Weekly television digest (Jan-Dec 1960)

14 JANUARY 4, 1960 HOLLYWOOD ROUNDUP NEW YORK ROUNDUP Desilu Productions has assigned Cy Howard as producer of a new pilot of Guestward Ho!, starring Vivian Vance . . . Steve Cochran will star in Renegade, a new series being prepared for NBC-TV by John Lee Mahin and Martin Rackin, and to be co-produced by that team and Robert Alexander Productions, owned by Cochran. NBC-TV will also finance Playboy, a half-hour action series to be produced by Cochran’s company . . . Guy Madison will star in a series tentatively called The Man from Oklahoma, to be produced by his own company. The pilot will go into production Jan. 5. Helen Ainsworth is executive producer. Warner Bros, and Alan Ladd’s Jaguar Productions have negotiated a deal for the producer-star to turn out 4 series. Ladd plans Saddle Tramp, a 60-min. Western series in which he and 3 others would be alternate stars, with Ladd playing host. Also planned is an anthology series. The other properties haven’t been selected. Homer Productions, owned by Lou Breslow, Ben Stoloff and Jack Harvey, has arranged with Ziv TV to produce 26 half-hour segments of a baseball series. Home Run Derby, which goes into production early this month in Chicago. Breslow is producer. Producer Lindsley Parsons will make a pilot, C. Q. Calling, for ITC in Jan. . . . Kay Lenard has been named pres, of the TV-radio branch of Writers Guild of America West, succeeding Leonard Freeman, who resigned to become a movie producer at Warner Bros. Producers George Justin and Art Wallace will make a pilot of 36 Maiden Lane in N.Y. for CBS Films. The property, created by Wallace and originally called Million Dollar Claim is about an insurance investigator . . . Jan Clayton will star in The Brown Horse, a situation comedy being produced by Jack Chertok. The pilot goes into production in Jan. Cal. Studios Pres. Philip N. Krasne and producerwriter Phil Rapp’s Senior Enterprises are planning several joint ventures, the first of which will be a pilot of a comedy starring Teddy Rooney & his mother, Martha Vickers. It goes into production Jan. 11 at California. Honeycomb Productions, owned by Jimmie Rodgers & his personal managers, Gabbe, Lutz, Heller & Loeb, plans to finance a pilot of Varsity Show, starring Rodgers. Bob Angus will produce the pilot and negotiations are under way for Mobile Video Tapes Inc. to tape it. Twentieth Century-Fox TV has signed Henry Slate as a regular for its Adventures in Paradise series . . . William Fineshriber Jr., consultant to the Television Program Export Assn., will speak at a dinner meeting of the Alliance of Television Film Producers Jan. 5. Screen Actors Guild has named Maverick star James Garner to its board, succeeding William Lundigan, resigned . . . Producer Everett Freeman and star John Forsythe of Bachelor Father have bought G. B., novel by Walter F. Morris, as a movie vehicle in which Forsythe will star, with Freeman producing. Robert E. Kearney has been named vp of Filmaster’s new govt, film div., and will also be gen. mgr. of the firm’s Orlando, Fla. studio. Screen Gems has scored its 2nd sale of a network film series to ABC-TV within a month. As with the forthcoming SG-ABC documentary series based on Churchill’s writings (Vol. 15:51 p8), the new sale involves an offbeat property: The Flagstones, a 30-min. situation comedy that’s unique in being the only fully animated cartoon show currently scheduled for nighttime viewing. Production of The Flagstones, which deals in contemporary language with family-life problems in prehistoric times, will be by Hanna-Barbera productions, currently producing Huckleberry Hound, Ruff & Reddy and Quick Draw McGraw for SG. ABC Films offered further evidence that the stationlevel market for reruns was still holding up last week. WPST-TV Miami, WBRZ Baton Rouge, KIEM-TV Eureka, Cal., KVOS-TV Bellingham, Wash., KOOK-TV Billings, Mont, bought the 42-episode Meet McGraw series, putting it in 38 markets. People’s Choice has been picked up by WDBJ-TV Roanoke, KCEN-TV Temple-Waco Tex., WGAL-TV Lancaster, Pa., WIMA-TV Lima, Ohio, WBTV Charlotte, N.C., KRON-TV San Francisco & KLZ-TV Denver, bringing the station lineup to 116. Ziv TV plans to increase its 117-man sales staff by 20% in 1960 “to keep pace with the sharply heightened demand” for syndicated telefilms, the film firm reported last week. Ziv’s release rate in syndication is customarily about 6 series a year, but in recent months Ziv has launched them at the rate of one-a-month. Syndicated sales for Ziv during 1959 ran 22% ahead of the 1958 level, stated sales mgr. Len Firestone. MGM-TV is running virtually neck-&-neck with MCA for top grossing honors in the distribution of feature films to TV. Currently, the 700-picture MGM backlog has accounted for $60 million in station sales since it was launched in mid-1956. MCA’s gross to date on the Paramount backlog (although scored in a little more than a year of selling) is about the same. Robert Saudek Associates, ex-Omnibus producer, has been appointed by the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, to create & produce one or more TV specials for possible network sale next spring. Reginald Allen, exec. dir. for operations of the Center, conceived the TV project which will feature attractions eventually to be made through the center. John Aaron & Jesse Zousmer, creators and ex-producers of CBS-TV’s Person to Person who quit in a huff earlier this fall, may provide their old show with a rival. Discussions are being held between NBC-TV and the A&Z team concerning a new property. Place to Place, which would be based on location-taped interviews. Screen Gems will begin production shortly on The Raven, a detective-adventure series created by Jonas Seinfield & Donald L. Gold. Seinfield & Gold also created Two Faces West, which enters syndication for SG this year. Jerry Franken has been appointed exec. dir. for advertising, promotion & publicity of NTA, headquartering in Beverly Hills. Martin Roberts will continue as promotion dir., Alfred E. F. Stern as publicity dir.. West Coast & Harry Algus, publicity dir., East Coast.