The Week in Review

Three shows stood out in the TV week. One was a nostalgic drama more than two decades old. One was a giveaway show to end giveaway shows. The third was a slice of life televised from a real operating room.

The Barretts of Wimpole Street, presented on the new CBS dramatic series Front Row Center, was accented with the pleasant roll of Elizabeth Barrett poetry ("How do I love thee? Let me count the ways") The best thing about the 1931Broadway hit, in fact, was the writing: unlike that of most TV plays, it was at least distinguishable from the commercials between the acts. Beyond the writing, however, The Barretts indicated again, as Front Row Center did a fortnight ago with Dinner at Eight, that it is next to impossible to squeeze a well-known stage play into less than 60 minutes of TV time.

Consoling Cadillac. To carry home the staggering jackpot from The $64,000 Question (Tues. 10 p.m., CBS), the contestant must correctly answer eleven questions spread over four weeks. The first week he can win $8,000. Then he has a week to decide whether he will risk it all for $16,000. If he wins, he has another week to worry about whether he will go for $32,000. If he wins that, he has still another week of anguished self-examination. Should he quit with his $32,000? Or, with the help of any expert he chooses, should he go for the $64,000?

Up to a week before the first show was televised, 14,000 people, hopefully eying the jackpot, had begged to be contestants. The lucky two chosen for the first show: Mrs. Thelma Bennett, a pretty housewife from Trenton, N.J. who is an expert on the movies, and Redmond O'Hanlon, a New York cop, who has five children and a wide knowledge of Shakespeare. Mrs. Bennett missed out on the $8,000 (the question: Name the Columbia movie which won almost all the 1934 Oscars, its stars and its director*), but was sent home with a nice consolation prize: a $5,250 blue Cadillac convertible.

O'Hanlon, hurdling the $8,000 barrier (he named the first five of the seven ages of man from Jaques' speech in As You Like it/-), went home to decide whether he will try this week for $16,000.

After the opening show, the network, sponsor (Revlon) and producer of The $64,000 Question were swamped with phone calls and telegrams by eager people who thought they might be able to give enough correct answers to come home with at least a Cadillac. More swamped, however, was O'Hanlon, whose doorbell and telephone never seemed to stop ringing. Free advice was being handed out lavishly. Some urged him to shoot the $8,000; others pleaded with him to be satisfied with what he had.

Fever Tension. NBC's March of Medicine (sponsored by Smith, Kline & French Laboratories and the American Medical Association) televised the removal of a tumor from a woman's breast. The camera was a straightforward reporter, blinking its impersonal eye at nothing. The sober absence of melodramatics intensified the drama of the operation. The TV audience knew that this was the real thing, taking place at Walter Reed Hospital, Washington, D.C. Viewers were also told that if the tumor proved malignant, the operation would continue with the removal of the unidentified woman's breast.

The camera moved in past the masked surgeon and his assistants to a closeup of an incision about 1 1/2 inches long. The surgeon reached into the hole, drew out a lump, cut it off with four snips of a pair of surgical scissors. The two-inch lump was placed in a pneumatic tube, and 45 seconds later it had traveled 2,000 feet to the laboratory. There before another camera, a pathologist examined it under a microscope, ticking off the tumor's characteristics in a matter-of-fact tone. At this point the tension was fever high. Was the tumor cancerous? The pathologist finally said, hesitantly at first, then with conviction: "It's benign. Yes, it's benign."

The camera's realism in the operating room and the unaffected naturalness with which the pathologist did his job packed a tremendous wallop. Fortunately, the woman's husband, an army doctor, had the good sense not to watch the TV show, whose suspense was painful enough for those who did not even know who the patient was. A few minutes after millions of TV viewers heard the verdict, the husband got the good news.

*It Happened One Night, with Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert. Director: Frank Capra.

/-Infant, schoolboy, lover, soldier, justice, "lean and slipper'd pantaloon," "second childishness."

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