To think or not to think

One of the (many) phrases that rubs me the wrong way is someone saying, most likely in an accuseatory manner, "You're overthinking things." It doesn't even have to be aimed at me; it raises my hackles whenever I hear it said or see it written. It carries imbedded within it, in some subtle yet insidious way, the idea that the process of thinking is, in and of itself, something that is to be discouraged.

Now, I know what you're thinking, and it's true that people can sometimes overanalyze things, that they can research something to the point that they enter into a kind of decision paralysis, unable to make up their minds because they're they're drowning in information. But when one is accused of "overthinking," it most often implies that you're devoting your mental energies to something that has been adjudged not worthy of expending your little grey cells. That, in and of itself, displays a kind of arrogance, suggesting that you're a better judge of what's important than they are.

The other day, at one of the Hogan's Heroes message boards I frequent, someone (not me) was speculating about one of the many implausibilities implicit in the show's concept. He was, of course, promptly accused of overthinking things. And while there are times when one has to suspend their own disbelief, not only with Hogan but with many other programs, the thought occurred to me: what, exactly, is wrong with thinking about various aspects of a television show? As long as you're not allowing it to intrude on the pleasure you derive from watching the show, why should you be scolded for "overthinking" it? Isn't it just part of the creative process wired into some people's minds?

Think of it this way: would you ever accuse someone of overthinking War and Peace or The Brothers Karamazov? Would you suggest to a film student that she's overthinking Citizen Kane or 2001? Would you stride into the Louvre and tell someone studying the Mona Lisa that they're overthinking the smile, or try to convince worshippers in the Sistine Chapel that they're overthinking Michelangelo's Last Judgment? They'd probably look at you like you ought to be locked up for such thoughts, and they'd be right. I'm not even sure you can overthink Jackson Pollock. (On the other hand, I might grant you Mark Rothko.)

What I'm trying to say here is that it's absurd to suggest that one can overthink art, whether it's in the form of literature, cinema, painting, sculpture, dance, and the like. Why should we exclude television from that list? Granted, I'm not trying to suggest that a show like Hogan's Heroes belongs in the same classification as, say, East of Eden (there is such a thing as perspective, after all), but it's also foolish to deny that there is an element of art present in the creation of any television program. What that show says, what it signifies, what (if any) messege it intends for the viewer: these are all topics worthy of thought—and, possibly, overthought.

You might recall that a few years ago I wrote about a conversation I had with a Catholic ethicist regarding the treatment of the Just War doctrine in Hogan's Heroes. Now, some of you might consider this a classic example of overthought; it's only a sitcom, after all, a form of entertainment (and a low one, at that). But how many of us accept the things we see on television—not just on Hogan's Heroes, but on any program—without even giving them a second thought? Assassination, lying, physical intimidation, robbery, blackmail: it's all good if it's done in a good cause, right? We don't think about it at all, and over time we can become lazy about it, inured to it, just like the video game players who become so used to their killing games that the sacredness of life itself begins to lose its meaning. I'm not suggesting that television, whether drama or sitcom, should be relied upon to give you a moral education—far from it! But what do we accomplish with our leisure time if we spend it doing things that produce absolutely no thought on our part? Even the most "mindless" entertainment should spur at least a little activity up there, whether it's on the left or right side of your brain. To do otherwise—well, that's just a foreign concept to me. 

Over the years, my thoughts, my philosophies, my beliefs: all of them have been influenced, to one degree or another, by programs I've seen on television. Sometimes the impact is minor, no more significant than learning the importance of laughing at yourself; other times, I find myself being challenged to defend long-held opinions after seeing them in a quasi-real world environment, rather than the vacuum of the intellectural laboratory, with the result that I'm either strengthened in that opinion, or open to other ways of thinking about it. Seeing the plight of an innocent man being persecuted on a police procedural or the agonies of soldiers in a war drama should cause you to at least give some thought about these things, even if it's just to ask "what would I do?" in a similar situation. 

Again, I'm not advocating that you form your opinions on important issues around what you see on TV, where the dice are often loaded and the issues slanted, but having an awareness of these things, an awareness that perhaps you didn't have before, should at least enter into the equation when you consider them more deeply. Remember the old public service messages on CBS that would run after some dramas or movies, where they provided a list of books in case you wanted to "Read More About It?" That's what I'm talking about.

Of course, some of this is dependant on the willingness of programmers to provide programs containing even the barest of thought-provoking content, and, quite frankly, we should be demanding more from them in terms of how we spend our leisure time. But if that's the case, we should also be demanding more from ourselves. "There’s grace in wrestling with thoughts," a Catholic priest once wrote, and the ancient Greeks believed that leisure was "an active state of mind," a time that included not only sports and physical activities, but "learning music theory, debating qualified peers and doing philosophy. Leisure was not easy, but it was supposed to be gratifying." And as we've seen, even a sitcom like Hogan's Heroes can be the source of a thought-provoking gratification.

Speaking of thoughts, next week I'm going to continue on this train of thought, by looking at one of the most challenging and thought-provoking programs that television has produced, and how it can serve as a model for the way in which we use the programs we watch to stimulate our own thinking, both individually and in a group. TV  

What's on TV? Monday, July 17, 1961

We came very close, it would appear, to having a different lede altogether for today, one not nearly as light-hearted; as it is, however, it's business as usual, at least looking at the week's TV listings. And a good thing it is, because today we have one of those wonderful juxtapositions in programming that I'm so fond of, the kind that almost makes you wonder if the local stations conspired to create the effect for TV Guide readers. At 11:25 p.mn., WHIO in Dayton is showing the movie The Devil is a Woman, with May Britt. Meanwhile, at 11:30 p.m., WCPO in Cincinnati has Brigette Bardot in That Naughty Girl. So who do you go with? When it comes to misbehaving, you've got to go with Bardot, right? This unintended humor, as well as the rest of the listings, comes from the Southern Ohio edition.

This week in TV Guide: July 15, 1961

The brooding visage on the cover of this week's TV Guide is not that of Dave Garroway, although you'd be forgiven for thinking that it was, given how it seems to be a perfect match for the sidebar teaser on the left. No, on the cover you see Gardner McKay, star of Adventures in Paradise. More about him later. First, here's Garroway.

David Cunningham Garroway, the subject of Richard Gehman's multi-part profile, is one of the pioneers of television, a man of immeasurable influence insofar as on-camera persona is concerned. He is a very complex man as well, a troubled man, and for once the psychoanalytical angle that Gehman so likes to use comes in handy.

Garroway is the star of NBC's Today Show, or to be more precise, The Dave Garroway Today Show, as it is currently known. His friendly demeanor, inquisitive mind and engaging personality all combine to make him one of the first big stars in the new medium. Today reflects that personality perfectly. Would that today's Today (a cumbersome handle, to be sure) had as much variety and innovation as Garroway's did.

And yet the Dave Garroway that millions see every weekday morning is a far cry from the offscreen Garroway. It's sometimes said that when TV viewers see a personality on their sets often enough, they come to feel as if they actually know that person. In Garroway's case, those viewers probably know as much about him as his friends and coworkers do. Garroway is almost painfully shy, far preferring the company of his cars and telescopes to human interaction. He used to disguise himself before leaving the house, and he has a bomb shelter in his Manhattan townhouse, along with a bottle of Secanol in case of nuclear war. He tells Gehman that his anxieties actually make him better on TV, where "he can be himself" in the unblinking eye of the camera lens.

I described Garroway above as the host of Today; actually, that will be true only for another two days. Come Monday morning, John Chancellor will take over as host of the new, hard-news version of Today. Garroway had made the announcement in May, a month after his wife had committed suicide by swallowing a bottle of sleeping pills, that he would be leaving the show in October, or earlier if possible. He cites the need to recharge his batteries, to get away from the entertainment business for awhile. The article promises that part two will tell why Garroway really left Today; unfortunately, I don't have that issue. (But if you think I should have it, in order to finish the story, I'll gladly give you my PayPal address.)

I've frequently picked on Richard Gehman's writing style as being unnecessarily sarcastic and snarky, making his own cleverness too much a part of the story. And yet, perhaps this time, as I suggested earlier, the subject is a perfect match for the writer. His opening paragraph is certainly as good as anything you'll read in classic TV Guide*: "In these troubled and abandoned days, some of the more troubled and abandoned among us celebrate the birth of Christ by behaving much like the very Romans who crucified Him. A bacchanalian Christmas party given three years ago by the staff of the Today show would have delighted a contemporary Edward Gibbon."

*When I mentioned this to my wife, she asked if today's TV Guide even has any writing; she thought maybe all they did was compose captions to pictures.\

Gehman goes on to discuss Garroway's obvious boredom and discomfort in these surroundings, taking it for as long as he could before getting up and disappearing. He continues, comparing Garroway to Tod Hackett, the protagonist of Nathaneal West's novel The Day of the Locust: "He was really a very complicated young man with a whole set of personalities, one inside the other like a nest of Chinese boxes." Garroway, a "very complicated 48," knows this better than anyone. "For 14 years, off and on, he has been seeing a psychiatrist in an effort to learn what is inside those boxes. And what he has learned is that there are more boxes." 

What I particularly like about those paragraphs is that Gehman assumes his readers will recognize the name Edward Gibbon, that they will know who Nathaneal West was and perhaps might even have read one of his books. It doesn't strike me that he's forcing these references; he's simply respecting his audience. TV Guide always prided itself on being more than a fan magazine, with readers who were a far cry from those who read the other rags; writing such as this tends to confirm that assumption.

Dave Garroway's story is a sad one, and it's not just because one of the pioneers of television is virtually unknown today. He appeared on various media off and on through the years, hosting a science show on NET, several radio programs on both coasts, and occasional guest appearances in various series, including on Today show anniversaries. He was married three times; the first ended in divorce, the second (as we saw above) with the suicide of his wife in 1961; his third to an astronomer, not surprising given his interest in that field. He underwent heart surgery in 1982 and, suffering from complications as well as his continuing battle with depression, killed himself with a single blast from a shotgun later that year. He was only 69 years old. 

Here's a clip from the first episode of Today in January, 1952. And here is a clip from Garroway's last television appearance, on the 30th anniversary show, where he's reunited with his old Today partners, Jack Lescoulie and Frank Blair. And to learn more about him, I highly recommend Jodie Peeler's wonderful biography of Garroway, Peace.

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And now on to Gardner McKay. He was discovered by Dominick Dunne, who was at the time a producer at 20th Century Fox, and hired to star in a new series Dunne was co-producing, Adventures in Paradise. Standing an imposing 6'5", he cuts a figure that leads Life magazine, in a cover story, to dub him "the new Apollo." McKay considers himself to still be a rookie when it comes to acting—"I'm no real actor," he tells the unnamed interviewer; "Show me a two-page speech from 'Antigone' and I'd get sick."—but Dunne, who first spotted McKay reading a book of poetry in a coffee shop, says that though he was a nobody in Hollywood terms, "his attitude declared that he was somebody." Despite the criticism of his acting, McKay is unquestionably a star, receiving up to 3,000 pieces of fan mail a week, and is well-liked by the crew that services his series.

Adventures in Paradise is now in its third and final season, but McKay remains untouched by his celebrity; he still drives the same 1958 Chevy convertible he had before Paradise, and he has no press agent, no business manager. On his weekly salary of over $1,500, he has "a few blue chip stocks and a bank account." In 1961, "the future burns brightly" for Gardner McKay. 

Like Dave Garroway after Today, Gardner McKay's life will travel a different route after Adventures in Paradise ends, but unlike Garroway's, it has a happy ending. After the series ends, McKay declines to renew his contract with Fox and turns down a chance to co-star in a movie with Marilyn Monroe, who personally lobbied him to take the part. Giving up acting completely, McKay works in the Amazon for two years and spends time in France and Egypt before returning to Hawaii, where he finds new success as a writer*, publishing several novels, an autobiography, and numerous short stories, as well as writing plays (winning a Drama Critics Circle Award for "Sea Marks"). In addition, he serves for five years as the drama critic for the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner and teaches a writing class at UCLA.

*I remember once seeing an interview with him, perhaps on Today; he was plugging his latest book, possibly The Kinsman, and mentioned how at first people didn't believe he'd written it himself, until they realized the depth of detail with which he wrote about sailing.

A friend said that he always considered himself a writer rather than an actor, and added that "He hated the fact that he was known for that television series. It was not the professional or private path he wanted to take." Gardner McKay was 69, the same age as Dave Garroway, when he died of cancer, a man who by all appearances was able to write himself a happy ending.

And if you're interested, you can see the episode of Adventures in Paradise that played in this episode: a rerun of "The Big Surf."

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If you're of an age where you only remember Julie London as nurse Dixie McCall on Emergency, you don't know what you've been missing.

London, who's already had a successful career as a singer but looks to add acting to her repertoire, complains of her lack of roles in Hollywood: "Sometimes I think they tend to measure an actress's talents by her—uh—measurements. If the measurements go beyond a certain point, they figure she can't possibly act." London's measurements, the unnamed writer helpfully points out, are 5'3", 37-23-36.

London was formerly married to Jack Webb*; the marriage was a good one until the success of Dragnet, with which he became obsessed. (Don't get me wrong; I love Jack Webb, but what do you say about a man who's married to Julie London and becomes obsessed with a television show?) They divorce in 1953, and in 1959 she marries jazz musician Bobby Troup, who also starred in Emergency but is probably best known (as he should be) for writing the song "Route 66," which made a lot of money for both him and Nat King Cole, among others.

*Of course, the irony here is that Webb, who remained on good terms with London, would hire both her and Troup for Emergency. When it came to television, Webb apparently only cared about getting the right people.

Today, though she continues singing, she still waits for the right role. "All I really want," she says, "is what every other girl in this town wants—a really good script."

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Saturday starts with golf, ends with murder, and features beauty in-between. The golf comes from the Royal Birkdale Golf Course in Southport, England, where Wide World of Sports expands to two hours for the final round of the British Open, taped earlier in the day. (5:00 p.m. ET, ABC) Arnold Palmer is scheduled to join Jim Simpson for commentary on the final three holes, but he'll have to work hard to fit it in; Arnie's busy winning his second Open Championship (and first of two in a row), defeating Welch golfer Dai Rees by one shot. The beauty can be found in Miami Beach, where Germany's Marlene Schmidt* is crowned Miss Universe. (10:00 p.m., CBS). Johnny Carson is the emcee at the Miami Beach Convention Center, while the broadcast hosts are John Daly and Jayne Meadows. And the murder comes from the 1946 movie The Killers, one of the great film noirs of all time, starring Burt Lancaster, Ava Gardner, and Edmund O'Brien.

*Fun fact: Marlene Schmidt was the third of eight wives of Bronco star Ty Hardin.

Sunday's episode of Dennis the Menace (7:30 p.m., CBS) presents the long-suffering Mr. Wilson (Joseph Kearns) with yet another headache: a washed-out bridge leaves him trapped at a mountain campsite with Dennis and five other young boys. A profile of Kearns shows us another side of the actor, who was once a child actor himself. Now, however, he's a veteran character actor, worried that "the 24 inmates of a nursery school will find out that Mr. Wilson lives right across the street." And the house he lives in? It's a 2½ story soundproof home he designed and built around a 26-rank Wurlitzer pipe organ that was originally designed for Warner Brothers back in 1926 and which he delights in playing for guests.  

On Monday, the aforementioned Ty Harden appears with Clint Walker and Will Hutchins in a rare Cheyenne episode featuring all three of its stars (7:30 p.m., ABC), as they battle someone who doesn't want Cheyenne's cattle drive to reach its destination. Later, the irrepressible Spike Jones and his wife, singer Helen Grayco, return for a second season of hosting a summer replacement series, this time for Danny Thomas. Their guests for this first show are Bill Dana and Jack Jones. 

Stagecoach West (Tuesday, 9:00 p.m., ABC) is the first of a trio of obscure series that we're looking at this week; it's the first primetime starring role for Wayne Rogers, who, along with Robert Bray, operates a stagecoach in the Wyoming Territory. Tonight's episode features guest stars Pippa Scott and Warren Oats, along with Robert Vaughn, whose character has the perfectly Robert Vaughn-ish name Beaumont Butler Buell. Wonderfully smarmy, don't you think?

Remember Father Dowling Mysteries, the series starring Tom Bosley as a priest who solved murders in his spare time? (A priest told me once that he only wished he had that kind of free time; some days he barely had a chance to eat.) The series was based on the novels by Catholic author Ralph McInerny, but he wasn't the literary world's first crime-fighting prelate; before him, there was Father Brown*, the hero of G.K. Chesterton's short stories that mixed mystery and theology. Wednesday, we see an example of it in the 1954 movie The Detective (11:30 p.m., WCPO in Columbus), with Alec Guinness essaying the priestly role, and Peter Finch as the archcriminal Flambeau. 

*The current Father Brown series on BBC, starring Mark Williams, strays considerably from the moral theology with which Chesterton invested his stories.

Outlaws is a two-season Western, running between 1960 and 1962, starring Barton MacLane, Don Collier, and Wynn Pearce as U.S. Marshals patrolling the Oklahoma Territory in the latter part of the 19th Century. Despite the fact that the series focused on the lives of the outlaws rather than the lawmen, Thursday's episode (7:30 p.m., NBC) remains unusual in that none of the regular cast appear in it; this story of a cowhand-turned-outlaw is carried entirely by the guest cast, including Joe Maross as the badman. I must admit this is one of the many series with which I haven't previously been familiar until now.

Don Wilson, Jack Benny's longtime announcer, makes a rare straight acting appearance as an oil tycoon in Harrigan and Son (Friday, 8:00 p.m., ABC), a sitcom starring Pat O'Brien and Roger Perry as father-and-son attorneys. You'll be forgiven if you haven't heard on this one, either; it had a single-season run. Far more stimulating is the late movie on Dayton's WHIO, the 1949 adaptation of Ayn Rand's novel The Fountainhead, starring Gary Cooper as Howard Roarke, the uncompromising architect, and Patricia Neal as the woman who loves him.

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Finally, a couple of programs that epitomize the notion of television as a time capsule, and point out the importance of television preservation as an original document of cultural history.

The cover of George Lefferts'
collection of scripts from the show

We begin with NBC's series of occasional afternoon programs, Special For Woman, which returns on Tuesday for a six-week primetime run (10:00 p.m.). "Each taped drama," according to the program description, "deals with a problem faced by women in America," and concludes with a brief discussion led by NBC news reporter Pauline Frederick.* This week's episode, entitled "The Single Woman," presents the dilemma of Elisabeth Greenway (Barbara Baxley), who "has reached an age where she knows she ought to get married." She has a beau (Michael Tolan) ready and willing to tie the knot, but "Elisabeth just can't see her way clear to committing herself to him—or any man—for life." Although it's not mentioned in the description, she's also being wooed by a married man, played by Patrick O'Neal. Following the play, Frederick interviews psychiatrist Louis English.

*An example of the "women's stories" that Frederick complained about, prior to becoming NBC's U.N. correspondent. 

Here's a great reminder of the culture of the early 1960s, when marriage and a family is still considered the norm for women, and the stigma that's attached to being an unmarried woman—even the idea that she's not quite respectable. I wager that the phrase "old maid" isn't used nearly as much today as it was back then; now, we might think such an unmarried woman is just coming into her own today. As for her choices, does she choose boyfriend Michael Tolan, or is she content to be the "other woman" with Patrick O'Neal? And what role does the psychiatrist play in the discussion? Is he there to reassure women that the desire to remain single is not abnormal—or does he encourage them to confront their fear of commitment?*

*I cheated a bit, and skipped to the end of George Lefferts' collection of scripts from the show, which you can find at the Internet Archive; she chooses Michael Tolan. "I don't know when I'll be ready to marry you, Mike—maybe not for a long while. I need some time to think and maybe grow up a little more. But if you have the patience—" Says Dr. English in the summary, "Finding the right man is a by-product of doing the things that you yourself enjoy." Go to page 89 for more.     

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This week's other blast from the past comes courtesy of CBS' Sunday morning religious series Look Up and Live (10:00 a.m.) that, with few adaptations, could be presented today. "The Police," based on the play by Polish writer Slawomir Mrozek, tells the story of a prison rapidly losing its reason for being. "All the other prisoners, convinced that they were living under 'the best system in the world,' have confessed their crimes against the state, received their pardons and gone home. Now there's only one prisoner left, and he too wants to confess. The Commissioner receives this news with a certain amount of regret."

Mrozek, often compared to the Absurdist playwright Eugène Ionesco, is a fascinating character himself. He was once an ardent Communist, praising Polish authorities for their persecution of religious leaders, and took part in demonstrations defaming Catholic priests. Following his defection from Poland in 1963, he became a harsh critic of Communism. The always-reliable Wikipedia offers this quote from him, explaining the change: "Being twenty years old, I was ready to accept any ideological proposition without looking a gift-horse in the mouth—as long as it was revolutionary. [. . .] I was lucky not to be born German say in 1913. I would have been a Hitlerite because the recruitment method was the same." "The Police" was published in 1958, bearing the marks of his growing skepticism of totalitarianism. I wonder what he'd think about the world of today? TV  

Around the dial

The actress Shelley Duvall died yesterday, aged 75, with a legion of fans and a resume that ran the gamut from Robert Altman movies to the television shows Faerie Tale Theatre and Tall Tales and Legends. We have two appreciations of her this week, from Terence at A Shroud of Thoughts and Trav S.D. at Travalanche.  

At The View from the Junkyard, Roger and Mike take on the Twilight Zone episode "The Long Morrow," and it isn't a pretty picture. TZ is in its fifth and final season, and it's far from the glory days of yore, yet there's still Robert Lansing and Mariette Hartley to look forward to, and that isn't bad.

Those Were the Days flashes back to the TV Guide cover from July 11, 1964, highlighting the anchormen about to cover the Republican National Convention in San Francisco. It's a bittersweet reminder not only of when political conventions were important, but when giants ruled the news.

Speaking of giants, at Comfort TV, David's journey through 1970s TV continues with Tuesday nights in 1974, and that night's shows cast giant footprints indeed: Happy Days, Marcus Welby, Good Times, M*A*S*H, Hawaii Five-O, Barnaby Jones, Adam-12, and Police Story. Not bad.

At Cult TV Blog, John flashes back to the very first assignment of Sapphire and Steel, a Twilight Zone-type story that gets the chance to dig much deeper into a strange world of disappearing people and mysterious protagonists; it's good enough to get you hooked into the rest of the series.

And at bare•bones e-zine, it's the latest entry in Jack's Hitchcock Project, "Completely Foolproof," Anthony Terpiloff's tenth-season story about a couple of grim and unlikeable people who, I think, get what's coming to them. It's a completely foolproof to wrap up this week's classic television review. TV  

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