What's on TV? Thursday, June 6, 1963

It's always nice to look at an issue that includes a station from Canada. CKWS, now an affiliate of Global TV, was with the CBS in 1963, and while some of its programs come from the United States (The Defenders, Surfside 6, Dr. Kildare), a number of them are homegrown, including Playdate, a dramatic anthology series hosted by Christopher Plummer; tonight's play is "The Hunt," which includes in the cast a Canadian actor who will soon become familiar to American audiences: John Vernon. Animal House just wouldn't have been the same without him. These, along with the rest of the shows, are from the New York State Edition. 

This week in TV Guide: June 1, 1963

One of the storylines we've seen in our continuing journey through the history of television is the role of the sponsor in determining the programs that viewers saw. It wasn't uncommon for advertising agencies to create and produce television shows, which would then be shown on timeslots purchased from networks by sponsors. The agency got its show, the sponsor got its exposure, and the network got its money, and everyone was happy. 

Among those happy sponsors was the Armstrong Cork Company, which started out making bottle corks in 1860, and over the past hundred years has expanded to include everything from gaskets to vinyl flooring. It has, writes James J. Dailey, "doubled in size on the average of once every eight years in this century." It has also, for the past 13 years, sponsored Armstrong Circle Theater*, "one of the most solid, enlightened programs ever to grace the sometimes superficial medium of television." "We built this show with one basic idea," according to Max Banzhaf. formerly Armstrong's advertising director and now one of its vice presidents. "We wanted something that offered more than mere escapism, something that would stick to the ribs—point a moral—educate and entertain." 

*It was actually spelled "Theatre," as was the case with many television series, but since it's spelled "Theater" in the article, I'll use that here as well.

True to Banzhaf's word, Circle Theater evolved over the years, expanding from 30 minutes to an hour, and morphing from a standard dramatic anthology program to a weekly docudrama, offering stories dealing with real people and current issues ("actuals," as David Susskind once called them), with subjects running from medical quackery, the sinking of the Andrea Doria, and drug dealing, to war orphans, payola in the music industry, and the story of Radio Free Europe.

And then, one day, Max Banzhaf opened up the pages of Variety, only to read that CBS planned to cancel Circle Theater in order to make room for The Danny Kaye Show, which the network thought would be a bigger challenge to NBC's The Eleventh Hour, the top-rated show in the Wednesday at 10:00 p.m. timeslot. He was passed from vice president to vice president until he was told that he'd have to wait until CBS president James Aubrey returned from a trip to Europe. Several weeks later, Aubrey did, in fact, return, whereupon he called Banzhaf and confirmed the news. He then offered Armstrong the opportunity to sponsor a portion of the Kaye show, which the company reluctantly accepted.

As Dailey points out, this demonstrates most clearly an evolution in the way television does business. Companies like Armstrong—Westinghouse and U.S. Steel are given as other examples—are what the industry calls "considered-purchase companies"; in other words, the audience for their products is not an impulsive one, but one more likely to take its time before deciding to invest in products as substantial as those offered by these companies. "Such audiences may be smaller," Dailey notes, "but in the opinion of 'considered-purchase' manufacturers contain a greater average of people who will buy their goods. In the days before we all became familiar with demographics, such targeted groups were called "selective audiences."

The networks, on the other hand, are becoming less and less interested in selective audiences; instead, they have their eyes on programs that deliver higher ratings, because they, in turn, deliver "more people and more money under the cost-per-thousand-viewers formula." Shows that appeal to such audiences are being squeezed out, he says, in favor of more "popular" programming. A cynic would refer to this as pandering to the lowest-common denominator, but, as you know, such cynicism is anathema at this website, something we would never dare to suggest. 

With this in mind, Armstrong was left with limited choices. It could wait for another time slot on the schedule to open up, which would likely be a half-hour rather than an hour; it could try to move the show to another network; or it could accept CBS's offer to sponsor another program. Banzhaf says the decision to sponsor Kaye was not an immediate one, nor did everyone in the company agree with it. "We wouldn't sponsor just any baggy-pants comedian," he insists. Kaye, he explains, has dignity and a sense of character, and has been involved in many national and international causes. "To this extent I feel we are still rendering a service to the American public—though not everybody in the company feels as I do." Indeed, some insiders wonder if Kaye has what it takes to carry a weekly series; in the event, it ran for four seasons of variable quality, as opposed to Circle Theater's 14. 

The bottom line is that it is now the networks, and not the sponsors, who carry the weight in television. U.S. Steel, which sponsored the since-cancelled U.S. Steel Hour, General Electric, which formerly sponsored G.E. True and, before that, G.E. Theatre, and Firestone, which fought the networks over The Voice of Firestone, decided to opted out of prime time television after their shows left the air. For his part, Banzhaf believes that without sponsor input, the quality of television programming has suffered as networks have strived for higher ratings. Dailey concludes that it is "debatable" whether any program will be able to replace Circle Theater in the eyes of its followers.

What I find interesting about all this is that the network philosophy of pursuing higher ratings would, itself, only last about ten years. James Aubrey, who axed Circle Theater, would be responsible for the rural purge that rid CBS of some of its highest-rated programs, because—get this—they were not attracting the right kind of viewers, the ones that sponsors craved. In other words, demographics. Kind of ironic, I guess, but as they say, what goes around comes around. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

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Let's take a look at some industry news, courtesy of the Teletype. First, we read that CBS has signed Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright William Inge (author of Picnic and Bus Stop) to develop a one-hour dramatic series for CBS for the 1964-65 season, with the tentative title All Over Town. I was interested, as the only Inge-related TV series I was aware of was the aforementioned Bus Stop, which had a single-season run in 1961-62. As it turns out, Inge never does do the series; instead, he writes a play, "Out on the Outskirts of Town," which winds up as an episode of Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre on NBC. In short, not only does CBS not get the series, they don't even get the play that took its place.

We also find out that CBS has "temporarily shelved" its plan for a new production of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella, which they'd planned to do next fall, because Julie Andrews (who'd starred in ◀ the original 1957 broadcast) will be working on a Walt Disney movie. That movie, Mary Poppins, makes Julie an international film star and wins her a Best Actress Oscar. CBS does eventually remake Cinderella in 1965, with Leslie Ann Warren in the title role. 

Finally, ABC will become the first network to premiere their entire primetime fall schedule, both new and returning shows, during the course of a single week, with the unveiling is scheduled for the week of September 15. NBC and CBS both plan to introduce their new seasons over several weeks.

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Here's something we don't see often: a TV Ticket Guide to how you can get tickets to your favorite shows if you happen to be in either New York or Hollywood. Not surprisingly, most of the New York-based programs are game shows; for your convenience, you can pick up tickets at the Gimbels-TV Guide Summer Festival Center on Broadway and 33rd. Among the shows for which you can get tickets are Who Do You Trust? on ABC, Amateur Hour, Password, Talent Scouts, To Tell the Truth, and What's My Line? on CBS, and NBC's Concentration, Match Game, Play Your Hunch, The Price is Right, and Say When. You can also write directly to the networks if you're planning your trip; their addresses are included.

In Los Angeles, there's more variety to the choices; in addition to game shows, there are also variety shows and sitcoms; you can also write directly to "The Steve Allen Playhouse" for tickets to his syndicated show. The Lawrence Welk Show is sold out—well, the tickets are free, but you know what I mean—but rush tickets for the dress rehearsal are available first-come, first-served on the day of the show. Otherwise, you can visit the ABC ticket office for Day in Court, Queen for a Day, and Seven Keys. I'm surprised by Day in Court; I had no idea that was taped in front of a studio audience. CBS Television City has tickets for House Party, The Danny Kaye Show, and The Danny Thomas Show, but be aware: Kaye and Thomas won't be be taping their fall shows until August. And you can write to NBC or stop in for last-minute tickets at Sunset and Vine in Hollywood; the shows available are Truth or Consequences, Your First Impression, and You Don't Say!

Remember, though: if you're writing for tickets, please allow four weeks for delivery. And keep in mind that most programs are taped at an earlier hour or on a different day from when they're aired. Personally, I've never been in a TV studio audience, save a local show when I was young. How about any of you?

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One of the programs not mentioned in the list above is The Garry Moore Show; the 1963-64 season will be the show's last, save a brief revival in 1966. Be that as it may, Garry is on the cover of this week's issue, along with one of his regulars, comedienne Dorothy Loudon. Loudon, who debuted on the December 4, 1962 episode, was such a hit with viewers that she was signed for 16 additional episodes, and becomes a full-fledged regular this coming season, replacing former regular Carol Burnett.

As a performer, Maurice Zolotow tells us, Loudon is the epitome of sophistication and cynicism, singing of "strong, masculine arms and predatory women," a product of 10 years performing at such clubs as New York's famed Blue Angel; "her musical monologues," Zolotow says, "were so pointed they were single-entendre." But that we find out, is not the real Dorothy Loudon—at least that's what she says. "I want to have a family and cook and keep house for them," she says. "I hate show business. I hate the whole way of life that goes with it. I hate being a performer. I'm glad I'm on this Garry Moore thing because at least it keeps me out of night clubs which I hate and I don't have to travel on the road—I hate living in hotels." Her friends call her a romantic who can "get her heart broken quicker than the average girl can get a run in a new pair of nylons." Zolotow notes that there is something inherently antifeminine about being a great comedienne, and in compensating for it, "comediennes are more vulnerable to romance than any other type of performer, except Elizabeth Taylor."

Prior to her success in comedy, Loudon was, or hoped to be, a torch singer. But everything changed when she auditioned with Julius Monk for a new show at a supper club. Monk went into hysterics when she sang the line, "It costs me a lot but there's one thing that I've got—it's my man." "It was so unconsciously funny that I just literally fell down on the floor laughing," Monk says. "I couldn't stop laughing for five minutes and Dorothy, poor thing, her feelings were hurt. But I told her she was the screaming end. She was just a natural-born comedienne and she couldn't help giving any song a crazy twist, even if she did it seriously." And, just like that, Dorothy Loudon became a comedienne, playing in Monk's show for three years, becoming one of the hottest acts in nightclubs, and doing TV guest shots with Steve Allen, Dave Garroway, Ed Sullivan, Jack Paar, and others. 

She still feels a bit uncomfortable with the material she's being given, that the sketches working for Burnett, Carol Channing, or Nancy Walker don't work as well with her. Coleman Jacoby, one of Moore's writers, says that Loudon is a much subtler comedienne than the slapstick Burnett. "That's what makes her so hard to write for—those nuances."

As I mentioned earlier, the Moore show leaves the air after the 1963-64 season, but that's not the end of Dorothy Loudon's career. She wins a Tony Award in 1977 for Annie, and is nominated for two other Tonys. And in case you were wondering, she does get married, in 1971 to composer Norman Paris, but does not remarry after his death in 1977.

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There's a little bit of everything on tap this week, although no Sullivan vs. the Palace; after all, The Jerry Lewis Show hasn't even debuted yet, and we all know how that led quickly to The Hollywood Palace. But for now, that Saturday night timeslot is still held by ABC's Fight of the Week, and this week's bout is for the world light-heavyweight championship, as challenger Willie Pastrano takes on champion Harold Johnson, live from Las Vegas. (10:00 p.m.) Despite being a substitute after the scheduled challenger, Henry Hank, was injured, Pastrano pulls off the upset and wins a 15-round split decision, which you can see here. He holds the crown until a loss in 1965*, after which he retires.

*Pastrano lost the title in a one-sided defeat to José Torres, but not before producing one of the great quotes in boxing history; when he was asked by the ring doctor if he knew where he was, he replied, "You're damn right I know where I am! I'm in Madison Square Garden getting the shit kicked out of me!"

Just because the Palace isn't here, though, we won't ignore Ed's lineup (Sunday, 8:00 p.m., CBS), which would probably have been a winner in any event: Sammy Davis Jr., Janet Blair, Rowan and Martin, the Kim Sisters, singer Jessie Pearson, and comedienne Sue Carson.

Monday night, Arthur Godfrey begins a one-week stint substituting for Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show (11:15 p.m., NBC); his guests tonight include Music Man composer Meredith Willson, the Buffalo Bills singing group (who appear in The Music Man), Nipsey Russell; and singer Frank D'Rone. There were so many interesting guest host choices back in the day, and it's a pity talk shows today are so star-centric (or the hosts are so insecure) that we don't have guest hosts anymore.

On Tuesday, What's My Line? host John Charles Daly presents an award to Don Wilson in honor of his 27th year as announcer on The Jack Benny Program (9:30 p.m., CBS). Predictably, chaos ensues. John's only one of a number of notable guest stars on tonight; there's also John Cassavetes on The Lloyd Bridges Show (8:00 p.m., CBS), Ed Begley on Empire (8:30 p.m., NBC), Cyril Ritchard on The Red Skelton Hour (8:30 p.m., CBS), Kathy Nolan and Robert Duvall on The Untouchables (9:30 p.m., ABC), and Don Knotts on The Garry Moore Show (10:00 p.m., CBS).

Burgess Meredith turns in a typically outstanding performance in a typically fine episode of Naked City (Wednesday, 10:00 p.m., ABC), as poet Duncan Kleist, who's proud, sensitive, eloquent, entertaining—and an arrogant egotist who succeeds in getting himself murdered. I wonder whodunnit?

Thursday's episode of The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet is a novelty: an actual variety show, the "June Music Festival," with Rick Nelson and his real-life combo, joined by folksingers Bud and Travis, the Brothers Four, Jennie Smith, and the Garrett Square Dancers. (7:30 p.m., ABC) His brother David interviews the guests backstage. 

Friday's Jack Paar Program (10:00 p.m., NBC), has an eclectic lineup, with Anne Bancroft, Buddy Hackett, and Kukla, Fran, and Ollie. There's a real art to preparing a guest mix that entertains, and I think this show succeeds. Something else that today's talk shows lack, since guests don't stick around after they've done their bit—I don't even know why they call them talk shows anymore. 

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Barbara Bain is not afraid of Elizabeth Taylor. She'd have good reason to be, if she were inclined; her husband, actor Martin Landau, is in the cast of Cleopatra, which stars Liz, Richard Burton, and Rex Harrison. But he returns home at the end of each day, and their neighbors in Rome tell her, "Ah, your husband really loves you! Leet-za don't get him!"

As this shows, we're fans, obviously!  

In these days before Mission: Impossible, Bain is known for having played "everything from femmes fatale to simple country girls" in series from Dobie Gillis and Richard Diamond to Empire. Before that, there were years of struggling, as is the case with so many young actors. "Neither of us worked for six months after we were married," she says of those days back in New York, where most of their friends still live. She augmented her income with fashion modeling; finally, after six months, she and Landau got parts in the touring company of the Paddy Chayefsky play Middle of the Night, with Edward G. Robinson. "It was our honeymoon," she says of the time. They ended up in Hollywood, where they've remained ever since.

Bain and Landau are part of the Mission: Impossible cast for the first three seasons, when the show was at its absolute peak. They would move on to the science fiction series Space: 1999, which, you may recall, was touted as the first really adult science fiction TV series since Star Trek. Later, they would divorce, but both would remain active in the business. Barbara Bain remains active, having appeared both in film and television as recently as 2020, and won three Emmys as Best Actress in a Drama for Mission: Impossible. And, believe me, she doesn't have anything to worry about from Elizabeth Taylor. TV  

Around the dial

At bare-bones e-zine, Jack's Hitchcock Project continues with "Mink," Irwin Gielgud and Gwen Bagni's first-season story, a complex story of deception and suspicion that also serves as a time capsule to the mid-1950s.

John turns his attention to documentaries at Cult TV with a look at 24 Hours, a BBC news program that ran from 1965 to 1972; the episode in question, regarding the 1966 assassination of South African prime minister Hendrik Verwoerd, provides a disturbing look at the country's apartheid policy.

Art has been a subtle but significant part of many classic TV series, and at Comfort TV, David proposes a Museum of Classic TV Paintings, along with his suggestions for some of the more prominent exhibits; how many of them ring a bell with you?

Paul takes Drunk TV to one of the great anthologies of the Golden Age, Studio One, with a look at the DVD set Studio One Anthology (a copy of which I'm pleased to say I have), representing seventeen of the series' plays, good and bad; and what it tells us about the early days of television. 

Cult TV Lounge has written in the past about TV tie-in novels, and we have another one of them this week, with "The Cornish Pixie Affair," the fifth original novel based on The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. How well does it mirror the tone of the series? Read on and find out.

In doing the Saturday TV Guide review, I've mentioned a time or two that it doesn't seem there was ever a variety show or special that Bob Hope didn't appear in, and Travalanche backs me up on this assertion with a simple but telling rundown of how many show he hosted, let alone guested in.

At A Shroud of Thoughts, Terence honors a couple of the entertainment world's most recent passings: Darryl Hickman, brother of Dwayne, who did a great deal of movie and voiceover work; and Richard M. Sherman, composer (with his brother Robert) for so many great Disney movies over the years.

Finally, it's back to Land of the Lost at The View from the Junkyard where Mike reviews "Hot-Air Artist," another quixotic episode that displays the show's later tendency away from serious sci-fi to "silly fiction," and again raises the question of where these characters would wind up if they ever escape. TV  

TV Jibe: Behind the scenes on a commercial shoot

TV  

What's on TV? Wednesday, May 29, 1968

Wait, we're back in the Twin Cities again this week. How did that happen? Well, never mind. One of the guests on The Mike Douglas Show is Lt. General Lew Walt, who served in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam, ultimately winding up as Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps and a four-star general. He was considered one of the more successful generals in South Vietnam, securing and protecting a substantial number of villages, and working to win over the "hearts and minds" of Vietnamese citizens. He returned to the United States in 1967, and I'd imagine his appearance with Douglas was to give his views on how the war was going and what the future strategy should be.

This week in TV Guide: May 25, 1968

In the long and occasionally glorious history of television, there have been many fiascos. Some of them, such as Turn-On and You're In the Picture, each of which ran for only one episode, have become synonymous with failure. The program which we are about to discuss, which TV Guide calls "The worst disaster of the TV season," is not one of them. In fact, it's likely you've never even heard of it. That doesn't make Edith Efron's autopsy of a story any less fascinating, though—after all, most train wrecks are.

The program, a television play entitled Flesh and Blood, aired on NBC on January 26, 1968. There were high hopes for the program, "a powerful and  compassionate drama of a contemporary American family": written by award-winning Broadway playwright William Hanley, directed by Oscar-nominee Arthur Penn, and starring Oscar-winner Edmond O'Brien and Emmy winners E.G. Marshall, Kim Stanley and Suzanne Pleshette, along with a very young Robert Duvall. NBC had paid Hanley the then-unheard-of sum of $112,500 for the script—the largest amount ever for a television script—and touted the coming special for the better part of a year.

In case the article's title didn't give it away, the show did not go over well. I love the pull quotes that Efron features—"a compression of enough emotional depression and disaster to sustain a soap-opera series through 1970" (New York Times), "a grim, depressing piece" (Boston Record American), "a catalog of calamities" (Philadelphia Inquirer), "an unrelieved chronicle of human misery" (Denver Post), "a numbing two-hour trickle of unspeakable secrets" (Time)—well, you get the idea.

So, Efron asks: what went wrong? A number of things, as it turns out. For starters, NBC wanted a prestige program, and thought they could get it by outbidding Broadway—except, as Hanley himself points out, the show never was headed to the Great White Way. With its depressing subject matter, Hanley says, "[i]t wouldn't have lasted five minutes on Broadway." The network executives saw Hanley as an award-winning playwright, but his awards had been for off-Broadway work, and he'd never had a box-office hit. The cast, many of whom were going through personal problems of their own, never really learned the script, and often ad-libbed their lines. Most important, perhaps, was the grim story itself. Hanley, refreshingly candid about the whole thing, allows that "I do have a very dark vision of life" that is not for everyone.

The whole thing is a prime example of how network executives, through ignorance, hubris, arrogance, stupidity—for starters—can foul things up. One executive tells Efron, "Some people thought we shouldn't put it on. But we thought we could get away with it. What the hell, we'd paid for it, we'd publicized it. And any special will get you some praise." And they did get some; at least the critic Rex Reed liked it. Soon after, NBC would announce a policy change regarding their dramatic programming, signing an agreement with Prudential Life Insurance to produce "five original 'upbeat' dramas" in the coming season—dramas that will be "exciting, hopeful and affirmative."

And here is where we come to the moral of the story. Clearly we have a disaster here, and although there are many reasons why, pretty much everyone would agree that William Hanley wrote a flop. Conventional wisdom might suggest that this would signal the end of Hanley's career, at least when it comes to television.

But you'd be wrong.

William Hanley went on to write over two dozen TV scripts, winning two Emmys and being nominated for three others. He wrote the landmark TV movie Something About Amelia with Ted Danson, as well as adaptations of Tommy Thompson's bestseller Celebrity and Shana Alexander's bestseller Nutcracker: Money, Madness and Murder, and The Attic: The Hiding of Anne Frank. When he died in 2012 at age 80, his New York Times obituary describes him as an "uncommonly gifted writer" who "received critical acclaim as a Broadway and Off Broadway playwright in the 1960s and who later won Emmys for television scripts." Of Flesh and Blood, the newspaper that had described it as " emotional depression and disaster" merely noted that it had received "mixed reviews."

So let that be a lesson to you: failure does not have to be permanent. Time can heel all wounds (and, if we're lucky, wound all heels), and people have short memories. Flesh and Blood did not ruin William Hanley's career; it merely disappeared into the ether. He didn't give up, and neither should we.

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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: Mike Douglas; Nancy Sinatra; Spanky and Our Gang; comedians Scoey Mitchell, Bobby Ransen, and Hendra and Ullett; the acrobatic Trio Rennos; the roller-skating Bredos; and the Muppets Puppets.

Palace: Co-hosts Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme introduce comics Tim Conway and Corbett Monica, dancers Szony and Claire, and the Mascotts, German head-balancing act. Tim portrays a square at a hippie love-in, and Corbett’s monolog concerns family life. 

It's kind of an indifferent week here in variety row, with the headliners carrying the heavy load in both cases. Sullivan has Mike Douglas, who is, well, pleasant; and Nancy Sinatra, who is, well, a Sinatra; which means we have to depend on Spany and Our Gang and the Muppets. Over Palace way we have Steve and Eydie, Tim Conway, and Corbett Monica. It depends on what you like best, I suppose, but from where I see it, we have to go with Sullivan this week, or else Sundays will never be the same.

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I suppose millions, if not billions, of words have been written about The Prisoner, Patrick McGoohan's legendary series that's part espionage, part sci-fi, part mystery, and completely compelling. I've contributed my share to the oeuvre over the years, and there's no need to go into more detail about it. But this week we get a unique opportunity to glimpse of the program before it becomes the legend; although it aired last year in England, it's about to make its American debut, and this week Joan Barthel talks to McGoohan—or, rather, listens to him talking—about what to expect from the series that, unlike Flesh and Blood, actually lives up to the hype.

McGoohan was given free rein (and a big budget) by Lew Grade and Associated Television, and in addition to being executive producer and star, he was also a part-time scriptwriter and director. In America, CBS, the network that aired McGoohan's previous Secret Agent, liked the idea of adding it to the regular fall schedule—provided a few changes were made. Michael Dann, VP of programming for the network, called it "the most extraordinary film I'd ever seen. It has style, taste, quality, and it’s quite sophisticated. But I told [McGoohan] that no matter how brilliant the production, the public likes to identify with a winner." And how did McGoohan react to that piece of advice? "He listened to me—he gave me a very understanding ear—but he was dedicated to this concept and I didn’t win my point."

Barthel notes that what Dann called "dedication" has been seen by others as "stubbornness" and "intolerance," which he exhibited in their "interview," which she called "a fascinating example of a strong will at work, determining the direction the talk was to take." Indeed, many of her questions brought responses such as, "I don’t know" or "I certainly don’t wish to talk about that now." Regarding some of the overly metaphysical interpretations of the show, he says that "It would be a grave error to pretend that this is anything other than a piece of entertainment of a certain type." Nevertheless, it's clear he wants the series to say something about modern society. "I've always been obsessed with the idea of prisons in a liberal democratic society," he says. "I believe in democracy, but the inherent danger is that with an excess of freedom in all directions we will eventually destroy ourselves."

The subject turns to America's obsession with polls, McGoohan says that "[t]he reason we're so concerned with these polls is that we're so desperately concerned with saying, 'We're free!' And I want to know, how free are we? I think we're being imprisoned and engulfed by a scientific and materialistic world. We're at the mercy of gadgetry and gimmicks; I'm making my living out of a piece of gadgetry, which is a television set, and anyone who says there aren't any pressures in it has never watched a commercial."

McGoohan himself rarely ventures out into that world other than to work, and when he does, he finds it "mechanized and computerized." "Computers have everything worked out for us. And we're constantly being numeralized. The other day I went through the number of units that an ordinary citizen over here is subject to, including license plate numbers and all the rest, and it added up to some 340 separate digits." McGoohan's character in The Prisoner, a former intelligence agent is kept captive by an unknown authority in an unknown place where people are known not by name but by number. is known by only one digit: Number 6. (He once said he chose the number because of its ambiguity, being the only digit that makes another digit when held upside-down.)

As for his program, McGoohan insists it isn't all that far-fetched. "What do you do with defectors, or with people who have top-secret knowledge of the highest order and who, for one reason or another, want out? Do you shoot them?" He says he knows better; "I know there are places where these people are kept. Not voluntarily, and in absolute luxury. There are three in this country—let someone deny it! I know about them because I know someone who used to be associated with the service."

The Prisoner was one of the most puzzling, most controversial—and most prophetic—television series ever. Its ambiguity and its failure to provide a definitive end to the series outraged many, enthralled others, and confused most everyone. And McGoohan wouldn't have had it any other way. "I just hope there are a couple of thoughts in it somewhere that relate to the things that are going on around us, to our situation at the moment. It will be interesting to see what viewers thing the symbols are. I will say this: There are, within it, answers to every single question that can be posed, but one can't expect an answer on a plate, saying, 'Here you are; you don't have to think; it's all yours; don't use your brain.'"

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One of the reasons I tend to go long on some of these feature articles is that, as spring turns to summer, original programming transitions into reruns, with the odd summer-replacement series thrown in. There are exceptions, though, and one of those shows up on Thursday, May 30. In 1968, Memorial Day was still celebrated on May 30; the holiday wasn't moved to its current fourth-Monday-in-May status until 1971. Back then, Memorial Day meant one thing for many people: the Indianapolis 500, the "Greatest Spectacle in Racing." (And don't think I'm biased because I live in Indiana; I felt that way even back in 1968.)

Besides the date, there were other things different about 1968. The race wasn't televised live, but instead was presented in highlight form on Wide World of Sports a couple of weeks later. No, if you wanted to follow the race, there were only two ways to do it: either on the radio, or via closed-circuit in a movie theater. In lieu of live race coverage, we have something else in store: the Indianapolis 500 Festival Parade (Thursday, 4:00 p.m., syndicated), taped Tuesday evening, with Garry Moore alongside Sid Collins, the famed radio "Voice of the 500." Unlike so many things, the 500 Festival Parade is still around today, and still on TV, carried by Peacock the day before this year's race.

Elsewhere, Leonard Bernstein hosts a pop quiz on music on Sunday's Young People's Concert (3:30 p.m., CBS); the quiz covers "identification, observation, terminology, TV series, and famous composers, from Bach to the Beatles." Also on Sunday, Max von Sydow stars in a made-for-TV version of The Diary of Anne Frank (8:00 p.m., ABC), with Diana Davila as Anne, and a supporting cast including Lilli Palmer, Theodore Bikel, Viveca Lindfors, Marisa Pavan, and Donald Pleasence.

Tuesday night is the critical Oregon Primary, and all three networks plan late-night coverage. Richard Nixon has been strong in the Republican primaries so far, but Ronald Reagan finished strong in Nebraska, and is hoping for momentum to take him to his home state of California. On the Democratic side, RFK has the momentum, while Hubert Humphrey is skipping the primaries; Eugene McCarthy has refused to withdraw, and many think that this is part of his bid for the vice presidential nomination. In the event, Nixon wins the GOP vote, while McCarthy scores an upset victory for the Democrats. California now becomes the critical primary for the Democrats, and Kennedy heads there to put on an all-out effort.

And Ethel Merman is the guest on Friday's Tarzan (6:30 p.m., NBC). I wonder who's louder—Tarzan's yell, or the Merm when she hits the high notes?

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This week's cover girl is Diana Hyland, currently appearing as "the nymphomaniacal drunk minister's wife" in ABC's prime-time soap Peyton Place, and author Burt Prelutsky is in love with her. She's got it all: a dazzling smile, lovely blue eyes, and legs that won't quit. She's interesting, too; she believes in flying saucers, said good evening to Nikita Khrushchev at the UN and was winked at by Fidel Castro, and has remained 27 for the last five years*, the previous time when she was interviewed by TV Guide.  "I lied then," she tells Prelutsky.

*According to the always-reliable Wikipedia, Hyland was born in 1936, which means she was in fact 27 —in 1963. She told the truth then; she's lying now.

She's a dedicated actress, and a successful one—"everything I've ever tried I've done well," she says. Her Peyton Place director, Walter Doniger, calls her "an elegant, bright, witty dame" who's also svelte, sophisticated, and a nonconformist. In fact, she only has two vices: she owns 200 pairs of shoes, and she smokes three packs of cigarettes a day. 

I don't know if that last vice is significant or not. Flash forward to 1977: she's in a happy relationship with John Travolta, she's playing Dick Van Patten's wife in Eight Is Enough—and she's diagnosed with breast cancer. She dies in March of that year, aged 41. 

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The Teletype tells us that Elvis Presley will be highlighting a special for NBC.  I suspect they're talking about this.  The rest, as they say, is history.

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Finally, is it possible that the most interesting item in this week's issue is not an article, but an advertisement?

Hmm.  Could be. TV  

Around the dial

We'll begin this week at Comfort TV, where David asks a question that's both practical and existential: how much TV is too much? It speaks to not only the quantity but the quality of what's available out there nowadays, and leads to another question: what has television become, and (not rhetorically) what purpose does it serve? I think this could well be the beginning of an important discussion that's going to have to take place at some time or other, before the industry winds up consuming itself. As so many revolutions do.

And now, on to a lighter note: the bottle from which Barbara Eden pops out in I Dream of Jeannie is currently on display at the Smithsonian Museum's National Museum of American History, and Smithsonian Magazine uses the occasion to look at the history contained in Jeannie, as well as its legacy.

Travalanche celebrates the Peggy Cass Centennial. For those of you my age, you'll remember her as a staple of the Goodson-Todman shows, especially To Tell the Truth (where she appeared over one thousand times), but you'll see that there was more to her than just playing games.

You'll recall how Coronet Blue ended without answering the main question of what the phrase "Coronet Blue" actually meant, but that's not the only series to leave viewers hanging. At Television Obscurities, the creator of the cancelled series So Help Me Todd tells us how that series would have ended.

Terence pays tribute to the late Dabney Coleman at A Shroud of Thoughts. Coleman, who died last week aged 92, was known for playing characters you loved to hate, and as we all know, it takes a lot of talent to do that for as long as he does.

At A View from the Junkyard, Roger and Mike compare notes on "The Interrogators," a Steed/Tara episode of The Avengers, and while we all know how fantastic some of the plots for this show can be (especially at this point), this is a surprisingly tense one that holds together well.

Rutland Weekend Television is the latest review from John at Cult TV Blog. It ran from 1975-76, parodying television of the time, and if you like Monty Python, you'll like this. Furthermore, if you like the shows that John writes about, you'll like this. I can't think of a better recommendation. TV  

Realism vs. plausibility

Back in the days when the classic version of Hawaii Five-0 was part of our regular Thursday night viewing, there was a span of a few weeks during which we saw Steve McGarrett blown up on a boat (no significant injuries), splashed in the face with gasoline (which didn't keep him from shooting the perp), blown up in a car (the lasting effects of which were mainly confined to the guy who ordered the hit on McGarrett), and variously shot at, punched, and targeted for mayhem. It's nice to know that none of this got in the way of our hero catching the killer by the end of the hour, including cases in which I'm fairly sure the Hawaii State Police wouldn't have jurisdiction. If, there is, the Hawaii State Police even existed, which they don't.

Even if you're not in Hawaii, though, you can still repeat this pattern in most classic TV shows of this kind: Mannix gets shot at and beaten up pretty much every week, with no symptoms of post-concussion trauma (expect a future revival of the series to be sponsored by the NFL), and I think that every cop on TV has shot at least a couple of people in every episode without even being put on paid leave, let alone going before the grand jury. Does this bother my viewing? Not in the least! Yet put me in front of a show like Law and Order or Chicago P.D., and I'd spend every moment of forced viewing complaining about everything from inadmissible confessions to the likelihood of a police detective being able to afford living in a Manhattan loft without accepting some kind of graft from the syndicate.

Therefore, the question before the house is why I demand certain things from current television shows, while I let other things go in the classic genre. Is it selective enforcement of logic, or is it merely a symptom of something deeper?

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My theory, and that's all it is, is a combination of original thought plus ideas cribbed from sources I can no longer locate, so if you're one of those sources looking for credit, forgive me for swiping your ideas. (And let me know, so I can do it again.)

You don't really expect me to buy that, do you?

I could probably write an entire book on this, but in brief, my theory is that classic television didn't attempt to create the same level of "realism" that exists in today's shows. Instead, the main characters— McGarrett and Mannix, to name a couple— represented archetypes, symbols of something greater than simply an individual character on a show. I recall reading somewhere that Mike Connors, the actor who played Joe Mannix, admitted that his type of private detective, a throwback to Spade and Marlowe and the rest, had already been gone for decades by the time the series premiered in the late 1960s. I've read elsewhere that the life of an actual private detective is, for the most part, pretty dull; most of them have never shot anyone, and they're much more likely to investigate an employee accused of dipping a finger in the till to checking out a scandalous murder that invariably introduces them to a bevy of glamorous and deadly femme fatales.

But would we watch a show like that? Probably not, unless it was a reality show on Discovery.

From the get-go then, a show like Mannix was never intended to be that realistic. You might see him bleed from the corner of his mouth, but for as violent a show as it was said to be in the day, you see more gore in the average trailer for a Scorsese or Tarentino movie. As such, while it was far more serious and deeper than, say, a cartoon, you were meant to watch it for something other than hyper-realism. From the simple good-vs-evil showdown to a commentary on current events to an allegory of the human condition, these shows were trying to sell you something that was not meant to be believable in the small bits, just the bigger ones. Call it a non-science fiction form of fantasy, in which heroes can be shot, beaten, and subjected to all manner of abuse that the human body was never intended to endure, all in pursuit of the larger goal of entertainment, with perhaps a message or two on the side.

What these shows often did have going for them, though, was logic. Take Mission: Impossible, for example. Could there be a government agency that really comes up with the kind of intricate plots for which the IMF team was famous, composed of incredibly beautiful women (Barbara Bain) and darkly handsome men (the rest of them), with a success rate of 100%? I can't say for certain, but I suspect not. And yet if you try to watch Mission: Impossible with an eye toward that kind of realism, you're done for. What you do find, however, is an exceptionally logical plot. Once you suspend a certain level of disbelief, you find that every element of this week's scheme makes sense and flows logically from one element to the next. If there is a roadblock that pops up, it's perfectly reasonable to think that the minds responsible for cooking up such a plan in the first place could ad-lib their way out of any trouble. Think of it as improv theater for the national security set, and you've got it made.

In contrasting these shows with the fare served up today, I describe the difference in one phrase: realism is not plausibility. You may disagree with me on this, but I believe the contrast between realism and plausibility is more than a distinction without a difference. If you watch an episode of any given police procedural today, you find out that people do, in fact, bleed when they're punched or shot, and that the world in general is a messier place than it looked back when. Fine.

But in other ways, these shows seem far less plausible than their counterparts from the olden days. When I look at these impossibly hip detectives, with their incredibly ability to tap into virtually any computer system in the known universe in less time than it takes for this laptop to boot up and go through a virus scan, I have to wonder. When I see them living in the incredible lofts I mentioned earlier, I wonder why Internal Affairs isn't looking into their finances. When I see a celebrity "consultant" like Richard Castle (remember him?) allowed to not only sit in on interrogations but ask questions as well, I wonder what the accused's attorney is going to say about this in court.

OK, you're thinking, I get it. You don't like what's on TV today. (Not completely true, but we'll let it pass for now.) You prefer the old shows to the new ones. (I'll readily plead guilty to that.) But aren't you trying to have it both ways?  I don't think so, and here's my explanation as to why.

The idealized policeman?

In an attempt to make today's characters deeper, more realistic, and often with a deep psychological backstory that gets parceled out in drips and drops via flashback, the show's creators make it that much harder to view them as mythic archetypes. Whereas the classic Steve McGarrett was a stand-in for the entire system of American justice, the McGarrett of the reboot was just another hot-shot detective with a hipster wardrobe and a military past that occasionally sends him into places like North Korea. That's when you get to the "give me a break" point in a show, because you're being asked to believe something that just isn't plausible, and in doing so it doesn't matter how grimy the city looks, or how much blood flows from someone's bullet wounds.

Part of this, I suppose, is due to the growth of ensemble television, and the concurrent fact that casting a single actor as the star of a regular series, a la Mannix, with only a supporting cast, would probably be prohibitively expensive, unless you're HBO or Netflix. Ensembles rarely leave room for mythological giants in their midst. But I do think I'm on to something here. I don't get upset when something unrealistic happens to the protagonist in one of my classic TV shows, because I don't view him as simply an individual—he's more than that. I don't know if there's ever been a lawyer like Perry Mason in real life, but I also don't know of a better ambassador for what the American legal system should be than Mason. A show like The Good Fight may present a more realistic view of the courtroom, but I don't think it would inspire you to realize just how perfect our system of justice should be.* Likewise, when I read the late Efrem Zimbalist Jr. discuss how many FBI agents told him they were inspired to join  the agency because of his show, I ask myself if that could happen today. Note that I don't say it couldn't happen, but I can't help thinking you'd be more likely to sign up for N.C.I.S. in order to play with the cool computers and meet goth scientists.

*Yes, I know it isn't that way now and probably never was, but it thrills the imagination in the same way that the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution make the heart skip a beat: we may not follow either of them today, but that doesn't make their principles any the less stirring.

Archetypes and myths were the stuff of which heroes were made. Realistically, we tell ourselves, heroes like that don't exist, or are rarely found, which is why we don't find them on TV. We don't believe in heroes that much, or in anything else for that matter. We're too cynical, too knowing, to with-it to fall for that claptrap. That makes it that much harder to sell the kind of hero I talk about here, the one who seems oblivious to things that would stop mere mortals. And perhaps that does give us a more realistic view of the world, albeit a less interesting one.

I don't really know if I've made a dent in my theory; I feel I've spent all my time setting up arguments that could feel superficial because I haven't built them out far enough, and any one of you might be able to tear it apart with well-founded arguments of your own, ones that might be both realistic and plausible. Maybe it does take a book to do it justice. (Unless Joseph Campbell already covered it in a chapter of one of his.) But when that book does come out, you'll probably be more likely to find it in the sociology area than television, because in the end this discussion isn't really about television at all. And if you have anything to add to it, I promise I'll mention you in the index. TV