Variety (August 1956)

26 TELEVISION REVIEWS PftRIETY Wedneaday, August 22, 1956 TV Webs in Valiant Try to Pump Freshness Into Tired GOP 'Script’ Television sets across the land were still vibrating from . last week’s tornado of Democratic ora¬ tory when the three networks zeroed in Monday (20) for more of same from the Republican’s Frisco powwow. Last week the webs freewheeled all over the Windy City in a schizophrenic attempt to cover both the “story” and formal pro¬ ceedings of the Dem’s assemblage. This week it’s the same script except radio-tv legmen are being forced to carry their "what’s new?” interviews to ridiculous lengths as the GOP affair which looks to go ■down in the record books as one political convention that failed to produce any surprises. There's no doubt about President Eisenhow¬ er’s renomination, and practically none about veepee Richard Nixon. All that remains aside from tomor¬ row’s (Thurs.) formal endorsement of the Ike & Dick ticket is a four- day combination pep rally and variety show stagemanaged for tv by the GOP national committee with an assist from Hollywood’s George Murphy and video's own Robert Montgomery. So for first time in its young history, the medium is left to tell a political “story" it has practical¬ ly no hand in developing because in Frisco ’56 it’s the only story available. And whether or not it’s" an “interesting” story or palatable tv fare depends in large measure on the viewers’ personal partisan stance. CBS, NBC and ABC reporters tried valiantly to pump up some “conflict” and excitement during ^Monday’s opening sessions. But by midafternoon even they had about given up on Hare Id Stassen’s drive to dump Nixon as a quixotic boom¬ erang. Therefore, during most of brace of opening meetings they sat back and let Bob Doyle’s pool cam¬ eramen shoot the show. It was just as well the tv lads let the speechmakers have the spot¬ light solo. By. the time the evening session started 50 minutes after the three webs had returned to the air, interviewers had chinned with virtually everyone from Cabinet members to airline hostesses, the analysis boys had reanalyzed their own analysis and directors had called for one more shot of the Golden Gate Bridge. Before Chair¬ man Len Hall gaveled the formal night session ooening, all three networks had run out of pictures to shoot and people to talk to and their anchor men just sat back and invited the nation to watch warmup entertainment emceed by Wendell Corey. Although to a lesser degree than at the Dem’s Chi clambake, be¬ cause there was less action on newsfront, the strength and weak¬ nesses of individual net’s coverage were apparent at the GOP’s open¬ ing day love feast. CBS, with Walter Cronkite repeating his ironman anchor role, still leaves the best impression of overall elficiency, not only in catching on- wing interviews (that Richard Hot- tclet as in Chi is all over the joint) but in providing a comprehensive picture of the whole situation. ABC-TV this year has gained new stature, not only from John Daly’s smooth narration but also for those “conventions within a convention” delegate debates stirred up by ubiquitous Martin Agronsky. Since there’s so little to pontificate on, skull sessions with Newsweek’s Ernest K. Lindley and Christian Science Monitor’s Erwin Canham are just so much filler. NBC-TV’s coverage continues to be overly tricked up with those- peephole screen effects, but it too is doing a solid overall job. If four years ago Columbia’s Cronkite was made a national figure by his con¬ vention duty, this year NBC’s Chet Huntley and especially David Erinkley, with his dry wit, figure to emerge with new prestige. If the combined forces of the tv industry strain out there in Frisco and produce nothing more than a gaudy elephant, maybe the reason is that the traditional political con¬ vention, no matter how carefully “produced” for video, is an anach¬ ronism in this electronic age. Dave. Portland, Ore.—Walter E. Wag- staff was named manager of KGW- TV by Gordon Orput, president of Pioneer Broadcasting Co. Wag- staff leaves the post of general manager of a tv station in Boise, Idaho, to take over the helm of the town’s newest channel in the fall. He is also a member of the NBC station planning and advisory committee. RENAISSANCE ON TV With Dr. Frank C. Baxter Producer: Bill Whitley Director: Alex Runciman 30 Mins., Sun. 4 p.m. WCBS-TV, New York The urbane U. of Southern Cali¬ fornia professor, Dr. Baxter, does just as well with the Renaissance topic of his “Shakespeare on TV” scries. The Renaissance lecture se¬ ries, originated by KNXT, the CBS o&o Los Angeles station, is being kinescoped Sundays by WCBS-TV, N.Y. Premiere show was devoted to Dr. Baxter’s exposition of condi¬ tions in the Middle Ages which presaged the period when men such as Leonardo Da Vinci flour¬ ished. Dr. Baxter speaks from a wealth of knowledge, his delivery is relaxed and punctuated by the interest he feels in the subject. He utilizes maps, woodcuts and pic¬ tures of the period to illustrate his talk. The sweep of the preem’s subject—taking in the entire Mid¬ dle Ages in 30 minutes—was its biggest weakness. There was hardly time to peek beneath the surface. In succeeding series, Dr. Baxter plans to have guest scholars on va¬ rious aspects of the Renaissance. The ensuing interplay should add to program’s interest. Horo. WPIX Inks New Biz WPIX, N. Y„ hit a fast-moving sponsor pace this week, inking seven new contracts, including two renewals from national adver¬ tisers. A majority of the business was spots and participations, including a 13-week saturation campaign by Robert Hall Clothes, commencing Sept. 17. On the renewal side, Maxon, Inc., renewed its contract for H. J. Heinz’s “Studio 57,” and the Toni Co. renewed another con¬ tract for a spot drive. The new accounts include Col¬ gate-Palmolive, Campbell Soup, Zenith and Peter Paul Candy. * No Weekend Respite From Politics as Webs Offer Up Entr’actes Television’s working stiffs hardly had time to catch their breaths before the electronic spot¬ light was swung last weekend from the Democrats’ Windy City talka¬ thon to the Republicans’ Frisco extravaganza which opened Mon¬ day (20). And if there was no hia¬ tus, for the video troops between the back-to-back political conven¬ tions, likewise there was no week¬ end respite from politics for the dialers. The three tele networks un- Icased a round dozen entr’ acte of¬ ferings Saturday (18) and Sunday (19) from Frisco, totalling six and a half hours of programming. Coming right on the heels of the Dems’ five-day gabfest and just be¬ fore the GOP’s whirl, it was a classic demonstration of saturation programming that must have left a lot of fans wishing for at least a brief moratorium from the soap- boxing and pontificating. There were to be sure, some high spots among this welter of political small talk. CBS-TV’s Sunday aft¬ ernoon ‘'Bandwagon ’56” is remem¬ bered as the most imaginative of the lot with its filmed recap of the Republicans’ dramatic ’52 con¬ clave. It was an excellent change of pace even if it did show up how unexciting this year’s conventions are compared to those four years ago when Dwight Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson first entered the political bigtime. Also NBC-TV’s “Outlook” came off with distinction as Chet Hunt- ley, David Brinkley and Bill Henry sat in on a comprehensive wrapup of the Frisco scene. Hour, com¬ plete with a filmed history of Ike’s career and a switch to Washington where John Rich described the President’s weekend, climaxed with an interview of veep Rich¬ ard Nixon by Henry. In a matter of minutes, Nixon popped up on CBS’s concurrent “Convention Preview” to repeat his humility act for Ted Church. This half-hour, like many of the others, was largely a Frisco trav¬ elog with Walter Cronkite anchor¬ ing from the web’s main conven¬ tion studio. The day before Charles Collingwood conducted a tv tour of the city, with the first of about a half dozen shots from Alcoa Hour Topicality itself isn’t enough to make a good play. David Karp’s “The Big Vote,” a piece about the decline of an old-line party boss, was topical enough in its Sunday (19) presentation on “Alcoa Hour,” coming as it did between political conventions, but still, it wasn’t a good play. It sustained interest, to be sure, but had little dramatic impact. In portraying the changeover from the old order to the new (en¬ lightened electorate), Karp dis¬ played two key failings. His char¬ acters were superficial and unsym¬ pathetic, for one thing, and his story really ended an act too soon, for another. After the old-line boss, pictured as an honest, cour¬ ageous and moral fellow whose ideas about politics are just too old-fashioned, gets his comeup¬ pance, the rest is anticlimax, con¬ cerned as it is with the efforts of the brash but practical winner’s ef¬ forts (successful, of course) to get the boss back into the ranks for the coming campaign. Ed Begley, as the boss, was im¬ pressive and believable within the limits set for him. He was an in¬ teresting character, though not a sympathetic one, and therein lies one of the faults of the play. When the conflict changed from one of issues after Begley gets plastered in the primary to a personal con¬ flict—whether he’ll return to poli¬ tics, the story lost interest. Char¬ acterization of the new boss, played with vigor by Walter Mat¬ thau, didn’t help any, since it seemed entirely one-dimensional. Rest of the cast, headed by Kath¬ leen Maguire, William Emhardt, Luis Van Rooten, William Harri- gan, Walter Burke and Robert Culp, were excellent. Norman Fel¬ ton’s direction was somewhat choppy and tended to lag in the final act, but here again, it was a matter of a weak ending to what might have been a fascinating story. Chan. Climax The 1945 crash of a B-29 into the Empire State Bldg, is a chal¬ lenging theme for ^ teleplay, but Leonard Lee missed the boat in his script, “The 78th Floor,” for “Climax” last Thursday (16). For¬ tunately, producer Edgar Peterson and director Tom Donovan sal¬ vaged much of the hour with a super-realistic staging job on the third-act crash that atoned some¬ what for the ineptness of the script, but it’s a good guess that the first two acts had chased many viewers away by then. Lee used the familiar technique —the basis for a multitude of dis¬ aster stories—of taking a couple of characters about to commit some wrong at the time of the crash and prevented from doing so by the disaster. The motivation was re¬ vealed via flashbacks, and for two- thirds of the hour, the audience was treated to a pair of dull soap- operas. Otto Kruger was one of the characters, an ad agency exec turned blind, who’s about to com¬ mit suicide because he’s useless to the wife, the agency and the world. When he leads a couple to safety, he finds “I’ve been of use to some¬ body.” Kruger wasn’t very con¬ vincing, but then who could be with lines like “I know I’m doing the right thing” to mouth. Rose¬ mary De Camp had an equally thankless role as his wife, and she didn’t have much luck with it either. Other couple, played by Pat Crowley and Scott Brady, were hardly more believable, with Bradv playing a tv repairman who decides to hold up the jewelry firm where Miss Crowley, his fiancee, works so he can ply her with minks when they’re wed. He had to go through the “you don’t know what it is to be poor” routine, while she count¬ ered with “minks aren’t every¬ thing.” The fadeout was a “what have I done” type clinch. So there we are, and ff not for a honey of a staging job where Kruger and the couple wander dazedly through flame, smoke and rubble-filled corridors while there’s a mob scene downstairs, the entire hour would have been worthless. As it was, the finale hardly made up for the script, but it was. some compensation. Chan. Sinatra Across the Board Whether by design or accident, and most likely it was the latter since the laryngitis was unexpected, Frank Sinatra sure played it across the board on two networks and one local (ABC-TV) ap¬ pearance, as part of the N.Y. outlet’s regular Sunday night “Film Festival” (British pix). Both on ABC and the Steve Allen (NBC) appearances he plugged his “Johnny "Concho” (UA) pic, concurrent at the Broadway Para¬ mount; on CBS he foiled for Red Skelton in a couple of impro¬ vised bits. Guest emcee Skelton (in the still ailing Ed Sullivan’s absence) deliberately stated he’d “take over in order to help save the voice.” On the Allen-NBCer they clowned with a gag panto to one of Sinatra’s recordings, “A Foggy Day In London Town.” Sullivan’s show was marked by a noblesse oblige reading (by Skelton) of a Collier’s mag article wherein the columnist, while expressing “disappointment” over their feud expressed himself that he chose to remember Sinatra’s unselfish chores for charity, war bonds, etc. Withal, the former swoon-croon kid has matured into a star of stature, and the network’s facilities, on the same cream Sunday night and within the same 8-9 evening hour (not to mention the local ABC-TV stint) contributed inestimable publicity values. Sammy Davis Jr., Alan Dale & Skelton, Steve Allen & Julius LaRosa were the Sinatra substitutions at the Paramount theatre early Sunday when ’his voice failed him. He did the final show on his own. Sinatra closed last night (Tues.), giving the Broadway Paramount (with the Tommy Dorsey band backing ’him) a taste of what a boffola bandshow can mean to the boxoffice. Sinatra proved boffola for himself on a two-ply stint which veered from vendetta to a generous salute to the ailing columnist. He signed off with a personal “get well” to Ed Sullivan. It was sweetness- and-light on Sabbath eve—but also good s’how business. Abel. the Top O’ the Mark which was a must for practically every shew. ABC-TV did its Chamber of Commerce routine with Saturday night’s “Convention City” helmed by Quincy Howe at the Cow Pal¬ ace vantage point he and John Daly are working from this week. It was the usual round of inter¬ views, plus that inveitable pose from the Mark Hopkins crowsnest. Howe and colleagues were back Sunday night interviewing a clutch of GOP. (“These Are the Men”) bigwigs. Nixon was present again, as was Available Harold Stassen who was all over the screen with his Herter-for-vice-president per¬ formance that badly needed a new script before the weekend was out. All the regular and special panel shows were loaded with GOP poli¬ ticos and except for CBS’ “Face the Nation” tense session with Thomas Dewey they were largely unproductive of fireworks. Nation¬ al chairman Leonard Hall fenced adroitly with the newsmen on NBC’s “Meet the Press” and Stas¬ sen tubthumped his anti^Nixon campaign on same web’s “Youth Wants to Know.” . ABC’s “College Press Confer¬ ence” featured governors Arthur Langlie and Theodore Mckeldin and UN ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, It was a polite meeting of minds. Same channel’s “Campaign Roundup” with Senator William Knowland leading a parade of GOP figures and NBC’s “American Forum” with a quartet of gover¬ nors, and its “Convention Search¬ light” chin session with Knowland again added to the torrent of words. With President Eisenhower’s re¬ nomination in the bag, the only re¬ motely possible question mark to be resolved this week at the Cow Palace is whether Nixon will be his running mate again. And this “controversy,” hardly worthy of -the name, was worked and re¬ worked to the point of absurdity by television last weekend. Some of the boys shoulda stood in bed and given everyone a rest. Dave. News-Comentary Continued from page 23 - - editorial stand on their news shows. He thought that editorials required at least four-minutes to develop satisfactorily. Hard News a Problem Charles Collingwood, commenta¬ tor for WCBS-TV, N.Y., and the parent network, explained why it was hard getting hard news into a quarter-hour. Film fdbtage, first off, takes a longer time to unravel than a radio newscaster’s words. Moreover, the changes between film clips and the necessary transitions, plus the chance for occasional tech¬ nical goofs, slow, down the tv pro¬ gram. An anonymous network news- writer offered some inflammatory comments. N His basic premise was that news programming was never a mass audience concept, nor will it ever be either on radio or tv. Hence, he felt that tv commenta¬ tors should “cultivate” a substan¬ tial and loyal audience with his own opinion of the news, just as many big names have done in radio. In tv today, a news show is only as good as its film, which is often as bad as it is good. Reliance on film makes the tv newscaster an innocuous “reader of news,” with¬ out opinions and as likely to lose homescreeners to a feature film or another “reader” as he is to hold them. He pointed to Edward R. Murrow as a prime example of a newscaster with an editorial opin¬ ion and a large, devoted audience, but not always sponsored. . He pointed to Howard K. Smith, who only gets weekend exposure and also without a bankrolled The man offered two reasons why weeknight newscasters aren’t per¬ mitted to spice up shows with edi¬ torial stands: One is that spon¬ sors, who fork out impressive sums nightly for a quarter hour, time and talent, fear the objection of a single dissenting viewer; second point was that the networks are constantly aware of and intimi¬ dated by the possibility of action by irate solons, either in pushing the monopoly question into the courts or in demands for costly “equal time.” Shepherd — Continued from page 23 —.j them. Somebody said, and Shep¬ herd repeated, “How about Sweet¬ heart Toilet Soap, it’s a good brand and it doesn’t do too much adver¬ tising” (station’s version is that Shepherd said its sales aren’t very good). So Shepherd told his lis¬ teners to go to their drug stores, buy a cake of Sweetheart Toilet Soap and tell ’em Jean Shepherd sent you. Also be sure to say “Ex¬ celsior.” That’s when general manager Bob Leder, who hasn’t been get¬ ting much sleep lately monitoring the hot-potato Shepherd’s 1 to 5:30 a.m. stint, reportedly hit the ceil¬ ing. If he didn’t reach the ceiling, he did make it to the phone, and called the transmitter in Carteret, N. J., and Instructed the engineer to cut Shepherd off the air. So then came the inevitable “Due to conditions beyond our control . . The following day, Shepherd merely said “I’ve been fired again.” Leder said he couldn’t have anybody insulting potential customers of the station (Sweet¬ heart and Cashmere Bouquet, also mentioned, aren’t advertisers oil the station) and anyway, he wanted a less cultish personality and one who would appeal to a wider audi¬ ence range. Shepherd, who appar¬ ently thought Leder blew up be¬ cause he felt Shepherd was rub¬ bing it in, insisted that it was “just a gag,” but said he hadn’t been able to get through to Leder dur¬ ing the day. The official WOR announcement stated that Shep¬ herd “Continually interjected un¬ authorized commercial material’' into the broadcast. While WOR admittedly had two offices manning the phones to handle the protests on Friday ( Shepherd was unconcernedly lis¬ tening to offers from both CBS and NBC (one of them.., a television deal) and wrapping up the narra¬ tion for a somewhat commercial enterprise, an industrial film fof Worthington Generating Equip¬ ment Co. And WOR meanwhile set a replacement, a "Parsippany, N. J., auctioneer name of Long John Nebel, whose done some Work on the station in the past and who will conduct a deejay-inter- view-special features show.