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..Scheduled guests: dancer-chorergrapher Peter Gennaro; singers Ed Ames, Shirley Verrett and Lana Cantrell; comics Richard Pryor, Davis and Reese, and Douglas and Haig; and accordianist Dick Contino.
Palace: Tony Martin and his wife Cyd Charisse introduce comedians Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks, who satirize advertising; the singing Kim Sisters; the folk-rocking Buffalo Springfield; comic Jackie Clark; high-pole acrobat Danny Sailor; and comic illusionists Milo and Roger.
Looking back at these lineups reminds me of how big comedy teams used to be: two of them on each show. Some of them had a longer shelf life than others; Davis and Reese were TV staples during the 1950s and '60s, and of course Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks were unforgettable, both individually and as a team. On the other hand, I have no memories of either Douglas and Haig or Milo and Roger. Tony Martin and Cyd Charisse are probably the most talented duo, and they're not even a team except in their personal life. Nevertheless, Ed Ames, opera star Shirley Verrett and Richard Pryor are enough to strike the right note. This week's verdict:
Sullivan.
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Throughout the 60s and early 70s, TV Guide's weekly reviews were written by the witty and acerbic Cleveland Amory. Whenever we get the chance, we'll look at Cleve's latest take on the shows of the era.
This week, Cleve takes a look at Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom; TV Guide doesn't give it the full title, but c'mon—who doesn't remember those great segues to commerical that Marlin Perkins used to do from the safety of the studio, while Jim Fowler was engaging in bare-armed wrestling with an alligator? "While Jim fights to keep death at arm's length, you won't have to fight to keep debt at arm's length with insurance from Mutual of Omaha."
To be fair, Amory does mention the commercial tie-ins, although he doesn't happen to mention the sponsor's name (which ruins half the fun), but we shouldn't be surprised that as an animal lover, he's much more at ease with Wild Kingdom than he is with, for example, The American Sportsman. Watching Wild Kingdom, you can find yourself, against all expectations, completely engrossed in the story of Adélie penguins in Anarctica, thanks to the show's excellent photography and Perkins' in-depth information. The fact is that Perkins, as a host, "is so stiff he is actually fascinating, and he delivers his lines as if he had just been told that, if he didn't, he would be severly punished," which makes the show's ability to reach out and squeeze you ("Pythons can squeeze with alarming power, but illness won't put the squeeze on you with Mutual of Omaha.") all the more impressive.
At the outset, Amory shares a story of the time when a lion cub bit Perkins on camera. What did he do? "I did," he says, "what his mother would have done. I bit him back." And, on camera. Unfortunately, as it turns out, Wild Kingdom's record on staging events for dramatic purposes wasn't all that good, and when a CBC interviewer questiond him about it in the 1980s, Perkins first demanded that he turn off his camera; when the reporter refused, Perkins punched him in the face. On camera. But then, Perkins hosted Wild Kingdom for 22 years; it was, in a sense, his baby. He just did what a mother would have done.
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Baseball season begins on Monday, and to celebrate the event, CBS offers the second showing of
Charlie Brown's All-Stars, one of the oldest and least-remembered of the Peanuts cartoons—it's second only to
A Charlie Brown Christmas in terms of air date, but it only aired through 1971. Why? Maybe because it isn't attached to a holiday (despite how baseball fans feel about Opening Day), maybe because the gang's criticism of Charlie Brown is harsh even when compared to other Peanuts cartoons. (And the strip always had a bit more of an edge to it than the TV shows.) Even though it was heavily merchandised (I still have a cap somewhere), it still never caught on in the same way.
Charlie Brown isn't the only celebration of the national pastime, though. On Saturday, NBC airs an adaptation of the marvelous musical comedy
Damn Yankees (8:00 p.m., preempting
Saturday Night at the Movies), with Phil Silvers as Applegate, aka the Devil; Jerry Lanning as Joe Hardy, the man who sells his soul in order that his beloved Washington Senators might finally beat those damn New York Yankees; and Lee Remick as Lola, the silky temptress who gets whatever she wants. The whole thing's introduced by
Today sportscaster Joe Garagiola. If you're curious, you can see
this version at YouTube. Hmm—maybe Opening Day
is a holiday after all. Baseball has become a mostly regional sport since then, and I have no interest in the modern game, but I'll watch these old games from the 1960s any day.
As I've
mentioned in the past, the 1967 baseball season sees one of the great pennant races of all time, with the Minnesota Twins, Boston Red Sox, Detroit Tigers and Chicago White Sox battling for the American League pennant down to the final weekend before the Cinderella Red Sox come out on top. That's all in the future, though, which gives us a chance to look at Melvin Durslag's pre-season predictions with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight. Durslag was half-right in thinking that the Tigers and Twins would be in the thick of it, but he had the defending champion Baltimore Orioles taking the flag. He had the Red Sox tabbed for ninth in the ten-team league, but we can't really hold that against him; nobody thought Boston had a chance. As for the National League, he sees the Philadelphia Phillies, who came so close in 1964, finally winning; the St. Louis Cardinals, who won the pennant and then defeated the Red Sox in a seven-game World Series, are picked for seventh. Ouch. A footnote: we also get the 50-game TV schedule for the Twins, all games (except for national broadcasts) are shown on WTCN. The schedule doesn't include the final weekend series against the Red Sox that decides the title; those games were added on the fly. Again, hindsight is—well, you know the rest.
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The Oscars and the major leaguers aren't the only big specials on this week; there's plenty to be seen, no matter what you might be looking for. On Tuesday, Dick Van Dyke makes his return to television with a singing, dancing, comedy special (7:30 p.m. CT, CBS) in which, as Joseph Finnigan points out in his cover story, he spends 56 minutes on camera. There's a good reason for that, Van Dyke explains: whereas most shows get their guest stars and then write around them, he and his writers decided to write the show first, and then get the guests to match. It's not quite a one-man show; he's joined by Phil Erickson, his old nightclub partner, and Ann Morgan Guilbert, who played Millie Helper on the Van Dyke show. Asked why he didn't go for movies like most other TV stars do when their series comes to an end, his answer is simple and satisfying: "If you want to entertain people, go to television. That's the place you can do things you can't do in movies."
Meanwhile, my old nemesis, KCMT in Alexandria, presesnts a Sid Caesar special—or, to be more precise,
The Sid Caesar, Imogene Coca, Carl Reiner, Howard Morris Special—that was originally shown on April 5 on CBS, but airs tonight at 6:30 p.m., preempting
The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. It's a glorious reunion of the cast from
Your Show of Shows, and if you were to watch that as a lead-on to Dick Van Dyke, you'd have a pretty good night of television. As a matter of fact, while I can't do anything for you with Van Dyke,
here's the Caesear show for your viewing pleasure.
Danny Thomas is another old favorite back this week; his Wednesday night special (8:00 p.m,. NBC) features "guests representative of America's melting-pot heritage," including Jimmy Durante, Sammy Davis Jr., Vic Damone, Ricardo Montalban, Lawrence Welk and Myron Floren, Jane Powell, and Dennis Day. The Peacock Network strikes a far different note on Friday, though, with their 90-minute adaptation of Peter Miller's Broadway play "The Investigation," a stark and brittle drama that tells the story of Nazi death-camp inmates in their own words.
All of this, mind you, is subject to change, as networks may preempt regular programming to cover President Johnson's trip to Latin America.
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Finally, we haven't had a fashion spread for awhile, and I can't think of anyone better to do the honors than The Girl from U.N.C.L.E.'s April Dancer herself, Stefanie Powers. KCMT may not have have time for Stefanie on Tuesday, but we'll always make the time.
The clothes are from California designer Joanna's Spring collection, and they really swing, don't they? Even THRUSH won't be able to keep up. The most expensive item, the red-and-beige checked linen pants suit, runs about $155 in 1967 dollars, which would be about $1200 today. Not knowing much about women's clothes, I still doubt it would be that expensive today. I'd hate to see what Mr. Waverly said about that expense account, though. TV
