Variety (April 1953)

82 TELEVISION FOIXOWIJPS PSSSBBTr' Sock 175G Two-Hour NBC-TV ‘Hamlet’ i Wins Kudos for Evans, Hallmark, Web f By JOHN HORN "Hamlet,” In the two-hour NBC- TV version on the expanded Hall- mark Hall of Fame last Sunday (26)* was a stunning production, replete with many artistic assets fn the way of performances, direc- tion, music, scenery and costumes Yet it remains primarily the great personal triumph of Maurice Evans. In the title role for the 778th time of his life, Evans, in his tele- vision debut, played the part as if Shakespeare had written It for him, and as if television had always been his dish of tea. It was a grip- ping, powerful performance. Shakespeare’s Dane had been done on American TV before, but as'a solo portrayal by Jack Man- ning in Lawrence Menkin’s "Mono- drama Theatre” on WABD, N. Y., with few props. Presented 15 min- utes daily for 10 days in January (and repeated in February), the Menkin production cost $5,000, against Hallmark’s reported $175,000 expense. Evan?, currently starred on Broadway in "Dial M for Murder,” dominated every scene in which •he appeared, broodingly and skill- fully in command in face of nota- ble competition. Among the out- standing performers were Ruth Chatterton, as Queen Gertrude, with an attitude and cut of dress suggesting the Oedipus undertones in the part; Joseph Schildkraut, as the scheming Claudius; Barry Jones, as Polonius; Wesley Addy as Horatio, and Sarah Churchill’ as Ophelia, playing her mad scene on and around a fourposter bed. Costumes by Guy Kent and Noel Taylor were handsomely com- pounded of Victorian style, with the effect of updating the play to more recent times, yet keeping it within the swordplay, or pre-re- volver, era. The result, striking a 19th-century note in a royal court dominated by the military, was of-' fective. Sets by Richard Sylbert were spacious, capturing the ex- panse of a palace, with the large , area used to good advantage by director - producer Albert McCleery, particularly in the fluid movement of Evans in his "O what a rogue and peasant slave am I” soliloquy. Purists may find some quarrel with this tele Hamlet, trimmed by Mildred Freed Alberg and Tom Hughes and, in which Evans is less the introspective man hamstrung by inaction than the man of con- science who had to gain proof of his suspicions before he could act. After proof is obtained in the play-within-a-play scene midway In the third of four television acts of about equal length, there is plenty of action—the killing of Polonius and, in act four, the quarrel and duel with Laertes. Among McCleery’s striking ef- fects were the double-exposure ap- E earance of the kingly ghost and is later reflection in a full-length mirror, the opening of the "To be or not to be” soliloquy with’ a re- flection of Hamlet in a pool, and the exit .of a dead Hamlet on a soldier-borne litter. Evans and William Smithers, as Laertes, Staged an excitingj convincing dueling scene in the climax. Minor flaws were regrettable in such a high-calibre production—a stagehand cutting across the back- ground during the "peasant slave” soliloquy; floor noise during Evans’ •‘To be”' speech. Lighting was er- ratic, too, with intruding shadows in some of the darkened scones. These, however, were slight irri- tations in an overall fine job. The Hallmark between-acts com- mercials, mainly on film, were in keeping with the production. The sponsor, which also backed the memorable “Amahl and the Night Visitors,” deserves a special salvo of praise for his taste and for his money-backed proof that genuine artistic achievement can be com mercial television. is a relief from the other domestic banalities, although her advice to the troubled (love, home, econom- ics, man-and-wife behaviorism, etc.) sometimes veers to that . . . Ed and Pegeen Fitzgerald, directly thereafter, on the same channel, are almost too literate, especially his expert book reviews which give the new issues serious treatment. He’s an inveterate reader and a serious book critic, but a ^ little more of their Mr. & Mrs. chitchat, sych as distinguishes this pioneer pair’s early a.m. stuff on AM (also ABC), would leaven their quarter- hour stint . . . Jimmy Cannon is an uninhibited and sprightly panel- ist on "SRO,” another of those show biz q. & a.’s, which is per- haps the most economic-minded in big league circles—a $2 prize for the Q.s, plus a book giveaway for "stumping.” The contrast is the more striking when the "mystery guest” star, in this case George Stevens, was given the more pre- tentious gift of a Cyma wristwatch when, actually, he probably pre- fered the plug payoff for "Shane,” which he has been personally ballyhooing on the Gotham AM& TV circuit of late . . . Eva Gabor, Roger Dann and' Arnold Moss made "Suspense” glamorous and sparkling . . . Dr. Robert M. Gold- enson, on NBC-TV Tuesdays, ably foiled by Ed Herlihy, makes mod- ern design and the 3-D concept in- teresting, as part of his "Keeping Up With the Times” series . . . Also in the quasi - educational idiom is an excellent Chi-orig- nated panel show, "Down You Go,” smoothly paced by Norwest- ern Univ.’s Dr. Bergen Evans, with Toni Gilman and Carmelita Pope as a. pair of chic panelists, along with two males, Francis Coughlin and Robert Breen, as they guess amiliar slogans or phrases which are sort of spelled out in acrostic fashion on the overhead board. It’s on DuMont Thursdays at 10:30 p.m. EDT. Abel. Bedroom TViewing, over an en forced stretch, such as when the virus bug puts renewed accent on what video means to shut-ins at all times, is illuminating. Some cf it may cause a relapse to the too captious but when "it’s the only crap game in town,” the choice is narrowed: One sees more trivia and greater values on that home screen than would be normally ab sorbed. You can hear the bleed ing bankers, caught with their end money down, as . some of the more recent, legally sequestered film features pop up at all times. But, mostly, it’s good, particularly for the audience * intended. Lee Graham, on WABC-TV, is a cross between a Mrs, John J. Anthony] and Beatrice Fairfax. Mrs. Graham 1 -drama, this -one really uses its per- fect-murder plot as a superstruc- ture on which to build several highly absorbing character studies. With a bit more polishing? it might well shape up as another "Dial M For Murder” for legit, and has ex- cellent film potentialities. Reich’s theme is a sort of "Kind Lady” in reverse. An innocent re- formatory girl, Helen Auerbach, is brought into a gloomy New Eng- land household by a book-ridden philosophy prof, John D. Seymour, and his morally confused wife, Katherine Meskill. They use the girl servant as a 'cat’s paw in an at- tempt to murder the prof's rich, acid-tongued old sister, Ethel Rem- ey, who has suddenly decided to leave her wealth to a cat and dog hospital rather than to their blind son, Wright King. First act, devoted to introducing the • characters, is slow and talky. But then, as motives and conflict- ing philosophies are developed, the suspense builds up nicely. The climax is not so much the solution of the murder, since the whodunit is obvious from the start, but rath- er the ironically tragic turnabout when the son refuses to accept the misdirected sacrifice made for him by his parents in the sake of love. Performances by King, Seymour and Miss Remey were particularly good, Miss Auerbach was compe- tent, while Miss Meskill could have probed for more depth in her fun- damentally sympathetic role as the woman torn in her loyalties be- tween husband and son. Producer- director Stanley Quinn apparently strove for simplicity in handling the action in the one-room set, but in doing so missed contributing to the eerie “coffin” and "net” at- mosphere suggested by the dialog. Ed Herlihy, per usual, delivered the Kraft cheese commercials with lip-smacking gusto. Rask. "Kraft Television Theatre,” fol- lowing a current policy of tele- preeming dramas originally script- ed for the legit theatre but whose options haven’t been renewed by Broadway producers, came up with another winner last Wednesday (22). with Richard Reich’s "The New Servant.” Ostensibly a melo- To wind up *its season, NBC Television Opera Theatre is doing Strauss’ "Der Rosenkavalier,” in two parts. First portion (Acts 1 and 2), heard last Saturday (25), was delightful. First TV perform- ance in English, in a highly agree- able version by John Gutman, this show was excellently cast, sung and staged, for a superior presen- tation of this melodious, witty satire on decadent 18th-century Viennese aristocracy. Version in English made the satire so much more intelligible than the German originals at the Met or City Cen- ter, even if a little more explana- tory matter should have preceded each of the two acts. But the principals were so at- tractive, and acted and sang so well, as to minimize small faults ‘Omnibus’ Comes of Age at Dusk The rich promise that “Omnibus” has held out since the dawn of the 1952-53 season is finally beginning to be realized as its "26 cycle” wanes. Last Sunday (26), for instance, going into its 25th and semi-final chapter on CBS-TV, "Omnibus” blossomed forth with one of the best 90-minuters to date. That it was all live (discounting a short film on strategic bombers made "by one of our subscribers,” as conferencier Alistair' Cooke is so apt to put it when one of the sponsors, often American Machine & Foundry, is pluglessly involved in the fabrication of such se- quences), was perhaps coincidental to the late afternoon’s mounting succession of slicko-clicko segments. More to the point, no doubt, was the Radio-TV Workshop-Ford Foundation’s anticipating the competition stemming from the NBC- “Hallmark Hall of Fame” unique two-hour brilliantine of Maurice Evans’—with an assist from The Bard—"Hamlet,” the last hour of which (from 4:30). was vs. "Omnibus.” Viewers who stayed straight through with the Melancholy Dane could still turn over to CBS for a half-hour (from 5:30) that included the socko reading by Emlyn Williams of "The Fancy Ball” from “Tale of Two Cities.” The William Spier-Andrew McCullough in-and-outer may have needed just this sort of competitive inspiration to stir things up in its ownjbehalf. And Welshman Williams, articulating Dickens’ words from the identical desk and in the same garb employed by the novelist duying his reading tours of Britain and the U. S. some 85 years ago, was but one of four ultra-interesting stanzas. There was an especially appetizing opening in James Thurber’s "The Figgerin’ of Aunt Wilma,” an eight-minuter adapted by Tad Mosel. Thurber himself introduced the piece offscreen as a slice of arithmetical humor, from his Columbus boyhood in 1905, with winning performances by veterans Margaret Hamilton and Loring Smith, as respectively a niggardly, suspicious customer and her bedevilled grocer. In the "cultural” department, emcee Cooke described and dis- played various sculptural works about to be exhibited for the summer at the MuseUm of Modern Art, N. Yr While it was some- times difficult to pinpoint the esthetic facets and physical dimen- sions of the objects, this inning established "Omnibus’* as "daring” in that among the works were Rodin’s "Three Dancers,” finely delineated nudes of impressive curvaceousness and muscularity . whose * details were dramatized by having the piece rotate; and Maillol’s "The Young Cyclist,” another nude (male) of even-more intimate design. Other objects shown were those by Brancusi, Archipenko, Giacometti and Lassaw, for a 10-minute display of meaningful, offbeat merit. It’s of rousing significance that Williams was able to follow the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo’s Offenbach-scored "Gaite Parisi- enne’-’ ballet, a 24-minute rouser of another color. This was sweep- ing, lively and altogether a delight from start to the finale, prob- ably the most elaborate and three-dimensional can-can ever given on tele. It had such depth it almost seemed to be Technicolored. Leonid Massine choreographed and Byron Paul directed this top terp session. "Omnibus” winds up Sunday (3) with Shaw's "Arms and the Man” consuming the full hour and a half. Advance info shapes "Omni” as providing that Hottentot finish to an erratic season. Trau, Wednesday, April 29, 1953 (such as some camera closeups that blunted or darkened noses, or libretto cuts that left some mat- ters obscure). Wilma Spence made a very handsome Marschallin, with the bearing of a princess and the voice of a prima donna. Frances Bible was an attractive Octavian, and Virginia Haskins a lovely (if light-voiced) Sophie. Ralph Her- bert brought more musical value to the role of venal Baron Ochs than Is usual, while acting the part with gusto. Supporting roles were also fine. Direction was good, especially in such bizarre scenes as the princess holding court for various parishioners in the first act; pres- entation of the rose, or the second- act finale, to offset the several static sections, as at the opera’s opening. Peter Herman Adler’s musical direction brought out the full beauty of the voluptuous mu- sic, and kept it dancing constantly along. Sets and costumes were noteworthy, for a lush recreation of the baroque period. Saturday’s version ran XVz hours; final'seg- ment (Act 3) next Saturday (3) will run an hour, for windup of what has been a distinguished sea- son for NBC’s opera department. Bron . Abbott & Costello didn’t raise their batting average any in their turn ~ at the "Colgate Comedy Hour” Sunday (26). They were in there swinging hard during the sketch parlay but never managed to get the ball out of the infield. Madcap duo poured plenty of mayhem into each routine but the slapstickery was overdrawn and entirely too familiar to win the yocks they were stretching for. Opening bit in which they tried to get into a spot blocked by a king- sized doorman seemed to set the style for the other A&C offerings. It was the mixture as before with the accent on buffonery rather than script. And in latter depart- ment, the boys didn’t get much help from writer John Grant. Hour fared better in the tune division with Teresa Brewer and Hoagy Carmichael coming in for okay sequences. Thrush delivered her disklick, "Till I Waltz Again With You,” and her current wax entry, "Dancing With Someone,” in a neat piping style. She also scored in production number of "Roll Them Roly-Boly Eyes.” Carmichael was socko in a med- ley of his compositions. His croon- ing and piano accomping gave just the right touch to such fave items as "Buttermilk Sky,” “Old Rock- ing Chair,” "Little Old Lady” and “In the Cool, Cool of the Evening.” Amin Bros., a standout aero duo, spotted early in the hour, were surefire winners with their superior spins and twirls. Gros. Freddie Robbins’ talent search series over WOR-TV, N.Y., wound up its 21 weeks (63 programs) with Beverly. Bart, 16V6, Samuel Tilden High School (Brooklyn), nosing out 15V£-year-old Judy Perlin, of Andrew Jackson High (Queens) for the grand prizes of a $1,000 U.S. Bond, a Columbia Pictures screen test, and a Decca recording con- tract. It was a spirited, talented race which made it a tough deci- sion for Col’s talent-story scout Arthur Willi, producer-composer Arthur Schwartz, and Decca’s a&r topper Bob Hilliard, who were, the judges of the finals. Universal Pic- tures-Decca Records dual prexy Milton R.. Rackmil made the plat- tery’s contract award; Don Ameche did the honors for the screen test, with a warm little speech that was refreshing in its change of pace from the usual; and "Mister” Ed- die Fisher did the Bond award presentation. Incidentally, with Ameche as "host” on Fisher’s new Coca-Cola TVer this week (Coke also spon- sors this talent series) it was a natural trailer all around. Rob- bins, himself, a telegenic juvenile, knows his way with the kids and handled both the winnah and the runner-up with gallantry and aplomb. Miss Perlin ("Be Any- thing, Be Mine”) was equally gal- lant and charming in her consola- tion $500 award, and Miss Bart ("Have A Good Time” was her standout and winning interpreta- tion) likewise deported with credit as befits a youth opportunity sweepstakes. Each had a suitably ardent rooting, section,' and each of the youngsters, for all their adolescence, belies the California and/or Texan boast that "we grow ’em big oqt here,” because these N.Y. kids had authoritative matur- ity for all their teenage years. En- tire series, three half hours a week, for 21 weeks, unspooled some amazingly good talent over the long stretch, and evidenced anew what a great visual schooling is the TV medium in which they all partook because many knew their way around as to voice, makeup, behaviorism and the other little authoritative touches that distinguish them . from the rank amateurs. NBC’s Ted Cott. knowing a good thing when he sees it, has snagged the package for his station next fall—the Coke spon- sorship, Freddie Robbins’ suave conferenciering, and all. Producer Herb Sussan goes along with the package, as well he might. Abel. "Fred Waring Show” on CBS-TV Sunday night (20) presented an- other pleasing musical stanza which, for the most part, didn’t require attentive viewing since the staging effects Vere held to a mini- mum. The sole visual bit was pro- vided by Bil & Cora Baird’s pup- pets in a parody of Bizet’s “Car- men.” This was a fair routine, with only a couple of amusing touches. The straight musical portion of the show was up to Waring’s usual tasteful standards in the drch and. choral workovers of a half-dozen numbers. One of the best things on this series continues to be the in- teresting institutional plugs for General Electric. Herm. Charles Boyer found a script to match his mature talent last Thursday (23) when he appeared in "Last Voyage” on "The Singer Four Star Playhouse” on CBS-TV. This original drama, scripted by John and Gwenn Bagni, was not- able both for the fact that no woman appeared in the cast and because it combined a neat plot twist with a bonafide attempt to evoke character. Boyer portrayed, with restraint and quiet dignity, a grey-mous- tached captain who is taking his tramp .steamer on her last voyage to Yokohama. He receives two wires, one telling him that his wife just died, the other that a bomb is believed planted in the ship, timed to blow up munition works when the ship docks. In- stead of abandoning the ship, Boyer changes her course out to sea. He is ready to stake his own courage against that of the culprit, sure that he’ll reveal the bomb’s hiding place rather than be blown up himself. In the war of nerves that fol- lows, his men want to mutiny, for they feel that the captain is a ty- rant, with nothing to go home to, bent on' going down with his ship. Ultimately, Boyer discovers the evil-doer, who is pretending to be a drunk by drinking tea for liquor, and the bomb is plucked out from the propeller shaft in the nick of‘ time. Boyer and the chief members of his crew, Walter Sande, William Leicester and Regis Toomey, are uniformly believable in their roles. But a major portion of the credit goes to director Robert Florey and producer Don W. Sharpe for the skilfull way they caught in film the emotionally charged. atmos- phere of this seemingly doomed vessel. Singer, employing a house- wife demonstrator and a non-tech- nical explanation, also used the film medium expertly to display the virtues of its dual suction power vacuum cleaner. . Rask. Last week’s edition of WOR- TV’s (N.Y.) "Broadway TV Thea- tre” came up with a suspenseful meller that’s nicely survived the almost three decades that have elapsed since it bowed on Broad- day. It was the Willard Mack drama, "The Noose,” and as played by a cast headed by Jay Jostyn, Lee Grant, Esther Ralston and Richard Hylton, it made for top- notch video fare. If there was any quarrel with the Roland Pertwee-Harold Dear- den script, it was the manner in which the entire second act was devoted to a flashback; breaking the continuity of suspense that started with the opening scene. But the third and final act more than compensated in its up-to-the- last-minute intensity. Hylton played the lead, a young- ster who shot g racketeer and who, despite public sympathy, was con- demned to die because he had re- fused to offer a defense or reason for shooting the racketeer. Ac- tion took place in the Governor’s mansion, with Jostyn, the Gover- nor, under pressure to give the boy a reprieve on the night of his death, pressure being applied by Miss Ralston, Jostyn’s wife, who had taken a peculiar interest in the case. Second act flashback showed why Hylton has refused to talk. Turned out the racketeer, who had befriended the boy through the years, was in reality his father, and the Governor’s wife, through a youthful indiscretion, his mother. Hylton shot him to rage and shame. Suspense built through the third act as Hylton, believing he was to die that night, wrote Miss Ral- ston a letter, disclosing his real identity. As a result of a mysteri- ous phone call from the Gover- nor’s mansion-—nobody admitted calling—the boy’s sentence was re- prieved and the remainder of the (Continued on page 46)