It's been awhile, but at Cult TV Blog, John returns to the world of The Prisoner with his continuing series in which he looks at various interpretations of the series. This week, it's a very interesting look at The Prisoner as an allegory of the Soviet Union.
Captain Video continues his own series, in which we look at various comic adaptations of the pilot for Space: 1999. Compare and contrast with last week's edition, which did a much more complete job with the same episode.
Speaking of comic book adaptations, at bare•bones e-zine, Jack and Peter continue their survey of DC's 1960s Batman comics. You can certainly see the resemblance between the TV series and the comics from the late 60s, and don't worry: Batgirl is there too!
At A Shroud of Thoughts, Terence pays tribute to Dame Patricia Routledge, who died last week at 96; best-known for the British classic Keeping Up Appearances, she had a long and varied career in both television and movies, including To Sir, With Love and If It's Tuesday, It Must Be Belgium.
At Classic Film & TV Corner, Maddie revisits one of Kurosawa's great films, Stray Dogs, starring the incomparable Toshiro Minfue and Takashi Shimura; I mention this as a happy reminder of when we subscribed to the Criterion Channel, and got to discover the gems in Japanese noir.
The View from the Junkyard takes on politics in The A-Team episode "The White Ballot," and as Roger points out, the episode gives us some insight into political corruption; I particularly like the idea of returning to the days of tar and feathers, myself.
At The Lucky Strike Papers, Andrew has some thoughts on recent interviews with Rob Reiner, as it relates to early television. In particular, he talked about how his family bought their first set so they could see father Carl on Saturday night's Your Show of Shows. What a radical change TV was.
Finally at Television Obscurities, Robert has a brief clip from CBS from an undetermined date, at a time when they were promoting themselves as "America’s No. 1 Network for 17 Years In A Row." I wonder where today's top shows, whatever they are, would fit in those rankings; probably right at the top. TV
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Fr was watching some old Christmas variety specials this week, which put me in mind to look back at this piece from a couple of years ago. It's a look back at CBS's famous Christmas interstitials, pen-and-ink drawings designed by R.O. Blechman and animated by Willis Pyle, with musical accompaniment arranged by Arnie Black. They were first used in 1966.
This is the best-remembered and most-loved:
However, this one is no slouch:
This copy is kind of fuzzy, but you get the idea:
There were four altogether; I haven't been able to locate the fourth, which features reindeer and poinsettias. Fortunately, CBS has updated their iconic bumpers:
No matter how you say it, the important thing is that you say it, and say it often. We need it now, more than ever. TV
Back in 2013, when I was writing about the TV Guide issue of April 15, 1967, I tried very hard to find a picture or video or something showing Arnold Zenker anchoring The CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite. Perhaps I didn't look hard enough, or maybe there really wasn't anything out there yet; at any rate, last week I stumbled across this while I was looking for something else, and even though it's a couple of years old, I'm not about to pass up the opportunity now that I have it.
Arnold Zenker, for the uninitiated, was the 28-year-old CBS executive who, with no television experience, was forced into temporary duty as the substitute for Walter Cronkite during the AFTRA strike in April of 1967. While Chet Huntley (who famously said he was "a newsman, not a performer"), Frank McGee and Ray Scherer, continued to work at NBC, and producers Daryl Griffin and William Sheehan carried the load at ABC, there was something about Zenker that captured the public's fancy. He became something of a cult hit during the 13 days of the strike, getting more than 3,000 fan letters from the public. He even became the answer to a Jeopardy! question. Scott Pelley interviewed Zenker on the 50th anniversary of his famous stint as an anchor; you can read about it, and see Zenker in action, here.
No wonder the execs worried!
As soon as the strike was over, of course, back behind the camera he went. (Cronkite's opening line upon his return: "This is Walter Cronkite substituting for Arnold Zenker. It's good to be back.") "They laughed and they said 'you're not a journalist, you're a fraud who sat in front of the camera,' and that's when I decided to go to Boston and do the news," he said. Of course, I have my own theory about that; I think that the success of someone like Zenker was a threat to the establishment—it suggested that anyone who was young and reasonably good-looking and could put a couple of sentences together could, with a little training, read the nightly news. That couldn't be allowed, of course. Of course, considering the amount of turnover on the CBS Evening News since Dan Rather left, there might be something to that. What with Bob Schieffer, Katie Couric, Scott Pelley, Anthony Mason, Jeff Glor, and now Norah O'Donnell, they might just as well have called Arnold Zenker. After all, he already has experience. TV
From 1966, CBS's famous Christmas interstitials, pen-and-ink drawings designed by R.O. Blechman and animated by Willis Pyle, with musical accompaniment arranged by Arnie Black. I can't think of anything better to share on the day after Christmas.
This is the best-remembered and most-loved:
However, this one is no slouch:
This copy is kind of fuzzy, but you get the idea:
There were four altogether; I haven't been able to locate the fourth, which features reindeer and poinsettias. Fortunately, CBS has updated their iconic bumpers:
No matter how you say it, the important thing is that you say it. After all, this is only the second day of Christmas! TV
Hard as it may be to believe, this is the first blog post of October; we're now able to say, in all honesty, that Thanksgiving is next month. Don't panic; it's still almost two full months away, but still. Means we'll be watching It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown at the end of this month. More important to us now, though, is what we're watching now. Here are some of this week's highlights.
At Classic Television Showbiz, Kliph is back with a fascinating article on how the Mafia seized control of CBS primetime. It hearkens back to the days of the "rural purge" at CBS, and while the two events aren't absolutely conjoined, they're not completely separate either. It's pay-to-view, but for a good cause - financial support for the blog - and well worth it.
Television Obscurities reminds us that GetTV, one of the newer retro channels, will be offering reruns of two throwbacks from the day - The Judy Garland Show and The Merv Griffin Show. It starts later this month, but I'll have a pre-review of them next week. Garland's show has been available on DVD for a while, and there was a great boxed set of Merv shows a couple of years ago, but it's nice to see shows like this making it to a wider audience. Now if only I had access to GetTV...
Made for TV Mayhem has a piece on one of those '70s TV movies that has the kind of title we love: Doctors' Private Lives. If that isn't an inducement to watch, I don't know what is. John Gavin, one of the movie's stars*, has a wonderful description of the plot: “Barbara [Anderson] plays my wife, and Donna [Mills] plays a widow with whom I become involved. But only physically and emotionally. It doesn’t go any deeper than that.” Well, then.
*Fun fact: in a few years, Gavin trades movies like this for a juicer role, that of U.S. Ambassador to Mexico, appointed by his old friend President Ronald Reagan.
Continuations of excellent, thought-provoking series reviews at two sites: Cult TV Blog, with his examination of apartheid in The Prisoner, and more of The Hitchcock Project at bare-bones e-zine. I wish I had time to get back to these kinds of long-form essays more often, but I've had a different writing project taking up most of my free time lately. More on that to come.
To explore these and other pressing questions, I'd suggest you come back here tomorrow, same time, same channel, to see what our next TV Guide has to offer. TV
A little late with this perhaps, but I just ran across this footage today: CBS' coverage of the first period of the US - USSR hockey game at the 1960 Winter Olympics in Squaw Valley, CA, with - I believe - Bud Palmer at the mic for the play-by-play. (There are several versions available; this one appears to be the complete game.)
A few observations: first, Bud Palmer isn't exactly an unbiased announcer, is he? But I always enjoyed listening to his work.
As was the case with the 1980 Miracle on Ice, this isn't the gold medal game; the medals were decided based on the overall record of the teams in the medal round. The US finished with a perfect 5-0 record in that round, followed by Canada at 4-1, and the Soviet Union at 2-2-1. The US actually clinched the gold with their 9-4 victory over Czechoslovakia the next day. (By the way, the corners on the ice surface are really deep, aren't they? It makes the rink look almost rectangular.)
And did you notice the sunshine streaming across parts of the ice and the crowd? Olympic regulations of the time required all events to be held outside (or, more precisely, they couldn't be held "under a roof"); thus, Blyth Arena was constructed with one complete side open (the one facing the camera). The Olympic rings were attached via cables, and ropes were hung down in an effort to cut down on the sun's glare on the ice. I don't know how you all feel about it, but I think it's kind of neat. And with the success of the NHL's Winter Classic, why not have all the skating events outside? The arena in Cortina for the 1956 games did this to great effect.*
*Not to mention its appearance in the James Bond movie For Your Eyes Only.
Dale Robertson is my kind of guy: plain-spoken, to the point, conservative. The star of ABC's The Iron Horse, and previous Western series such as Tales of Wells Fargo and Death Valley Days, "believes in income taxes but thinks that they should be a flat 25 percent with no limit on how much the high rollers can make."* He also believes that the troubled urban areas such as Harlem can be rehabilitated by installing some pride of place, perhaps an early version of the "Broken Windows" theory, and that anyone fortunate enough to have the kind of life he has - a loving wife, obedient children, and three square meals a day - should be able to "do anything on God's green earth he sets his mind to." No wonder that Robertson was out campaigning for Ronald Reagan during his successful 1966 run for Governor of California.
*Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, as I've said more than once.
It's not a surprise to learn Robertson's values; a graduate from Oklahoma Military Academy, joined the Army right after Pearl Harbor, fought with Patton's Third Army in Europe. Nor is it a surprise to read Robertson's opinions in TV Guide, or that a man with them is the star of a new series. It's not quite so common today, however, to find conservatives in the industry so outspoken. As Clint Howard (brother of Ron, and formerly of Gentle Ben) said not too long ago, “I always tell younger conservative-minded people that they better mind their P's and Q's and remember that you want to have a career." This isn't a judgement on my part, by the way, just an observation. Of course TV Guide, a conservative publication, gives voice to conservative actors. And there are still conservatives in Hollywood today - they're just a little harder to find.
On the opposite end of the political spectrum, Sunday night features the premiere of one of the most notable, controversial series of the 60s: The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. Once upon a time I reviewed a DVD release of season 3 of Smothers Brothers. Upon looking back at it, I find I didn't think much of it, which doesn't surprise me since I didn't think much of the show when it was originally on, just as I never thought much of the Smothers Brothers themselves, other than as a testimonial on just how far one could get in the entertainment business without much talent.
But here we are, at the very beginning. The Brothers are coming off a mildly amusing sitcom in which Tom played an angel (no typecasting there), not to mention a fairly successful stand-up act, and numerous appearances on various television shows. Their opening night lineup is amazingly conventional, with Ed Sullivan (welcoming them to the Sunday night lineup; they immediately followed Ed's show), Danny Thomas, Jim Nabors, and Jill St. John. The ad accompanying the show promises a "riotous new series,*" with "daffy ballads and oddball humor." Sounds pretty innocuous, doesn't it? As I mentioned in that review, for all the shouting about the Smothers Brothers, their show was actually pretty conventional, and when it's removed from the topical context it's actually kind of stupid.
*I don't know what CBS was expecting from the show, but I doubt they thought the biggest riots would come from the network's relationship with their stars.
Nonetheless, that innocent listing is exactly the kind of thing we like to look for here: an advertisement for a historic program, with no hint as to what lies ahead. The Smothers Brothers were, in my opinion, far more influential in terms of the precedent they set for the shows that followed them than they were with their own show. One thing's for sure, though - the times, they were a 'changing.
***
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..
Sullivan: Scheduled guests: comedian Woody Allen; actor-singer Gene Barry; comics Wayne and Shuster, and Stu Gilliam; singer Lanie Kazan; the Muppets puppets; the singing Doodletown Pipers; and the Staneks' balancing act.
Palace: Host Jack Benny is joined by singers Petula Clark and Johnny Mathis; the Nitwits, English musical comics; dancers Brascia and Tybee; and the Halasis, a Hungarian teeterboard act. Also: Ernie Terrell and the Heavyweights (Terrell's sister and brothers) offer a musical challenge to Cassius Clay, who defends his heavyweight crown against Terrell on February 6.
Regular readers know that Gene Barry is one of my television favorites; nonetheless, much as I'd like to, I can't go with Sullivan this week. Personal bias, I know - I like Woody Allen even less than the Smothers Brothers, I never could take the Doodletown Pipers, and I'm afraid Barry and the Muppets aren't enough to overcome Jack Benny and the singing of Clark and Mathis. Even a singing boxer isn't enough to do it in*. The Palace it is, by a TKO.
*Although he had some talent, Terrell didn't fare nearly as well as a singing boxer as this guy; he didn't do as well in the ring either, losing a lopsided 15-round decision to Clay/Ali.
Curious to see? Here's the entire show, via YouTube.
***
TV Guide movie critic Judith Crist takes on a couple of Frank Sinatra flicks this week, and finds them both more than acceptable. First up is Guys and Dolls, Wednesday night on ABC. I've always found this movie problematic, not least because of the casting of Marlon Brando as Sky Masterson*, but Crist finds "Sinatra's way with a song and Brando's - yep, he croons it himself - compensate" for any flaws." Sinatra never cared for the casting, either - he thought he should have had the lead role, rather than playing second fiddle Nathan Detroit, and got his revenge by making one of Masterson's signature songs, "Luck Be a Lady Tonight," a standard of his concert repertoire.
*To paraphrase Bette Midler, I never miss a Marlon Brando musical.
On the flip side, we have Sinatra in a far more serious role, that of the drug addict in Otto Preminger's The Man with the Golden Arm on ABC Sunday night. As Crist points out, while this kind of a story might have been more common by 1967, in 1955 it was very much cutting edge - so much so that the movie was denied the industry's seal of approval, akin today to being released without a rating. Sinatra was nominated for an Oscar for Best Actor for this flick, which Crist praises as "gritty with truth, glistening with cinematic effectiveness."
As to the rest of the week, Crist says, "proceed at your own risk" to Under Ten Flags (Tuesday, NBC), a World War II mix of "secondary characters, muddled fact and fantasy, forays into sex-ploitation and inconsistencies" that not even Van Heflin and Charles Laughton can overcome; Good Neighbor Sam (Friday, CBS), a sex farce with Jack Lemmon that leaves "the inevitable implication that marriage is a dirty joke"; Back Street (Saturday, NBC), the third "and hopefully last" version of Fanny Hurst's weeper novel; and The Caretakers (Thursday, CBS), a "cheapjack movie that attempts to give its tawdry melodramatics significance by spouting sententious pieties about mental illness that are as insulting to the medical profession as they are banal for even a near-literate audience." But what do you really think, Judith?
***
Some quick hits for the week:
Sports: NBC airs the final two rounds of the Bob Hope Desert Classic, which used to be one of the signature events of the early season (Arnold Palmer was a five-time winner) but now, under the name Humana Challenge, attracts the attention of the golfers' relatives. In the NBA on ABC, Oscar Robertson and the Cincinnati Royals take on Bill Russell and the Boston Celtics. Purdue plays Michigan in the Big Ten Game of the Week, and Minnesota battles Indiana in local coverage.
Variety: Orange juice spokeswoman Anita Bryant is the guest star on Saturday's Lawrence Welk, Steve & Edie, Rowan & Martin, and the Kingston Trio join Andy Williams on Sunday, and Vicki Carr and Fred "Herman Munster" Gwynne share the spotlight with Danny Kaye on Thursday.
News: Sunday afternoon's 21st Century examines how man might explore and colonize the moon. A locall KSTP documentary asks: "Venereal Disease: a Problem in Minnesota?" (ewww...). National Geographic (CBS, Tuesday) takes viewers on a tour of Alaska, less than ten years a state, and later that night CBS Reports examines the growing problem of air pollution. Thursday morning, NBC interrupts the Today show for a live press conference by Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin, who's in London on a week's tour, brought to us via Early Bird satellite.
Celebrity Game Shows: On the Sunday afternoon edition of Password, it's Shelly Winters vs. Barry Nelson. Sunday night's What's My Line? broadcast features the aforementioned Password's Allen Ludden and Phyllis Newman joining regulars Arlene Francis and Bennett Cerf. As for the weekly daytime shows, Dick Gautier, Gisele MacKenzie and Michael Landon are the guests on PDQ, Virginia Graham and Nipsey Russell are on Password, Barry Sullivan and Betty White appear on You Don't Say!, Audrey Meadows and David Susskind (!) are on Match Game, and Hollywood Squares, of course, has the biggest guest list of all: Cliff Robertson, Patti Page, Dana Wynter, Van Williams, Don Rickles, Noel Harrision, Wally Cox, Rose Marie and Charley Weaver. Note who's missing from that lineup? Paul Lynde wasn't a regular yet.
Debuts: The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour isn't the only newcomer this week: on Wedensday, John Astin makes his debut as the new Riddler in Batman. The Riddler's out to rob a bank by flooding the underground vault, and threatens to demolish Gotham police headquarters unless the city legalizes crime. I could make a comment here about Congress, but I think I'll pass.
There wasn't much of interest in the sports section; the most interesting coverage actually comes in the features section, where Stanley Frank lets fly on how sports has sold its soul to television, and is the poorer for it. This is another of those pieces that I think is worthy of its own space, which you'll be reading here in the not-too-distant future. TV
Each week for the next couple of months, I’ll profile one of the series that appear on my personal Top Ten list. I don’t claim that these are the ten greatest series of all time; that would be presumptuous. However, I do presume to identify those shows that mean the most to me.
These aren’t academic histories or encyclopedic entries; rather, they’re personal memories of shows that, through the years, have brought me delight, influenced my way of thinking and doing, left their indelible traces imprinted on me. Think of it as a memoir of my life as seen on TV.
James Lileks once wrote that it was the secret dream of every lawyer to have the theme to Perry Mason played at his funeral, and a lawyer friend of mine later acknowledged it was probably true.
Few television shows have had an opening title sequence more representative of its content than the one used for the third season of Perry Mason.* It starts with the camera looking down on a stylized figure standing in front of the judge’s bench. There are no walls in the animation, no courtroom to be seen; just a still white image of a man, isolated and alone, open and vulnerable, before the bar of justice. It is the lawyer, engaged in single-warrior combat, the only man standing between an innocent client and the gas chamber. And that lawyer, we see when the camera returns to eye level, is Perry Mason.
*Along with the original opening of The FBI, it’s my favorite series opening of all time. It’s not only stylish but gripping, telling us everything we would ever want to know about the character of Perry Mason. For Mason is a loner; we never see him out socially with anyone other than Della Street, his devoted secretary, and Paul Drake, his stalwart private investigator; we never see the inside of his apartment unless it’s to establish the setting when he receives an emergency phone call in the middle of the night. Mason's life is the law - you get the idea he reads law books for relaxation - and he’s chosen to pursue that profession by putting himself in the most vulnerable position available to him: that of a trial lawyer committed to seeking justice for his client.
The odds are always against him: the evidence of his client’s guilt is usually considerable, the DA and police are confident of victory, even Paul Drake has his doubts. His reputation and his undefeated record probably put even more pressure on him, what with everyone expecting him to pull another rabbit out of his bottomless hat - not only getting his client off, but identifying the true killer. That’s more than most people would ever want to deal with, and yet by all evidence, Perry thrives on it. What an interesting character!
Some people say that Perry Mason is formulaic, that the plots are often preposterously complicated, that Perry often functions more like a detective than an attorney, that he never seems to have more than one client at a time, that anyone seems able to walk in and see him without an appointment.
To such people, this is what I have to say: So what?
Burger about to snap his pencil after yet another airtight case crashes in flames
Yes, it’s formulaic, as most series are. When you watch an episode of Perry Mason you know exactly what you’re getting: several characters are introduced, with one of them generally in some kind of untenable situation. Often, that person starts out consulting Mason about this situation, which suddenly fades into the background with the appearance of a dead body. The evidence usually puts Perry’s client at the scene of the crime at roughly the same time as the commission of the murder, and the client has ample motive for committing the crime. The client complicates matters by lying to Perry, or at least withholding the entire truth. The District Attorney, Hamilton Burger, and the homicide detective, Lt. Arthur Tragg, are obsessed with the idea of defeating Mason.*
*Burger more than Tragg; the good lieutenant occasionally acquiesces to one of Mason's far-fetched schemes, in the pursuit of truth. Burger, on the other hand, sometimes seems as if he doesn't much care whether the accused is guilty or innocent as long as he can beat Mason. In the pre-trial hearing* Burger’s evidence seems unassailable, until Paul comes into the courtroom with a vital piece of evidence. Perry’s frowning visage fades, replaced by a steely determination as he launches into a withering cross-examination, punctuated with one rapid-fire question after another, always starting with “Isn’t it true,” at which point either the witness or someone in the packed gallery blurts out an admission of guilt (frequently without remorse). Before the final credits run, the gang gathers, usually either in Perry’s office or a restaurant, where he regales them with an explanation of just how he figured out the identity of the guilty party. Fade to black, and the theme music reappears. All you have to do is change the names of the actors and their characters, and you’ve pretty much got 90% of the stories right there.
*A cost-saving method; by staging the action in a pre-trial hearing, the producers didn’t have to cast – or pay for – a jury.
"Isn't it true?"
But it’s precisely this formula that makes the story so enjoyable. It shares the same qualities as a Three Stooges short or a Road Runner cartoon – you can see the punch line coming, which is half the fun. We salivate waiting for the key moment when Perry gets the guilty party on the stand, and with the first “Isn’t it true” question, we grin knowingly, because that’s the sign that the jig is up, that it’s just a matter of time before the truth comes out. From the moment Perry Mason stands up to start the fateful cross-examination (and he can get wonderfully contemptuous), these people have had it – they just don’t know it yet.
True, there are some questions. For example, the office of District Attorney is an elected one in many cities, including Los Angeles (where the show is set), and it’s hard to see how Burger* keeps getting voted in when he loses every high-profile case he tries. And what about that police department? They seem to constantly be arresting the wrong person, after little more than a cursory investigation which suggests they already have their minds up before they even start. Tragg’s just lucky he isn’t back to walking a beat. In that sense one might see a fairly subversive undercurrent to this series.
*I wonder if anyone ever calls him "Ham"? As in Ham Burger?
There’s never much of a passage of time between the commission of the crime and the pre-trial hearing, either – usually a matter of days, seldom more than a few weeks. Even if we’re looking at a significant period between the hearing and the actual trial (which we hardly ever get to), that’s still justice moving at the speed of light compared to what we have nowadays. And, even considering the judge’s desire to provide the defense with the greatest amount of leeway, Perry seems to get away with a lot.
And to all this, my answer remains: So what? There are few series that have been as much fun to watch as Perry Mason. Raymond Burr, simply put, is Mason; he embodies the role so much that it’s no surprise in real life Burr made many speeches before bar associations. Burr radiates a an overpowering presence, a confidence that most lawyers – or just about anyone else, for that matter – would kill for.* If I were in serious trouble, I cannot imagine just how comforting it would be to have Perry Mason out there fighting for me. I'd probably figure that if he couldn't get me off, I must be guilty. It is rare that any actor can project that kind of power, but Burr does it week after week.
*And smooth, too. When a fan once confronted Burr demanding to know how it was that Mason won every case, he replied, "But madam, you only see the cases I try on Saturdays."
And Perry’s surrounded by a great supporting cast: Della (Barbara Hale), the absolutely perfect confidential secretary; Paul (William Hopper), the private detective who, although he’s sometimes a step or two behind Perry, always delivers the key information in the nick of time.* Burger (William Talman) is properly villainous; seeing his smug face fall when he realizes that Perry has outwitted him yet again, is one of life’s simpler pleasures. And the performance of old pro Ray Collins as Tragg is almost always scene-stealing – it’s a shame that Collins died during the sixth (of nine) seasons.
*One of the things the series does quite well is portray Drake as the head of a large and successful business, the Drake Detective Agency. Contrary to the typical lone-wolf PI, Drake employs a number of good detectives, and has contacts in cities all over the world. He also knows how to throw his weight around.
As was the case with Nero Wolfe, about which I wrote last time, watching Perry Mason led me to pick up the Mason books, written by Erle Stanley Gardner. Gardner wrote over 80 of them, many of which were adapted for the series. They’re not great art, but they’re great fun. In those books, even more than in the series, Mason comes across as a man dedicated to seeing that his client gets a fair break: he’s suspicious of authority, determined to prevent the police from rushing to judgment, willing to bend the rules to the breaking point in pursuit of the truth, and unwilling to rest until that truth is uncovered.
I wrote some time ago about the prevalence of police procedurals on TV today, and wondered if this in some way had the subliminal effect of reinforcing the public’s acceptance of police and governmental authority. If that is the case, it’s also interesting that there’s nothing like Perry Mason on TV anymore, a series built around a trial lawyer defending the innocent, taking on the state and its authorities, and winning. It’s our loss, in more ways than one.
First: in our household, Mike Wallace’s very name is something of a code word. It means, I don’t know, something very much like, “you’ll get yours.” An example: there was a movie of the week, one of those lachrymose efforts that networks like Lifetime and We do so well (or so awfully, depending on your point of view), about a man who comes home to find his wife and children gone, spirited away by the government as part of the witness protection program. It only took a bit of imagination to create a commercial that was the perfect antidote.
[Ticking sound in background. Male narrator’s authoritative voice.]
“Imagine you’ve come home from work to find your entire family has disappeared without a trace. Now imagine the police know all about it - and they won't tell you a thing. That’s what happened to this man: see what happens when they try it with Mike Wallace – this week on 60 Minutes.”
See how well this works?
A related joke: when I was running for the state legislature and harboring dreams of the presidency, I used to imagine another teaser involving my friend and campaign manager, Gary, who would be pictured on screen walking through the Rose Garden while the omnipresent voice intoned, “Do you recognize this man? Most people have never heard of him, but he just might be the second-most powerful man in America. And while you may not know him, Mike Wallace does. Meet him tonight on 60 Minutes.”
Finally, a Frank & Ernest cartoon many years ago, during the Watergate era, that ran on Washington’s Birthday. President Washington is sitting behind the desk in his office, his pen frozen in midair and a startled expression on his face, as an aide says to him, “Mr. President, there’s a Mr. Woodward and a Mr. Bernstein to see you. Something about a cherry tree.” And while that's funny, it would have worked better if it had been Mike Wallace.
Now, I’m not sharing these anecdotes to make fun of Mike Wallace, but as something of a tribute to him, and his style. For there was something about Mike Wallace. He may not have been the prototypical blow-dried television reporter, but there was still a certain charisma about him. Richard Nixon had had a soft spot for him since Wallace had showed a kindness to Pat Nixon, and offered him the job as his press secretary. (Would history be different today if he had accepted?).He counted the Reagans as friends dating back to their Hollywood years. He was often accused of bias of one kind or another, but through it all there was that something about Mike Wallace: the idea that here was one newsman the guilty couldn’t escape from, one who would get the story no matter what.
He'd been an actor and a game show host (including doing the pilot for To Tell the Truth), a radio announcer and a commercial pitchman, and he’d hosted one of the milestone programs in early television news (The Mike Wallace Interview), but it was 60 Minutes that really cemented his reputation, with his ambush interviews of hapless white-collar crooks, his unrelenting grilling of sweating interviewees (even though Mike often wasn’t the one asking the actual questions), and the feeling (thanks in part, no doubt, to skillful editing) that he just wouldn’t let you get away with it, whatever it was. Indeed, nobody ever enjoyed hearing that he was sitting in your waiting room. If Walter Cronkite was the most trusted man in America, then Mike Wallace may well have been the most feared.
He was far from the perfect journalist. There were controversies about supposed racial slurs he’d once uttered, a libel suit brought by General William Westmoreland over a Vietnam story he’d done, and a controversy about killing a story on the tobacco industry after receiving pressure from sponsors. His private life had its downs as well: the death of his oldest son in an accident, and a years-long battle with depression.
But through it all, Wallace persevered, and when he retired from 60 Minutes in 2006, it was the end of an era. I liked Mike Wallace, and most of the time I enjoyed watching his work. It was hard then to imagine who would take his place, and even harder now. TV
We do seem to dwell on death a lot at this site, don't we? But there's no question the death of a prominent person provides television with some of its most dramatic moments. Such a time was 44 years ago today, as we see with CBS' bulletin on the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Note that in the five years since the assassination of JFK, CBS has changed its graphics. Although they still use a modification of the repeating "CBS News" script, it is now a "Special Report" rather than a "Bulletin," a convention which is more or less standard today. As a matter of fact, I can't recall the last time I saw an actual bulletin on TV*; the going concern nowadays is "Breaking News."
*Actually, I think I do - it was in 1981, when ABC interrupted with the shooting of Ronald Reagan.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was not an elected official, a head of state or government; yet, such was the impact he made that his murder caused regular programming to be pre-empted, and his funeral would cause the Academy Awards to be postponed for two days. TV
Here's something you're not likely to see on television nowadays. Thursday, April 6, ABC presented its latest episode of its anthology/variety show Stage 67. This week: "A Time for Laughter: A Look at Negro Humor in America," produced and hosted by Harry Belefonte, and featuring Sidney Poitier, Godfrey Cambridge, Redd Foxx, Richard Pryor, Dick Gregory, and Diahann Caroll - to name a few. I wonder what this show was like? One sketch features Pryor as a nervous undertaker forced to deliver the eulogy when the clergyman doesn't show at the funeral, while another has Gregory as a civil-rights marcher discussing "Black Power." Would we see this today as an example of ethnic African-American humor, or cheap racial stereotypes?
In all likelihood, it's a moot point: since the show was up against Dean Martin (this week's guests: Phil Harris, Sally Ann Howes, Paul Winchell, comedian Bob Melvin and the singing Kessler Twins), it's likely nobody saw it at all. It was successful in one way though, winning an Emmy nomination for best variety special.
"Television Fights the War of Ideas," is one of the feature articles in the issue. When I first saw that, I figured the author might be talking about how TV fights to keep ideas off the air, but in reality it's an examination of the United States Information Agency, the government's propaganda arm, and how it beams the American ideal into living rooms around the world.
The comely cover girl on the right is Cheryl Miller, one of the stars of CBS' series Daktari. Her co-star on the right is Judy the Chimp, who was apparently quite the scene stealer (along with Clarence the Cross-Eyed Lion, who had a stand-in lion for tough stunts). I don't remember a whole lot about this show, nor do I remember Cheryl Miller. In fact, until I ran across this issue, the only Cheryl Miller I knew of was the former basketball player. She does not seem to have had a long career, and whenever TV Guide does a piece like this touting someone I haven't heard much of (for example, Laurie Sibbald, who played Sammy Jackson's girlfriend in the TV version of No Time for Sergeants*), I wonder if they were expected to become the next big thing, or if they were just actors and actresses filling a role.
*Not to be confused with the televised version of the play, which appeared on the U.S. Steel Hour, starring Andy Griffith and adapted by Ira Levin, who later would write something a little less gentle:Rosemary's Baby.
Dean Rusk, the U.S. Secretary of State, appears on an hour-long NBC news special which looks a lot like its Sunday morning regular, Meet the Press. The main topic, of course: Vietnam. CBS presents a repeat showing of its acclaimed production of Death of a Salesman, starring Lee J. Cobb and Mildred Dunnock. It's one of the rare TV plays of the 60s that is available on DVD, and it's well worth watching. CBS also reruns Frank Sinatra's special A Man and His Music: Part II, which is also on DVD and well worth watching, except for the part with Frank's daughter, Nancy. And TV Guide's resident critic, Cleveland Amory, reviews Tim Conway's Western comedy Rango. Ever heard of it? Says Amory, "[I]f you've seen one episdoe, you've seen them all. And although this is, in such a show, by no means bad news, the fact remains there are men still alive who claim to have seen several episodes. They are not many, though, and they are fading rapidly." That explains a lot.
Finally, does anyone other than me remember when CBS used to run what they called "National Tests"? There was the "National Citizenship Test," the "National Driving Test," and on April 4 of this week, the "National Science Test." Each of these shows came complete with an answer sheet for you mark your answers if you're scoring at home - or if you're just watching the show. TV
About Dwight D. Eisenhower, three distinct memories:
1. In his acceptance speech at the 1968 Republican National Convention, Richard Nixon starts off with mention of Eisenhower in the hospital, and that nothing would make him feel better than a Republican victory in November. “So let’s win this one for Ike!” The crowd roars.
2. In March 1969, Eisenhower is now gravely ill. Across the street from the South Minneapolis fourplex we live in is one of the regional headquarters of Northwestern Bell . (It has a large, rolling lawn that was just made for kids to have fun on, and we used to play football there on Saturday afternoons. This is, mind you, in the days before corporate buildings are fenced off from the rest of the neighborhood, or hidden within business parks.) I’m eating lunch (no school, it being what was at the time called Easter Break), and as I’m sitting at the table, we look out the kitchen window and see the flag on top of the Northwestern Bell building falling to half-staff. My mother nods; Eisenhower must have died.
3. Eisenhower, like Churchill, was quite the amateur painter, and many of his paintings were reproduced and sold in sets. We had one of those sets, along with a portrait of Ike – it wasn’t, as I recall, that we had an overwhelming affection for Eisenhower, but as Supreme Allied Commander he had won the war in Europe, and as the GOP nominee in 1952 he had ended 20 years of Democrat control of the White House, so in a Republican household like ours that was enough to generate some admiration, at least. At any rate, my grandparents worked at a department store just off Lake Street in Minneapolis , and they borrowed the Eisenhower portrait, which was framed. It was put in a front window of the store, which was otherwise bare except for yards of black fabric which had been draped along the bottom of the display. There may have been roses in the window as well; I can’t remember now. But this is the kind of thing that businesses used to do, at times of national mourning.
Eisenhower was given the choice, after his term ended, of the honoraria to be used - president or general. He chose the later, which is why you'll often hear him referred to as "General Eisenhower" after his presidency. Such is the case in much of the footage here.
Eisenhower’s funeral was, unless I'm wrong, the first American state funeral to be televised in color. JFK had, of course, been in B&W; RFK's and MLK's hadn't been state funerals. The procession to the Capitol took place on a rainy, cool Palm Sunday; the fact that people would have been in church probably accounted for the afternoon start. CBS's coverage starts here, but we'll pick up the coverage with the Sunday procession. You can follow the coverage with the succeeding segments.
An interesting footnote is that Eisenhower was also the center of attention in what has been referred to as the earliest surviving color videotape footage, as he appears at the dedication of NBC's new Washington facility in May 1958. The color here is just brilliant; it would be completely realistic to assume that this event had been televised earlier today. It also gives us another look at Ike, at the time the oldest man elected president. We think of him as a figure out of the history books, but here he seems very much alive and relevant. In many respects, he is more alive than the grainer, B&W footage of his successor a few years later.
