Broadcasting Telecasting (Jan-Mar 1956)

IN REVIEW KNOW JOE? HIS PICTURE IS FAMOUS IN 3 STATES! Yes, Joe Floyd's big-powered KlpLO beams a picture that blankets South Dakota's large trading zones, plus populous areas in Minnesota and Iowa. It's a terrific picture for you to be in— the magic spot for smart merchandisers who want to sell a whole group of volume markets at one flash, and for one smart buy. THE BIG TV COMBO K E ■ 1 mm ' » ABERDEEN ' ; .' L o 78 % °^ South Dakota, plus western Minnesota, northwestern Iowa CHANNEL ABERDEEN ' I WATERTOWN » : # HURON K \ LOTv JOE FLOYD, President Evans Nord, Gen. Mgr. Larry Bentson, V. P. NBC PRIMARY H-R Representative MAGIC FLUTE COULD MOZART himself find fault with NBC Opera Theatre's "Magic Flute" Sunday? Maybe he, or maybe the well tempered, hi-fi ear would want to point out some imperfection. But here's at least one auditor who would not. NBC apparently spared no expense for these two hours. It hired two prestige writers, poet W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman, to write a new translation for the Mozart bicentennial telecast. Their words were worthy of Mozart's notes. George Balanchine, N. Y. City Center Ballet's imaginative choreographer, did a glittering job of staging the colorcast. And, most important, Peter Adler's musicians, led by William Lewis, John Reardon, Leontyne Price and Laurel Hurley, demonstrated acting as well as singing ability in their demanding roles. Miraculously, most of their words could be understood. Of course, Mozart's librettist didn't do right by him. But the music's sweet reason makes a senseless plot seem unimportant. Maybe the network and its writers will dare to doctor the story a little next time. And there really should be a next time. Production costs: $150,000. Broadcast sustaining on NBC-TV in color and black-and-white, Sun., Jan 15, 3:30-5:30 p.m. EST. Cast: Leontyne Price, Laurel Hurley, Adelaide Bishop, Yi-Kwei Sze, William Lewis, John Reardon, Andrew McKinley, 30 singers and actors, Symphony of the Air Orchestra. Producer: Samuel Chotzinoff; director: Kirk Browning; music and artistic director: Peter Herman Adler; stage director: George Balanchine; English translation: W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman; special production consultant: Lincoln Kirstein; scenery and costumes: Rouben Ter-Arutunian. BLITHE SPIRIT A LACKLUSTER performance by the playwright himself surprisingly enough was the one jarring note in an otherwise mildly funny television version of Noel Coward's stage hit "Blithe Spirit." Mr. Coward's stilted carryingson during the Ford Star Jubilee colorcast of Jan. 14 gave rise, on more than one occasion, to the thought that perhaps the fabulous Britisher should have quit when he was 90 minutes ahead (in his American tv debut last season with Mary Martin). On the other hand, Claudette Colbert, in the role of Coward's second wife, and Mildred Natwick, portraying the zany spiritualist Madame Arcadi, fared much better in the Coward comedy of supernatural errors. Miss Colbert's deft vocal inflections managed to wring every bit of humor from her somewhat tepid lines, and Miss Natwick's playing of a plum role was all that could be desired — unless, of course, Margaret Rutherford, who was the Madame Arcadi of the British film some years ago, could have been imported for the production. There also was little to quarrel about in Lauren Bacall's playing of the first wife, who returns from the hereafter to give the play its plot. Production costs: $200,000. Sponsored by Ford Div. of Ford Motor Co. through J. Walter Thompson Co. on CBSTV, Sat., Jan. 14, 9:30-11 p.m. EST. Live and in color from Hollywood. Director: Noel Coward; producers: Lance Hamilton and Charles Russell; staging: Frederick de Cordova; art director: Robert Tyler Lee; producer for CBS-TV: Richard Lewine. Entire production under supervision of Harry Ackerman, CBS-TV executive producer of special projects. OUTSIDE U.S.A. IF TELEVISION is made up of fleeting images to be seen and forthwith to be forgotten, ABCTV and commentator Quincy Howe have a pat formula in their news-in-depth treatment of the world's troubled areas. The half-hour "Italy: A Troubled Volcano" essayed pictorially developments and history since World War II, the Communist problem, the unrest beneath the surface-smooth Italy of artistic, architectural and scenic splendor, the overpopulated north and the povertystricken south, the need for land reform, the meaning of the existing bond between the U. S. and Italy and the influence of the Roman Catholic Church. To put it bluntly: too big a bite to chew in 30 minutes. Some of the material presented was interesting— notably, police action in bludgeoning a Communist-led street riot; a roundup of black marketeers and female fraternizers of GIs (in the post-surrender occupation period); ski troops on a NATO maneuver; the American landing at Salerno, and the seen before mob treatment of the bodies of Mussolini and his mistress. Not only has Italy a problem to live with for some years to come, but Mr. Howe and the program's other editors have a dilemma of their own making: how to squeeze into a halfhour "picture" what a Toynbee fits leisurely into a few thousand-page volumes. Production costs: estimated $5,000. Broadcast sustaining on ABC-TV, Tues., 10 10:30 p.m., live-film originating from New York. Director: Marshall Biskin; editorial producer: Robert Carlisle. LOST FROM the standpoint of pure television artiness — e.g., absence of elaborate settings, superimposed electronic images, and the use of a Greek chorus in telling a story — last Tuesday's Playwrights 56 was a masterpiece of grotesque staging. But as a tv adaptation of Berton Roueche's clinical case study of a victim struck down by amnesia as originally published by the New Yorker a few years ago, Arnold Schulman's tv adaptation, "Lost," was just that, in a welter of tricky lighting, surrealistic film clips and dramatic cliches. Seemingly, neither adaptor Schulman nor director Arthur Penn were sufficiently impressed with the naked horror conveyed in Mr. Roueche's article of a maladjusted man in search of his own identity through a maze of strange cities, hotels and bars to leave well enough alone. Thus, they tossed in a stream of needless dialogue, an antagonist or two and the inevitable friendly psychiatrist who helped the victim out of his dilemma in time for the closing commercial. A thoroughly competent cast, led by Steven Hill and Vivian Nathan, was complemented by the classic choral technique, which itself might be further exploited by other tv directors. Production costs: $55,000. Sponsored by Pontiac Motors Div., General Motors Corp., through MacManus, John & Adams Inc., New York, every other Tuesday, 9:30-10:30 p.m. EST on NBC-TV. "Lost" adapted for tv from New Yorker magazine's "Annals of Medicine," June 19, 1954, by Berton Roueche. Writer: Arnold Schulman. Producer: Fred Coe; associate producer: Bill Nichols; director: Arthur Penn; associate director: Dominick Dunne; script editor: Oliver Flanders; casting director: Everett Chambers; music director: Harry Sosnik. Page 14 • January 23, 1956 Broadcasting Telecasting