Swing (Feb-Dec 1951)

THE CREAM OF CROSBY and tear on his health. The whole thing then boils down to whether the rest of us have the stamina to endure Ken Murray for two and a half hours every week. Well, he's an engaging low-pressure fellow who wears well. When he first started on CBS-TV, he was all over the place — trading badinage with other come dians, working strenuously in all the sketches and even drinking Budweiser with great zest during the commercial. Over the years he has become less obtrusive. That's the new or anti-Milton Berle trend. Stay out of the animal acts. You'll live longer. The contemporary Ken Murray trades a few jokes, generally of a rather special wolfish nature, with his guests and leers at the pretty girls. There is quite a lot of leering going on in television, but Murray, with his vast countenance, has a leer that outreaches anyone else's and could in a pinch throw a shudder into a girl in the second balcony. On a recent Murray program, there were more girls to leer at than ever before. Virtually the whole sbow was given over to sounding the klaxon for Esquire magazine, especially Esquire's calendar girls. I expect everyone now knows what the Esquire calendar is and that each month is adorned by a longlegged lass in various attitudes of abandon. Well, they had all twelve of them there — some of them the originals, others reproductions of the originals — and each one simpered her way through a little poesy to the effect that she adored men, especially men who bought her diamonds. "This," said a young lady who happened to be watching the same exhibit at the time, "is going to set women back 400 years." It sounded like one of the most elaborate magazine tie-ins of all time. The magazine television tie-in; you give a comedian a full page spread in color; he responds with wild praise over the air for your magazine. But it wasn't. At least, Esquire claims that Mr. Murray's enthusiasm for the magazine, especially its calendar girls, was entirely spontaneous and that the magazine's retort to this hour-long tribute would be only a small plug for Mr. Murray on the editorial page: "Nobody reads the editorial page," said the managing editor of that magazine glumly, "except my mother." Apart from all the pulchritude — and, believe me, unrelieved pulchritude can get awfully monotonous — the Murray show was and usually is a relaxed and expert operation which never pounds at your ears as do so many of the others. One unique feature is a weekly serious dramatic sketch plopped right in the middle of the buffoonery, an idea that has stood up well. In last week's, a young lady running away from life and men, takes refuge with Josephine Hull, who had locked the door against such intrusions nineteen years earlier. After a session together full of psychiatric allusions to their childhoods, the two girls decided they were being silly and returned to the bearpit to face Life and Men. Well, there have been more sensible ones and hereafter the sketches will be written by three of radio's top writers— Arch Oboler, Norman Corwin and Jean HoUoway. While the Esquire salute was not a tie-in, Mr. Murray is not above tic'ins here and there. During the commercial, Sherman Billingsley dropped by to scratch the back of Mr. Murray's sponsor, Budweiser, while Mr. Murray scratched the back of Mr. Billingsley's sponsor, Fatima — both of them puffing, sipping and scratching as if they had three arms. As commercials go, it wasn't bad, but I still prefer the Budweiser horses — massive, august animals who are easily the most dignified and impressive things ever to appear on my television set. "Talk Back" with Happy Felton . . . HAPPY FELTON played host one day to a lady author whose books bears my favorite title for 1951. The author: