The Week in Review

A good deal of television seemed star-crossed last week--and the rest was tugged and buffeted by the ebb tides of summer.

In Hollywood, rehearsing for his show, Red Skelton plunged headlong into a "breakaway"* door. It didn't break, and Red was hospitalized with concussion and a mild case of shock. Skelton seems to be growing accident prone: last year he narrowly missed blowing off his head with a shotgun; last January he fell through a glass shower door, requiring 30 stitches in his arm; last April he sprained his back falling down a flight of stairs. This time, on only 30 minutes' notice, Nightclub Comic Johnny Carson (who is also M.C. of CBS's Earn Your Vacation) took over and did a very funny job. particularly in a doubletalk explanation of the economics of TV.

Toil & Trouble. In Manhattan, Author Meets the Critics--minus one critic--came on the air for a discussion of William Faulkner's A Fable. Author Frank (Five Gentlemen of Japan) Gibney arrived ten minutes late, breathing hard and blaming the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad. Gibney's first comment was that he thought most readers would have difficulty understanding A Fable. In reply, Critic Irving Howe took a surprising potshot at his own publisher. Random House President Bennett Cerf, who also doubles as a humorist and a panelist on What's My Line? Noting that Publisher Cerf had praised Fable's lucidity, Howe added: "If Bennett Cerf understands it, I'm sure that everyone else will."

The Morning Show, CBS's early-hour rival to NBC's successful Today, started the troublous week with a new star, dapper, 36-year-old Jack Paar, and a new format--fun and games instead of just news and weather. The fun turned out to be slightly repetitious. On his opening show Paar observed: "I went to Phila delphia once on a Sunday, but it was closed." The same joke turned up again on Friday. Paar's idea of early morning games included complaints about the placement of cameras and pretending to misunderstand the off-screen signals of his technical staff. After the first go-around The Morning Show's co-Producer David Heilweil commented: "At least, Ernie Kovacs rehearses his confusion; Paar just creates it."

The Philco-Goodyear TV Playhouse had troubles both onstage and off. Last week's play, Recoil, by A. J. Russell, had a good plot (a nice guy wants to get through life without stepping on anyone, but his girl and events won't let him), an adequate cast, and uneven, but sometimes moving, writing. However, the actors had more than average difficulty remembering the words; even bright-eyed Susan Shaw, doing the Goodyear commercials, blew her lines.

Offstage, Producer Fred Coe, who has been responsible for putting on the air some of the finest new TV playwrights (e.g., Horton Foote and Paddy Chayev-sky), had trouble over the Playhouse series: the advertising agency was upset by the lack of upbeat endings and the prevalence of Southern "mood" plays (Coe was born in Alligator, Miss.). Complained an adman: "One week there'd be a story about a blind old lady in Texas, and the next week a story about a blind young lady in Texas." This summer the Playhouse audience rating took a serious dip (usually it has been in or close to the Top Ten), and that, apparently, gave the admen enough leverage to ease Coe's control of the show. Coe has been moved upstairs to the job of supervisor of production, Gordon Duff will replace him as producer.

Things were even getting a bit thick in London. BBC Announcer Donald Gray, a ruggedly handsome six-footer who lost an arm on the Normandy beachhead, has a deep, quiet voice that thrills British housewives (said one: "It makes me all relaxed to listen to him--I think he's smashing!"). Among his burbling fan letters, Announcer Gray got an ominous note from an anonymous husband who claimed Gray had "mesmerized" his wife. The husband threatened to kill Gray unless he retired from TV. Last week another threatening letter arrived, this time setting the day for the execution: Aug. 25. Wrote the threatener: "I stake my life against his. He will not live the day ... I promise BBC one thing--After August 24, a new television announcer." Said Gray, as he agreed to Scotland Yard protection: "I am taking this seriously."

In & Out. The air was busy with the usual number of arrivals and departures:

P: In Vermont, the only state in the union without a TV station, set owners have had to depend on uncertain reception from Canada and nearby states. This week Vermont's TV drought ends when Burlington's station WMVT begins broadcasting from a transmitter atop 4,393-ft. Mt. Mansfield.

P: In Chicago, Kukla, Fran & Ollie found a new home on the ABC network. A standard NBC item since 1948, the gentle Burr Tillstrom show originally ran for half an hour, five times a week. Then it was cut to 15 minutes, and finally, limited to 30 minutes once a week. With a new sponsor (Gordon Baking Co.), the Kuklapolitan players will go back to their five-day-a-week format.

P: On What's My Line? last week, Fred Allen replaced Steve Allen (no kin) as a panel member and sounded more like the old Fred than he usually has on TV--but not as sharp as the new Steve. To a resident of Long Island, Fred cracked: "Welcome to America!" and to a contestant, non-game-minded Allen said: "This is your first time on the show and it's my first time, so why don't you just tell me what you do?"

P: In Los Angeles, the Gillette Safety Razor Co. struck a blow for the purity of singing commercials by filing a $500,000 damage suit against a music company and a songwriter who had published the Look-Sharp Be-Sharp March based on the famed Gillette jingle.

P: In Manhattan, Gordon Gray, general manager of station WOR, laid out $510,000 for the purchase of recordings, including full-length Shakespearean plays and adaptations of novels by Dumas and Dickens. Recorded in Australia by U.S.. British and Australian actors, the plays will be heard in half-hour chunks, five days a week, beginning in January.

End of the Road. Ordinarily, the best thing in summer TV is live drama. Last week two of the best were cut down in their prime. NBC's The Marriage, starring Jessica Tandy and Hume Cronyn, bowed out. And Suspense, a five-year-old veteran, left the air when Sponsor Auto-Lite failed to renew its option. For most of its history, Suspense was a run-of-the-mill thriller, but in recent months had been far and away the best of its kind on TV. Last week Suspense put on Barn Burning by William Faulkner, dramatized by Novelist Gore Vidal. The story of a hypersensitive war veteran and sharecropper who will not let any man's arrogance top his own vindictiveness, the play was superbly acted by E. G. Marshall, Peter Cookson and Beatrice Straight. As the sharecropper's son, Charles Taylor was that rare thing on TV--a believable adolescent. The play was tightly directed by Robert Mulligan and produced by David Heilweil, who commented: "I'd been saving this one; I thought we might as well go out in a blaze of glory."

*In show business, a "breakaway" (e.g., a vase, door, chair or bottle) is an object that is supposed to shatter harmlessly on impact--usually on someone's head.

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