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THAT’S WHEN HARD LUCK HIT OTHER COMICS George Gobel has gone into his sec¬ ond year on TV with the two strikes of tradition weighing nastily against him. The first strike says that when¬ ever you’re on top, you’re fair game to be pulled down. The second says that a comic who is red hot his first year on TV tends to fall on his face the second. Witness Red Skelton and Red Buttons. Skelton’s second race was as miserable as Swaps’. And But¬ tons wasn’t even on the same track. While Gobel is keenly aware of the mental hazards involved in trying to duplicate his resounding success of last season, he is not talking much about them. He figures to go his quiet way, minding his own business and doing what comes naturally. Which is what put him up there in the first place. David O’Malley, Gobel’s partner, man¬ ager and closest friend, is more wor¬ ried about “second season jinx” than Gobel himself. “Trouble is,” O’Malley says, worrying, “people keep going up to George and saying, ‘Watch out, old boy. Second season, you know.’ And pretty soon George is going to start thinking about it and that’s bad. “It’s like the movie bit,” he con¬ tinues. “Everybody told George, “Look out, boy. You’re getting into the movies now. That’s the really rough business. They’ll try to knife you in the back at every turn.’ So George got worried about it, and then dis¬ covered that making a movie—at least, at Paramount—was one of the nicest, pleasantest experiences he ever had.” O’Malley intends to continue to handle Gobel with the same meticu¬ lous, cautious care that marked the young comic’s first season on TV— very few extracurricular appearances, as little excess ballyhoo as possible and careful attention to the quality of the scripts and guest stars. “We want to do an hour-long show on Christmas Day,” O’Malley says, “but that’s still only in the talking stage. And that’s about the only extra thing we want to do. We’ll use movie- star guests on the regular show, but perhaps not so often. We’d like to get some off-beat guests, like Carl Sand¬ burg, but only if they can be fitted naturally into a good script. We don’t want to make the mistake of dragging a ‘name’ in just for the sake of drop¬ ping the name. Name-dropping doesn’t make for a good show.” O’Malley professes not to be overly worried about the new competition being thrown at George this season by CBS. “I just honestly don’t see a Western (Gunsmoke airs three times a month opposite Gobel) cutting into any good comedy show on a Saturday night. But that monthly Ford Star Jubilee ‘spectacular’ of theirs could hurt. Crosby, Coward, Martin—that’s rough competition, that is.” A basic change in the Gobel format will be a soft-pedaling of the hus- band-and-wife skits. But George will continue his humorous byplay with singer Peggy King. “Publicity is a great help,” O’Malley glooms, “but why does it all have to come at once? Last year, George’s success was big news, but what do we do this year? Print our own hand¬ bills?” It is probably a needless worry and Gobel, for one, isn’t worrying. George dismisses the entire subject with a characteristic lift of the eyebrow. “It’s a real thrill being a soph in TV,” he says, innocence streaming from him in large quantities. “It’s higher than I ever got in college.” 17