitching performances in Series history: two runs given up in the four games.

***
Once again, the Series tops all other sporting events for the week, such as Saturday afternoon's college football match between Missouri and UCLA. UCLA Quarterback Gary Beban, who will win the Heisman Trophy the next season, leads the Bruins to a 9-1 season, losing only to Washington (but staying home for the bowl holidays, thanks to the conference's Rose Bowl-only rule), and they take the Tigers handily, 24-15.

Sunday's NFL games are all over the map, with the Minnesota Vikings playing at home, and thus blacked out within a 75-mile radius. Channel 4, the CBS Minneapolis affiliate, offers an Eastern Division matchup between the Cleveland Browns and New York Giants; Channels 8 and 12, located in LaCrosse, Wisconsin and Mankato, Minnesota respectively, carry the Detroit Lions and the Green Bay Packers; and the two stations unaffected by the blackout, in Duluth, Minnesota and Mason City, Iowa (both Channel 3) carry the Vikings game against the Chicago Bears. It's much easier keeping track of the AFL game - the Buffalo Bills and the Kansas City Chiefs, a preview of the 1966 AFL Championship Game.

In this era before Sunday football doubleheaders, there's actually some time for other sporting events, such as the Canadian Open golf championship. This tournament used to be much bigger than it is today, and the 1966 field included the sport's best: Gene Littler, Jack Nicklaus and Billy Casper. To reinforce the event's stature, a footnote in Sunday's listing mentions that in case of a tie, CBS will provide coverage of the 18-hole playoff on Monday afternoon - a playoff format once seen in all the majors, but now only the U.S. Open.

Not exactly sports-related, but then you can't exactly leave off something on Tuesday called "The National Sports & Physical Fitness Test." It's the latest in CBS' popular series of interactive viewer tests, which have included "The National Driver's Test" and "The National Citizenship Test." I don't have a list of the questions in front of me, only the "official score card" included in the TV Guide; however, the Close-Up promises location shoots from the Air Force Academy, "where cadets eat heartily without gaining an ounce," a New York dance studio, and a California high school with an acclaimed fitness program. Also, for no apparent reason, the program includes clips of Bobby Thomson's famous 1951 home run, and Joe Louis' first-round knockout of Max Schmeling in 1938. Harry Reasoner hosts; I wonder if this had any of the success that the other tests did?

***
So if you don't have wall-to-wall sports on television Sunday afternoon, what the heck is on? Well, between the NFL football and Canadian Open, CBS has To Tell The Truth and Ted Mack's Original Amateur Hour; in later years the lineup would include Mister Ed. NBC featured G-E College Bowl (North Dakota State versus the winner of last week's contest between Oklahoma and the University of Scranton; the Minnesota statewide edition of TV Guide might have had an earlier go-to-print time that didn't allow them to wait until Monday), and a religion special. ABC's coverage leans more toward the affiliates; Minneapolis' Channel 9 has reruns of The Untouchables, Naked City, Thriller, Surfside 6 and The Greatest Show on Earth.

Sundays were also known as the "graveyard" for public affairs and educational programming, and that's well in evidence this week. There are the venerable Sunday morning news chat shows; ABC's Issues and Answers has a debate between the candidates for governor of California, Democratic incumbent Pat Brown* and his Republican opponent, Ronald Reagan. Brown, who'd defeated Richard Nixon in 1962, had said that he looked forward to sending Reagan back to Death Valley Days, a show he'd once hosted. Presumably this was before Reagan managed to eek out a one-million vote win, garnering a mere 58% of the vote. ABC also had an interview show called Elections 66, with Vice President Hubert Humphrey and former Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater as the guests, and ABC Scope, their weekly Vietnam report. Face the Nation on CBS had Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen; the venerable Republican senator from Illinois is quizzed on the coming midterm elections. Dirksen's Democratic counterpart from Illinois, Paul Douglass, is the guest on NBC's Meet the Press (he's not listed in the TV Guide, but a quick Google search gives us the answer).

There's a heavy concentration of news this particular Sunday, and per the cover story, much of it has to do with Vietnam. In addition to ABC's weekly Scope, NBC has Vietnam Weekly Review, and later that afternoon The Frank McGee Report, which often presented breaking Vietnam news. NBC also has a special report late Sunday afternoon, "The Agony of Two Cities," looking at racial conflict in Chicago and Cleveland.

*Father of the past and current governor, Jerry.

Channel 11, the Twin Cities' independent station, presents the long-lost standby of the local channel, matinee movies, which in this case is a prime choice indeed: the Academy Award-winning Casablanca, followed by Basil Rathbone's Sherlock Holmes in The Voice of Terror. Reruns of Laramie and Sea Hunt and a religion show round out the afternoon.

***
I talked a little a couple of weeks ago about the frustrations that writers had working with the Production Code, that arbiter of content that governed how certain moral issues should be presented. Well, that was in 1965, and now one year later TV Guide takes on the question of what should be done to produce a movie code that "makes sense in view of contemporary standards." The Editors' conclusion: "It isn't easy."

For starters, it's becoming increasingly clear that movies and television present separate challenges. As the editorial puts it, "while you can forbid youngsters to enter a theater, you can't keep all of them from seeing an 'adult' movie on TV." And yet you can't allow the needs of television to control what paying customers in movie theaters can see. And speaking of that audience, while there's been a relaxation of moral restrictions lately, "puritan standards still control the thinking, if not the actions, of most Americans."*

*A fact that must drive Gene Roddenberry and Sterling Silliphant to drink.

And then there's the foreign audience to think about. Nudity and bedroom scenes are as commonplace in European movies as violence is in American ones, and "Europeans aren't exactly titillated by a sheepish Rock Hudson trying, unsuccessfully, to hold hands in a crowded restaurant with a well-corseted Doris Day."*

*From what we know now, neither, apparently, was Rock.

The answer, according to the Editors, is that the movie code shouldn't worry about television and concentrate on theaters only. Most movies, they point out, can be adapted to run on television*, and the ones that can't will probably recoup any advertising losses through European distribution. "The important thing is that such a code, run by administrators empowered to interpret its provisions, will make it possible for creative men to treat any subject tastefully."

*Which in itself was the source of no little controversy.

Is that what we wound up with? My suspicion is that the code Hollywood wound up with included the Ratings System that, with subsequent changes, we've come to know and love (or hate). Television, itself under increasing pressure from the government, came up with its own ratings system, not to mention the V-Chip. But whether it be movies or television, I'm not sure that the word "tasteful" is the first that would come to mind... TV  

Around the dial

We're running a little behind this week, but I did want to take time to highlight a couple of interesting pieces from the week.

At the Onion A/V Club, Dennis Perkins asks whether specialty networks are beyond redemption.  I can remember when channels such as History, HGTV, A&E and other "niche" networks started up.  There was something dependable about them - the idea that you could turn to them at any time and not only know what you were getting, but have a pretty good chance of really liking what you were seeing.  (I never minded the Hitler documentaries that The History Channel had., but their series of "As It Happened" replays of original television news coverage was outstanding.)  I suppose it was inevitable that they'd run out of material (after all, how many biographies are there really worth watching?), but to look at what's happened to Bravo, Sci-Fi (or Syfy, for the stupid out there), and MTV, or to see how general cable networks like TBS and USA have turned into clearinghouses for binge police procedural watching - well, they're living and breathing advertisements for cutting the cord, aren't they?

Comfort TV takes a look at how TV shows of the past portrayed the future.  I think this is always entertaining, as these old shows never seem to get it quite right - they either dramatically overestimate or grossly underestimate the leaps and bounds that technology makes, often within the same series.  Take Star Trek for example - cheesy digital control board combined with warp speed and transporters.  It's probably a testament to the greatness of human creativity that technological advances multiply and morph exponentially, at a far greater clip than the mind can even comprehend.

Sorry for the brevity this week - sometimes it happens!  I'll make up for it on Saturday with a brand new TV Guide! TV  

Mitchell's Top Ten, #5: The Prisoner

This is another of those stories that can’t be properly explained without drifting back to my misbegotten youth. It began late one summer when I was in high school in the World’s Worst Town™. For the past few weeks I’d noticed a listing on Channel 8, the PBS station*, for a late Sunday night program called The Prisoner. Since it kept appearing, it had to be a series; and it had these bizarre descriptions in which nobody had a name, only a number. It was summer; there was no reason to get up early on Monday morning; thus emboldened, I decided to stay up late one Sunday night and see what this strange show was all about.

*Yes, even though we only had one commercial station (KCMT, Channel 7, about which I’ve written frequently), we did have a PBS affiliate, which was based in Appleton. It’s thanks to them that I first started watching Sesame Street, even though I was probably out of their demographic; that’s how bad the programming on Channel 7 was.

And when that episode was over, all I could think of was what the hell was that?

Things haven’t been quite the same since.

I don’t know where, in the 17-episode run of The Prisoner, I came in; it was in the second half, for sure, because the final episode ran on the Sunday prior to the first Monday after school resumed, so I probably only saw the final five episodes or so. I remember this because that final episode (which I was determined to see, despite having to get up early the next day) was so bizarre, so utterly unlike anything I’d ever seen before, that it agitated me to the point that I couldn’t go to sleep for a couple of hours afterward.

But it wasn’t only me; The Prisoner wasn’t quite like anything that had ever been on television before. It was another British import which had originally appeared in this country as the summer replacement for Jackie Gleason, and two more different programs couldn’t be imagined. The Prisoner changed the way I looked at a lot of things. I suppose it did that to a lot of impressionable youth. It captured the sense of the rebel against the system, which is what all of us were when we were in school, especially if the school’s system was repressive, inane, or both.*

*My high school certainly qualified on that account.

The Prisoner has a timelessness about it, though, that means you don’t have to be a young rebel to watch or appreciate it, and no matter how many times you see it you’re always picking up something new.

However, in order to truly appreciate The Prisoner, I think you have to go back even further in TV history, back to a modest half-hour espionage series called Danger Man.

Number 6 (Patrick McGoohan) with the
best Number 2, Leo McKern

Danger Man starred Patrick McGoohan as John Drake, a NATO agent who globetrotted on various assignments designed to preserve world peace. Although Drake was a tough cookie, he eschewed conventional forms of force, preferring to defeat his enemies not with guns, but though cleverness—and a good pair of fists, when necessary. Danger Man was a good, if not great, series, and when it reappeared in 1964 after a two-year break, it had expanded to an hour, and Drake was now a British secret agent.*

*In the United States the show was aired under the title Secret Agent, using Johnny Rivers’ hit single “Secret Agent Man” as its theme.

This new incarnation of Danger Man ran an additional three seasons, and ended only when McGoohan announced his plans to start a new series which he would produce, write, and star in, called The Prisoner.

One of the favorite occupations of Prisoner fans is to debate whether or not Number 6, McGoohan’s hero in The Prisoner, is the same character as John Drake. They are, after all, played by the same actor, and Number 6 is introduced to us as a secret agent who has resigned from the service. McGoohan always denied that the two were the same, possibly because he didn’t own the rights to "John Drake," and therefore couldn’t safely use the character in his new series.

I prefer to think that the two are one and the same (although I won’t go to the mat over it), because it makes so much sense to watch the three series one after the other: the two versions of Danger Man followed by The Prisoner. Drake and Number 6 do in fact share a lot of characteristics, including an unshakable integrity and a quirky cynicism, both of which can at times work to undercut his devotion to his job. Obviously you can watch and enjoy The Prisoner without the Danger Man prologue, but I think you find yourself with a much deeper appreciation of Number 6's character if you accept the earlier series as backstory.

The other controversy surrounding The Prisoner deals, of course, with the ending. The first time I saw it I was dumbfounded. I mean, I got what he was trying to say (SPOILER ALERT: Number 6 is Number 1), but I just couldn’t see how that could be. I was too literal-minded to fully understand the concept of allegory, and I’d never encountered that kind of hallucinatory abstractness. It was by far the most sophisticated level of storytelling I’d ever seen before, and it deeply influenced my artistic outlook.

If The Prisoner

McGoohan strikes one of several Messianic-type
poses during the series

changed the way I thought about writing, it also changed the way I thought about other things. I’d always bristled somewhat when it came to authority, but for the most part it had been a latent feeling. The Prisoner, with its celebration of the dignity and value of the human individual (“I am not a number! I am a human being!”) made a profound impact on me, and brought this attitude closer to the surface (not, always, to my advantage), eventually influencing everything from my attitude toward Corporate America to my feelings on the sanctity of life. I don’t want to overstate this, because there are a lot of things that have impacted me over the years, but there’s no question that The Prisoner deeply influenced my methodology of thinking: it taught me to look at things differently, to question authority, to look beyond easy answers, to question whether or not things could always be tied up neatly. Its emphasis on the individual nicely complimented my political ideology and its strong moral foundation would be compatible with my eventual conversion to Catholicism. (McGoohan himself was said to be a devout Catholic.)  This doesn't even begin to address the "Number-6-as-Savior" allegories that pop up during the run of the series. When you add that to its influence on my creative process, you can see how important it’s been to me.*

*I briefly considered ranking it #6, but my great respect for it prevented me from making a joke at its expense.

Perhaps three years ago I watched The Prisoner all the way through for the first time in several years, as a way of topping off my then-recent purchase of the Danger Man box set. I was surprised, and I suppose I shouldn’t have been, to find that the series was as fresh as ever. I’d forgotten the outcomes of some of the stories; others, while I remembered them well, caused delight in their twists and turns. It was a thoroughly satisfying experience.

It’s true that The Prisoner isn’t for everyone; its lack of a clear-cut ending, combined with its ambiguous and challenging themes, mean you really have to be in the mood for it, and you have to commit to staying with it for the long haul. And if it does win you over, you’re invariably going to wind up comparing other shows to it, often unfavorably. But on the upside, watching The Prisoner can make you not only cynical, but paranoid, and those are two qualities that can come in pretty handy nowadays. TV  

This week in TV Guide: September 30, 1961

From the beginning of time – or at least the introduction of television – there’s been much handwringing about the content of programming and its effect on viewers specifically, and culture in general. Over the last few weeks I’ve pointed out several discussions surrounding violence on television, and what can (and should) be done about it. In this week’s issue, mystery writer Mickey Spillane has a novel idea - improve it!

Spillane is author of the hard-boiled Mike Hammer detective series, perhaps one of the most violent of a violent breed of pulp thrillers, so it’s no surprise that he believes there’s a place for it on television. However, he points out, “Fiction writers don’t incite to riot; they simply dramatize what is already there, and long before TV and Mike Hammer there was a World War, the Roaring Twenties, the living Untouchables, and dead Dutch Schultz, Pretty Boy Floyd, Little Augie, Dillinger and Mad Dog Coll with their Bonnie Parker-type broads.” (Any doubts that Spillane wrote this article himself should have been dispelled by that sentence.” Yes, Spillane says, his books are filled with “highly explosive scenes, but in reality they were only fictionalized facts and any day you can see these things in existence in your local papers.”

The problem, according to Spillane, is what might be thought of as “lazy” violence, the kind that permeates today’s television. It’s cliché-driven, “fake judo chops or wild punches that can belt a villain 10 feet without knocking his hat off,” or “a hero with a chopper dropping a half dozen actors with blank bullets.” Such overt violence "is not necessary.  It uses up valuable storytelling time, brings on the screams of critics who threaten Governmental control and mighty often annoys the sophisticated audiences it is trying to entertain.” Such violence “goads toymakers into selling snub-nosed guns so authentic-looking that they were outlawed in New York City unless altered in color.”

Interestingly enough, Spillane offers a suggestion that would likely have won approval from the writers roundtable I discussed last week. Audiences “still want violence, but it needs to be based on the suspense of“impending action” rather than the gratuitous use of fists and guns of today’s shows. "A war of nerves can be so deadly between fictional characters as well as actual nations that when climactic action does finally come it is almost a relief."  This kind of violence, “portrayed at the proper time and portrayed believably is rarely castigated. You can expect a wild explosion from dynamite, but not from a firecracker, and it’s trying to build firecracker scenes into dynamite ones when they don’t belong that causes the explosion to fire in producers’ faces.” The result, says Spillane, is that “Rather than a frenzied, overt violence continually erupting in fist fights and shootouts, the violence is held in check, a grenade with the pin out but the handle still held down.”

Spillane points out that two of television’s greatest authority figures – Joe Friday and Matt Dillon – rarely resort to “the stilted, pseudo-bloody action seen in one of some current shows.” The violence was there; “It was about to happen every second and you knew it and wondered how it was going to come about. But in between a story got told and an audience got entertained believably, no critics screamed and if kids wanted to emulate a hero they got good ones in Friday and Dillon. And brother, you still don’t mess around with Old Matt.”

And it’s the need to tell a cohesive story that Spillane keeps coming back to. Audiences are more sophisticated now than they were years ago, a fact that movies have begun to understand, and they’re “far more selective in their choice of entertainment,” which requires television violence to be “refined to a higher degree to satisfy story-conscious audiences who have developed as objective viewers as the trade itself has developed technically.” Violence can’t and shouldn’t be eliminated from television, Spillane implores, but it needs to make sense in the context of a well-written and well-told story. “If I’m right,” he concludes, “I’ll be on the wave of a new trend. If I’m wrong the public will bury me as quickly as it did many others.”

***
One of the things I particularly like about this era of TV Guide is how live events are frequently described with a mix of up-to-the-date and to-be-announced information. Case in point is the start of the World Series on Wednesday morning (10:45am CT). There are no divisions in 1961, no playoffs except in case of ties, so the American and National League champions go straight to the Series. There were more than a few years when this meant the two participants were known well before the end of the season, because they’d either already clinched the pennant or were far enough ahead that their victory was taken for granted.*

*For another example of TV Guide’s timeliness, see Sunday afternoon’s episode of G-E College Bowl, pitting TCU – winner of last week’s match – against Buffalo University. College Bowl was a life broadcast, which meant that this issue couldn’t have been published until Monday at the earliest.

At press time, “it looks like the Cincinnati Reds vs. the N.Y. Yankees this year,” and so it was, with the powerful Yanks topping the Detroit Tigers by eight games, while the Redlegs managed to hold off the Los Angeles Dodgers* by four. New York had appeared in nine of the previous 11 Series, including 1960, when they’d lost a breathtaking Game 7 to the Pittsburgh Pirates. Cincinnati, meanwhile, was making only their fourth appearance in the World Series, and their first since 1940, when they’d defeated Detroit (the only non-tainted Series they’d won to that point, the other being the year of the 1919 Black Sox Scandal). The undermanned Reds were led by future Hall-of-Famer Frank Robinson, while the Yankees countered with a Murderer’s Row that included Roger Maris (fresh off breaking Babe Ruth’s single-season home run record with 61), Mickey Mantle (who’d hit 55 of his own), and 25-game winner Whitey Ford. The Reds surprised New York by winning Game 2 and headed back to Cincinnati with the Series knotted at a game apiece, before the Yankees reasserted control and swept the next three, winning the Series 4-1.

*And how strange that still must have sounded in 1961, only four years after the Dodgers had moved from Brooklyn.

A note about that starting time – we often hear it said that the World Series can’t be played in the afternoon anymore because people wouldn’t be able to see or hear it, and yet a starting time of noon Eastern couldn’t have been an accident. It would have afforded anyone in the Eastern and Central time zones a chance to catch a sizable part of the game during what was undoubtedly an extended lunch hour (with a few liquid libations on hand, no doubt), and stories abound of schoolchildren smuggling transistor radios into classrooms under their shirts, listening to the games through earphones. As is the case with so many things in life, half the fun of a daytime World Series was the effort required to follow the game. An accompanying article mentions that 300 million people worldwide are expected to watch the Series. Nowadays, games are seldom done before midnight – and they wonder why the game’s having so much trouble attracting younger fans.*

*Another mark of changing times – a notation that if the game “is concluded before 2pm the regularly scheduled programs will be seen.” If today’s Yankees were in that Series, they’d probably be reaching the 7th inning just about then.

The rest of the sporting landscape pales in comparison. For NFL football, the Vikings take on the Baltimore Colts on CBS, while ABC’s AFL Game of the Week features the Houston Oilers and the Dallas Texans. Saturday’s college football spotlights one of the game’s great matchups, between Oklahoma and Notre Dame. It was Notre Dame that ended Oklahoma’s staggering 47-game winning streak four years previously, and while this season finds both teams far from their glory days, it’s still worth a 15-minute pregame show spotlighting the tradition of the rivalry (despite the fact the two have only played four times). By the way, if you’re reading this article on Saturday morning, it’s not too late to catch the two doing battle again this afternoon, on NBC.

***
The new season is here, and this issue is full of new and returning series making their debuts this week. There’s the aforementioned Gunsmoke, for example, making its inaugural appearance as an hour-long drama after six seasons at 30 minutes.* According to the always-reliable Wikipedia, thirty television Westerns came and went during Gunsmoke’s run.

*The half-hour dramas would appear in syndication as Marshal Dillon; in the UK, the series would be known as Gun Law. I kind of like that one.

On Monday a new medical drama premieres on ABC - Ben Casey, starring Vince Edwards and Sam Jaffe.  It runs for five seasons, and you might remember it from the famous opening titles:


Another successful series makes its debut Tuesday night, on CBS.  You might have heard of it - The Dick Van Dyke Show, "starring comedian and musical-comedy performer Dick Van Dyke as comedy writer Rob Petrie."  That had some pretty famous opening titles as well:



Other successful shows have already had their coming-out party: NBC had Ben Casey's archrival Dr. Kildare, along with Car 54, Where Are You, International Showtime (hosted by Don Ameche, presenting a different international circus each week), and Hazel, with Oscar winner Shirley Booth, as well as the debut of the popular Saturday Night at the Movies; CBS added The Defenders to its stable of hit series such as The Andy Griffith Show (starting its second season), Perry Mason (season number five) and The Danny Thomas Show (also fifth season), and welcomed Mr. Ed, which had previously run in syndication.  A pair of new and much-loved cartoons appeared on Tuesday nights - Top Cat on ABC, and The Alvin Show on CBS; both would go on to greater fame and glory on Saturday mornings, while The Bullwinkle Show made the move from ABC to NBC, where it would air early on Sunday evenings.

And then there are those shows that are probably best forgotten, since viewers didn't really remember them to begin with.  It seems as if you were particularly in for it if you'd experienced previous success.  Robert Young had had a big hit with Father Knows Best (still in reruns on Wednesday nights), not so much with Window on Main Street, which remained open for only 13 weeks. Similarly, Gertrude Berg had been a TV pioneer with the early hit The Goldbergs (not to be confused with this year's new sitcom), but couldn't duplicate the success with Mrs. G. Goes to College, later retitled The Gertrude Berg Show.  It didn't help; no matter which title you preferred, you only had 26 shows to watch it.  Bob Cummings, whom audiences had loved for five seasons on Love That Bob, fared less well with The New Bob Cummings Show, which audiences only loved 22 times. Calvin and the Colonel, an animated gloss on Amos 'n' Andy, was  26 and out.  Leslie Nielsen starred in The New Breed, playing a member of the Metropolitan Squad, an elite corps of the Los Angeles Police Department.  He'd have better luck 20 years later playing a member of Police Squad, a special branch of the Police Department.

***
That goofy face on the cover belongs to Carol Burnett, years before she has her own variety show. Right now she’s entering her third season as part of the cast of The Garry Moore Show on CBS, but there’s already reason to suspect stardom is not that far away. Earlier in the year she was voted Favorite Female Performer at the TV Guide Awards, defeating Loretta Young, Barbara Stanwyck, Dinah Shore and Donna Reed, and Moore says her talent “is so powerful you almost have to protect her from it.” She’s had a hit novelty song, “I Made a Fool of Myself Over John Foster Dulles,” and received a Tony nomination for the Broadway musical Once Upon a Mattress.

She tells a story of the time she went to a fashionable restaurant in slacks, because she had once seen a slacks-wearing Marlene Dietrich dining there. Told by the captain that this wasn’t permitted, she apologized, saying “I’

(L-R) Garry Moore, Carol Burnett, Durward Kirby

ve just been fitted for a new wooden leg and I’m still not used to being out in dresses.” It’s that ability to spin any situation into one that will draw laughs, combined with her modesty and all-around likeability, that bodes well for the future.

As a matter of fact, the person most skeptical of Burnett’s future success is Carol herself. Moore says she won’t believe in her own feminine charms, and others point out that when she’s complimented for a particular piece of work, she almost always insists it could have been done better. When she won the TV Guide award she was so unprepared, so sure that one of the others would win, she burst into tears and for a moment forgot everything as she tried to accept the award.

But Garry Moore is indeed right when he says that Carol “has got to be a star.” She’ll remain with the Moore show for one more season, but as Moore says, she’d “be foolish to continue with our show after next season.” Series offers are already coming in, and sooner or later the right one will appear. It’s not The Entertainers, a failed variety show that ran for one season in 1964. But Moore says it’s only a matter of time – “She’s got a glimmering, but no real idea how important she’s become.”

***

Channel 11 wraps up its coverage of Billy Graham's Philadelphia crusade with a Friday night broadcast.  The night's topic: "Will God Spare America?"  The crusade is broadcast from Municipal Stadium, which in three years will be renamed John F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium.  Over the next few years, there would be many things from which God would not spare America.

Finally, the Editors despair at the low ratings for last season's more educational television fare.  People are always complaining that there's nothing "for the mind" on television,  but when they're given the chance they still tune out.  Last season's highbrow shows, such as Winston Churchill: The Valiant Years and Eyewitness to History were routed by such series as The Untouchables and Gunsmoke.  The Editors weren't surprised by this, but "we had hoped that the informational shows would gain more attention, more audience, than they did.  It seemed most of those who campaigned for serious programming instead of violence kept watching violent shows instead of the serious ones."

NBC has a new strategy, though.  They've taken Sing Along With Mitch and moved it to Thursday nights, directly opposite The Untouchables.  Stanley Frank wonders if NBC's "measuring Miller for the Distinguished Service Medal or a truckload of Purple Hearts."  Somewhat surprisingly - or maybe not - Sing Along bloodies the veteran cop show, which moves to Tuesday nights the next season before moving off the schedule completely.  Now, I'm not ashamed to admit that I love watching The Untouchables - but you ought to know by now never to bet against anyone named Mitch. TV  

Around the dial

One of these days we'll make it to the Mid-Atlantic Nostalgia Convention, although I suppose I don't have any excuse for not having attended the one year that we lived two states over from where it was held, in Maryland.  Anyway, until that day comes, I'll just have to live vicariously through those that were there - and Joanna from Christmas TV History has a great write-up of all the excitement - with great pictures!  I'm so jealous of that picture of Joanna in the Tardis...   Meanwhile Andrew from The Lucky Strike Papers was there as well, and has his own report from the scene.  Andrew, if you're reading this - your book is next up on the pile in our library!

Speaking of great stuff (and of Maryland), I'm never sorry to head over to the Broadcasting Archives at the University of Maryland.  What I wouldn't give to spend a few hours in that collection.  This week's offerings include everything from vintage radios (which I find particularly of interest, since I'm into a bit of a radio phase right now) to pictures celebrating the anniversary of the historic Kennedy-Nixon debates.   Can you imagine people getting that excited about a debate between presidential candidates today?

I didn't watch the Emmy Awards last Sunday, which I suppose isn't too surprising considering I don't watch most of the shows that were up for awards, but at TV Gems Tom tells us what we missed - and it isn't surprising that some of the best moments came from the classic TV stars.

Fred Astaire was pure elegance.  Even if he's just sitting there, he does it with style.  And in the days when variety specials really were must-see TV, few of them were as must-see as the trio of specials Fred did from 1958-1960.  Fortunately, Kinescope TV takes us back to those days, and do make sure to take some time to check the video out, one of the oldest existing shows broadcast in color.  I promise you won't be sorry - unless it's that there aren't shows like this on TV today.

And I can't think of a more graceful note on which to end for this week.  See you back on Saturday, when I promise that This Week in TV Guide will be more about what's on the tube, and less on my pontificating! TV