This week in TV Guide: December 17, 1955

This is one of my oldest TV Guides, and one of the reasons I'm so fond of it is this week's cover story, in which Robert Montgomery says TV ain't what it used to be.

We read that and we laugh. In 1955 television has been around for less than ten years, although it's been around longer than we think, and from today's perspective we look back at the years that are affectionately called Golden, and we wonder what Robert Montgomery can possibly be thinking of.

He knows of what he speaks, though. Montgomery is truly one of the pioneers of television, "the first top name movie personality to enter TV full-scale," as host and occasional star of Robert Montgomery Presents, a show which premiered in January, 1950. It is, therefore, winding up its sixth year on TV, and if there is anyone with the right to say "TV's not what it used to be," it's him. His memories constitute an encyclopedia of what can go wrong on live television (the only kind, back then): an actor who muffs his lines, forcing his co-stars to ad-lib for 10 minutes before he gets back on track; a ladder left on stage by a sloppy stagehand, requiring the cast to dodge around it for the entire act, until the next commercial; Montgomery himself muffing an interview with actress Teresa Wright, repeatedly calling her "Martha" instead.

With the logistics involved in early television, it's a wonder any of these shows ever got on the air. "We produced our show at 67th St. and Central Park West," Montgomery says; "our music came from Rockefeller Center, half a mile away; the commercials came in from Columbus Circle. We figured we were lucky if we got them all on the air the same night." Cameras quit working, lights burn out, actors freeze - and yet the only time the show failed to make it to airtime, it was because of a studio strike. Compared to those early days, the show today is "as slick and smooth as the wax made by one of its sponsors." And we'd probably consider it primitive.

Montgomery is definitely a populist when it comes to programming - "Let's let the audiences - and not just the critics - decide what's good and what's bad on TV," he says. And for the most part, there aren't any problems that a few good scripts won't cure. In other words, this is television - thus has it been, thus shall it be.

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With one week to go before Christmas, I'll bet we can find some shows on TV - what do you think? Why yes! This is the week that many series have their Christmas episodes, and we'll run by some of them along the way.

Few entertainers are more associated with Christmas than Perry Como, thanks to his '70s-era specials from all over the world. In 1955 Perry has his own weekly program on NBC, and since next Saturday is Christmas Eve, I'm betting that's when all the holiday trimmings come out. Even so, he manages to work in a couple of Yuletide songs this week: "The Christmas Song" and "Jingle Bells." Doesn't get much better than that.

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that not every program has to be Christmas-themed in order to be the kind of special that's only shown at special times of the year. Just check out this ad for Saturday's Ford Star Jubilee, on CBS, with Eddie Fisher, Red Skelton, and Ella Fitzgerald. (Oh, and Nat King Cole makes an appearance, too.) There are a couple of Christmas pieces in the 90-minute program, but for the most part, it's just songs. And I'll bet it was a pretty good show, too. It does prove one thing, though: if it's near Christmas and you're showing a special, just throw some decorations on the ads. It never fails.

Sunday is where it really starts to look a lot like Christmas, starting with the afternoon program Wide Wide World at 3:00 p.m. CT on NBC. During the 90-minute program, host Dave Garroway takes us around the world to see how different cultures celebrate the season, including choirboys singing hymns in Quebec and New York, decorations at the Tropicana night club in Havana, the Posada Christmas processing in Mexico, and decorated department store windows in New York, Dallas, Minneapolis-St. Paul, and Washington.* A little after an hour into the program, they'll cut away for live coverage of President Eisenhower lighting the White House Christmas tree, from his home in Gettysburg.

*Do they still do that nowadays? Do they still have department stores nowadays?

At 8:00 p.m., the husband-and-wife team of Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy star in the Goodyear Television Playhouse production of "Christmas 'til Closing," which ponders the question of "whether the Yule season's emphasis has not become far more material than spiritual." In a twist, it's the couple's children, not the parents, who wonder if there's too much of a fuss being made over it all.

The Today show spends the entire week before Christmas touring various churches, most of which will have their choirs performing appropriate pieces. Garry Moore's CBS morning show has the spirit as well, featuring Christmas-themed entertainment all week, including an appearance by the famous Trapp Family Singers (The Sound of Music) on Monday. And on NBC's Home, host Arlene Francis tours the department store windows along 5th Avenue in New York. Voice of Firestone's Christmas program is Monday night (7:30 p.m., ABC), with opera star Eleanor Steber joining the Firestone orchestra for a predominantly classical Christmas.

On Tuesday Dinah Shore sings "White Christmas" on her 15-minute program that precedes the NBC evening news program, while on CBS Red Skelton celebrates the season with his traditional Freddie the Freeloader skit, in which the tramp tries to get arrested so that he can spend the night in a nice warm jail cell. And speaking of jail cells, DuPont Cavalcade Theater tells a tale of Christmas in a POW camp. Later that night, on Steve Allen's Tonight, an extraordinary program featuring survivors from the sinking of the Titanic in 1912. They're appearing with Walter Lord, whose universally acclaimed book A Night to Remember, written this very year, was predominantly responsible for the resurgence of interest in the disaster - although, as the 1953 movie with Barbara Stanwyck demonstrates, it never completely went away. Think about it, though: it had only been 43 years since the disaster (which would be like 1973 to us), so it wouldn't have been all that remarkable to have had survivors still living. And technology, the great god that failed everyone in the design of the ship, leaving them alone and isolated in the darkness, is what makes it possible for viewers to see them on television this night.

Bing Crosby's brother Bob hosts his own music program afternoons at 2:30 p.m. CT on CBS. He's been playing Christmas music all week, and Wednesday is no exception, including one of his brother's favorites - "Christmas in Killarney." Howdy Doody's celebrating Christmas this week as well, and this afternoon he takes the NBC cameras to Santa's workshop at the North Pole. Santa's also part of The Mickey Mouse Club on ABC, in the cartoon "Midnight in the Toy Shop," and the Mousketeers also see a film on Christmas around the world. MGM Parade, about which more later, has clips from some of the studio's holiday offerings, and Father Knows Best, Kraft Television Theater, Studio 57, Waterfront, and The Millionaire have Yuletide-themed episodes of their own.

On Thursday it's one of the most famous of all traditional Christmas episodes, Dragnet's "The Big Little Jesus" (left) at 8:00 p.m. on NBC, as Friday and Smith investigate the theft of the Child from a church Nativity. Babies are also the theme on tonight's episode of Climax (CBS, 7:30 p.m.), which tells the true story of a 12-year old orphan who spends Christmas Eve finding homes for his five younger brothers and sisters. Brandon de Wilde, Barbara Hale and Joan Evans star. Before that, Bob Cummings plays his own grandfather in an episode of his show (CBS, 7:00 p.m.) called "Grandpa's Christmas Visit." Even Johnny Carson gets into the act, on his CBS variety show (9:00 p.m.), where a fairy godfather grants him three holiday wishes.

By the time we get to Friday, practically everybody's doing Christmas: Rin Tin Tin, Ozzie and Harriet, and The Patti Page Show on ABC; Mama, Our Miss Brooks, Crusader, and Playhouse of Stars on CBS; and The Big Story on NBC. I particularly like the Patti Page touch; her program ends at 11:30 p.m. out East, just a half-hour before midnight rings in Christmas Eve.

And of course, this doesn't include all the other episodic series, Burns and Allen, Medic, and the like, that have their Christmas-themed stories. Yes, it's true that at Christmastime, everything comes to a halt.

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There's an interesting article by Dan Jenkins (not the sportswriter) about how, in the wake of Walt Disney's spectacular television success, the rest of Hollywood finds this TV business isn't as easy as it looks.

Take Warner Bros.'s foray into the small screen. They've got a series called Warner Brothers Presents, featuring a rotating trio of shows, each of which runs for 45 minutes, followed by a nine-minute "behind the scenes" film "designed to sell Warner Brothers pictures." Of the three - Kings Row, Casablanca, and Cheyenne - only the third, with Clint Walker in the lead role, will have any staying power. However, it won't be long before WB gets it figured out, and their cookie-cutter style of replicating successful shows - for example, 77 Sunset Strip, Bourbon Street Beat, Hawaiian Eye, and Surfside 6 - prove successful, even though many critics accuse Warners of sacrificing quality in the process.

20th Century Fox, long before they it starts its own network, makes its first stride with The 20th Century Fox Hour which, like Warner Brothers, features a nine-minute behind-the-scenes piece to accompany its anthology format. It alternates every week on CBS with The United States Steel Hour, and while the series isn't bad, it lags behind both boxing and This Is Your Life in its time period. A similar series, M-G-M Parade (which you can see occasionally on Saturday mornings on TCM), has been a disappointment for that studio. In fact, even Alfred Hitchcock Presents has fallen short of "setting the TV audience on its ear," although it winds up being one of the most venerable, and loved, of mystery series.

One of the problems, says an ad executive, is that studios have yet to figure out that television isn't the movies. Says another executive, "Wed' like to pitch in with our own people who know television" in order to improve the quality of the shows. In fact, Otto Lang, executive producer of The 20th Century Fox Hour, acknowledges that "We have a lot to learn, I guess," and M-G-M's executive producer Les Petersen points out some of the differences the studio has already learned. "A hilarious scene from a movie is suddenly not very funny when seen by just two or three people in a living room," which has led them to experiment with the use of a laugh track. They're also not sure how to lead into and out of commercials, since those aren't found on the big screen, but he knows they'll figure it out - eventually.

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TV Teletype has some fun items for us to look at this week.

For instance, we get the scoop that "Twelve Angry Men," the award-winning Studio One presentation from last year, is headed for the big screen. Henry Fonda's going to play the lead role, which Bob Cummings played on TV. I seem to recall that movie was pretty good...

And then there's this note that "TV actor PAUL NEWMAN, who played the part of a prize fighter in Playwrights 56's 'The Battler,' has won the big role in MGM's Somebody Up There Likes Me, the Rocky Graziano biography." That Newman fellow turned out to make the transition to movies without too much trouble...

In an effort to get consumers interested in color TV, CBS-Columbia is offering up to $400 for New Yorkers who want to exchange their B&W sets for an $895 color set. They say they'll expand the promotion nationwide if it's successful, but I think this color TV business is just a fad...

Finally, CBS is trying to pep up its Morning Show, competing against NBC's Today, by sending its host "on quickie weekend trips to foreign cities," where he'll shoot films that can be shown on the show when he returns the next Monday. The host is a guy named Dick Van Dyke - wonder what happened to him?...

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Last but not least, As We See It has yet another story for its collection of "doctors who blame television for practically anything." In this case the doctor is Salmon Halpern, who says that "children who watch television while lying on a rug may contract an 'allergic' type of cold." He doesn't recommend, for example, that parents tell their children to get up off the floor; rather, he recommends spraying the rugs with a special solution. Methinks that the doctor might well have some kind of financial interest in that special solution, but who am I to judge?

Merrill Panitt compares Dr. Halpern to "the dentist who said children's teeth get out of whack because they lean on their chins while watching TV, the chiropractor who insists TV causes back trouble because people slump in their chairs before TV screens and the doctor who blames TV for obesity because viewers keep nibbling at snacks." These videochondricacs, as Panitt calls them, probably won't be satisfied until they've "blamed television for scurvy; that is, scurvy in children who refuse to touch food except the cereal advertised on television."

Now, I've grown up as a child of television; TV and I have been constant companions as long as I can remember. I do have allergies, although they owe more to cats than watching TV; the fillings in my otherwise excellent teeth are more the result of failing to brush than leaning on my chin; and the only way in which my chronic back problems could be related to television would be if I twisted my back reaching for the remote. I will allow as to how my weight is higher than it should; but since I can watch television on my iPhone while working out, it's probably laziness more than TV that keeps me from getting in better shape.

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It's Christmas next week - bet there'll be some special content just waiting for you! TV  

You can be sure if it's Westinghouse

I saw a billboard for Westinghouse the other day, on my way home.  For a minute I was probably more distracted than they recommend if you're behind the wheel; it's just that I was surprised.  I didn't even know that Westinghouse still existed, let alone that they were still advertising.  It interested me because the name Westinghouse has had a long and rich relationship with television, dating back almost to the beginning, when the company was known for making household appliances of all kinds.

The logo you see above is from Westinghouse Studio One, the Golden Age anthology the company sponsored on CBS from 1948 to 1958.  During those years, the show was recognized as one of the greats of early television, with adaptations of classic books such as Wuthering Heights and Nineteen Eighty-Four, and original teleplays that became movie hits, like Twelve Angry Men (starring Bob Cummings, which I actually prefer to the cinematic version with Henry Fonda).  Studio One also made a household name of a lesser-known actress named Betty Furness, who parlayed her gig as the company's live commercial spokeswoman into a career as a consumer advocate, presidential assistant, and newswoman.  Her commercials are charming and warm, always ending with the heartfelt tagline, "You can be sure if it's Westinghouse."


(Yup, over two minutes for a commercial.  Well, I guess you can do that if you sponsor the whole show and your name's in the title.)

Westinghouse also had a successful sponsorship relationship with Dezi Arnez' production Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse, which in its two seasons (1958-1960) gave us two pilots for long-running shows: The Twilight Zone and The Untouchables.


Although those might have been the best-known examples, that wasn't the limit of Westinghouse's involvement with television.  One of the company's many divisions was Westinghouse Broadcasting, better known as Group W.  It began as Westinghouse Radio Stations before making the transition to television, and in addition to owning seven television stations, it produced two pretty successful series of its own, The Mike Douglas Show and PM Magazine.  Later on it would add a couple of subsidiaries, TelePromTer and Filmation.


There's a long and complex history regarding Group W's sometimes contentious relationship with the FCC, which we'll skip over because it's kind of dull.  Suffice it to say that the biggest move in television came in 1995, when the company bought CBS lock, stock and barrel, in the process changing the company's name from Westinghouse to CBS.  (Though at least initially, nothing much changed.)  Eventually, the network was folded into Viacom, and the company divested itself of almost all of its non-media assets.

So where does the new Westinghouse name come from?  Well, in fact it's Westinghouse Electric Company, which is controlled by another company with links to television, Toshiba, and it's a nuclear power company.  (I think, but I'm not sure, that they've licensed the name from CBS - as I said, it's complicated.)   And I think I can be forgiven for thinking that Westinghouse was simply a name from the past, since it's gotten so far afield from its original appliance manufacturing roots.  If you know more about it than I do feel free to chip in, because I can be sure of only one thing - it's a Westinghouse.

Why “Miracle on 34th Street” is the best Christmas movie ever

As was the case with my top 12 political movies, this isn’t strictly a TV post; yet for most of us, our exposure to Miracle on 34th Street comes from our television sets, either through reruns on local stations or NBC, or via DVD.

Now, it’s interesting that when Miracle on 34th Street was initially released in theaters in 1947, it came out not in December, but in May, when supposedly more people went to the movies. The movie’s trailer contains not a hint of the Yuletide season; promos for the film play up the stars of the movie, the lovely Maureen O’Hara and the terrific John Payne.  Santa, on the other hand, is never seen.

The movie was a smash, both commercially and critically. It won three Ocsars, including a richly deserved Supporting Actor award for Edmund Gwynn as Kris Kringle, and was nominated for Best Picture. Since then it’s gone on to become a well-loved staple of the Christmas season. But what, in my opinion, makes it not just great, but the best Christmas movie ever? Better than It’s a Wonderful Life, A Christmas Carol, White Christmas, or the plethora of made-for-TV dreck on Lifetime and Hallmark?

1. Strong story 
For starters, Miracle on 34th Street is well written and tightly plotted. Even though it’s classified as a fantasy, there are no major gaps in the plot, no illogical leaps, no unreasonable suspensions of belief.* Particularly in the climactic courtroom scene, Fred Gailey acts in a completely realistic manner, appealing to the logic of the law rather than the heart. True, he’s motivated by idealism, or rather, a refusal to sacrifice the beliefs of what makes life worth living, but he knows that and a dime will get you a cup of coffee in a court of law – and nothing else. The whole movie is like this – little wonder that two of its three Oscars were for Story (Valentine Davies) and Screenplay (director George Seaton).

*Contrast this with Rudolph, to name one example. As James Lileks pointed out many years ago, why does King Moonracer need Rudolph to tell Santa about the Island of Misfit Toys? After all, he flies around the world collecting them all – why doesn't he just fly to the North Pole himself?

2. Satire, not sentimentality 
People who haven't seen Miracle on 34th Street, or who are familiar with the story from its several remakes, may well expect a sweetly sentimental story, all hearts and violins - and they'd be wrong.  What I like best about Miracle is the movie’s smart, sly, satirical take on everything from commercialism to Freudian psychology – the very opposite of the saccharine, cloying sentimentality that clings to most Christmas movies (and almost all the contemporary ones). For today’s viewers, Miracle hearkens back to a simpler, more inviting time, one that we recall fondly. But it’s important to keep context in mind – that nostalgic era we look back to is the very time in which this movie was made. In other words, for those who saw it in 1947 it was a contemporary piece, not a period one. And so it’s useful to see that even in the 1940s, there was a sense that things were changing rapidly, that they aren't what they used to be – and that this change isn't all for the good.* In one scene Kris mentions to Alfred, the young stock boy with whom he’s become friends, that he’s been fighting for years against the way Christmas has been commercialized, to which Alfred responds, “There's a lot of bad 'isms' floating around this world, but one of the worst is commercialism. Make a buck, make a buck. Even in Brooklyn, it's the same. Don't care what Christmas stands for. Just make a buck.” The more things change, hmm?

*Even in the movie’s most charming moments, we’re reminded that this isn’t a perfect world. For example, in the famous scene with the little orphan Dutch girl on Kris’ lap, and her adopted mother talks about how the orphaned girl "has been living in Rotterdam ever since..." - well, in 1947 you didn't need to ask what the rest of the sentence was. And when Fred speaks of the need for people to have someone like Kris to believe in, he’s talking about a war-scarred world, with Korea on the horizon, and the Cold War hanging like a cloud a short distance away.

But this is probably putting too fine a point on the movie’s realism. Better to focus on its sharply cynical outlook on the pop psychology of the day, which Davies and Seaton ruthlessly, if humorously, ridicule. For example, Doris (O’Hara), the divorced mother and prototypical professional woman whose life was changed by a Prince Charming that turned out to be a heel, is adamant that her daughter Susan (Natalie Wood) not be exposed to the fantasies of life, such as fairy tales and belief in Santa. “We should be realistic and completely truthful with our children,” she tells next-door neighbor Fred (Payne), a man much more likely to appreciate the inherent whimsies of life. This attitude has caused a barrier to be built around Doris – an icy, detached realism that doesn't leave room for much else.

John Payne, Maureen O'Hara,
Wood and Gwynn

Early on, we’re presented with the movie’s central dilemma – is Kris Kringle actually the real Santa Claus, as he claims, or his he simply crazy? Sawyer, the armchair Freudian disciple who conducts psychological examinations of Macy's employees, sees Kris’ belief as part of a neurotic delusion that makes him potentially dangerous. But Shellhammer, manager of the store’s toy department, isn't so sure. “Maybe he's only a little crazy, like painters or composers - or some of those men in Washington."   Later on, Sawyer diagnoses Alfred with the same neurosis because he enjoys playing Santa at the local Y. According to Sawyer, Alfred does it as compensation for unresolved guilt over something he did when he was a child. The outraged Kris asks him what else Sawyer has told him. “Oh, just that I hate my father,” Alfred replies in a wonderful throwaway line. “I didn't know it, but he says I do.”

Shellhammer’s remark above spotlights another target of Davies and Seaton – politicians. One of the best supporting turns goes to William Frawley as Halloran, campaign manager for Judge Henry X. Harper*, who will decide the issue of Kris’ sanity. Halloran urges the upright Harper (“I’m a responsible judge. I've taken an oath.”) to recuse himself from this no-win situation. Suppose he rules there’s no Santa Claus, Halloran points out:

“The kids don't hang up their stockings. Now, what happens to all the toys that are supposed to be in those stockings? Nobody buys them. The toy manufacturers are going to like that. So they have to lay off a lot of their employees – union employees. Now you got the C.I.O. and the A.F. of L. against you. And they're gonna adore you for it. And they're gonna say it with votes. And the department stores will love you, too, and the Christmas card makers and the candy companies. . . . And what about the Salvation Army? Why, they got a Santa Claus on every corner and they take in a fortune. But you go ahead, Henry. You do it your way. You go on back in there and tell them that you rule there's no Santa Claus. But if you do, remember this: you can count on getting just two votes: your own and that district attorney's out there."  

To which Harper, shaking his head sadly, replies, “The District Attorney’s a Republican.”

*Gene Lockhart, who played Bob Cratchit in the Reginald Owen version of A Christmas Carol. He’s also the father of June Lockhart, star of Lassie and Lost in Space.

Miracle on 34th Street is not slapstick comedy full of belly laughs. It’s better than that: intelligent, literate, subtly humorous, with a definite edge to it. And it makes its points much more effectively than louder movies, such as Christmas Vacation and Scrooged.

3. Characters you like and root for 
Perhaps I’m just being hypercritical, but there’s always been something about characters like the ever-so-slightly dim George Bailey (It’s a Wonderful Life) and Rosie Clooney’s neurotic Betty Haynes (White Christmas) that’s really gotten on my nerves. I admit that Wonderful Life has never been a favorite of mine. I mean, sometimes you just want to grab George by the shoulders and slap him: “Don’t you get it? Clarence is an Angel! When he tells you this is a world in which you never existed, believe him!”* Now, it’s true that Doris is a little uptight – I think Fred is much more likable. But Doris isn't dense or cruel or anything; she’s just a woman who needs a man around the house, one who can loosen her up (if you know what I mean).

*One of my favorite Onion headlines: “George Bailey indicted in Savings and Loan scandal.”

And then there’s Gwynn’s Kris Kringle. You can’t really say enough about his performance – it’s charming, elegant, sophisticated, and dryly humorous. After you've seen it, it seems not just right but perfectly obvious that Santa should have a British accent. Gwynn never succumbs to the temptation to ham it up, to play the role broadly. It’s a thoughtful presentation of a man who may or may not be Santa Claus, and the fact that you believe he just might be telling the truth is due entirely to Gwynn. Finally, Natalie Wood. She avoids all the clichés of the child actor here; her performance as the little girl who doesn't believe in Santa is devoid of the mannerisms and precociousness that mar most roles like this. She doesn't hint at the sex symbol she’ll eventually become, but you can still tell she’s going to break a few hearts along the way.

OK, so there are a couple of plot holes. In one early scene, Kris mimics the questions he’s answered in past sanity tests, one of which is “Who was the vice president under John Quincy Adams,” to which Kris responds Daniel D. Tompkins, but it’s actually John C. Calhoun.* Another was suggested by the authors of the book Reel Justice, who felt Harper could have dismissed the case without worrying about the political implications, simply by ruling that the prosecution had failed to prove that Kris was a menace to society, which is the actual crux of a sanity hearing. However, as the always accurate Wikipedia points out, “this high standard for involuntary commitment was not instituted until 1975 with the U.S. Supreme Courts’ decision O’Connor v. Donaldson.” So I think we can give them a pass on this one.

*Well, what can you expect – after all, they didn't have the Internet yet.

There are other things as well that make this the perfect Christmas movie, from the supporting cast to the rich detail (filmed after hours in the actual Macy’s store during the 1946 Christmas season), but in the end the unbeatable combination I've listed above makes Miracle on 34th Street the best Christmas movie ever. You’re welcome to disagree, but you’ll be wrong.