Around the dial

David has another terrific piece at Comfort TV on expressions that were once commonplace enough that they could be used as premises in television episodes of teh day. I'm so conscious of this kind of thing when I write; if I refer to the Irish Sweepstakes, will anyone know what I'm talking about? Do you know what I'm talking about?

The "Sylvia Coleridge Season" continues at Cult TV Blog with the episode "The Link-Up" from Shoestring, the private detective series he's reviewed recently, and Sylvia's reole as "a beer-drinking radio ham" is one that could have been written for her. It's great how many British character actors you start to follow when you watch enough British TV.

Terence at A Shroud of Thoughts, Paul at Mavis Movie Madness! and Inner Toob all have features on the latest classic TV icon to pass from the scene, Jay North, who died of cancer at age 73. Best known for Dennis the Menace, North had a long career in the industry, and worked with fellow former child star Paul Petersen in supporting current and former child actors.

At A Vintage Nerd, Daffny reviews one of the great features of I Love Lucy: the cameo appearances of guest stars playing themselves. This is something that keeps popping up in Lucy's series through the years, all the way up to Life With Lucy, and it almost always made for a better, more entertaining episode.

Speaking of Lucy, at Classic Film and TV Corner, Maddie takes a look at "L.A. At Last!" from the fourth season of I Love Lucy; she also has a brief anecdote on how and when she discovered Lucy; it's always a lot of fun to read about people and their initial introductions to the classics. It's a moment of wonderment and discovery that stays with them.

Finally, a couple of shameless self-promotions: my latest "American TV with Mitchell Hadley episodes are up at Dan Schneider's Cosmoetica, a double-header on American news legends: Edward R. Murrorw here, followed by Walter Cronkite. You can also here me on the latest Eventually Supertrain, where Dan Budnick and I discuss Garrison's Gorillas. Any other Dans out there who'd like me as a guest? TV  

What South Park tells us about ourselves

Your faithful scribe has had his hands full lately, trying to balance several projects simultaneously, including the penultimate draft of a new book, which, let's face it, is to your benefit, as well as some future projects which promise much—especially more work. Therefore, with your indulgence (in addition to avoiding a full-fledged anxiety attack) I present, for your consideration, this piece from 2017, which I think still holds up. Or maybe not, but at the very least it takes up—space, that is, which right now is just what's needed.

And now we come to the confession portion of today’s blog, wherein I tell you that I’ve never, ever, seen an episode of South Park. (Not boasting, just fact. Although I've never watched it, I'm quite familiar with it, thanks to my efforts on behalf of you, dear readers, to keep abreast of the pop culture scene.) Now, I know what you’re thinking – well, duh, all you ever watch is classic TV anyway, so what? True, South Park doesn’t exactly fit into my M.O. for TV viewing, but as this article at the AV Club reminds us, it has now been on for 20 years, and so it’s bound to fit into someone’s definition of classic. More than that, and the reason I bring it up today, is that this article asks us to take a close look at the effect South Park has had on society over its run, and how it’s shaped the way people behave. As Sean O’Neill writes, an entire generation has now grown up with South Park always there, a constant part of their lives, with the effect of “allowing a healthy, amused skepticism to ossify into cynicism and self-satisfied superiority, then into nihilism, then into blanket, misanthropic hatred.”

South Park’s influence echoes through every modern manifestation of the kind of hostile apathy—nurtured along by Xbox Live s**t-talk and comment-board flame wars and Twitter—that’s mutated in our cultural petri dish to create a rhetorical world where whoever cares, loses. Today, everyone with any kind of grievance probably just has sand in their v****a; expressing it with anything beyond a reaction GIF means you’re “whining”; cry more, your tears are delicious. We live in Generation U Mad Bro, and from its very infancy, South Park has armed it with enough prefab eye-rolling retorts (“ManBearPig!” “I’m a dolphin!” “Gay Fish!” “…’Member?”) to sneeringly shut down discussions on everything from climate change and identity politics to Kanye West and movie reboots. Why not? Everything sucks equally, anyway. Voting is just choosing between some Douche and a Turd Sandwich. Bullying is just a part of life. Suck it up and take it, until it’s your turn to do the bullying. Relax, guy.

(Sorry about the language there; I tried to edit it as much as possible. But I think it’s equally important to understand just what these cultural forces are, how they walk and talk and influence, and so I’m going to let some of this go through.)

Perhaps this will wind up as part of a chapter in my book, where we can discuss this more at length, but I don’t want to give South Park too much credit for this; we can’t really know whether it created this mindset, exploited it, or merely gave it a louder volume. Neither, however, should we dismiss it's impact as insignificant. The point here is that in comparing television of the past with that of today, one thing we have to consider is the effect the programming has on the public – not just the people who watch the programs, but those who live in the culture populated by and in large part created by those viewers. We’ve seen television pass through many stages during its existence, all the while questioning the effect it has. At various times its purpose has been to entertain, to educate, to challenge, to prevaricate, to lead.

In particular, the history of television is littered with discussions regarding its effect on children. Here, too, the hope has been to educate, but along with that – or maybe I should say in conflict with it – we’ve seen it portrayed as a mindless babysitter, a manic instigator of hyperactivity and short attention spans, an agent provocateur, a thief that robs the young of their childhood and turns them into cynical, sexualized, immature mini-adults. This is what happens when television’s purpose is to tear down.

Sometimes television mirrors the culture, sometimes it drives it. In this case, it’s not clear there’s even anyone at the wheel. Parker and Stone, the creators of South Park, may not have intended this when they started out, and indeed O’Neill suggests they may well have struggled with what their creation hath wrought. But then, we all know the composition of the road to Hell. TV  

What's on TV? Tuesday, April 10, 1956

There's a good amount of distance between Dallas and Fort Worth. It's not like the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, which share a border; while they're closer now because of the sprawl, they're still two distinct cities. Even so, it's interesting to see the odd affiliate-sharing system between WBAP and WFAA, where they seem to take turns carrying NBC and ABC shows. For example, WFAA has Dinah Shore's 15-minute show (guest hosted tonight by Gordon MacRae), but WBAP has her one-hour special later in the same evening. I guess if it works for them, it works for us, in this Dallas-Fort Worth edition.

This week in TV Guide: April 7, 1956

With tensions between the United States and Canada running high at the moment, it seems appropriate to lead off this week with an article from Gordon Sinclair, the legendary Canadian journalist who in 1973 will become famous south of the border for his editorial on behalf of America at a time when the rest of the world is taking potshots at her. He's writing on the state of Canadian television, which he describes as "green," as it was in America a few years before; "there's no doubt that the future is just as bright" but at this moment, don't expect to see "the same slick technique you get in the States." Indeed, TV in Canada is still a little rough around the edges: "Our scripts are pedestrian, our crews are inexperienced and our directors seem hesitant to direct. Or even to suggest to performers older than themselves how to play a scene better."

Canadians produce 38 hours of network television each week, ranking third behind Hollywood and New York. Canadians have produced stars of American television, including Lorne Greene, Gisele MacKenzie and Barry Morse. (But no William Shatner?) Canadian shows have their share of curvy females, including Joan Fairfax and Shirley Harmer. But American television is still more popular than many home-grown shows; one of those native shows, Cross Canada Hit Parade (similar to Your Hit Parade in the States) is a twice-weekly musical showcase. A guest star ("usually American") is invited to sing a top record; MacKenzie, Canada's "most glittering expert in the field of song," has never appeared on the show. She was offered as much as $2,000 for a one-shot, but "showed no interest." And Fairfax, who was once voted "Miss Canadian Television" (because of her picture tubes?) has a Monday variety hour she co-hosts with Denny Vaughan, but it's beaten in the ratings by Robert Montgomery Presents; "You see, American programs are highly popular north of the border."

One of Canadian television's sitcoms, the French-Canadian Plouffe Family, is unique in that "it must be the only dramatic show on earth bradcast in two languages by the same cast playing the identical parts." A nice trick if you can pull it off. And there's the comic team of Johnny Wayne and Frank SHuster, "who are vulgar or delightful, depending on how you feel about such stuff." (Ed Sullivan was one who obviously expressed the latter; he had the two on his show 58 times.) On the Jackie Rae Show, he says, Canadians occasionally get the unexpected—along with imported guests. There are even what Sinclair describes as "fleeting glimpses of high comedy," which means Canada's Jackie doesn't really measure up to America's Jackie (Gleason, that is). Don't despair, thoughf: Sinclair suggests Canadian television will one day thrive. After all, even the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the government-run entity that "frowns on press agentry and commercial exploitation" hasn't been able to completely subdue the spirit of Canadian TV.

Where, I wonder, is today's Gordon Sinclair? We could certainly use him, on both sides of the border.

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Let's make sure we take care of the cover stories. The cover picture of Garry Moore, host of the quiz show I've Got a Secret, along with the show's two female panelists of the time, Jayne Meadows and Faye Emerson (much better looking than the male panelists, Bill Cullen and Henry Morgan) doesn't really have anything to do with the inside story. That's about the "secret" files of I've Got a Secret, which aren't really that secret. What is a secret, or at least something many of you might not have known, is that IGAS was created by Allan Sherman, the singer-comedian who was Weird Al before Weird Al, best-known for the hit single "Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah." This week Sherman talks about some of the up to 4,000 secrets he receives each week—people with 12 toes or 13 fingers or no eyebrows, but also people with relatives who came to America on the Mayflower or shook hands with Abraham Lincoln, a man who went over Niagara Falls in a rubber ball and lived to tell about it, the first man to cash a Social Security check, or the woman who won the first Miss America pageant. By the way, Sherman says, if you have 40 toes he'll take you, but if it's only 12, don't bother.

After that, we go down south to Nashville, and visit the Grand Ole Opry. The Opry is already an American institution, having started in 1925, and what's surprising about its transition to television is not that it's happened, but that it took this long. The 1955-56 fall season brought about the premiere of the Opry on ABC, where once a month it substitutes for Ozark Jubilee, another Country-Western program, and in rural areas (which, remember, make up a much larger part of America in 1956 than they do today), it is absolutely slaughtering the competition, Perry Como and Jackie Gleason.

This week's article takes a kind of quaint approach to the whole thing, pointing out that these Country stars are just as business-savvy as anyone—hardly surprising considering how successful the Grand Ole Opry has been over the years; and when you think of how big Country music has become as a business, I think it shows these "hayseeds" have always been pretty shrewd business people.

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Two new soap operas premiered last week on CBS, and they're unusual in that they run for 30 minutes, rather than the traditional 15-minute format (a carryover from radio; you notice a lot of shows fit into that category). You might have heard of them: As the World Turns and The Edge of Night. Incidentally, The Edge of Night started out as "the daytime version of Perry Mason," with Mason creator Erle Stanley Gardner writing it, but the notoriously temperamental Gardner pulls out due to "creative differences,"* and the character of the heroic lawyer is changed from Mason to Mike Karr, played by John Larkin, who played Mason on the radio.

*According to the always-reliable Wikipedia, those differences include Mason having a regular girlfriend, which throws into question that intriguing relationship with his secretary, Della Street. That's something Gardner, who jealously guarded Mason's image, would never agree to.

Speaking of the great lawyer, there's an interesting item in this week's Hollywood Teletype: "If everybody can agree on the contracts, Fred MacMurray will wind up as lawyer Perry Mason in the new CBS hour-long detective series." Discussions had gotten to the point that a Gardner memo states, "Apparently Fred MacMurray is the person who will probably be selected." It's an intriguing thought; like Burr, MacMurray had played many the heavy in movies up to that time (and would continue to do so; check him out in The Apartment), and there are many who think that Burr brought, from those roles as a heavy, an underlying sense of menace that gave his Mason, especially in the early seasons, a real edge of danger. Could MacMurray have done the same? He was certainly talented enough, but when Burr finally had the chance to audition for the role (he'd previously been tried as Hamilton Burger), he is said to have so impressed Gardner that he told Bur, "In twenty minutes, you captured Perry Mason better than I did in twenty years." That, presumably, was the end of that.

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Baseball is back! Well, kind of; it's still Spring Training, but on Saturday the New York Giants take on the Cleveland Indians in a pre-season game live from Dallas, home of this week's TV Guide. (1:25 p.m. CT, CBS). Dizzy Dean and Buddy Blattner call the action. It's not the big sports story of the weekend, though; that would be the final round of the Masters Golf Tournament, live from Augusta, Georgia. (Sunday, 4:00 p.m., CBS) It's the first time for the Masters on television (and the start of the tournament's long association with CBS), and the first major championship for Jack Burke Jr.,  who came from eight shots behind to defeat amateur Ken Venturi by one stroke. It remains the last time no golfer broke par for the tournament. 

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There's some real star power in this week's shows. On Saturday night's Ford Star Jubilee (9:30 p.m., CBS), Orson Welles and Betty Grable make rare television appearances in the comedy "Twentieth Century," written by the famed Broadway duo of Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur. Welles would come to do a lot of television in the last couple of decades of his life—remember those cheesy appearances on the Dean Martin roasts and the commercials for Paul Masson wine? ("We will sell no wine before its time.")—but in 1956 he was still a star, known for The War of the Worlds and Citizen Kane and The Third Man, and still two years away from his noir classic Touch of Evil. Ah, one has to pay the bills, however, and Welles was always looking for money for his latest projects, many of which sadly never came to fruition. As he once famously said, "I hate television. I hate it as much as peanuts. But I can't stop eating peanuts."*

*By the way, if you're interested in absorbing article on Welles, check out this New Yorker piece by Alex Ross from ten years ago, celebrating the Welles centennial. It truly seems as if Orson Welles could only have been a character concocted in an Orson Welles movie.

On Sunday afternoon the American composer Norman Dello Joio premieres his opera "The Trial at Rouen" on NBC Opera Theatre (3:00 p.m.). It's Dello Joio's second crack at rendering an operatic version of the story of Joan of Arc. His first, "The Triumph of St. Joan," premiered in 1950, but Dello Joio was never happy with it, and eventually reworked the story (but neither the music nor the libretto) into the 75-minute opera (plus commercials) that you'd be seeing on television. There's yet a third version to come, however, as Dello Joio will add some of the music from the 1950 version to the 1956 version while creating some new scenes and expanding on others, resulting in the 1959 version, also called "The Triumph of St. Joan." Many of the critics of the time will consider it to be the best of the three versions of the story.

That night, G.E. Theater (8:00 p.m., CBS) presents Judy Garland in an informal one-woman show, performing a half-hour of songs she's never before done in public, and backed by pianist Leonard Pennario and choreographer Peter Gennaro (who did Annie, West Side Story and The Unsinkable Molly Brown, among other Broadway hits). It's introduced by host Ronald Reagan.

If you happen to own the boxed set of Studio One episodes that came out a few years ago, you'll have seen the Rod Serling political drama "The Arena," airing Monday night (9:00 p.m., CBS), with Wendell Corey as an ambitious young senator dealing with the legacy (and feuds) of his father. (If not, you can watch it here.) You might have thought, watching it, that it was substandard Serling, one of the episodes that helped drive him to create The Twilight Zone. The problem, as he writes in his 1957 collection of television plays Patterns: Four Television Plays With The Author’s Personal Commentaries, is not a new one: interference from the network and sponsors. His reaction, however, shows us the direction he is already considering going:

I was not permitted to have my Senators discuss any current or pressing problem. To talk of tariff was to align oneself with the Republicans; to talk of labor was to suggest control by the Democrats. To say a single thing germane to the current political scene was absolutely prohibited. So on television in April 1956, several million viewers got a definitive picture of television’s concept of politics and the way government is run. They were treated to an incredible display on the floor of The United States Senate of groups of Senators shouting, gesticulating and talking in hieroglyphics about make-believe issues, using invented terminology, in a kind of prolonged, unbelievable double-talk… In retrospect, I probably would have had a much more adult play had I made it science fiction, put it in the year 2057, and peopled the Senate with robots. This would probably have been more reasonable and no less dramatically incisive.

I suspect this episode was included in the DVD collection because 1) it was Serling, and 2) it was in fairly good condition. There are likely better episodes that could have been chosen. "The Arena" isn't bad, mind you, but far from peak Serling.

Dinah Shore currently hosts a twice-weekly 15-minute show (Tuesday and Thursday evenings on NBC, filling the remainder of the half hour occupied by John Cameron Swayzee's News Caravan), but she's talking about dumping that in favor of an hour-long Tuesday night show; another idea is to keep the current show, while adding a number of hour-long specials. The latter gets a tryout tonight (7:00 p.m., NBC), with Dinah welcoming Dean Martin and Marge and Gower Champion. As it turns out, nothing could be finah than to catch an hour of Dinah: The Dinah Shore Chevy Show starts up this October, and runs until 1963. (Her 15-minute show, which airs at 6:15 p.m. tonight, is guest-hosted by Gordon MacRae.) And, in the "you might be interested" category, a note on The 64,000 Question (9:00 p.m, CBS) tells us that, "As of the 43rd show, emcee Hal March has given out $544,608 and nine luxury automobiles." 

On Wednesday, M-G-M Parade (7:30 p.m., ABC) presents "The Greatness of Garbo," the conclusion of a two-part tribute to the legendary star. (Presumably, Garbo speaks.) Parade is the subject of Robert Sanders' review this week, which isn't a positive one; last month, Walter Pidgeon had been introduced as the new host, and the format of the show had been altered to present serialized versions of movies along with clips from the M-G-M vault. The problem, Sanders says, is that this doesn't produce any new material for television; the studio execs seem to "presumptously believe that viewers will be eager to watch their old hit movies and promotional plugs for new movies." And when movies are chopped up into two or three parts, "viewers cannot help but lose interest." Anyway, it only has another month to run. One story you'll get to see all at once is "The Funny Heart," tonight's presentation on The U.S. Steel Hour (9:00 p.m., CBS), with Imogene Coca, the female side of the team that made Your Show of Shows such a success, making her dramatic television debut. 

Thursday we see another of those shows that we likely won't see today, The All-American Homemaker of Tomorrow (7:00 p.m., ABC), sponsored by Betty Crocker, with the aforementioned Hal March on hand to crown the winner (or whatever is was they did). The competition, which was comprised of high school students who'd won similar competitions at the local level, began in 1955, and ran through 1977. You might be interested to know that one of the future contestants will be now-Senator Elizabeth Warren, competiting in 1966 as the representative from Northwest Classen High School in Oklahoma City. Meantime, Shower of Stars (7:30 p.m., CBS) presents a review of current musical trends, with Frankie Lane and Joe E. Brown sharing the hosting duties. 

On Friday, John Newland, who we'll come to know better as the host of One Step Beyond, stars in "The Bitter Land" on Schlitz Playhouse of Stars (8:00 p.m., CBS), as a father heading West to revenge the death of his son during a bank robbery. Later, Edward R. Murrow interviews pollster George Gallup on Person to Person (9:30 p.m., CBS), discussing the exotic art of measuring public opinion. It was probably just as accurate then as it is today.

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Finally, there's a small ad on the bottom of Wednesday's listings referring to the social event of the year, perhaps the television event of the year, with the provocative question: "How much will you see?"

That event is the marriage of the Academy Award-winning actress Grace Kelly to Prince Rainier of Monaco, and everybody who's anybody will be heading over there to cover it. At the end of this week's What's My Line?, John Daly mentions that both Dorothy Kilgallen and Arlene Francis will be in Monaco to cover the wedding (Dorothy for the New York Journal American, Arlene for her Home show on NBC), and a worldwide audience estimated at 30 million tunes in for the formal ceremony on April 19.

It's an interesting mix of attendees; with Rainier as a head of state, a vast assemblage of diplomats and other heads of state are present, while Grace's status as Hollywood royalty attracts such luminaries as Cary Grant (who costarred with her in the Monaco-based To Catch a Thief), David Niven, Gloria Swanson, Ava Gardner and Aristotle Onassis, and her iconic wedding dress is designed by MGM's Helen Rose.* In essence, this is Charles and Di before Charles and Di.

*According to the always-reliable Wikipedia, this dress was the inspiration for that worn by Kate Middleton for her wedding to Prince William.

There are actually two marriage ceremonies; the first, a civil ceremony required by law, was held on April 18, while the Catholic Nuptial Mass, the televised event, was held the following day at St. Nicholas Cathedral. I'm not sure of the answer to TV Guide's question of how much viewers will see, but here's a brief look at what all the shouting was about. TV  

Around the dial

As you may have heard, after 20 years, the revival of Doctor Who is in a bit of a bind. It's possible, according to some sources, that Disney+ may not renew its option at the end of the current season, meaning that the BBC would probably need to find another partner to help finance the series. This YouGov poll purports to offer some insight into why the series is losing favor, but the figures don't tell much of a story. For instance, among those who've seen both the classic and modern versions, there's no indication as to why viewers may prefer one over the other; for those who've never seen either version (an alarmingly high number), why haven't they watched it? And there has to be a category of people like me who used to watch the new version but no longer do--after all, the ratings are down heavily from where they were. Why? Is it because of cord cutting, is it because the show's too woke, is it because it's not woke enough, is it that they don't like the actors who've played the Doctor more recently? You know the joke about lies, damned lies, and statistics? Well, guess which this is?

The "Sylvia Coleridge Season" continues apace at Cult TV Blog, and this week John travels back in time to The Tomorrow People and the story "A Rift in Time," which gives us a timeline in which Rome never lost rule over Britain. Interesting idea for today, hmm? 

At bare-bones e-zine, Jack's Hitchcock Project takes us to the ninth season episode "A Matter of Murder," written by Boris Sobelman, with Darren McGavin, Pat Crowley, and Telly Savalas. A black comedy follows, and does anyone do those better than Hitchcock?

The progression through 1970s TV has reached Friday, 1975 at Comfort TV where Dan looks at NBC's rare killer lineup: Sanford and Son, Chico and the Man, The Rockford Files, and Police Woman. Oh, and then there are shows like Big Eddie and Mobile One, and the less said, the better.

At RealWeegieMidget, Gill recalls the career of Wings Hauser ("the biggest star you've never heard of") and his many television appearances, focusing on the season two episode "Just a Small Circle of Friends" from The Fall Guy.

This week's classic television obituary—I hate to put it this way, but it's true—is Richard Chamberlain, who certainly left his mark on TV history. Television Obscurities, Classic Film and TV Corner, A Shroud of Thoughts, and the brand-new Mavis Movie Madness! (from our Drunk TV friend Paul Mavis) all share their memories of his life and work. And one more; Travalanche recalls the career of Sian Barbara Allen, who appeared in so many television shows, especially in the 1970s. 

We wrap with "Angels of Death," the latest episode of The New Avengers at The View from the Junkyard, and as Steed sees another of his former friends bumped off, Purdey asks him the pertinent question: why must the show always go on? TV