Broadcasting Telecasting (Jan-Mar 1956)

Sell the Nation's 14th Largest Market! . . . use WGR's Salesmen of the Air MUSICAL. CLOCK Starring John Lascelles 6:30 9:15 AM — Mon. thru Sat. Buffalo's oldest service-type wake-up program. Music, time, weather. Helen Neville Show 1:00 1:15 PM Mon. Fri. Hints and News for women from Buffalo's outstanding homemaker's counselor. Live audience. PLUS Outstanding 5 and 10 minute News and Weather Spots NBC 6 filiate Representatives: FREE AND PETERS IN REVIEW INSIDE BEVERLY HILLS IF Mr. and Mrs. America want to see how the movie stars live, they will have to buy the 50-cent map and look for themselves, regardless of what Art Linkletter promised in opening NBC-TV's Inside Beverly Hills spectacular. Other than some excellent dancing (partly filmed down Wilshire Blvd.), a couple of Tony Martin songs in good mood settings and a dash of Marx Brothers' humor, the show almost didn't get inside. Occasioned by Beverly Hills' 50th anniversary, the NBC-TV program spoofed the famous little city more than lightly. A big share of its illustrious residents clutched coffee cups in a make-believe restaurant in NBC's color studios at Burbank and watched film inserts of visits with their equally illustrious neighbors. The film clips gave the intent viewer only a fleeting glimpse of this ultimate in suburbia. Often they were awkward front-lawn interviews showing lineups of children and parents instead of homes, although the camera tour of Harold Lloyd's fabulous estate ("16 or 20 acres," he couldn't recall exactly) sparked imagination of what was not seen elsewhere. An entertainment highlight was the cartoon drama used by U. S. Rubber to impress the safety features of its auto tires. Production costs: $150,000. Sponsored by U. S. Rubber, Mabelline, Turns, Kraft Food Co. on NBC-TV as Jan. 29 Sunday Spectacular, in color and black-andwhite, every fourth Sunday, 7:30-9 p.m. EST. Producer: John Guedel; assoc. producer: Hariy Spears; director: Dick McDonough; assoc. director: Roy Montgomery: writers: Glenn Wheaton, Mannie Manheim; unit production manager: Gino Conte; musical director: Gordon Jenkins; art director: Jay Krause; choreography: Earl Barton. Stars: Art Linkletter, Groucho Marx, Tony Martin, Peter Law ford, Sheldon Leonard, Chico Marx, Helen O'Connell, plus the movie greats whose homes were visited or who appeared as special guests. POLITICS, U.S.A. THE WISDOM of keeping recordings of old radio programs was never proved better than on Jan. 29, when America's Town Meeting of the Air dug into its grabbag and pulled out "Politics, U.S.A.," a special hour-long documentary made up chiefly of the highlights of political debates on various Town Hall broadcasts over the past 20 years. Here were Republican Presidential candidates Robert A. Taft, Wendell L. Willkie, Thomas E. Dewey and finally the successful one, Dwight D. Eisenhower. Here were Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman, the latter delightfully caught in the exhuberance of the morning-after-election-day of 1948, gleefully imitating H. V. Kaltenborn's reading of vote returns the previous midnight. Here were many more familiar (or at least once familiar) names and voices debating the Third Term, the Fourth Term, government versus business, civil rights and many other burning political issues. Will Rogers Jr., narrator, had little to do except identify the speakers and it was not his fault that frequently and annoyingly the identifications followed the speeches instead of preceeding them. Aside from that minor flaw producer-editor William H. Traum and editorial supervisor Harriet C. Halsband deserve plaudits for selecting from what must have been a terrifying mass of material just the right bits to make up a dramatic picture of Politics, U.S.A. Production costs: Approximately $500-$600. Broadcast Jan. 29 as a special domumentary item of America's Town Meeting of the Air, ABC Radio, Sun., 8-9 p.m. EST. Producer-editor: William H. Traum; editorial supervisor: Harriet C. Halsband; director: Richard Ritter; recording engineer: Phil Pollard. Narrator: Will Rogers Jr. FESTIVAL OF MUSIC IT WAS ALMOST a surfeit of good music that NBC served up Jan. 30 on the Producers' Showcase "Festival of Music" colorcast. Certainly it was a rare treat to hear Sol Hurok's dozen or so performers who represent the cream of the country's artists. But you can't live a lifetime in an hour and a half. Nor did all the performers seem quite happy with this recital form. There just wasn't time to relax. Still it was an exciting evening. Television technique did a lot for the opera favorites that predominated in the program. A camera capsule of the story can make a song, sung in a foreign language, more meaningful than it would ordinarily be. Costumes, sets and lighting managed not to dominate but to enhance the music. Instrumental numbers and Marian Anderson's spirituals, of course, were done in conventional dress, but artful lighting accomplished a stylized effect as beautiful as the dressed-up opera settings. Elaborate production, plus color, made "Festival of Music" the feast it set out to be, with only the chronic complaint after a big meal. The partaker is grateful, but next time let's savor the treats more slowly. Production costs: $200,000. Sponsored by: RCA Victor and Ford Motor Co., both through Kenyon & Eckhardt, N. Y., on NBC-TV Jan. 30, 8-9:30 p.m. Master of ceremonies: Charles Laughton; musicians: Marian Anderson, Renata Tebaldi, Jussi Bjoerling, Zinka Milanov, Jan Peerce, Roberta Peters, Gregor Piatigorsky, Artur Rubinstein, Isaac Stern, Rise Stevens, Blanche Thebom, Mildred Miller, Leonard Warren. Producer: S. Hurok; supervisors: Donald Davis, Dorothy Mathews; director: Kirk Browning; associate supervisor: Andrew McCullough; conductor: Max Rudolf; staging: Herbert Graf; scenery: Burr Smidt; costumes: Noel Taylor; ballet master: Zachary Solov; musical director: George Bassman; continuity: Jay Harrison; assoc. director: Dean Whitmore; technical director: Jack Coffey. SEEN & HEARD BITING THE HAND THAT FEEDS YOU DEPT. LATEST ENTRY: "The Starlet," a drama about Hollywood life, on The Goodyear Playhouse, Jan. 29 (NBC-TV, Sun., 9-10 p.m. EST), which featured the following bit of dialogue: TALENT AGENT: "Well, there's always tv . . ." INGENUE: "Do you think I'm that bad?" No, dear, you're not, but the play was. BOOKS ELECTRONIC ENGINEERING, by Samuel Seely. McGraw-Hill Book Co., 330 W. 42nd St., New York 36, N. Y. 525 pp. $8. THIS textbook, whose author is professor and chairman of the department of electrical engineering at Syracuse U, presents a detailed discussion of the numerous electronic circuits important in such diverse fields as television, radar, electronic control and instrumentation and computers. With its companion volume, Radio Electronics, this book is a revision and enlargement of the author's Electron Tube Circuits, although both books are independent selfcontained texts. Page 14 • February 6, 1956 Broadcasting • Telecasting