Motion Picture Daily (Oct-Dec 1955)

Motion Picture Daily Who's Where ABC changes, effective today: ERNEST E. STERN, publicity man i ager, to director of advertising, promotion and publicity for the western division TV Network, Los Angeles; ADOLPH L. SETON, from assistant to publicity man ' ager, New York; ANTHONY LEIGHTON, from photo editor to assistant publicity manager; CHRISTIE BARTER, from assistant to photo editor; SEYMOUR , VAL in as copy chief, audience i promotion; ART FOLEY, in as as i sistant photo editor. HERBERT W. HOBLER has been ! named vice-president in charge ] of sales for TelePrompter Cor. poration, New York. Others: ' WARREN ABRAMS, stations division head; WILLIAM MARSH, , public speaking and staging division; JAMES BLAIR, sales service j division; NAT MYERS, director of operations; PHIL ELBERT, compj troller. ! DONALD DRUCKER has joined : George Blake Enterprises, Inc., TV i film producers, as film editor; ! GEORGE GOODMAN added as I film expediter, and JACK LIEBER • MAN as studio manager. HARRIET KAPLAN and LILY VEIDT will join the Harry C. Brown Agency November 1, handling talent. JASON LANE has been named manager of research for the NBC Film Division, Ted Sisson, director of the division, announced. STATION TO STATION It was real slick timing that went into the installation and use of its 20,000-watt transmitter and single section antenna by WHTN Television, Channel 13, in Huntington, W. Va. Also involved was remodeling of the studio, and acquiring a full staff. The station serves 1,300,000 persons in 340,000 homes in a tri-state area. It was a sterling 24-day job. A planned community antenna network, coming more and more into use, is under way, as in some other communities across the country, in Eugene, Ore., with coaxial cables strung across the area from four tall antennas on a hillside by Abar TV Cable Company. For a fee, owners may tap into the cable instead of having individual antennas. The initial fee to subscribers is reported at $135, with an additional monthly charge amounting to $3.75. A smart new departure in theatrical seating is employed in TV Theatre No. 2 at KTLA's Sunset Monday, October 17, 1955 Television Today "SOMEWHERE, U.S.A." IS JUST NOWHERE, OUR MAN COMPLAINS up in the place she knew so well. Haverville, U. S.A. is supposedly the average American small town community, a place that doesn't exist and thus has about as much reality as a country club on Mars. In recent years motion picture producers have discovered the importance of geographic locations, and not just for the pretty vistas they offer. The surface story of "Three Coins in the Fountain" could have taken place nowhere but in Rome and Venice, but in that very fact it took on an individuality of meaning that invited audience belief and, in turn, identification — both for people who had never been there and those who might not give a rap for the scenery. Sir: Television Today, in its issue of September 26, properly drew attention to the fact that "Kukla, Fran and Ollie" now is the only major network origination from Chicago, and we indicated that "a good way to head off criticism of network operation would be to provide at least a semblance of national originations." That's well and good but it seems to me, as a private televiewer whose roots go back to a small town called Barrington in Illinois, that the problem goes somewhat deeper than network origination. The new television season has gotten under way on a wave of gags — from Milton Berle, Bob Hope, Red Skelton and George Gobel, to name a few — which highlight the existence of Forest Lawn, the Los Angeles Freeway, Disneyland, smog and the Beverly Hilton Hotel, each a phenomenon indiginous to that very small area of California where the above-mentioned live, work, love and play. It's unimportant that 99 per cent of this nation's 160,000,000 citizens will have absolutely no idea what the Beverly Hilton looks like until they take their vacations next summer. What is important is the peculiar rootlessness of so much television comedy and drama today. This rootlessness is a double-edged thing, resulting in a provincialism in television comedy that is preoccupied with the superficialities of perhaps three small geographical areas, and in television drama which consciously de-emphasizes any geographical identification whatsoever. A whimsical cartographer some years ago put together a map of the United States that was simply New York and California separated by a fancy pub called the Pump Room in Chicago and a couple of oil derricks that were Texas, and which was purportedly a Hollywood producer's view of the nation as he whisked from one coast to another. Something on this order might now be appropriate as far as television comics are concerned, except that the introduction of the nonstop DC-7 has eliminated even Chicago. This provincialism was — and is — present in radio, but is all the more striking in the visual medium of television. Broadcast over our extensive system of communications, it has conditioned the American public from Bangor to San Antonio so that, like the mouse which salivates at the sound of a gong, the public roars with appreciation at the mere mention of smog. In the field of television drama, rootlessness is even more distressing. A case in point is the fate of Molly Goldberg, who this season moved her family from its comfortable apartment in the Bronx to a never-never land identified as Haverville, U. S. A. The results have been disastrous. Gertrude Berg's chronicle of family life in the Bronx which, for sheer detail, might be compared to Marcel Proust's endless work, had a validity and reality that was inextricably bound It is in the field of soap opera that this lack of regional identification is most marked. Look them over and you'll find that they all take place in such towns as Fairview, Centerville and State City. A perennial nighttime show takes place in Big Town, for which reason I can't get at all excited about it. This is not to advocate location production for such shows, but only the added inducement to belief afforded by specific times and places. I'm a pushover for any "and then" narative, no matter how maudlin, and a soap opera that took place in Yakima (where I've never been either) probably would have me as a steady viewer. One of the reasons that a famous old radio jawbreaker has continued for so long may be that it has always existed in a real place. When Mother Barber goes off on a toot, it's to Williamsburg, Virginia, not Centerville. "Big Story" also has made some notable contributions to the use of actual locations. Jackie Gleason's Ralph Kramden is honest and appealing because, among other things, Ralph is a bus driver in New York City, not Big Town, and that disreputable apartment he shares with Alice could exist nowhere but in New York, or perhaps Chicago, or Pittsburgh, but never in State City. I'm probably old-fashioned in that I like to know where stories take place and I've found that when I do know (and believe in that place's existence), it's usually been a better show. Thornton Wilder, in writing such a wild farcefantasy as "The Skin of Our Teeth," which might very easily have been laid in Anywhere, U. S. A., had the good sense to place it in — of all places — Passaic, N. J. Last night's "Wide Wide World" telecast was a fairly spectacular look at some of the geography which this nation offers to television producers, dramatists and even comedians and their well-publicized writers. There are, all together, 48 different states in the union! Some people are haunted by phantoms from space. With me it's those phantoms from Centerville and gags from Forest Lawn. Sincerely, VINCENT CANBY Studios in Hollywood. Approved by the local fire department, the method is called "continental seating." There is no center aisle, using two side aisles, each four feet wide. A distance of 51 inches is provided between rows of seats, making for a high degree of comfort. The Madison Square Garden sports schedule on Station WPIX, Channel 11 in New York, for 1955 56 is almost sold out, it is reported happily by the station. The series begins Saturday, October 29, with a schedule which calls for no less than 58 Fall and Winter championship events. Harold Harris is director of news for WNDU-TV and WNDUAM, Notre Dame stations at South Bend. He is a former news editor at radio stations WJOB, and WJIZ, Hammond, that state; and previously had a newspaperman's and correspondent's career in several locations. EVERY DAY ON EVERY CHANNEL BROOKS COSTUMES 3 West 61st St., NYC. -Tel. PL. 7-5800