This week in TV Guide: February 13, 1960

Iread the other day that NBC was planning on 176 hours of coverage of the Winter Olympics this month. That's just on the over-the-air broadcast; including cable and streaming, NBC/Universal will have more than 2,400 hours. They say that's the most ever for a Winter Olympics - it's hard to see how there could be any more to show.

Contrast that with the 15 hours that CBS is scheduled to bring viewers when the 1960 Winter Olympics kick off from Squaw Valley, California on Thursday, February 18. Walter Cronkite anchors the coverage, which begins with a half-hour of highlights from the Opening Ceremonies, staged by Walt Disney and Art Linkletter. Vice President Richard Nixon will officially open the Games, partly because he's from California and partly because by tradition, no American president has ever opened the Olympics. (A situation that continues until Ronald Reagan in 1984.)

This marks the first time America has hosted the Winter Olympics since 1932, when they were held at Lake Placid, New York. Just how Squaw Valley came to be the host city is quite a story; you might say that the organizers sold the International Olympic Committee a bill of goods, convincing them that a puny, virtually undeveloped ski resort - it had only one ski lift - was capable of handling an international sporting event the magnitude of the Olympics. Virtually everything was built from scratch, in less than four years, at a cost of $80,000,000. It paid off, though; the intimate setting (you could walk to almost everything) and the snow-covered mountains (it helped that the Opening Ceremonies were delayed for an hour by a blizzard), plus the Disney touch, made the Games a success.

This is also the first time that the Olympics have been televised in the United States, although they've been shown previously in Europe (where every Winter Games save the Lake Placid edition had been held). In fact, according to the always-reliable Wikipedia, the television coverage actually played a role in one of the events; "During the games, officials asked Tony Verna, one of the members of the production staff, if it could use its videotape equipment to determine whether or not a slalom skier missed a gate. Verna then returned to CBS headquarters in New York City and developed the first instant replay system, which debuted at the Army–Navy football game in 1963." For its 15 hours of coverage, CBS paid a half-million dollars. By contrast, NBC is paying about $12 billion for the rights to the Summer and Winter games through 2032.

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On the cover this week we have the stars of Blake Edwards' Peter Gunn and Mr. Lucky. You could say that Edwards is the one who's lucky, with two hit series already under his belt, and a potential third on the way - but you can read more about that one farther down the line. Gunn and Lucky have many similarities: they both feature smooth, dark-haired leading men compared to Cary Grant (Craig Stevens and John Vivyan), with attractive girlfriends (Lola Albright and Pippa Scott), and a jazzy texture supported by the music of Henry Mancini. At the moment Lucky is the luckier of the two series, with a rating of 25.7 compared with 20.3 for Gunn.

John Vivyan (left) and Ross Martin

Mr. Lucky airs on Saturday evenings at 8:00 p.m. CT on CBS, but in a strange turn of events it's about to get very unlucky. The premise of the show, very loosely based on the movie of the same name starring - surprise! - Cary Grant, is that of a smooth operator running a gambling establishment on a boat that's moored offshore, just out of the reach of the authorities. And according to this week's Television Diary feature, that's what's causing the trouble, according to sponsor Lever Bros. Despite the show's success in the ratings, "the powers-that-be sent down orders that the celebrated television character. . .would henceforth have to be respectabilized." Overnight, it seemed, Lucky converted his gambling establishment into a swanky restaurant. "By thaking the bite out of the character, it was running a very real risk of transforming one of the season's big hits into a big flop, to say nothing of fumigating the air so thoroughly that even soap suds might seem astrigent after that."

It's true - having seen Mr. Lucky, there's a noticeable drop in quality once the change in premise takes place. The show's easy charm disappears, the plots become routine, and Ross Martin, Lucky's show-stealing partner/sidekick, is totally wasted as a maître d'. I quit watching it after the changeover, but the show's ratings remained high enough that it should have been renewed. (It finished in the top 25 for the season.) It wasn't, though - Lever Bros. dropped its sponsorship completely (so why bother with the change in format?), and the network was unable to find a replacement. Lacking a sponsor, the network dropped the series. It cost John Vivyan a movie role opposite Ingrid Bergman; he'd turned down the role thinking (reasonably so) that Lucky would be renewed.*

*Vivyan always felt the show had been cancelled as a favor to Jack Benny; its replacement on Saturday nights, Checkmate, was produced by Benny's JaMco Productions.


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In the "Local...and Timely" section, the headline "Local Boy Makes Good" updates us on Robert Vaughn, who was born in New York City but grew up in Minneapolis with his grandparents and graduated from North High School in 1950. After a year at the University of Minnesota, he headed for Hollywood, and after a few small roles in TV and movies is now ready to headline his own series, Boston Terrier, by the aforementioned Blake Edwards.*

*The Boston Terrier never did make it as a weekly series, but appeared twice on Dick Powell Theater, with Vaughn in the lead role.

Of course, for Robert Vaughn the best is yet to come. He'll get an Oscar nomination for The Philadelphians (left), a movie he did in 1959, and in the mid-60s he'll co-star in the series that brought him lasting fame, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. I remember him from 1972 or so, hosting a local telethon in the Twin Cities to support clean water. (Buster Crabbe, and Don Herbert, Mr. Wizard, were two of the other national stars appearing.) As I've written before, I was never a big fan of Vaughn's, although I liked him a lot in U.N.C.L.E., and as a proud Minnesotan I've always been proud to claim him as one of us.

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No "Sullivan vs. Allen" this week; Steverino is preempted on Sunday by what is, for my money, the TV highlight of the week: NBC's live color presentation of Steven Vincent Benet's classic "The Devil and Daniel Webster." (7:00 p.m.) Edward G. Robinson, in a rare television appearance, stars as Webster, while David Wayne is Old Scratch, and Tim O'Connor the poor soul who sold his in return for "seven years of glittering fortune." It's replayed in 1962; too bad it's not out on DVD today.

Were it not for the above, the show of the week might have been Frank Sinatra's special on Monday (8:30 p.m., ABC). The theme is "Here's to the Ladies," as the Chairman "offers a valentine to the female sex in general and introduces some women he particularly admires." Among the stars are Lena Horne, Mary Costa, Juliet Prowse, Barbara Heller - and Eleanor Roosevelt. Quite an interesting mix, don't you think? Mrs. Roosevelt "talks with Frank about the hopes of the world and recites the lyrics of the song 'High Hopes.;"


Another of the week's rare color presentations is on Tuesday, when Joan Fontaine, John Ireland and Agnes Moorehead star in "Closed Set" on Startime. (7:30 p.m., NBC) Meantime, at 8:00 on CBS, it's Tightrope!, starring the pre-Mannix "Michael" Connors as an undercover police officer whose real identity is never divulged during the run of the show; he's referred to occasionally as "Nick" but otherwise simply assumes whichever undercover role he has for that case. I've seen a few episodes; it's a pretty good show. Of course, Connors was good in almost everything he was in.

Robert Vaughn (there's that name again!) pops up in CBS's Men Into Space at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday. He plays one of two geochemists conducting a search for radioactivity on the moon.  "McCauley [star William Lundigan] finds that one of his men is more interested in outdoing his colelague than in making the mission a success." The listing doesn't say which of the two men it is - really, it doesn't have to, does it? After that it's The Millionaire at 8:00, with a pre-Bewitched Dick York using his new fortune to try and find out why his fiancée broke off their engagement. And if you'd rather have some tunes, you might want to check out Perry Como's Kraft Music Hall with José Ferrer, Patrice Munsel, Señor Wences and Frank D. Rone. (8:00, NBC)

Once a month, DuPont (""Better Things for Better Living...Through Chemistry") sponsors The Show of the Month on CBS, preempting regularly scheduled programming. This Thursday, Show of the Month (8:30 p.m.) presents Edith Wharton's grim story "Ethan Frome," with an outstanding cast including Julie Harris as Mattie Silver and Sterling Hayden in the title role. I think I'd rather have watched The Ford Show (NBC, same time), with Ernie's guest Peter Palmer (try saying that five times fast), currently starring as Li'l Abner.

Just what is this ad for Huckleberry Hound supposed to mean? Adults Only?? The only thing blue in one of these cartoons is Huck hinmself. It's possible, I suppose, that "Adults Only" didn't have the stigma then that it does now, but people still knew what it meant. At any rate, I think that Huck is for kids at least as much as he is for adults, don't you?  That's not the only thing on Friday; at 7:30 p.m., NBC's Project 20 presents "Not So Long Ago," a look at America in the period 1945-50, narrated by Bob Hope. Those five years included the return of the troops from Japan, the development of atomic energy, the baby boom and growth of the suburbs, the investigations into Communist influence in Hollywood, the Hiss-Chambers case, the victory of Harry Truman, the Korean War - and more. At 8:00 p.m., CBS's Desilu Playhouse presents "Thurder in the Night," a mystery set in North Africa and starring Desi Arnaz himself, with Rod Taylor and Akim Tamiroff.  And at 10:30 on WCCO, it's CBS's 15-minute recap of the Olympics, featuring pairs' figure skating. That's it for today's Olympic coverage, by the way; if you can't tell the story in 15 minutes, it's not worth telling.

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This week's starlet is Susan Cummings, currently appearing in the sydicated Western Union Pacific with Jeff Morrow and Judson Pratt. We don't learn a whole lot about Susan in this brief article: we know she can handle dialects, since she was born in Germany; she wears her hair long because producers seldom have wigs made well enough to fit or be the right color; and although she's only 29, she's already been married and divorced twice. (Her third husband will die in 1975; her fourth will outlive her.) Her resume following Union Pacific is thin; a few guest shots in TV, and some movie roles. Her most famous role - well, it's more like a line, delivered in a famous episode of an equally famous television series, when she yells to Lloyd Bochner, "It's a cookbook!" Can you name it?

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I confess that our loyal reader Mike Doran has me stumped, as in truth he often does. Writing about yesterday's "Around the Dial," he mentions something to look for in the New York edition of TV Teletype. I've looked and I've looked, and I've surfed through mysteryfile.com in search of clues (or, as Ellery Queen might put it, "clews"), and I've come up with nothing. I have confidence, though, that in today's comments section he'll clear it up for me.

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And finally, John Barba of Hamden, Connecticut, has this TV business down pat. In his letter to the editor, he relates to us a "hot tip" on this week's Perry Mason episode.

There is going to be a murder. Lieutenant Tragg is going to pick up an innocent person. The person will be defended by Perry Mason. Ah, who is this? Why it's the famous district attorney, Hamilton Burger. He has only lost 150 cases. But, this case might be different. Who is the murderer? Will Perry win? Is the defendant guilty? Paul Drake or Della Street enters and slyly gives some inside information to Perry. He recalls a past witness, who turns out to be the murderer. The score for Burger is 151.

I couldn't have described it better myself.  TV  

Around the dial

Terry Teachout leads off our look at this week with a well-done obituary of John Mahoney, who died earlier this week. As he reminds us, Mahoney as an actor was more than just fine, and much more than just the father on Frasier.

At bare-bones e-zine, Jack, who writes the terrific "Hitchcock Project" articles, this week covers Oh, For the Life of an Author's Wife, a biography of Fredric Brown by his second wife, Elizabeth. You'll recognize Brown's name from the stories he wrote that were adapted for Hitchcock, among many other shows. Sounds as if Mrs. Brown has some wonderful stories about her husband.

Who among us doesn't have a favorite show or two that everyone else things is absolutely awful? For David at Comfort TV, the terrible show he likes is Gemini Man, which I confess I've only seen when a couple of episodes were cobbled together into a movie that was riffed on MST3K. Perhaps I really have been missing something.

Great news for all fans of The Avengers (the real ones, not the cartoon superheroes), and of course I include myself in that category. At Cult TV Blog, John reports that an episode previously thought lost, "Tunnel of Fear," is not only found, but coming out on DVD. Sign me and my region-free player up, though I suspect it will make it over here before too long.

The Broadcast Archives at the University of Maryland links to a very interesting article from Current on how Sesame Street got PBS to start acting like a network.

Really interesting story at Garroway at Large, where Jodie tells about how Today covered the breaking news - one hour before airtime - of the death of King George VI in 1952. Impressive, especially considering the pioneering show had only been on the air for a month.

A Shroud of Thoughts has a very good, very comprehensive review of the military sitcoms of the 1960s. There are more of them out there than you might think, upholding a great tradition of military comedy that goes back to the 1950s in both movies and television.

Yes, a good week indeed - and you can start off the weekend on the right foot by being back here tomorrow for TV Guide. Just look for the issue with the stars of Peter Gunn and Mr. Lucky on the cover.  TV  

Maria Callas does The Sullivan Show, 1956

ED SULLIVAN WITH MARIA CALLAS AND GEORGE LONDON, NOVEMBER  25, 1956

Ed Sullivan was a man who liked to think he had his finger on the pulse of the American entertainment scene. “If he understood and liked an act,” biographer James Maguire wrote, “[the public] would; if he didn’t, his audience probably wouldn’t either.” That instinct didn’t often fail him, as the appearances by Elvis and The Beatles will attest.

He also realized that there was a great middlebrow audience out there, viewers who enjoyed seeing the latest Broadway plays and New York operas but didn’t have much of a chance to see them in person, and he was dedicated to giving them that opportunity through his show. Recreations of scenes from plays, musicals, and operas were common, with the singers and actors appearing in costume on a reproduced set. It wasn’t enough, thought Sullivan, to recreate the performance; he wanted to recreate the experience as well.

And that’s how, in November of 1956, the great Maria Callas came to be on The Ed Sullivan Show. Callas had made her Met debut on opening night of the 1956-57 season in Bellini’s Norma. On November 19, she would premiere perhaps her most famous role, that of Puccini’s Tosca. Sullivan knew the headlines that would be generated by Callas’ debut on American television, and booked Callas to appear on the show.

Maguire recounts some of the behind-the-scenes tension; Callas, a diva to the last, refused to do Tosca, preferring to save it for the paying customers at the Met. Sullivan, in turn, threatened to boot her off the show if she didn’t fulfill her half of the bargain. The result, of course, was this performance, from November 25, 1956. The first person you’ll see is Rudolf Bing, the general manager of the Metropolitan, followed by scenes from Act II of Tosca, featuring the Canadian bass-baritone George London as the villainous Count Scarpia. The orchestra is under the baton of Dimitri Mitropoulos.


In 1956, opera and theater were not uncommon on television. Aside from an occasional appearnce on PBS, where are the outlets for such programming today?   TV  

What's on TV? Sunday, February 8, 1959

After having seen a weekday and a Saturday, it only makes sense that for this third 1959 issue in a row, we turn to Sunday. Then, as now, Sunday night included some quality programming - Benny, Sullivan, G.E. Theater, Hitchcock and What's My Line? on CBS, Steve Allen, Dinah Shore and Loretta Young on NBC, and Maverick on ABC. Almost enough to make the last night of the weekend bearable, wouldn't you say?

This week in TV Guide: February 7, 1959

Sometimes you just have to play with the hand you're dealt. It was never my plan to do three consecutive issues from 1959; they just happened to be the ones that best fit the calendar. And you know what they say about making lemonade - except none of these issues have been lemons.

For example, NBC's Kaleidoscope, at 4:00 p.m. Sunday afternoon. It's hosted by Charles Van Doren, during the period of time before he was swallowed up by the Quiz Show Scandals, and it reminds me of Omnibus, another Sunday afternoon program on NBC, with topics that ranged from Communist East Germany to atomic energy to the Radio City Music Hall Rockettes, and commentators that included David Brinkley and Edwin Newman.

This week's episode is a drama, "The Third Commandment," written by Ben Hecht and starring Arthur Kennedy, Anne Francis, Fay Spain, Richard Erdman, John Hoyt, Simon Oakland, Regis Toomey, and Jack Weston - familiar names all to classic TV viewers. The play's subject matter is a provocative one, centering on the Third Commandment, "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord Thy God in vain." Kennedy plays Jim Mundy, an "embittered young writer" so determined to achieve material success that he ignores his conscience and abandons his principles. Hecht wrote the play for television; according to The Great American Playwrights on the Screen, it was a pilot for a proposed series on the Ten Commandments.

SOURCE: HADLEY TV GUIDE COLLECTION

A thought before we move on: NBC, at this point in television history, had a remarkable record for offering high-class programs. In addition to Kaleidoscope and Omnibus, there was NBC Opera Theatre, Hallmark Hall of Fame, Bell Telephone Hour, and specials such as Astaire Time, which we'll get to later. These weren't attempts to be highbrow, either; they were middlebrow programs designed to appeal to viewers who might not otherwise be exposed to quality drama and music. (The operas on NBC Opera Theatre, for example, were all translated into English.)

One of the many unfortunate consequences of network television's shift to all-sports or all-informercial weekend afternoons is the loss of programming like this. It's true that a lot of these shows were not ratings bonanzas; that's why the networks stuck so many of them on Sunday afternoons, where they wouldn't do much damage to the ratings. But at least they were there, where people who wanted to see them could find them.

How did we get from there to here, from the classics to a network that has been variously labeled as the "Nothing But Coitus" or "Nothing But Crap" network? I know, I know - times change.

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One of Ed Sullivan's first great on-air challenges came from Steve Allen, who left Tonight to take over an NBC variety show which, at the beginning, aired opposite Ed. It didn't run as long as Ed's, of course, but then Allen said his goal was never to conquer Ed, but to coexist with him, which he did for three seasons. Let's see who gets the best of the contest this week.

Sullivan: Ed's guests are actor Richard Boone, actress Nancy Kelly, singer Frankie Laine, singer-actress Miyoshi Umeki, comedians Jan Murray and Wally Griffin, comedienne Trude Adams, singer Johnny Cash and the dancers from the Broadway musical "Jamaica."

Allen: Steve's guests are Liberace, singer Steve Lawrence and teh U.S. Army Chorus, actress Marie McDonald, and comedian Dayton Allen. Steve interviews mythical ex-celebrities, played by Don Knotts, Tom Poston and Louis Nye.

It's not that Steve's show is so bad this week; Steve Lawrence, who's a private in the Army, has been doing shows with the Chorus since finishing basic training, and I suspect his interviews with regulars Knotts, Poston and Nye are pretty funny. But c'mon, let's get real: Richard Boone, Frankie Laine, Jan Murray and Johnny Cash - Johnny Cash! It's a case of quantity and quality over quality this week; Sullivan for the win.

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I mentioned Fred Astaire earlier; last October Fred had starred in a color special with his new partner Barrie Chase, winning tremendous critical and popular acclaim, not to mention nine Emmy Awards including Program of the Year and Best Performance by an Actor.

On Wednesday at 9:00 p.m., NBC repeats the special "by popular demand," and it's a testimonial not only to the brilliance of the show (and of Astaire and Chase), it's a reminder of what things were like before the VCR/DVR/on demand era. Back then when you missed a show you missed it, and there was no guarantee you'd ever get a chance to see it again - particularly if it was a special.

On the other hand, it's also an example of the great strides that television technology had already made. In the earlier days of TV, this would have been a live broadcast, and the only way to repeat it would be to do the show all over again. With the advent of video tape, you not only had the opportunity for an encore presentation, you could preserve the performance so that we could watch it on streaming video 60 years later.

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And now, let's take an annotated look at the rest of the week:

A look at Saturday's college basketball serves as a reminder of how the balance of power changes through the years. On NBC at 2:00 p.m., future NBA superstar Jerry "The Logo" West leads West Virginia against Holy Cross. West Virginia will make it all the way to the NCAA finals in 1959, where they'll lose to California 71-70. That night on ABC (6:30 p.m.), it's The Dick Clark Show; Dwight Whitney reports that two tobacco companies have been battling for sponsorship of Clark's show, with Lorillard finally winning out. Writes Whitney, "Clark's 52-week contract is reputed to be one of the fattest in recent years."

We've already taken a pretty good look at Sunday, but the most interesting thing left might be this ad for the famed Art Instruction, Inc., advertiser on many a matchbook cover and in magazines far and wide. Usually, it's "Draw Skippy!" or something like that, but this week, in honor of Lincoln's Birthday, it's Honest Abe himself! Art Instruction Schools, as it's called now, is still around, and its headquarters are still right here in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Its two most famous graduates are Minnesota native Charles M. Schulz and "Beetle Bailey" creator Mort Walker, who just died last week.

Monday's Lucy-Desi hour features the gang going to Alaska (9:00 p.m., CBS), where Ricky's band is scheduled to appear on Red Skelton's show in a celebration of Alaska's admission to the Union; it became the 49th state just a month ago, on January 3. It's always interesting watching programs from this era; when Jack Paar brings Tonight to Hawaii in 1960, he refers to flying over from the States, whereupon the audience's shouts remind him that Hawaii is now one of the states.

On Tuesday, it's an all-American night of music on the Bell Telephone Hour (7:00 p.m, NBC), with an all-American cast of singers and dancers, including Risë Stevens, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Martha Wright, and the New York City ballet. Elsewhere, Jonathan Winters is the guest of Arthur Godfrey (8:00 p.m., CBS), Bob Hope welcomes Danny Thomas, Maureen O'Hara and Carol Haney to his NBC special (8:30 p.m.), and Cloris Leachman tries to fight off a mysterious strangler on One Step Beyond (9:00 p.m., ABC)

Besides Fred Astaire, Wednesday has other shows of interest in store. Last week Abraham Lincoln was the focus of Omnibus; tonight, on the eve of his 150th birthday, it's Project 20 (7:30 p.m., NBC), which presents a half-hour pictorial essay on the last four years of his life, accompanied by words from Lincoln and the people who knew him. That's followed at 8:00 p.m. by the Kraft Music Hall with Milton Berle - but, according to Burt Boyar's story elsewhere in the issue, next season Perry Como will be taking over Music Hall, with Berle filling in for eight or ten specials in the same time slot. NBC isn't crazy about having Como move from his Saturday night spot, but Kraft owns the Wednesday spot, and they want Como filling it. When you spend $8,000,000 to sponsor an hour of television, you get that kind of clout. If drama is what you're looking for, you'll probably find it on U.S. Steel Hour (9:00 p.m., CBS), with French star Jean Pierre Aumont starring in the Tolstoy story "Family Happiness," with Gloria Vanderbilt and Patty Duke.

Danny Thomas makes a rare dramatic appearance Thursday on Dick Powell's Zane Grey Theatre (CBS, 8:00 p.m.), playing an Italian immigrant targeted for some rough play by the citizens of Yuca City.* James Mason and Margaret Leighton star in "The Second Man" on Playhouse 90 (8:30 p.m., CBS), while at the same time Cliff Arquette, as Charley Weaver, guests with Tennessee Ernie Ford on NBC. The KMSP movie at 9:00 p.m. is appropriate: Abe Lincoln in Illinois, starring one of the movies' most famous Lincolns, Raymond Massey.

*Not to be confused with The Beast of Yucca Flats. (No offense to the Coleman Francis Fan Club.)

Connie Francis is one of the guests on CBS's Your Hit Parade on Friday (6:30 p.m.); in an article from this year, Francis talks about how the traumas of her rape and her brother's murder almost destroyed her career. On M-Squad, detective Frank Ballinger investigates a series of killings; in an article elsewhere in the issue the actor playing Ballinger, Lee Marvin (who is also half-owner of the series), describes the role as "a strait jacket." "I would get out of this series if I could," he tells his interviewer. "Do you realize I'm playing the same character on 19½ hours of film a year? And it gets pretty dull. In a movie you're on for maybe 45 minutes and that's it. The audience doesn't stand as much chance of anticipating you. After the second week in a series they gotta anticipate you. And when they do - adios!!" It's not nearly as colorful an interview as one we discussed earlier, but Marvin is outspoken and no fool, and it's always interesting reading what he has to say.

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Wrong again!

Polly Bergen was hired to be stupid, according to the cover. What's the rest of the story, hmm? Well, she's currently a panelist on the CBS show To Tell the Truth, along with Kitty Carlisle, Ralph Bellamy, and Don Ameche. Now, she isn't really stupid, but by the same token, according to producer Gil Fates, she wasn't hired to get the right answers, either. She's there for her effervescent personality, her coy mots and saucy rejoinders, tricks she's acquired from her night club experience. Her three rules for playing the game are: "1. Play that hunch. 2. Keep guessing. 3. Gag it up."

She admits to weaknesses: "I must admit I have a little trouble with athletes," she says. "And I'm not very good on the armed forces. I can't even remember whether two stripes on your arm means you're a second lieutenant or only a major." But there remains the big question - "Is that featherbrained gadabout on To Tell the Truth really Polly Bergen? Or is Polly Bergen merely playing a featherbrained gadabout on To Tell the Truth?" Says Polly, "You'd really like to know the answer to that one now, wouldn't you?"

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Finally, Chuck Connors is on the cover this week (along with Johnny Crawford, from The Rifleman).  I've always liked Connors, and he was good for an entertaining article a while back, so it's certainly worth spending a few lines on him.

With The Rifleman, Connors has, as the article puts it, "finally made the big leagues," and in his case that's to be taken literally. For five years he was a member of the Brooklyn Dodgers system, never able to beat out Gil Hodges at first base, so he found himself traded to the Chicago Cubs. After hitting .223, he was sent to the Cubs' minor league team in Los Angeles. He did pretty well in L.A., even hosting a TV interview show between games, where - only in Hollywood - he was spotted by a movie talent scout. His first role was as a state policeman in the Tracy-Hepburn movie Pat and Mike, making $500 a day. "I figured they'd made some mistake on the adding machine, but I stuck the check in my pocket and shut up. Sure enough, the next day they gave me another $500. 'Baseball,' I told myself, 'just lost a first baseman.' "

His big break came a few years later, playing a heavy against James Arness on Gunsmoke. It "typed him as a fellow you could depend on to take a beating gracefully in a Western." When he heard about a new series - The Rifleman - he decided to give it a try. They tossed him a rifle - wanted to see how it handled it. "Feels like a Louisville Slugger," Connors said. The rest, I would say, is a home run. TV