Broadcasting Telecasting (Oct-Dec 1956)

IN REVIEW SAVROLA REAL matinee fare — romance, intrigue and melodrama, with a full share of passionate speeches, bloodshed and tears — made up "Savrola," written in 1897 by the 23-yearold Winston Ghurchill and dramatized Nov. 15 on NBC Matinee Theatre, with Sir Winston's lovely daughter Sarah as the feminine star. Very beautiful she was, too, sweeping down the staircase into the ballroom of the palace, or gazing up to the stars with the young leader of the revolutionary party whom she was trying to beguile into telling her his secret plans so she could inform her dictator husband. But instead she and the y.l. of the r.p. found themselves in each other's arms, and that's when the door burst open to reveal them to her righteously incensed husband. Yes, it was that kind of plot. But "Savrola" departed from the ZendaGraustark royal-romance-in-a-mythical-kingdom routine by packaging a sizable dose of political philosophy along with its heartbreak and heroics, concluding with the double moral that love conquers all but that revolution is more apt to establish a new dictator on the throne than it is to bring freedom to the people. Miss Churchill's gowns, the brilliant uniforms and the settings, especially the palace ballroom and the housetop observatory, gave NBC's color cameras something to work with and the result was a delight to the eye of the beholder at a color receiver. If NBC-TV keeps this up the women who watch in the afternoon will soon see to it that there's a color set in every home. Production costs: Approximately $48,000. Broadcast in color and black-and white on NBC-TV, Mon.-FrL, 3-4 p.m. EDT with participating sponsors. "Savrola" was broadcast Nov. 15. Producer and director: Albert McCleery; assist, director: Ray Montgomery; costumes: Jack Baer; sets: Jim Buckley; adapters of Sir Winston Churchill's novel: Frank and Doris Hursley. Cast for program: Sara Churchill, Lamont Johnson, Geoffrey Tone, Dayton Lummis, Val Dufour, John Irving, Norman DuPont, Tom Brown Henry. OUR MR. SUN WHEN CBS-TV last Monday presented "Our Mr. Sun," a number of emotions were evoked. To the critical eye the first was one of sheer admiration for the deft handling of a different subject. To the non-critical, it was rapt attention to a fascinating story. Purpose of the story, pure and simple, was to tell about the sun, what it is and what it means to us. To lift it out of dull scientific fact they (producer-director Frank Capra and associates) "gimmicked" the story by having a "scientist" (Dr. Frank Baxter) and a "fiction writer" (Eddie Albert) present the factual side of the story for two animated cartoon characters, Mr. Sun and Father Time. The program, which replaced Studio One for that night, achieved its purpose ad Broadcasting • Telecasting mirably. It was sponsored by A T & T, which promised there would be more like it. We enthusiastically hope so. Just to add a grain of salt to the analysis, it can be noted that television as an art took a back seat to the talent which prepared the show. Television was simply a carrier — however, a superb one. It is interesting to think how many millions of people awoke Tuesday morning with more knowledge about their everyday sun than ever before. This, indeed, was education. Commercial tv can be gratified for having presented it. Production costs: approximately $200,000. Sponsored by American Telephone & Telegraph through N. W. Ayer & Son, N. Y., on CBS-TV Mon., Nov. 19, 10-11 p.m. EST. Animation sequences: United Productions of America. BOOKS THE CONSTITUTION: By Joseph N. Welch with Richard Hofstadter and the staff of Omnibus. Illus., 1 1 1 pp., Houghton-Mifflin Co., Boston: 1956 — $3.75. SOME people may prefer their U. S. Constitution rare (i.e. verbatim), others medium (with marginalia and footnotes), but we prefer ours well-done. That's why the three programs seen earlier this year on Omnibus (then on CBS-TV) for three successive Sundays dealing with this marvelous document was just our dish from beginning to end. Under the aegis of Boston's most famous 20th Century barrister, Joseph N. Welch, and Columbia U.'s Prof. Richard Hofstadter, described by Mr. Welch as "an imaginative, resourceful and indefatigable editor," Omnibus came up with a lesson in American history viewers aren't likely to forget for some time. To insure against the day they do forget, H-M Co. has taken the pains to put the three programs — in their entirety and lavishly illustrated with actual off-theair photos — into hard covers. It is one of the most beautiful history books to come across our desk in a long while, from binding to type and — most important perhaps — so far as content is concerned. In prefacing the three programs ("One Nation," "One Nation, Indivisible" and "With Liberty and Justice for All") Mr. Welch, who neither claims credit for the series (nor, naturally, for the U.S. Constitution), pays homage to Omnibus' Bob Saudek "whose genius created a form for what otherwise would have been formless," director Richard Dunlap, "a sensitive and perceptive man," and staffmember Mary Ahern who "brought to the project, first, limitless industry plus a really high talent and, second, a curious ability to make a somewhat indolent narrator work." THE MASTER GUIDE FOR SPEAKERS, by Lawrence B. Brings. T. S. Denison & Co., 321 Fifth Ave. So., Minneapolis 15, Minn. 409 pp. $4.95. "IT IS a generally accepted fact that a speaker's favorable impression on an audience hinges upon his ability to know how to begin his speech and how to end it," the author states in his foreword. In this volume, which is designed for use by speakers, TOP RATING IN CINCINNATI! ELLEUY QUEEN starring series HUGH MARLOWE 488 Madison Ave. New York 22 PLaza 5-2100 November 26, 1956 • Page 15 •