Broadcasting Telecasting (Jan-Mar 1956)

CAPITAL TYPES #20 SECURITY GUARD Alert to everything that goes on: usually sees first robin of the season around August 10th. Once worked for the railroad but lost three Pullman cars and a locomotive. Loves parades; carries bass drum every Independence Day. Won local contest for most acrobatic cheerleader while in high school. And Washington advertisers are winning all the way when they use WTOP Radio. WTOP gives them (1) the largest average share of audience (2) the most quarter-hour wins (3) Washington's most popular personalities and (4) ten times the power of any other radio station in the Washington area. WTOP RADIO Operated by The Washington Post Broadcast Division • Represented by CBS Radio Spot Sales IN REVIEW ELDER WISE MAN IRISH PLAYWRIGHT Sean O'Casey is the answer to an interviewer's dream — he's gay, communicative and companionable. Sympathetically treated by NBC-TV film cameras, Jan. 22's Elder Wise Man laughed and sang, philosophized, versified, criticized and told tales about himself and other drama immortals, all in an unstinting spirit. Dressed in a sweater and beanie, Sean O'Casey showed himself to be a theatrical personality, as indeed he has every right to be. Robert Emmett Ginna Jr., billed simply as "a young American friend," was in tune with his subject. He managed to ask all the big questions in a leisurely way, to show the O'Casey family, home and study in Devon, England, and to keep all the show's values in balance. It's a smart move on the network's part to pick interviewers individually suited to each subject in this series. The viewer has the intended feeling of being in the presence of greatness during these interviews— and it's a pleasant feeling when the great one is so charming as Sean O'Casey. NBC has developed the filmed, location interview to a fine point. It comes over in a spirit of sincerity that makes the everyday live interview suffer by comparison. Production cost: Approximately $41,000. Broadcast sustaining on NBC-TV, Sunday, Jan. 22, at 2-2:30 p.m. EST. Producer-director: Robert Graff; associate producer: Beatrice Cunningham; film editor: Sidney Meyers; cameraman: W. Suschitzky; sound: Tom Druce. SALUTE TO ASCAP THE NOSTALGIA over in Ed Sullivan's corner last week was, to use ASCAPer Oscar Hammerstein's words, "as high as an elephant's eye." It was quite apparent from the outset of Mr. Sullivan's fifth "Salute to ASCAP" that the calloused rock 'n roll crowd could, if it wished, switch to NBC, so crowded was Memory Lane with oldtimers of the musical world. Just about everybody who used to be a musical somebody back in the days before the first Mercury, dropped in for a brief run through of their most memorable contributions to the ASCAP library, and we're sure that the screens in many American homes were blurred that night by rolling tears. (In case anybody got the idea that ASCAP is in reality an old folks' home of shopworn and displaced composers, the Sullivan show played host also to such contemporaries as Mitch Miller and Julie Styne.) Production costs: Approximately $65,000. Sponsored by Lincoln-Mercury Dealers through Kenyon & Eckhardt Inc., New York, Sun., 8-9 p.m. EST on CBS-TV. Starring Billy Daniels, John Raitt, Claramae Turner, Pat Rooney, Will Oakland, Margaret and Barbara Whiting, Frank Silvers, Helen Kane, Rose Murphy, Cab and Lael Calloway, Mitch Miller, Eddie Burnett, Maude Nugent Jerome, Julie Styne, Jack Norworth, and Frank Loesser. Producers: Ed Sullivan and Mario Lewis; director-choreographer: John Wray; musical director: Ray Bloch. CAMERA THREE WCBS-TV New York's Peabody Award-winning Camera Three, which premiered on CBSTV for the first time a week ago Sunday, has already pioneered in the "off-beat"; in the year it has been shown in New York, the program has dwelled on the literary output of 19th century metaphysicians — Walt Whitman, Herman Melville and other writers. Last week, for its initial network showing, it picked an enormously difficult writer: Feodor Dostoyevsky. In a brilliant one-man enactment of his "Dream of a Ridiculous Man," this series again proved that television is a wide-open, flexible medium. Through the use of a bare stage, sharp lighting contrasts and a very poetic actor named John Drainie, "Dream" became very much alive. Certainly, "Dream of a Ridiculous Man" has little mass-appeal, particularly with such Dostoyevsky-isms as: ". . . when men became greedy, they became humanitarians and began to search for universal truth and wisdom. They who disagreed became criminals, so justice was established. To carry out justice, men devised the guillotine. . . ■" Perhaps such morbid explanations of modern society had better be left unsaid after 12 noon on Sunday, but we certainly hope that CBS-TV sees fit to expose Camera Three to a larger audience in the months to come. Production costs: $5,000. Broadcast sustaining on CBS-TV, Sunday, 11:30-12 noon EST Jan. 22, originating from WCBS-TV New York. Producer-Adaptor: Robert Herridge; director: Francis Moriarty; narrator: James Mac Andrew; music: Tom Scott; production supervisor: Clarence Worden; advisory consultant: Dr. Edward C. Bowen, N. Y. Dept. of Educ. FORT LARAMIE LIKE TV's Rin-Tin-Tin series, CBS Radio's Fort Laramie is set in an army outpost in Indian country in the 1870's, but there the resemblance ceases. No dog-and-boy story, Fort Laramie is rather a wild west version of What Price Glory whose main characters, in this case Capt. Lee Quince and Sgt. Gorce of the U. S. Cavalry, spend half their time grousing about how tough life in the army is and the other half proving that it's the only life for them. Writer John Meston and producer-director Norman Macdonnell, whose work on Gunsmoke has won them critical acclaim, have in Fort Laramie a good locale for an equally successful series. Raymond Burr as the captain and Vic Perrin as the sergeant handled their parts with professional aplomb. A special fanfare is due Bill James and Ray Kemper, the program's sound effects men, for the sounds of horses walking, trotting, galloping, the creaking of harness, the clanking of metal gear, the stirring notes of a cavalry bugle and all the other background noises that give the heroic adventures an auditory cloak of authenticity. Production cost: $15,000. Broadcast sustaining on CBS Radio, Sun., 5:306 p.m. EST. Producer-director: Norman Macdonnell; writer: John Meston; sound effects: Bill James and Ray Kemper. BOOKS PERSONAL INFLUENCE, by Elihu Katz and Paul F. Lazarsfeld. The Free Press, Glencoe, III. 400 pp. $6. DID you buy that brand of toothpaste, or go to that movie, or vote for that candidate because of something you saw on tv, heard on the radio or read in the newspaper? Or did you make the choice you did because of the personal influence of a friend or acquaintance? This book studies, to quote its subtitle, "the part played by people in the flow of mass communications." A serious sociological treatise, Personal Influence is not easy reading, but anyone interested in knowing more about why people do what they do will find it a valuable source of ideas. Page 14 • January 30, 1956 Broadcasting • Telecasting