Radio: The Week in Review

On a cavernous stage in suburban Los Angeles last week, a TV play was in the throes of dress rehearsal after eight days of tough practice and preparation. Sets representing scenes in an upstate New York home, in Manhattan and in London were ranged in a circle around a cluster of cameras, microphone booms and cables. Overhead glared a battery of lights. In and around the sets moved actors, cameramen, soundmen, stagehands, assistant directors and a stage manager in a reasonable facsimile of confusion. From the control booth, Director Seymour Kulik barked commands to his headset-wearing assistants as the actors, electricians and cameramen annoyingly muffed their cues. The play was To Each His Own, adapted from the 1946 movie that won an Oscar for Olivia de Havilland. Now, cut from two hours to 46 minutes, it starred Dorothy McGuire on NBC’s Lux Video Theater—the first of a series of adaptations of top movies with top movie stars.

Surrounding Treacle. Once it was on the air, the opening Lux show moved far more smoothly than the dress rehearsal, but it was nonetheless disappointing—a clear warning of some of the tremendous problems ahead in a season loaded with adapted drama. Adapter Sanford Barnett, prohibited by space and time limitations from imitating the far-ranging freedom of movie cameras, had to cut the film script down to a sentimental skeleton. The original film had been aimed at the handkerchief trade; on TV the tear jerking scenes came as fast as in any soap opera. To compensate for his lack of mobility, Director Kulik borrowed heavily from Hollywood’s sob expert, Ralph Edwards (This Is Your Life). Just like Edwards, the Lux show employed a tremulous, offstage voice to say such things as, “Yes, you came to New York, Jodie, to lose yourself in hard work . . . And then you ran away to England to forget . . .” Dorothy McGuire tried hard but was never able to free her self from the surrounding treacle.

Another West Coast-drama entry was CBS’s Life with Father, starring Leon Ames and Lurene Tuttle. One of the greatest disappointments of last season, Life now has a new outlook. Instead of blustering about every trifle, Leon Ames now restricts his bellowing to an occasional protest of “Oh, no!” Lurene Tuttle has shed much of last year’s archness, and the four children (with the exception of Master Harlan) are more recognizably human. But with the acting satisfactorily toned down, the actors last week were betrayed by a plot that threatened to gothree ways at once and ended up by going nowhere.

Avalanche of Bathos. Hollywood’s filmed TV fare included Dragnet, which began its new series with a shocker: the tracking down of a criminal who was flooding local high schools with obscene pictures. The daring theme was soon buried under an avalanche of bathos as Jack Webb set about proving that there is some good in everybody, even pornographers. Brought to bay, the filthy-picture dealer was revealed as a broken-down movie producer with total recall about the good old days in the film business.

In the filmed Mickey Rooney Show, Hollywood’s final dramatic effort of the week, Mickey plays a stagestruck network page boy who has no chance in TV because “he’s too small to be a wrestler and too big for a puppet.” Mickey comes equipped with parents (Regis Toomey and Claire Carleton), a sweetheart three inches taller than he is (Carla Balenda) and a shady dramatic coach (Alan Mowbray). Fast-moving and full of bounce, the Mickey Rooney Show is aimed at the large audience that already likes Our Miss Brooks, I Married Joan, Topper and My Little Margie.

Steeped in Aplomb. While Hollywood was beginning the new season with drama, Manhattan concentrated on songsters. Eddie Fisher and Perry Como arrived back on TV with the dependability of swallows zooming into Capistrano. Soon due are such talented warblers as Vaughn Monroe, Dinah Shore, Jo Stafford, Martha Wright and Jane Froman. Eddie Fisher sang four songs, worked in a little quick sell for his sponsor (Coca-Cola), and on ballads, unashamedly imitated his idol, Perry Como.

On his show, Como demonstrated why he is the acknowledged TV master of song. Relaxed to the point of bonelessness, he is something of an Ed Sullivan steeped in aplomb, and presents the very picture of ease and graciousness. Como this year will repeat last season’s big audience-getter: religious songs. For Catholics, Como sang a musical version of the Act of Contrition; for Protestants, Onward Christian Soldiers; and for Jews, he wore a yarmulke (skull cap) and sang Kol Nidre.