Swing (Feb-Dec 1951)

338 Swinq August, mi This annual Summer hibernation of the great names has been done for years in radio and is now being done in television. But there is considerable difference. In radio, the date of departure, the date of return, were fixed and changeless like the tides. We knew to the second when "Amos 'n' Andy" or Jack Benny or the rest of them were coming back. With television, a vast uncertainty hovers over each departing entertainer. "We'll be back in the fall," said Frank Sinatra on his last show. "We don't know just when. But we'll be back." We'll wait, Frankie. A sea of doubt exists as to when these people will come back, or whether — and this is the thought that makes me toss in my bed at night — they'll ever return. And, if they do return, what sort of show will they return in? In radio we knew not only when, but we knew also there'd be no change in Mr. Benny's inflections, or in George's exasperation at Gracie, or in de Kingfish's peculations. But in television, the nature of the vehicle, the identity of the entertainer, the length and expense of the show are shrouded in the hesitancies which exist in the sponsor's mind. In radio it was almost a bookkeeping operation. You invested a certain amount of dough in a certain entertainer and you got fairly measurable results. Television, though, is show business with all its uncertainties, its quixotic human elements, its surprises. This is as it should be. ' The creative impulse cannot exist alongside the slide rule. If a formula works too well — as it did in radio — the inventor and the experimenter are stifled. I devoutly hope that doubts grow like weeds in the minds of both entertainers and sponsors over the Summer. It'll set the boys to thinking, which wouldn't do a bit of harm. So long, Jimmy, Frankie, Miltie, Eddie. Have a good Summer and don't get too fat with complacency. Incidentally, the farewells were at least as fervid as those in radio, and you know how passionate those are. Or perhaps poignant is the word I'm groping for. Durante faded into the N.B.C. darkness, waving goodbye (a trick he's done several times), like Charlie Chaplin walking off into the sunset, or like Gen. MacArthur's old soldier. This proved so effective that ^ Sinatra did it too, and, in his case, they I even struck the set in front of our very | ■ 1» eyes. Frank, abandoned by his cast and i| ^ even by the electricians, then turned his ] { ^ back, a forlorn figure with a suitcase and j i i no place to go, and walked off into the \ 0 C.B.S. darkness. (The C.B.S. darkness is P darker than the N.B.C. darkness, which ' i makes it twice as poignant.) Berle's finale was a little different. He ! ' has never found darkness especially in ; viting. The spotlight never sets on Milton ■ ( Berle. He doesn't like to go wandering ■ j any great distance from the footUghts, ! . either. This left him a little short in the " ' poignance department, but. as recompense, I ' he surrounded himself with a horde of | ' small children and they all sang "In The f ' Good Old Summertime" together. It'^ ' didn't raise a large lump in my throat like j, Durante and Sinatra, but it raised a small ' [ welt which will carry me through the ' j Summer. j ', Actually, Berle didn't, as did the others, disappear altogether. He's been bobbing up '■ all over the place, most recently on Eddie Cantor's farewell show. Mr. Cantor had been laid low by germs. Not entirely prostrated by them, you understand. Nothing has ever succeeded in entirely prostrating Eddie. He was in and out of his | own farewell performance, but he got a ] lot of assistance from Mr. Berle, Jerry | Lewis, Dagmar and Jack E. Leonard. \ It all ended with Berle vilifying to , j Berle's mother on one phone, Eddie cast I ing aspersions on Berle to Ida on the i other. Now if they'd just had Georgie I Jessel in there on a third phone to hij i I mother . . . well, you can't have every t | thing. ^ Those TV Style Shows j OF COURSE we got the style show | with which the afternoon air is stud' ! ded. (Keep your pocketbooks buttoned, ' I men. They're after us again.) \ This one was a showing of bathing | suits enveloping some very pretty girls, , and right here my notes are a little scrambled. I can't follow fashion language