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TELEVISION REVIEWS t'A'filETv Wednesday, November 2, 1955 S* TWO OF THE MOST With Peter Marshall & Tommy Farrell, Marilynn, Lovell, Mel Powell Trio, guests Producer-director: Bill Dodson Writer: Bob Arbogast ' 60. Mins., Mon.-thrfu-Fri., 12:30 p.m. Participating WABC-TV, New York With Bob Stone in as the new general manager of the ABC-TV flagship in New York; 'the station is just beginning to find its way into a daytime programming schedule. It’s necessarily a late date for this, • because Stone only took over a* month ago'. With the installation of the “Million Dollar Movies" reruns into the 1:30-3:15 slot and “Two of the Most” in 12:30-1:30, the afternoon sked is now just about firm. How long it will stay that way, however, is another question. “TWo t)f the Most;” which stars the com¬ edy team of Peter Marshall & Tommy Farrell, is a loosely-hung, slow-moving and only slightly en¬ tertaining hour. It needs some re^l sharpening if it’s to make any kind Of dent in the daytime sweepstakes in Gotham, particularly against the strong network programming at the time. ' Seemingly, the chief trouble with the show appears*to be a lack of direction. Is it variety, comedy, audience participation or a com¬ bination of the three? Marshall & Farrell go out in the audience, presumably to cavort, but they aren’t particularly funny and the guests seem to be discomfited. On¬ stage, there’s banter without rou¬ tining, and the ad-libs don’t click. On the other hand, the time de¬ voted to chirp Marilynn Lovell and the Mel Powell trio is insignificant, and so the vicious circle once again turns on Marshall & Farrell. Comedy team has made the rounds of niteries and should have some rmaterial stashed away some¬ where. Obviously an- hour a day would consume this in no time, but at least they can space some of it out over an extended period. But there seemed, at least on the show caught, to be no effort whatsoever to come up with comedy routines (with the exception of the old ear¬ plug bit and an inexcusably bad vaude-blirley sketch which was apologized for in advance). Boys aren’t much as ad-libbers, and there’s got to be an effort toward more discipline and preparation. Fact that Miss Lovell and Powell’s combo are pretty much brushed doesn’t help the comics, making the burden on them even greater. Marshall’s a goodlooking gent who- briefly displayed a pleasing voice and who acts as straightman for Farrell. Latter’s largely a phys¬ ical comic who looks as though he can handle any kind of a situa¬ tion. As a team, they sometimes step on each other’s lines, but they appear to have some strong poten¬ tial. Only trouble is, they didn’t show any of it on the show caught. Miss Lovell is personable, has an offbeat type of voice that shows a good deal of promise, and appar¬ ently has a flair for comedy of which the show might make greater use. Powell, of course, is a gifted pianist from way back, and has a couple of good sidemen on guitar and bass. He, too, showed a brief feel for comedy that could be used to take some of the burden off. the comics. Guest on day caught was hoofer Jack Williams, who turned in some creditable soft-shoe and tup work.and helped out in the Eketches. Interview with Williams took the form of a series of private jokes about their wartime periences which really didn’t sourd as funny as they may have been when they first happened. The onus here is going to have to be on producer-director Bill Dodson and scripter Bob Arbogast, who must bring in the rest of the cast to a larger extent and work on material for the comics. If this isn’t done, it’s a good bet that WABC-TV’s role in the early after¬ noon will be strictly from the bush- leagues. Program, incidentally, mercilessly unrelieved by com¬ mercials. Chan. Tele Follow-Up Comment Warner Bros, made a couple of basic changes in last night’: (Tues.) “Warner Bros, Presents’ on ABC-TV, and the improvement was so rtiarked. as to be astonish¬ ing. For. one thing, the studio put a little thought into its “Behind the Scenes” segment, making the trailer fo£ “Rebel Without a Cause” fairly palatable; more important, it came up with a script for “Chey¬ enne”- that though resembling a watered-down' “Treasure of Sierra Madre,” packed plenty of punch in the telling and was about the most adult of the “adult westerns” sepn this seasomon tv. •With Clint Walker in the lead as Cheyenne, the D. D. Beauchamp screenplay from a B. Traven novel put him in the company of a cou¬ ple of prospectors, one of whom, played by Ed Andrews, as mean a critter as has graced the home- screens in a long time. Theme of the stanza, as in “Treasure,” was the effect gold can have on. normal human beings. And Beauchamp played it up big, what with Indian attacks, a mine cave-in, some gun¬ play and a windup duststorm that wafted the hard-earned gold to the desert sands. Yet, the story stood up well, and backed by some topflight production and some fine thesping by Andrews and Bob Tay¬ lor as the other prospector, it em¬ erged as a fine entry and easily the best Warners effort thus- far. Give a nod to Richard L. Bare, the director, for giving the story action and movement and manag¬ ing to balance some of the more catastrophic elements into a be¬ lievable entity. And producer Roy Huggins rates a b.ow for moving into this type of offbeat (for tv) story area and for stinting nothing in the production. On the thesp¬ ing side, Walker works strictly in a strong-silent-cowpoke vein, but Andrews, though overdoing things at times, delivered a strong per¬ formance as the heavy while Tay¬ lor's fair-and-square characteriza¬ tion was impressive. Back at the ranch—the studio, that is, the “Behind the Camera” segment hosted by Gig Young made lots more sense in its ap¬ proach to trailerizing theatrical features than in the past. This time, the plug was centered in an overall commentary on juvenile delinquency, with clips from “Rebel” used to illustrate the points being made. As such, it had more effect as a teaser than other trailerizing techniques and was easier to watch. Warners story chief Walter MacEwen served as the peg on which the plug was in- troed, while Jim Backus provided an okay but orthodox interview on his role in the pic to close things out. Chan. CBS Radio Spot Sales Shifts to Larger Hdqs. Expansion of CBS Radio Spot Sales has dictated a move from general and New York hq at 501 Madison Ave., N. Y., to larger space in recently completed Marion Davies Bldg, on Park Ave. Wendell Campbell, recently stalled v.p. in charge, said the move represents a further consoli¬ dation of all the factors which have given spot sales a consider¬ able upbeat in the last few months. The SS division was formed in 1932 with six staffers and now has 103 employees in five other offices across the country—Chicago, At¬ lanta, Detroit, L. A., Frisco. Repped also are 14 stations and two re¬ gional networks. Would it be . presumptuous to to suggest that the pooled facilities of -creative network talent can pro¬ duce a show that far exceeds even the grandiose dreams of its cre¬ ator? Remark is framed as a tim¬ orous question because the cre¬ ator is the president of the net¬ work, NBC’s Pat Weaver, and the show is his special brainchild, Wide Wide World.” But it’s not likely that in his inspired moments Weaver envisioned the masterfully integrated admixture of sightsee¬ ing, history, folklore and general visual enlightenment as was pooled under the catchall title “The West” on Sunday’s (30) WWW presentation. Where this week’s WWW dif¬ fered from previous exposur< and was much superior—was ... the overall thematic approach. Lou Salaman and Charles. Andrews, who turned in a topnotch scripting job, and producer Robert Bendick pinned this WWW on a historical- folklore approach, and for a warm¬ up starting with wagon trains leav¬ ing Ft. Leavenworth, took a birds- eye westward preliminary tour all the way to the Santa Barbara Mis¬ sion, where as host Dave Garroway put it, they (the pioneers) couldn’t go any further west. Garroway contrasted the then-and-now time- it-takes (wagons vs. tv signal) to ante up the effect. With the this- is-what-you’ll see formalities (an excellent preface), out of the way, Garroway and the WWW staff pro¬ ceeded to enlarge on their subject. First stop was Tombstone, for the annual Helldorado Week Fes¬ tival, complete with reenactments of the famous gun duels, among them an on-location “Battle of the OK Corral,” where the Earps (Wy¬ att, of current ABC-TV fame, among them) downed the Clantons and their gang and a visit to some picturesquely-worded headstones on the town’s Boot Hill. Then on to a modern-day legend, that of Las Vegas and specifically t’hc Golden Nugget, where the intent gamesters not only managed to drown out the band and some hard¬ working chorines, but the lieuten¬ ant governor of Nevada and guest Jimmy Wakely. Credit the NBC gang with some fine pictorial cov¬ erage of the various tables (and characters). Thence to Hoover Dam on the Colorado for a camera tour of the giant installation (plus as a the¬ matic tiein, reference to the ford¬ ing of the river by the wagon trains;. Microwave trouble upset the WWW applecart a couple of times at this visit, but the sight- plus - statistically - slanted - sound made for an awesome appreciation of the engineering feats involved. It was also a tv “first” in terms of a guided tour of the jernt. Okla¬ homa City’s oil ventures, subject of a brief stopover on the prefa¬ tory segment (with Oklahoma’s Governor explaining the presence of a rig right in front of the cap¬ ital lawn), got an extended treat¬ ment with an explanation of the drilling apparatus and a well-staged quickie exit via a “Geronimb” (similar to a shipboard breeches buoy) from the top of one of the derricks by a worker. In' modern-day Houston, WWW pulled another first with a lookin on Leopold Stokowski’s rehearsal of the Houston Symphony in prep¬ aration for the world preem of Alan Hovahness’ “The Mysterious Mountain” symphony. ' Here the NBC-KPRC cameras were at their best with some wonderful shots of Stoky and the orch, while com¬ mentary-wise, the conductor had some pertinent things to say about grassroots appreciation of classical music. A switch to San Francisco’s Cow Palace brought on the Grand National Rodeo’s bronc - busting events, with some exciting riding by cowpokes from all over the west plus an informative commentary by an unbilled KRON-T-V staffer. To the southwest, a group of Apaches performed what was de¬ scribed as a wild dance but one! which seemed rather listless. More interesting was the “flying pole dance” of members of the Otomi tribe from Mexico, also performed back at Tombstone. Wrapup, also a “first tv visit,” was the impressive Tabernacle in Salt Lake City, complete with demonstrations of the unique acoustics and a final chorale from the auditorium, audio of which (“America the Beautiful”) was con¬ tinued as the cameras once more did a quickie review of the 90 min¬ utes. Garroway performed an un¬ usually - intelligent - for - tv chore with the explanation that no pre¬ tensions were made that this had been an intensive tour of the west -it was just a “ripple” was the way he put it, not only giving video a change-of-pace in modesty but whetting the appetite for a look at more. Chan. they’d been made—in many in¬ stances a word-for-word repetition —didn’t help-any either. It might be assumed that, if someone is interested enough to tune in on the Forum, he’s also intelligent enough to grasp what is being said without having it hammered in twice. Hift. The “Let’s Take A Trip” excur¬ sion through Columbia Records’ 30th St. <N. Y.) studios Sunday (30) over CBS-TV provided enough sur¬ face revelation to give viewers a feeling of being “inside” on the making of a record. Stanza was wrapped into a plug for a Col kidisk cut by the show’s regulars, Sonny Fox. Ginger MacManus and Pud Flanagan but the commercial never got out of hand. With Hecky Krasnow, Col’s kidi- vision chief, acting as guide,' the trio was. shown through the studio while Art Carney was cutting ‘ a new platter tagged “Mama.” Kras¬ now didn’t get too involved in ex¬ plaining the mechanics of mikes, sound controls and tapes. He kept the info at a level to be understood by juves ' and the points came across easily. Krasnow also traced the history of the trio’s first platter release,, a coupling of “Whoopsie Doo” and “Let’s Take A Trip.” Tunesmith Bob Allen started the ball rolling taking the tune “Whoopsie Doo” from’ its inspiration state to the actual writing. Arranger Ray Car¬ ter-then took over and showed how the original melody, he called it “a stick drawing,” was orchestrat¬ ed to give it color and depth. This section was the most informative part of the show. The visiting trio did a “live” version of “Whoopsie Doo” and then Krasnow turntabled the bot¬ tom side. It was a solid promotion for the record company and the disk which “will be in the stores tomorrow morning,” everybody seemed to be repeating. Gros. The New York Times Youth Forum over WABD, N. Y., Sunday (30), in discussing juvenile delin¬ quency, made a laudable attempt to go to the source of the trouble, i.e. the delinquents themselves, but despite the potential drama—the four boys and girls appeared in silhouette only—the idea somehow didn’t come off. In fact, it was a rather labored and uninformative show. Guest for this session was Jacob K. Javits, New York’s attorney general. He and Dorothy Gordon, the moderator, kept throwing ques¬ tions at the “delinquents” who had come from N.Y. State training schools. Perhaps there was some¬ thing wrong with the selection of the panelists (Miss Gordon indi¬ cated there had been difficulties), and then again it may have been that it’s expecting too much for them to come across with intelli¬ gent solutions regarding their own dilemma. At any rate, apart from repeated references to love and affection and how the lack of them would turn youths, to delinquency, “Delinquent Youth States Its Case” hit few highlights and Javits acted as little more than an interested spectator. He did, near the end, indicate that the state was trying to make changes by Varyifig the type of in¬ stitution available so that youthful offenders wouldn’t be thrown in with hardened criminals. He pointed out, too, that—in 1954— some 41,000 youths came to the attention of the authorities in New York. There was some disagreement among the panelists on whether or not discipline at the state insti¬ tutions was too severe and also on the treatment meted out to offend¬ ers by the courts. But somehow the comments didn’t focus intelli¬ gently, and Mi.sS Gordon’s habit of “summing up” statements after Remember “The Winslow Boy,” the British-made film starring Sir Cedric Hardwicke and Robert Donat which made the arthouse circuit a few years back and now is making the television rounds in an Associated Artists feature pack¬ age? The very same.story, in "half- hour form and by an odd coin¬ cidence also starring Hardwicke, made its appearance on ABC-TV’s “TV Reader’s Digest” Monday (31) night. This time, the real names were used under the title of “The Archer-Shee Case,” and it was a legit story deal too, since the Wells Root teleplay was based on a 1939 Digest piece on the case by none other than Alexander Woollcott. Story was the 1908 case in which a youngster was summarily dis¬ missed from naval college after having been accused but never tried of having stolen a money or¬ der from a locker at the school. Naturally, with a 90-minute-plus screen treatment, “The Winslow Boy” made quite a production of it, pictorializing the real Sir Ed¬ ward Carson, as played by Robert Donat, into quite a Parliamentary character, politically and person¬ ally, with Donat in that role. It also built up quite a suspenseful ending. The 30-minute “Reader’s Digest,” however, stuck pretty close to the facts, having little time for shenanigans such as these. Within its limitations, therefore, “The Archer-Shee Case” made for an engrossing half-hour of tele¬ viewing, but hardly a very dramaP-' ic^ one. The treatment* was almost documentary in style, since the en¬ tire half-hour was needed for the purposes of plot. Little was left for characterization; nor did the story build in terms , of impact and dramatic values. As a subject, the “Archer-Shee Case” was interest¬ ing; as a tv drama, it was unin¬ spired. On the basis of a couple of “Digest” shows viewed this season, It would seem that producer Ches-: ter Erskine is tending to pick out properties that are too long on story and too short on dramatic values. Perhaps some of the short¬ er pieces might have more poten¬ tial for dramatic treatment. Hardwicke was proper and cor¬ rect as the youngster’s father, who carries the case along. The script and time limitations left little but a straightlaced thesping job for him; Christopher Cook was good as the youngster and Henry Daniell impressive as Sir Edward, though here too the script requirements called for little in the way of emot¬ ing. Supporting cast, headed by Sara Selby,' Paul Cavanaugh and Anthony Eustrel. were competent. Harry Horner directed in brisk style, but it was just a matter of getting the story told. Chan. FACE THE NATION With Stuart Novins, moderator* Henry A. Wallace, guest; Carle- ton Kent, John Madigan, Ray¬ mond Brandt, reporters Producer: Te4 Ayers f Director: Robert Quinn 30 Mins., Sun., ,4 p.m. CBS-TV, from Washington Video’s critics have always main¬ tained that the . medium has not improved on radio’s coverage of panel discussions. In that these stanzas are loaded with dialog but no action, they are right; in' that the tv camera ..can’t do much to liven up the situation, they have yet to be proved wrong. Neverthe¬ less, when • “Face the Nation,” CBS-TV’s answer .to “Meet the Press,” Was ,viewed last Sunday (Oct. 30) afternoon it had some¬ thing that the repeat radio broad¬ cast of later in the day did not have. . Lensing on “Press” didn’t get much motion into the session be¬ tween Henry A. Wallace and the reportorial triad facing him. Stanza was confined to closeups, but some of these closeups were telling. .. Personalities came through on tv, but when the radio repeat came on at 10:05 p.m. the people involved became sort of anonymous,? their unidentified voices sounding:.alike. Otherwise, the radio an4 tv editions of the j^anel program wertj different only in that five-miriuteS were neatly .edited from the audio version. .. When you could look at the re- porters who did the questioning, they each assumed’ distinct char¬ acteristics. Viewer even felt after awhile he could tell, without knowing the policies of 4 their p u b 1 i c at i o' n s, which of the re¬ porters was at least person¬ ally opposed to Wallace. On radio, belligerence of Newsweek's John Madigan wasn’t evident. Nor was Carleton Kent’s (Chi Sun- Times) seeming slyness, nor Ray- mon Brandt’s (Sfc Louis Post-Dis¬ patch) “elder journalist” role. And via audio alone it was obvious that Wallace’s even-tempered answers didn’t betray, his feelings, yet tele¬ vision occasionally . gives a hint, through its tight shots, of the ex¬ veep’s discomfort or displeasure over some of the questions. Stuart Novins, who hosts the panel, showed both here and on the CBS Radio show earlier that Sunday, “The Leading Question,” that he is capable of complete ob¬ jectively and that his questions suggested mastery of the many political subjects at hand. Some¬ times, though, that mastery lead to questions that' were beyond the ordinary man’s appreciation. Art. FIGHTING WORDS With Nathan Cohen, mentor Producer: Cliff Solway 30 Mins., Wed., 10:30 p.m. CBC-TV, from Toronto „ “Fighting Words,” which is not sponsored because the State-oper¬ ated Canadian Broadcasting Corp. does not allow this’ on “opinion” programs, is a panel discussion series that, for the past three sea¬ sons, has been the top CBC talks program, according to trans-Canada listener ratings. Panel members have freedom of speech and the verdict is left to the viewer-listen¬ er. In addition to the full CBC-TV treatment, “Fighting.Words” ^lso goes across the Dominion radio network of 48 stations. As combo discussion with celebrity spokes¬ men on current events, this series has built on such recent con¬ temporary topics as racial equality, divorce laws, temperance, morals, criticism of the arts, education, etc.; such controversial subjects enlisting experts to present their opinions in a completely unre¬ hearsed show. With Nathan Cohen continuing as mentor since the series was launched three seasons ago, “Fight¬ ing Words” is not only the oldest "opinion” program on the CBC but the most popular spokesman- outlet for the intelligentsia minor¬ ity in getting experts to express theirs and the listeners’ viewpoints on current controversies. “Fighting Words” got off with the present blocking of musical concerts in Canada on Sundays be¬ cause officials of the Lord’s Day Alliance have invoked the regula¬ tions of an earlier bylaw, despite lusty minority protests. Opposi¬ tion squawk is. that one can buy tickets to baseball and hockey in Canada on Sunday but listening to Bach or Beethoven is banned. On pro and con, Dr. William Blatz of the U. of Toronto, pointed out that-sprofesslonal singers are hired by church choirs on Sundays in combination of proper worship with secular activities; with Dr. Douglas Wilson, columnist on The Montreal Star, charging that base¬ ball and football players, plus preachers, get paid for Sunday (Continued on page 48)