Demographic Vistas: Television in American Culture

Demographic Vistas

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University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia

David Marc

Demographic

Vistas

Television in Amencan Culture

Revised Edition

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Copyright © 1984 by the University of Pennsylvania Press.Revisionsto RevisedEdition copyright © 1996 by the University of Pennsylvania Press. All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging

in Publication Data

Marc, David. Demographic vistas: television in American culture / David Marc; with a foreword by Horace Newcomb. - Rev.ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and indexes. ISBN0-8122-1560-5 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Television broadcasting-United States-History. 2. Television programs-United States. 3. Popular culture-United States. /. Title. PN 1992.3.U5M26 1996 302.2.'345'0973-dc20 95-50889 CIP Printed in the United Statesof America

To Mnemosyne, more beautiful than Beta Max

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Contents Preface to the 1984 Edition xi Foreword to the Revised Edition Horace Newcomb

xix Introduction to the Revised Edition xxiii

1 Beginning

to Begin Again 1 Television Is Funny 7 Enter the Proscenium 11 In Front of the Curtain 21 The Theater Collapses 29

Z The Situation Comedy of Paul Henning: Modernity and the American Folk Myth in The Beverly Hillbillies 39

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Contents

3 The Comedy of Public Safety 65

4 Gleason's Push 99 viii

5 Self-Reflexive

at Last 129 Cradle to Grave

135 The Stars Come Out at Night

139 Boomers 148 A Light from Melonville 158

6 What Was Broadcasting? (new to Revised Edition)

159 A Signal Cast Broadly 167 The Closing of the American Circuit 177 Ed Sullivan Is No Longer Possible 181 Appendix: Broadcast Network Prime Time Viewing Suggestions, 1984-96 189 Notes 191 Bibliography 205

Contents

Glossary 215

Main Index 221

Index of Television Series 233 Index of Films Made for Theatrical Release 239

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Preface

"A most confusing thing in American History," observed William Carlos Williams, "is the nearly universal lack of scale."! Television is very much at home in this history. Inviting nothing but superlatives ("dullest," "greatest opportunity," "most asinine," "quickest," etc.), it has generated more cash and less prestige than any other activity that could be even loosely described as having a collateral relationship with art. But the extreme reactions and predictions that are easily heard in casual and critical discussions of the medium stand in stark contrast to the processional flow of recognitions, appreciations, and evaluations that continue to characterize normal viewing. This is a book about living with television in the culture that turns it on, creates it, rewards it, despises it, forgets it, and remembers it. There is no posture that honestly separates the author from that culture. In Reading Television, the British critics]ohn Fiske and Iohn Hartley write: the tools of traditional literary criticism do not quite fit the television discourse. At best they can be used in the way a metaphor works-the unknown tenor of television might be apprehended by means of the known vehicle of literary criticism.' By "traditional literary criticism," I take it, the authors refer to xi

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what some now consider the rather old-fashioned practice of personally encountering texts, researching their historical contexts, and offering idiosyncratic, autobiographical readings of them. This book owes much to that method. Decisive authority is awarded to neither impression nor empirical research but rather to their endless synthesis. Metaphor is indeed used here in attempts to apprehend "the unknown tenor of television." "If reality is description," the anthropologist Stan Wilk has astutely argued, "metaphor is technology."3 I have striven to put that technology at the reader's service. James Carey, Raymond Williams, and other leading communications and culture critics have pointed out the limitations of communications theories that ignore the aesthetic analysis of artifacts.' I would go further and say that if any theory of communication is to be meaningful it must admit that it proceeds from the aesthetic vision of its creator and that it aims to understand the aesthetic vision of the artifact's creator. While I have no doubt that those with uses for communications theories will continue to seek them, I have stopped short of proposing any in this study. Like the practitioners of "traditional literary criticism," I have tried to give my first loyalty to the texts I examine and not to any theory of what makes them tick. Despite formulaic or generic similarities among these texts, under close scrutiny each reveals individual quirks-continual reminders that all television images are created by people. This is not to say that one should stray too far from the historic, economic, political, and social influences to which television images are subject; but a writer about anything ought to do no less. I have tried to respect television. In some cases I found work that earned my admiration. In other cases I found rich repositories of ideas, styles, and historical moments-artifacts worth keeping. Elsewhere I came across the insidious. I even encountered work of such utter aesthetic aridity as to stagger the imagination. Texts that held none of these qualities were generally avoided because they were so boring. It is not unusual to find books on television written by sociologists, psychologists, cliometricians, psycholinguists, physicists, and the specialists of many other widely diverse disciplines. Therefore, the reader should be alerted to some of the

Preface

methods not employed and controversies not addressed in this book: I have not created or made extensive use of quantitative surveys that purport to describe the reactions of millions of 1V viewers by the examination of "representative" hundreds. Even if I were convinced that this Widelyused method did not hold threats to the dignity of the individual, I could still find reason to question its verity. I am the case study. Who is representing you? I have not found-or sought-an axiomatic method with which to describe television programs or the watching of them. While I confess an attraction to the neatnesses of functionally descriptive transformational grammars, I feel that the critical dialogue lacking in American culture, at least insofar as television is concerned, is the vigorous exchange of idiosyncratic viewings of programs and other televised phenomena. Gilbert Seldes initiated such a dialogue as a lonely voice in the 1950s, recognizing its crucial function in a democratic culture. In recent years, it has begun to grow with the work of Horace Newcomb, Michael Arlen,James Wolcott,Marc Eliot,Jeff Greenfield, and a handful of others. None of these writers, it is worth noting, is committed to any codified theory of video perception. Performance, visual composition, writing, makeup, and the other arts and crafts that go into the production of television time are likely to perpetually confound efforts to rationalize them into replicable formulas. This is true even where it is the intention of the artist or artisan to find such a formula. This book seeks neither to justifytelevision's existence nor to eradicate it from the face of culture. That issue is a popular red herring of technicolor hue. Television has its viewers, and, given painful twentieth-century history, the fantasy of playing culture czar is more embarrassing than appealing. At the same time, I have purposely declined the mask of "value-free" investigator; we are already suffering from far too much freedom from values. Instead, I have searched for germinating centers in my own television experience and consciousness. I have done this on the assumption that a reader might find points of identity with which to share and evaluate these recuperations. AWhitmanian

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faith in the ability of the individual consciousness to mingle with a collective cultural consciousness is therefore crucial to this study.5 In terms of bibliography, the landmark reference works that have been published in recent years, including those by Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh, Alex McNeil,Vincent Terrace, and others, have been of invaluable help. Their extensive catalogs of programs, casts, schedules, ratings, and authors have provided a record of bibliographic detail that is indispensable for critical writing about American commercial television shows. Though these archival volumes cannot easily be read from first page to last, they invite a kind of thumbing-through that in some ways imitates flipping around the dial. Videotape recording devices played a less important role in the preparation of the book. Though I was allowed access to such equipment through the generous auspices of the University of Iowa American Studies Program, I preferred to follow series as they were telecast on the air. By allowing the viewer the opportunity to pull programs off the daily schedules automatically,freeze them in time, and view them repeatedly at will, these recording devices successfully challenge network/station programming control, thus altering the character of viewing. Because my greater concern in this study is television's life in American culture and not the shows out of context, I generally followed the schedules of the stations that were available to me wherever I happened to be living at a given time. These locations included both cable and noncable markets and were usually determined by circumstances not directly related to the study. When available, cable did prove useful; the intense commitment to syndicated reruns of independent superstations such as WTBS (Atlanta), WGN (Chicago), WOR (New York), and the Christian Broadcasting Network (Virginia Beach, Virginia) provided the bulk of primary material that needed to be reviewed. Discussions of comedians, comic forms, and comedy dominate the study. I am convinced that American television has defined itself as a comic medium. Most of what it does best is funny; almost every citizen may patronize it. It was my intention in chapter 1 to set the tenor of the study and to move in this direction. Attempting to leave behind the quagmire of debates

Preface

over whether television is the end of Western civilization and! or a scientific theory of mass behavior, I hastened to the stage, an ancient medium. Blessed with an unimpeachable pedigree (its critics include Aristotle; its artists, Shakespeare), theater has exerted tremendous formal influence over both cinema and television. In the case of the movies, they were (at least until quite recently) shown primarily in theater buildings and even shared the stage with live acts during their early years. Television, the home miniature, not only must narrate each feature it offers but also is obliged to create continuities between these offerings. It was therefore my aim to define modes of theatricality on television so as to provide critical language with which to talk about it. The taxonomy I found includes three main types: the presentational (theatrical illusion managed by an interlocutory figure); the representational (imitation of the proscenium effect); and the documentary (reality offered as such). Chapter 1 concludes that these three modes of illusion are not monolithic obstacles to the imagination of either the televisionmaker or the viewer; rather, they are so easily seen through as to provide a bottomless pit of satirical transformations. Chapters 2-4 take license from these assumptions. They are studies of a comic auteur (Paul Henning), a comic genre (the crimeshow), and a comic personality (Iackie Gleason). In each case I encountered the subject floating free in space and attempted to retrieve as many of its relationships to history/ television/culture as possible. The Henning and Gleason chapters are largely attempts at biography. One rural and western, the other urban and eastern, each used the medium in a peculiar way to present a personal vision of-and to-America. Each also brought a tradition with him that gives the lie to the assumption that American television just somehow popped out of mass society's thin air. A self-consciously good old boy from Independence, Missouri, Henning traveled a well-worn path into show business and popular culture. A bona fide waif of New York proletarian tenements, Gleason American-Dreamed his way to millionairedom on the strength of endless jokes at the expense of what he might have been had he failed. In each case it is significant that the complex machinery of the production and distribution system could be put so thoroughly in the service of personal expression. The successful use of these

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expressions to sell cornflakes and automobiles enriches their mystique by tying them to specific historical periods. As any Madison Avenue executive is likely to tell you, neither Henning nor Gleason would be a safe bet for the prime-time advertising dollar in 1984, though both were able to air their work during the most expensive advertising hours of the fifties and sixties. Both comic visions find happiness in America more than a touch bittersweet. The Clampetts, whose sense of blood community has been sacrificed for money and Lifestyle,sit around their Beverly Hills estate with little sense of purpose, the objects of their neighbors' derision. The Kramdens, the last white family in the eternal 1930s of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, wait, without either telephone or television, for Ralph's ship to come in at last. In between these sketches of the behind-the-scenes auteur and the public star personality, I have placed chapter 3, a history of the crimeshow. My aim here is to describe this genre's dominant narrative model and the styles and trends that have given it character. Unlike the sitcom and the comedyvariety show, the 1V crimeshow does not announce itself as comic but earns that description in its effect. I attempt to demonstrate this through reconsiderations of several concepts, auteurs, and stars that shaped it and of the relationship between historical circumstances and narrative transformations. McCarthyism (1950s), the Generation Gap (1960s), and Lifestylism (post -1960s) are the three historical watersheds that receive attention in this respect. Happy endings are provided for all. "Who can recreate the experience of going to the pictures in the radiant dawn of popular mass culture?" asks Robert Sklar in Movie-made America" In the fifth and final chapter, I ask a similar question about television, a phenomenon that might better be placed at the high noon of "popular mass culture." To answer it, I leave prime time for the ragged edges of what the industry calls "marginal hours" in search of an avant-garde that might portend an opening of the field for television comedyand, one might hope, for American television in general. This leads me to the late-night weekend satire shows that have made television-its programs, stars, auteurs, and even its scheduling practices-the self-reflexive target of their material. The Saturday Night Live of the late seventies and SC7V Comedy Network make use of the canon and history that American television has

Preface

created since World War II. Like Fielding's jabs at the novel, Swift's absurd travel literature, and Pope's attacks on contemporary British society in the eighteenth century, SC1V and the original SNL confront the tragedy of mass culture by finding sense in its humor. Televisionhas become adult enough to have a childhood that is capable of embarrassing it. This loss of innocence is likelyto push it toward more self-conscious efforts at self-improvement. I set the limits of the book's intentions at this point, refusing to speculate on what character these efforts might assume or how likelythey are to be successful. Whatever develops will in any event be hooked up to the cable, effectively preserving the first forty or so years of three-network hegemony as an important etiological period. Having concentrated on prime-time and late-night comedy, I have obviously left much out; this study in no way pretends to account for all, most, or even much of what appears on American television. The made-for-1Vmovie, and its extended cousin, the miniseries, both of which take up so much prime-time network air and investment, are not discussed. The prime-time soap opera, the most important new serial genre to emerge in the last decade, is completely ignored, as are daytime soap operas and gameshows, public broadcasting, and independent video. The vast quantity of texts produced for television (what Martin Esslin calls "the drama explosion") makes any attempt to review American television comprehensively in a single volume futile. Even within the relatively circumscript bounds I have set for this study, many readers are apt to find important omissions. "Where is M*A*S*H?" and "How about Rodney Dangerfield as performance artist?" are among the many reasonable questions that could be asked. I remember that the first reaction of the folklorist Harry Oster to the manuscript of this book was, "But what about Gilligan's Island?" As I have already admitted, my method in writing this book was something less than mechanically systematic. To borrow a phrase from Allen Ginsberg, I have walked which way my beard has pointed. No slights were intended. Apologies are offered to neglected fans, performers, technicians, and producers. Then too there is the problem of time. The relentless pace of life and death among television shows and styles threatens any book on the subject with the specter of anachronism. This

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book was written for the most part before May 1982. Minor revisions continued to be made until May 1983. This may help solve such puzzles as why there is no discussion of St. Elsewhere in chapter 3 and why Late Night with David Letterman is missing from chapter 5.

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The notion of culture, a concept that continually spawns and confounds interdisciplinary studies, has not been dealt with extensively in any theoretical way. I have taken it for granted that television and television programs have become a part of the "complex whole" described by Edward Burnett Tylor in his famous definition of the term.' As a teacher, I have walked into classrooms, mentioned obscure television programs that aired for only a season or two a dozen years ago, and found that not only are most of the class members (gathered from all over the United States) familiar with these shows but many are quick to express opinions about them. If this is not an example of "shared culture," I cannot imagine what is. Like most Americans, I was already an avid 1V watcher of some years when I learned to read. The banality of the Dickand-Jane texts used by the New York CityBoard of Education to accomplish that task was not lost on a child who had already seen World War II narrated by Walter Cronkite on Prudential's Twentieth Century. Having spent many Saturday mornings in a Brooklyn apartment envying Joey Newton because he had both a 1V show and a horse named Fury, I was an early believer in the day-to-day strength of the box's fantasy power. Myfirst notions of irony came from the disembodied narrator of Rocky and Bullwinkle. This discussion of television, like any by a viewer, is autobiographical. Providence, Rhode Island

Foreword to the Revised Edition Horace Newcomb

In this edition of Demographic Vistas David Marc directly addresses the fundamental question that underlies the first edition and all his subsequent work: What is television? Here, in a new concluding chapter, the question is framed in the past. Marc argues, and I agree, that what we have generally accepted as a social, cultural category and phenomenon referred to as "television," what he more appropriately designates as "broadcasting," is with us no more. But neither the historical perspective nor the more precise terminology can fully answer that first question, the one that seems so simple and obvious. We have never truly known what this thing is, this experience, this industry, technology, art form, amusement, diversion, smoke screen, ideology machine. It is all these. Moreover, "television" is the intersection, the nexus, a knot of contradiction, a collection of overlapping histories and effects. If we are vitally self-interested, of course, if we are performers or producers or technicians for "the industry," if we are salesmen or network executives, or politicians or advertisers or celebrities, we may choose one term or another, or yet another, to define the meaning of television and our relation to it. Choosing any single designation is merely to suggest a ratio of interest and power, to argue that we can somehow identify and measure the phenomenon by one category rather than anxix

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other. In doing so we rarely recognize that the category defines us as much as it defines the medium. But for most of us the mundane experience of television is so typical, so ordinary, that the question never arises. Second thought about such experience is unnecessary, if not a contradiction. Marc knows all this, and is never content with that knowledge. For he recognizes the significance of television in the life of this century. He sees how it has transformed experience and how what we have known as "TV"-now come and gone-has played a fundamental part in lives individual and collective. This notion of the collective is central to his understanding and to his argument. It is most clear when we realize that this book, particularly with its new introduction and conclusion, is about far more than "television" vaguely and casually understood. It is about questions far deeper than "What is television?" It probes such matters as, What is it that we share? What ceremonies and tales, what explanations and lies, what vague remembrance of old evils and recognition of new failures do we experience together? What is common among us, in the sense of the low and vulgar, but also in the sense of shared experience. And more, this book is about the sense of communion, that levelling experience in which some have far more power than others, in which some control the performance of others, but in which all must bear some degree of responsibility and pay some allegiance. If this sounds too weighty for "TV,"so be it. No one knows this better than Marc. His prose never moves too far ahead without a joke, a fond reference to jackie Gleason, or the inclusion of Green Acres among the "classics" of the medium. By the same token he manages, better than almost anyone writing about television, to connect his verbal pranks, these trivialities, to larger issues. Perhaps no writer examining TV uses the word "banal" so often or so fluently, reminding us so well that most writing about the medium, scholarly, journalistic, polemical, scientific, matches banality for banality, especially when scoring others for attending too much to this most banal of media. But if there is little solemnity here there is also a constant reminder that real issues are at stake. Marc is truly disturbed by the loss of connection and commonality in contemporary culture. Network television may be (or have been) a most imper-

Foreword to the Revised Edition

feet form of connecting tissue. But it did connect, and Marc is quite correct to point out that newer forms of communication lack this power and fail in this function. He makes a compelling case for understanding and examining television as the end of a long line of expressive forms that fulfill such fundamental cultural demands. Ultimately, as in all Marc's work, it is a case made from a particular, individualized perspective. He is no "television theorist." Few generalizations are presented here in a manner that does not elicit from the careful reader a heartfelt, "Wait just a minute!" Where Marc fears this response is not forthcoming he may willfully undercut his own generalization with a counterexample or a throwaway line. In the end, we may not accept Marc's correlation of the apparent disintegration of many social structures with the rise of cable television, or his suggestion that "cultural pluralism" is an ideological smokescreen for cynical and vicious retreat from true public life. But even when we do not accept them we must respond with arguments that somehow match his own. In those arguments he manages, without pedantry or snobbishness, references to Eliot and the Bible, to the history of u.s. media policy and the development of broadcasting technology. Marc confirms Robert Warshow's claim that the man who reads Shakespeare can also be the man who goes to the movies. This is the perspective of the true critic, one who speaks strongly and forcefully from a well of private experience, and at the same time dares any good reader to toss the writer back into that well. When the first edition of Demographic Vistas came to me in manuscript I wrote words that later appeared on the dust jacket, "A fine example of a new generation of television criticism." Would that it were so. While the academic study of television has developed into a complex and informed field, there are few practicing television critics. The situation is even worse in the world of public journalism. David Marc proves that this need not be the case, that, if there were sufficient venues for publication, we could still have a meaningful public discussion of the role of television in American life. It is no accident that in the introduction to this new edition he once again draws inspiration from Whitman. But in the end the voice here is not so much Whitmanesque as Emersonian. Assertion is presented without apology. The angle of analysis

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is always from off center. Los Angeles is, currently, Marc's Concord, an appropriate shift given subject matters. But the arrogance in the pronouncements is filled with New England brittleness. Each sentence can stand, even demands, scrutiny. The connections among them are sometimes tenuous, allusive, hidden without that examination. Each could be lifted for individual argument, but must finally be pushed back into paragraph, into the full essay. As always, even in this "book," Marc is more essayist than monographer. And like Emerson's, each essay is part of a much larger argument, one that exceeds this particular work, exceeds the subject of television, reaches out for old meanings that must be given new shapes. Television is Marc's "meal in the firkin, milk in the pan," but it is also the transparent eyeball through which we view ourselves. (He would be the first to compare Emerson's image to CBS's.) At the end of his introductory essay, Marc says that, "In the high-tech cultural marathon, art runs a decent second to technology, but criticism remains a distant third." He's right. But like all dogged marathoners he stays in the event. Sometimes he's out front, pacing the pack. Sometimes he's dragging up the end, trailing in someone else's dust. More often than not he's in the middle, on our heels, maybe even tripping us with a mean glint in his eye. But he generally helps us back to our feet, pushes his face close, yells about something misunderstood, then screams at us to get back in the race. Even if television, so crucial to my life as to his, is gone, he makes me want to try once again to understand it.

Introduction to the Revised Edition

... the lack of a common skeleton, knitting all close, continually haunts me ... nothing is plainer than the need, a long period to come, of a fusion of the States into the only reliable identity, a moral and artistic one. -Walt Whitman, Democratic Vistas I attended college at a school that changes its name quite a bit. It was founded as Harpur College in 1948. When I enrolled in 1968 it was in the process of switching over to the State University of New York at Binghamton. The last solicitation for alumni funds I received had it as Binghamton University. Given the primitive speed of book publishing, it could very well be calling itself something else by the time you are reading thisperhaps the Richard Nixon Institute or George Pataki A & M. In any case, I visited alma mater several years ago on the way to a funeral and I barely recognized the campus. In twenty years the number of buildings had increased geometrically. Wooded areas that I remembered as settings for primary natural experiences had found new use as peripheral parking lots. What had once been the entire main library was now but a reserved reading room. Walking around the grounds, however, I discovered that if I stared hard at the sprawling postmodern multiversity I could see the modest little college-the place where I first learned which rats get the M&Ms-emerge xxiii

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like a hologram from the densely overlaid glass-and-concrete academic themepark: a building here; a quadrangle there; a couple of appropriately ridiculous sculptures rusting in the wind. It reminded me of one of those "find the hidden objects in this picture" puzzles on a place mat at a cheap restaurant. It also reminded me of 1V. Like the old school, the old television I grew up on-commercial network television-remains intact. But the relatively few structures that once constituted the whole are now imbedded in a strange infoscape of high-tech forms and functions that has been built up around it. What is familiar can be found, but to do so it is necessary to penetrate a tangle of alien webs. When I wrote Demographic Vistas almost fifteen years ago, American 1V was a well-defined body of narrative drawn from an identifiable, if strikingly banal, perspective. Its stories, both the frankly fictional and the self-professing historical, were presented by means of a sparse collection of overused framing devices. Coherent may be too stong a word to describe the television of that period, but prime time was, at the very least, consistent in its narrow range of moral and aesthetic postures. It was almost impossible to distinguish between television as a medium and television as the specific pool of programming that CBS, NBC, and ABC shared with each other and the viewer. There were "independent" stations, but they mostly showed reruns of the same stuff. PBS, offering non-violent children's programming, British drama, nature documentaries and no mid-program commercial interruptions, constituted American 1V's avant-garde, alternative culture and upscale niche market all rolled into one (apologies to Naim]un Paik). Those days of course are long gone. The "Network Era" of television broadcasting, like its antecedents the Golden Age of radio and the Studio Era of Hollywood film, can be filed as another episode in the larger techno-cultural history of mass market programming. All three of these progressions have a cyclical character. Each was driven by a technological innovation that quickly propelled it from the lab to the center stage of popular culture. Each was eclipsed just as quickly by a new, even more spectacular attraction. Each survived by finding new functions and fashioning appropriate genres to fit changed circumstances.

Introduction to the Revised Edition

Given the millennia dividing Homer from Gutenberg, and the centuries dividing Gutenberg from Morse, and the half century dividing Morse from Marconi, and the decades dividing Marconi from the successful TV patents of Farnsworth and Zworykin, the pace at which media rise and fall from primary to supplementary shamanistic functions seems to perpetually accelerate. In the case of radio, RCA launched the first transcontinental network, the National Broadcasting Company, in 1927, only thirty years after Marconi demonstrated wireless transmission 1 The development of NBC and the other commercial networks fashioned after its model imposed a form of planned, centralized quality control over American radio, both technologically and aesthetically. The network feed, as it came to be called, imagined, searched for, and articulated the roles radio would play in the everyday life of its listeners. Genre management and style maintenance fell into the hands of a relative few. In the case of the movies, the key year was once again 1927. Warner Bros. had merely hoped to bring down labor costs by automating the live-performance sound tracks that accompanied its movies and, in the bargain, to make its cinema product more attractive by adding singing and dancing. The resounding success of the company's experimental film The Jazz Singer, however, had unexpected consequences. Within a matter of several years, studios had either retooled exclusively for talkies or gone the way of the telegraph. The audience for synchronous sound features promised greater profits, but reaching it and satisfying it entailed greater overhead and therefore greater capital investment. As with network radio, a shake-out in the movie industry put the power to define genres, which is quite arguably the power to define culture, into the hands of a few corporate executives gathered at a centralized point. Radio, emanating from New York, and film, from Hollywood, like mind and genitalia, stretched across the body of the nation, an electric nervous system of national stimulation and reaction. The radio age and the studio era were more than merely congruent; they constituted the joint reign of twin cultural oligarchies. The giant broadcasting companies and the major film studios, in mutually beneficial alliance, presided over a spectacularly effective industrial age popular culture the

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likes of which the world had never seen. This dominant media axis lasted for approximately twenty-five years (c. 19271952). Its achievements included the successful day-to-day retailing of national consciousness through such difficulties as the Great Depression, World War II, and the introduction of the Cold War. This balance of power between the three broadcasting companies and the five major movie studios was broken by the broadcasters' introduction of television, which decisively shifted strength in their favor. By the late 1940s the old allies found themselves at war (there was a lot of that going around at the time). The movie people tried Technicolor, Panavision, 3-D, air-conditioning, double-features, and contracts forbidding their actors from appearing on television. Their own efforts to enter the broadcasting business failed. Born as "radio with pictures," TV was a federally regulated activity and the broadcasting titans knew the territory better than the movie moguls, who were used to regulating their own industry. Using their experience and influence with the FCC to create a series of legal technicalities, the old radio networks, led by General Sarnoff, effectively barred both movie studios (e.g., Paramount) and technology companies (e.g., Zenith) from entering the telecasting business. 2 Commercial television transmission, which had started before the war, was made legal again in 1946. By 1948 the FCC had issued 108 station licenses. That year, citing technical problems such as transmitter specifications and spectral interference, the networks asked for a freeze on new station licenses and the Commission dutifully imposed it. This action effectively kept all other companies out of the TV business while the radio nets used their head start to secure the medium, the mode, and the market. By the end of the freeze, all 108 stations were either directly owned by or affiliated to the existing networks.' In this protected environment, the radio nets calmly refitted the popular home audio genres they had invented for what amounted to their new line of home audio-visual products. Sitcoms, soap operas, copshows, gameshows, and so on emerged as the "natural" forms of television. By the time that the FCC lifted the freeze in 1952, most of the potential competitors had given up their plans and resigned themselves ei-

Introduction to the Revised Edition

ther to carrying on the fight against television or to finding supporting roles in the new industry. The one outside company that had actually launched a 1V network before 1948, Dumont, was mortally wounded during the freeze and finally went dark in 1955. The Network Era can be historically bracketed by the Freeze at its beginning and the significant audience penetration of cable TV and VCRs some thirty years later. During that period the American (viewing) public was the tri-net cartel's captive audience. A choice of three television signals was offered, each competing against the other two with approximately the same programming, manufactured within the same moral and aesthetic boundaries. As technology and business, the Network Era was an unqualified success. The tripartite signal was made available to every corner of the nation; color image and stereo sound were successfully standardized and introduced. The average price of sets dropped and the range of screen sizes and options increased. The aggregate three-network share of the active national viewing audience never fell below 90 percent, not for a single moment, during those three decades. Artistically, however, the result was less satisfying. The three networks and the small group of production studios they cultivated worked in a protected aesthetic environment tantamount to the official "socialist realism" imposed by the Kremlin over Soviet culture during the same period. The homogeneity of the output was equally analogous. A closed, protected market of the imagination yielded an enormous and steadfastly mediocre body of work that only rarely achieves the extreme of either excellence or complete incompetence, and much of both by accident. (I have tried to note exceptions to that generalization in these pages.) Most of what is fantastic, bizarre, or original about Network Era programming depends on a conscious knowledge that hardly any of it was considered fantastic, bizarre, or original at the time of its production. The legacy of Network Era television, however, is of more than antiquarian interest. The strategy of most post-Network Era services has been to pick through the trash heaps of Network Era television searching for material that, while now marginal to mass marketing currents, is a viable product to sell to their own demographic focus groups. So while reruns of Lost

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in Space (CBS, 1965-68) are hardly worth anything any more on the open syndication market, the series proves ideal for the Sci-Fi Channel: a cheap product jacked up in value for sale in a ghettoized market. Similarly, during the early 1990s Lifetime Television offered a programming line-up that was utterly dominated by multiple daily reruns of thirtysomething (ABC, 1987-91) and LA Law (NBC, 1986-93), two series that had scored particularly well on network with Lifetime's target audience of adult women. Nick-at-Nite built a marketing strategy around a psychological theory that a small but salable percentage of 35- to 55-year-old TV boom babies can be attracted to view sitcoms evocative of their childhood and adolescence. Academic criticism of the Network Era has been generally negative, to put it mildly. However, there is one aspect of the Network Era that has hardly provoked any discussion at all in the academy or elsewhere and seems to deserve some. Network TV was the culmination of a unique phenomenon in U.S. cultural history that had begun with the mass marketing capabilities and strategies of radio and the movies: a national drama. Striking differences in age, religion, gender, race, education, I.Q., social class, credit rating, and sexual orientation characterized the daily audiences for shows such as I Love Lucy, Bonanza, or Charlie 5 Angels; the same cannot be said for any of the audiences that now watch MTV,the Family Channel, Bravo, ESPN or The Nashville Network. To a greater degree than in any previous period, the pre-cable viewing public shared a common culture, which was, at least theoretically, the utopian goal for American democracy articulated by Whitman in Democratic Vistas. Ironically, the quality of drama and political rhetoric produced by TV during the Network Era is generally despised by those very people who might approve of the concept of a national drama or even understand it. The Network Era was a crossroads for American society. It posed a series of questions about the interrelatedness of culture, distribution, and human potential that had been debated since the Enlightenment. Does widening the circle of cultural distribution improve society by extending the influences and pleasures of culture to citizens who would otherwise be denied them? Or does a greater distribution capacity inevitably disfigure or destroy culture by stretching it so thin

Introduction to the Revised Edition

with compromises that there is no influence or pleasure left in it worth distributing? Is the goal of culture greater universal bonding? Or is culture designed to achieve the opposite: to isolate the splintered elements of society from each other so creative genius and its fans may develop civilization without having to bear the burden of-and here is the Network Era's greatest contribution to the language- "the lowest common denominator?" Answers rendered by a look at the reruns of Network Era television are generally not pretty, especially when crossreferenced with their Nielsen ratings. Liberals see a content that underestimates human intelligence and makes mediocrity a self-fulfilling prophecy; conservatives sneer at the hopelessness of achieving excellence in any form designed to flatter the mediocre. In any case, while cable has not exactly terminated this debate on the species-wide capacities of humanity, it has made it less pressing for business application. Freed of the stigmas of Milton Berle and Paul Henning, intellectuals of all stripes may pull the set out of the closet and pop in a tape of Ken Burns or Leni Reifenstehl and give their status anxieties a rest. Early in the Network Era, Marshall McLuhan floated an image of the TV set as an electronic hearth around which family members would gather in the flickering blue-gray light of mass neo-shamanism. McLuhan's vision was a brilliant insight into its moment, which was the cusp of radio and television. But technology and marketing strategy advanced in ways that robbed it of prescience. The picture of family members sitting together in the same room, bathed in the light of the single TV set, glazed eyes staring at the screen and not at each other, is as obsolete as the downtown of a middle-sized American city lacking adequate parking. McLuhan's electronic hearth seems more nostalgic than futuristic as each member of the familyand, in turn, each component of society-turns away from the center and retreats to its special piece of the demographic periphery. At the risk of sounding less than idealistic, I must say that since I wrote this book I have come to believe that the most politically and socially democratic moment I am likely to witness during my lifetime has already passed. The diaspora of the mass audience to dozens of separate-and-by-no-means equal

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channels of culture has not occurred in a vacuum. It has been accompanied by the polarization of the workforce toward an elite of haute bourgeois technocrats being serviced by a labor pool of non-unionized minimum-wage workers. Computer programmers and hamburger flippers do not watch the same TV shows. Fundamentalist Christians call pro-choice secular humanists murderers on The 700 Club and The Old- Time Gospel Hour; secular humanists call capital punishment advocates murderers on anyone of the many secular humanist TV shows, none of whose names come to mind at the moment. These two groups also have different viewing habits. Racial, ethnic, gender, and psycho-sexual separatisms, which already have captured such old-fashioned cultural focal points as literature and politics in America, are marching toward cable. Families that survive the physical breakdowns of divorce and abandonment are balkanized. Dad is absorbed in a rerun of a college basketball game on ESPN. He invites his son to join him, but Junior doesn't want to miss the skateboarding championships on ESPN-2 and, besides, Dad never lets him switch to MTV during the commercials. Mom is all wound up in a disease movie on ABC. Sis, the family intellectual, kicks back with a pack of hyenas tearing apart the flesh of a zebra on the Discovery Channel. The twins have gone interactive, playing video games in the basement, their promised reward for sitting still through Sesame Street that morning. For a period of almost a century the economic direction of American culture beckoned all demographic elements toward a center at which a model for identity was revered. Among the characteristic elements of that period were cultural eurocentrism, nuclear family patriarchy, love of automobiles, Protestant Christianity, and so on. The movies aided in this process by pushing significant elements of the upmarket away from the evolving complexities of the novel and the stage play, helping to establish the marginality of literature and theater in mass culture. Similarly, the movies pushed up the downmarket to "legitimate" drama from vaudeville and burlesque, both of which perished without low-end patronage. Radio condensed information and entertainment for the upmarket. At the same time, it introduced a professionally produced rhetoric, which didn't require literacy, to the downmarket. In channel-scarce Network Era television, the American

Introduction to the Revised Edition

consciousness industry brought all these elements to a peak of effectiveness, achieving the closest historical realization yet of what theorists such as Dwight Macdonald and T. W. Adorno had hypothesized as mass culture. To use Fred MacDonald's phrase, the Network Era remade the u.s. into "one nation under television.":' But-surprise, surprise-the picture would not hold. I have in this new edition added a chapter that attempts to reconsider television broadcasting after a dozen years of its decline from the crossroads of American culture toward the status of a slow lane on the information superhighway. My purpose is to balance the sense of aesthetic relief many viewers may be feeling with a sobering look at the political consequences of this path of development. In Democratic VistasWhitman imagined popular culture as a coherent force in a democratic society-the place where every ear heard every voice. In a nation being rewired into subscriber bases that vision seems more romantic than ever. As I write these notes, the spiral of communication technology has by no means plateaued and there is plenty of work to do for anybody who is as interested in continuity as in disjunction. Critical response to network television is beginning to flourish now that cable occupies the center and the frontier has moved west to CD-ROM and online computer services. In the high-tech cultural marathon, art runs a decent second to technology, but criticism remains a distant third. Los Angeles

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Never was there, perhaps, more hollowness at heart than at present, and here in the United States. Genuine belief seems to have left us. The underlying principles of the States are not honestly believed in (for all this hectic glow and these melodramatic screamings), nor is humanity itself believed in. What penetrating eye does not everywhere see through this mask? WaltWhitman, Democratic Vistas (1871) An unholy marriage of sociology and art-the shotgun is pointed at art-American television is a perplexing montage. The programs are conceived as stimuli for the masses, but it is left to the viewer to establish a text in a personal, even private, way. Whatever is exposed to television is under attack. Ideals are confounded by the depressing spectacle of astonishing technical acumen aimed at gross simplification. Belief is disappointed; the soul is not visible on the screen. Traditional political ideologies have been unable to respond coherently. The Left finds conspiracy snarling behind the pervasive promotion of consumer outlook even as it envies the industrial medium's ability to organize millions at the flick of a switch. On the Right, there is no less conflict. Television has become an integral factor in the processes of modern capitalism. Entrepreneurial success is largely based on effective use of it. As a consequence, however, what Jose Ortega y Gasset called "the bigotry of Cul-

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ture" has itself become the victim of discrimination; the prerogatives of cultivated taste have become buried in an avalanche of processed styles. The achiever is awed by the material accomplishment of the national communications system but hates to waste time on the nonsense it delivers. The dreamer welcomes the continuous, coast -to-coast, willing suspension of disbelief but is let down by the obsessive neatness of the narrative. The lover knows that all truths wait in all things. In one of the few famous speeches given on the subject of television, Federal Communications Commission chairman Newton N. Minow shocked the 1961 Convention of the National Association of Broadcasters by summarily categorizing its membership's handiwork as "a vast wasteland."! The general acceptance of Minow's metaphor is outstripped only by the appeal of television itself. Americans look askance at television, but look at it nonetheless. Owners of thousand-dollar sets think nothing of calling them "idiot boxes." The home stereo system, regardless of what plays on it, is, by comparison, holy. While millions of dollars change hands daily on the assumption that 98 percent of American homes are equipped with sets and that these sets play an average of over six and a half hours each day,' a wellpronounced distaste for 1V has become a prerequisite to claims of intellectual and even ethical legitimacy. Social scientists, perhaps less concerned with these matters than others, have rushed to fill the critical gap. Denying the mysteries of teller, tale, and told, they have reduced the significance of this American storytelling medium to the study of the effect of stimuli on masses, producing volumes of data that in turn justify each season's network schedules. A disillusioned advertising executive, his fortune safely socked away, has even written a book entitled Four Argumentsfor the Elimination of Television. Hans Magnus Enzensberger preempted such criticism as early as 1962 when he wrote: The process is irreversible. Therefore, all criticism of the mind industry which is abolitionist in its essence is inept and beside the point, since the idea of arresting and liquidating industrialization (which such criticism implies) is suicidal. There is a macabre irony to any such proposal, for it is indeed no longer a technical problem for our civilization to destroy itself.3

Beginning to Begin Again

Though Jerry Mander, the abolitionist critic, dutifully lists Enzensberger's Consciousness Industry in his bibliography, his zealous piety-the piety of the convert-could not be restrained. Masses of television viewers (Who else would read such a book?) scooped up the copies at $7.95 each (paperback). As Enzensberger points out, everyone works for the consciousness industry. Despite the efforts of Erik Barnouw, Horace Newcomb, and a few others, the chilling fact is that the most effective purveyor of language, image, and narrative in American culture has failed to become a subject of livelyhumanistic discourse. It is laughed at, reviled, feared, and generally treated as persona non grata by university humanities departments and the "serious" journals they patronize. Whether this is the cause or merely a symptom of the precipitous decline of the influence of the humanities during recent years is difficult to say. In either case it is unfortunate that the scholars and teachers of The Waste Land have found "the vast wasteland" unworthy of their attention. Edward Shils spoke for many literary critics when he chastised "those who know better" but still give their attention to works of "mass culture" for indulging in "a continuation of childish pleasures." Forgoing a defense of childish pleasures, I still cannot imagine a more destructive attitude in terms of the future of both humanistic inquiry and television. If the imagination is to play an epistemological role in a scientific age, it cannot be restricted to "safe" media. Shils teased pop culture critics for trying to be "folksy";unfortunately, it is literature that is in danger of becoming a precious antique. As the transcontinental industrial plant built since the Civil War was furiously at work meeting the new production quotas allowed by modern advertising techniques, President Calvin Coolidge observed that "the business of America is business." Since that time, television has become the art of business. The intensive specialization of skills called for by collaborative production technologies has forced most Americans to the marketplace for an exceptional range of goods and services. "Do-ityourself' is itself something to buy. Necessities and trifles blur to indistinction. Everything is for sale to everybody. As James M. Cain wrote, the "whole goddamn country lives selling hot dogs to each other." Choice, however, is greatly restricted. The permutation-bound structure of mass marketing theory has formal-

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ized taste into a multiple-choice question. Like the menu at McDonald's and the suits on the racks, the choices on the dialand, thus far, the cable converter-are limited and guided. Yet even if the material in each 1V show single-mindedly aims at the quality of quantity, too much happens along the way to cavalierly dispose of this body of dreams as a mere series of surface realizations of some master socioeconomic deep structure. If, as Enzensberger claims, we are stuck with television and nothing short of nuclear Armageddon will deliver us, then what choice is there but consciousness? Scripts are written. Sets, costumes, and camera angles are imagined and designed. Performances are rendered. No drama, not even melodrama, can be born of a void. Myths are recuperated, legends conjured. These acts are not yet carried out by computers, as much as network executives might prefer such a system. When Marcel Duchamp signed a urinal "R. Mutt" and sent it to the Society of Independent Artists in 1917 for exhibition, he invited viewers to take advantage of the presentational structure of a show in order to look at what they live with. Television continually thanks us for inviting it into our homes and returns the invitation emphatically. A 1V show or a commercial or any random moment of the broadcast day entreats the viewer to love it and live with it, and as even the programming executives must admit, the success or failure of the seduction, no matter how carefully and rationally C'scicnuficallv") planned, is not predictable. Every television program that has been canceled for failing to capture an audience is the successful survivor of a battery of audience tests. But beyond the reams of Audience Research Reports stockpiled during these decades of agency billings, there is the living work of scores of 1Vmakers who accepted the marketable formats, found ways to satisfy both censors and the popular id, hawked the Alka-Seltzerbeyond the limits of indigestion, and still managed to leave behind images that demand reimagining. The life of this work in American culture is a matter of taste, not test. It is ludicrous to crucify Sgt. Bilka for the sins of General Sarnoff. A fantastic, wavy,glowing procession of images hovers over the American antennascape, filling the air and millions of screens and minds with endless reruns. To accept a long-term relationship with a television program is to allow a vision to enter one's life. That vision is peopled with characters who speak a familiar idiosyncratic lan-

Beginning to Begin Again

guage, dress to purpose, worship God, fall in love, show elan and naivete, become neurotic and psychotic, revenge themselves, and take it easy. While individual episodes-their plots and climaxes-are rarely memorable, though often remembered, cosmologies cannot fail to be rich for those viewers who have shared so many hours in their construction. The salient impact of television comes not from "special events," such as the coverage of the Kennedy assassinationsor men on the moon playing golf, but from day-to-day exposure. The power of television resides in its normalcy; it is always there at the push of a button. Despite the frenzy of promotion that accompanies each new season, the debut of a series is not much of an event. It rarely creates the will to view.The comedies uniformly promise nonstop laughter. The copshows dutifully guarantee fast-paced action. The melodramas will of course be warm, human stories of contemporary life. There is little significance in any of this. Why watch? Are the sex objects compelling? Does the camera take me somewhere I like to be? Is the time slot convenient? Should I make a "special effort" to watch? It may take years to come to a show. If a show is a hit, if the Nielsen families go for it, it is likely to become a Monday-through-Friday "strip." The weekly series in stripped syndication is television's most potent oracle. Sitcoms, with their half-hour formats, may air two or even three episodes a day on local stations. Months become weeks, and years become months. Mary accelerates through hairdos and hem lengths; Phyllis and Rhoda disappear as Mary moves to her high-rise swinging-singles apartment. Simple identification and suspense yield to the subtler nuances of cohabitation. The threshold of expectation becomes fixed as daily viewing becomes an established procedure or ritual. The ultimate suspension of disbelief occurs when the drama-the realm of heightened artifice-becomes normal. The aim of television is to be normal. The industry is obsessed with the problem of norms, and this manifests itself in both process and product. Whole new logics, usually accepted under the general classification of "demographics," have been imagined to create transformational models that explain the perimeters of objectionability and attraction. A network sales executive would not dare ask hundreds of thousands of dollars for a prime-time ad on the basis of his high opinion of the show that surrounds it. The sponsor is paying for "heads." What guarantees, he demands,

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can be given for delivery? Personal assurances-opinions-are not enough. The network must show scientific evidence in the form of results of demographic experiments. Each pilot episode is prescreened for test audiences who then fill out multiple-choice questionnaires to describe their reactions. Data are processed by age, income, race, religion, or whatever cultural determinants the tester deems relevant. Thus the dull annual autumn dialogue of popular television criticism: Why the same old junk every year? ask the smug, ironic television critics after running down their witty lists of the season's "winners and losers." We know nothing of junk, cry the "value-free" social scientists of the industry research factories. The people have voted with their number 2 pencils and tuners. We are merely the Board of Elections in a modern cultural democracy" But no one ever asked me what I thought, puzzles the viewer in a random burst from stupefaction. Not to worry, the chart-and-graph virtuosi reassure. We have taken a biopsy from the body politic, and as you would know if this was your job, if you've seen one cell-or 1,200-you've seen them all. But is demography democracy? Walter Benjamin warned that the institutionalizing of such unquantifiable properties as creativity, genius, eternal value, and mystery as criteria for the creation and distribution oftechnologically reproduced art can be a dangerous proposition. Awitness to the rise of Nazi Germany, he feared that the definition of these subjective terms was too vulnerable to abuse and "might lead to the processing of data in the Fascistsense." The authoritarian use of the plebiscite in Iran by the charismatic AyatollahKhomeini might be cited as a recent fulfillment of Benjamin's fears. But this need not be the case with American television. 1V is capable of inspiring at least as much cynicism as docility.The viewer who can transform that cynicism into critical energy can declare the war with television over and instead savorthe oracular quality of the medium. A" Roland Barthes,]ean-Luc Godard, and the French devotees of Jerry Lewis have realized for years, television is American dada," Charles Dickens on LSD, the greatest parody of European culture since The Dunciad? Yahoos and Houyhnhnms battle it out nightly with submachine guns. Sex objects are stored in a box. Art or not art? This is largely a lexicographical quibble for the culturally insecure. Interesting?

Beginning to Begin Again

Only the hopelessly genteel could find such a phantasmagoria flat. Yesterday's trashy Hollywood movies have become recognized as the unheralded work of auteurs; they are screened at the ritziest "art houses" for connoisseurs of le cinema. Shall we need the French once again to tell us what we have?

Television IsFunny 7

Comedy is the axis on which broadcasting revolves. Gilbert Seldes, The Public Arts Though network executives reserve public pride for the achievements of their news divisions and their dramatic specials, the fact remains that comedy-entertainment of a primarily humorous nature-has always been an essential, even dominant, ingredient of American commercial television programming. The little box, with its squared oblong screen, egregiously set in a piece of overpriced wood-grained furniture or cheap industrial plastic, has provoked a share of titters in its own right from a viewing public that casually calls it "boob tube." Television is America's jester. It has assumed the guise of an idiot while actually accruing the advantages of power and authority behind the smoke screen of its self-degradation. The Fool, of course, gets a kind word from no one: "Knee-jerk liberalism," cry the offended conservatives. "Corporate mass manipulation," scream the resentful liberals. Neo-Comstockians are aghast, righteously indignant at the orgiastic decay of morality invading their split-level homes. The avant-garde strikes a pose of smug terror before the empty, sterile images. Like the abused jester in Edgar Allan Poe's "Hop-Frog," however, the moguls of Television Row make monkeys out of their tormentors. Their deposit slips are drenched in crocodile tears; the show must go on. In 1927,1\1 inventor Philo T. Farnsworth presented a dollar sign for sixty seconds in the first public demonstration of his television system." The baggy-pants vaudevillians Farnsworth televised in 1935 have been joined by a host of modern cousins, including the sitcom character actor, the stand-up comedian, the sketch comic, and the gameshow host. No television genre

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is without what Robert Warshow called "the official euphoria which spreads over the culture like the broad smile of an idiOt."11Police shows, family dramas, adventure series, and madefor-1Vmovies all rely heavily on humor to mitigate their bathos. Even The News is not immune to doggerel, as evidenced by the spread of "happy-talk" formats in 1V journalism in recent years. While the industry experiments with new ways to package humor, television's most hilarious moments are often unintentional, or at least incidental. Reruns of ancient dramatic series display plot devices, dialogue, and camera techniques that are obviously dated. Styles materialize and vanish with astonishing speed. Series such as Dragnet, The Mod Squad, and Ironside surrender their credibility as "serious" police mysteries after only a few years in syndication. They self-destruct into ridiculous stereotypes and cliches, betraying their slick production values and achieving heights of comic ecstasy that dwarf their "serious" intentions. This is an intense comedy of obsolescence that grows richer with each passing television season. Starsky and Hutch render Jack Webb's Sgt.Joe Friday a messianic madman. The Hill Street Blues return the favor to Starsey and Hutch. The distinction between taking television on one's own terms and taking it the way it presents itself is of critical importance. It is the difference between passivity and activity.It is what saves 1V from becoming the homogenizing, monolithic, authoritarian tool that the doomsday critics claim it is. The self-proclaimed champions of "high art" who dismiss 1V shows as barren imitations of the real article simply do not know how to watch. They are like freshmen thrust into survey courses and forced to read Fielding and Sterne; they lack both the background and the tough-skinned skepticism that can make 1V meaningful experience. In 1953 Dwight Macdonald was apparently not embarrassed to condemn all "mass culture" (including the new chief villain, 1V) without offering any evidence that he had watched television. Not a single show is mentioned in his famous essay, "A Theory of Mass Culture.':" Twenty-fiveyears later it is possible to find English professors who will admit to watching Masterpiece Theatre. But American commercial shows? How could they possibly measure up to drama produced in Britain and tied in form and sensibility to the nineteenth-century novel? There is an important reply to this widespread Eng-

Beginning to Begin Again

lish Department line: 1V is culture. The more one watches, the more relationships develop among the shows and between the shows and the world. To rip the shows out of their context and compare them with the works of other media and cultural traditions is to deny their history-their American historyand misplace their identities. The influence of other American media in the genesis of 1V programming is obvious. Radio and movies immediately come to mind. In the early days of network telecast, however, viewers were treated to generous doses of "exhibition sports," such as professional wrestling and roller derby, phenomena that were new to electronic media. The outrageous antics of the performers on these shows were more in the realm of burlesque or the dance than sport. Wrestler Gorgeous George (the late George F. Wagner) was an early superstar of the genre who was capable of sending pre-space-age viewers rolling off their couches. Borrowing a page from Max Fleischer's cartoon hero Popeye, he would struggle to his corner at the point of defeat, take a few hits from an oxygen tank marked "Florida Air," and, born again, return to the center of the squared circle to defeat his perennially wide-eyed opponent. The carnival-freak-show ambience of the program was enhanced by special matches featuring midgets and women. Wrestling was 1V's first original comedy, a grotesque comedy of violence. Not only did the performers have to be excellent acrobats possessing numerous circus skills in order to execute their complex ballets of flying dropkicks, atomic skullcrushers, and airplane spins, but they were also called upon to prove their mettle as character actors and stand-up comedians during the "interview" segments of the show, which can take up as much as half of a wrestling telecast. Playing various archetypal American figures, including ethnic stereotypes that date back to minstrelsy and the vaudeville stage, such characters as Killer Kowalski, Baron Fritz von Erich, and "Country Boy" Haystacks Calhoun would rant and rave, threaten their opponents' lives, and make promises to their fans, never for a moment stepping out of character. Roland Barthes has compared the technique of wrestling with that of the commedia dell'arte." The early tone that wrestling set in television comedy is in direct opposition, however, to the comic framework that even-

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tually won commercial favor. As television strove to legitimize itself as a medium worthy of the attention of a middle-class sensibility (circa 1950s, U.S.A.), programming came packaged in more identifiably respectable wrappings. The "play area" or stage of the wrestling show was vague and undefined; the viewer could not automatically distinguish between stage and world. Was that wrestler leaving the arena on a stretcher truly unconscious? Was the blood on his face real? Were those women actually tearing chunks of hair out of each other's heads? The ring announcer said yes. Manyviewers had their doubts. Could television lie? Was this any way to sell a Chevrolet? Previous to 1955, all four networks (including the now defunct DuMont Network) had offered coast-to-coast wrestling telecasts during the heart of prime time." Though wrestling continues to be locally produced in many U.S. markets and has even reappeared nationally on superstations, it has disappeared from the network programming taxonomy. The only wrestling matches carried by the networks today are occasional telecasts of amateur wrestling on such shows as The Wide World of Sports and Sportsuiorid. Barthes likens the experience of watching this "respectable" sport to attending a suburban cinema; it is devoid of the spectacular distension of the professional variety.IS The present-day descendants of professional wrestling on television are such shows as Real People and That's Incredible! These schlockumentary magazines (7V Guide calls them "sit-life shOWS")16perhaps fill the void left by the cancelation of the wrestling spectacle. Just as wrestling played on its superficial resemblance to the relatively respectable sport of boxing in order to establish a framework of legitimacy for outrageous spectacle, the schlockumentaries borrow their form from the respectable 1V newsmagazine (notably 60 Minutest." These shows stage phony sporting events (e.g., man in tug-of-war with the Goodyear Blimp; daredevil attached to giant rubber band leaping off bridge), and freaks are gratuitously displayed (twoheaded man; child savant, etc.), all is presented by a straightfaced ersatz newsman, the successor to wrestling's ersatz sports announcer.

Beginning to Begin Again

Enterthe Proscenium The forms that came to dominate television comedy (and therefore television) were video approximations of theater: the situation comedy (representational) and the variety show (presentational). The illusion of theater is a structural feature of both. It is created primarily by the implicit attendance of an audience that laughs and applauds at appropriate moments and thus assures the viewer that the telecast is originating within the safely specified walls of the proscenium stage. Normal responses are thus defined. The "audience" may be actual or an electronic sound effect, but this is a small matter. The consequence is the same; the jokes are underlined. The ambiguities of wrestling are thus avoided. The situation comedy has proved to be the most durable of all commercial television genres. Other types of programming that have appeared to be staples of prime-time fare at various junctures in 1V history have seen their heyday and faded (the western, the comedy-varietyshow, and the big-money quizshow among them). The sitcom, however, has remained a consistent and ubiquitous feature of prime-time network schedules since the premiere of Mary Kay andjohnny on DuMont in 1947.The 1V sitcom obviously derives from its radio predecessor. Radio hits such as I Remember Mama, TheBurns and Allen Show, The Goldbergs, and Amos 'n Andy made the transition to television overnight. Then, as now, familiarity was a prized commodity in the industry. In terms of preelectronic art forms, the sitcom bears a certain physical resemblance to the British comedy of manners, especially in terms of its parlor setting. A more direct ancestor, as Jack Gladden has shown, may be the serialized family comedy adventures that were popular in nineteenthcentury American newspapers." Perhaps because of the nature of its serial continuity, the sitcom had no substantial presence in the movies." Though Andy Hardy and Ma and Pa Kettle films deal with sitcomic themes, their feature length, lack of audience response tracks, and relatively panoramic settings make them very different viewing experiences. Serial narratives in the movies were usually action-oriented. Flash Gordon, for example, was constructed so that each episode built to a breathless, unfulfilled climax designed to bring the patrons back to the thea-

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ter for next Saturday's resolution. The action of the sitcom is far too psychological for this. Urgent continuity rarely exists between episodes. Instead, climaxes occur within episodes (though these are not satisfying in any traditional sense). In the movie serial (or a modern television soap opera) the rescue of characters from torture, death, or even seemingly hopeless anxiety is used to call attention to serialization. The sitcom differs in that its central tensions-embarrassment and guilt-are almost always alleviated before the end of an episode. Each episode may appear to resemble a short, self-contained play; its rigid confinement to an electronic approximation of a prosceniumarch theater, complete with laughter and applause, emphasizes this link. Unlike a stage play, however, no single episode of a sitcom is likely to be of much interest; it may not even be intelligible. The attraction of an episode is the strength of its contribution to the broader cosmology of the series. The claustrophobia of the miniature proscenium, especially for an audience that has grown casual toward Cinemascope, can be relieved only by the exquisiteness of its minutiae. Trivia is the most salient form of sitcom appreciation, perhaps the richest form of appreciation of any television series. Though television is at the center of American culture-it is the stage upon which our national drama/history is enacted-its texts are generally unavailable upon demand. The audience must share reminiscences to conjure the ever-fleeting text. Giving this the format of a game, players try not so much to stump each other as to overpower each other with increasingly minute, banal bits of information that bring the emotional satisfaction of experience recovered through memory. The increased availability of allrerun stations being brought about by cable services can only serve to intensify and broaden this form of grass-roots 1V appreciation. Plot resolutions, which so often come in the form of trite didactic "morals" in the sitcom, are not very evocative. The lessons that Lucy Ricardo learned on vanity, economy, and female propriety are forgotten by both Lucy and the viewer. A description of Lucy's living room furniture (or her new living room furniture) is far more interesting. The climactic ethical pronouncements of Ward Cleaver conjure and explore the essence of Leave It to Beaver less successfully than a well-rendered impersonation of Eddie Haskell does. From about the

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time a viewer reaches puberty, sitcom plot is painfully predictable. After the tinkering of the first season or two, few new characters, settings, or situations can be expected. Why watch, if not for a visit to the sitcosmos? The sitcom is a representational form, and its subject is American culture: It dramatizes national types, styles, customs, issues, and language. Because sitcoms are and have alwaysbeen under the censorship of corporate patronage, the genre has yielded a conservative body of drama that is diachronically retarded by the precautions of mass marketing procedure. For example, All in the Family can appropriately be thought of as a sixties sitcom, though the show did not appear on television until 1971. CBS waited until some neat red, white, and blue ribbons could be tied around the turmoil of that extraordinarily self-conscious decade before presenting it as a comedy. When the dust had cleared and the radical ideas being proposed during that era could be represented as stylistic changes, the sixties could be absorbed into a model of acceptability, a basic necessity of mass marketing procedure. During the historical sixties, while network news programs were offering footage of student riots, civil rights demonstrations, police riots, and militant revolutionaries advocating radical changes in the American status quo, the networks were airing such sitcoms as The Andy Griffith Show) Petticoat junction) Here's Lucy, and I Dream of jeannie. The political issues polarizing communities and families were almost completely avoided in a genre of representational comedy that always had focused on American family and community. Hippies occasionally would appear as guest characters on sitcoms, but they were universally portrayed as harmless buffoons possessing neither worthwhile ideas nor the power to act, which might make them dangerous. After radical sentiment crested and began to recede, especially after the repeal of universal male conscription in 1970,the challenge of incorporating changes into the sitcom model finally was met. The dialogue that took place in the Bunker home was unthinkable during the American Celebration that had lingered so long 011 the sitcom. But if the sitcom was to retain its credibility as a chronicler and salesman of American family life, these new styles, types, customs, manners, issues, and linguistic constructions had to be added to its mimetic agenda.

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The dynamics of this problem are perhaps better explained in marketing terms. Five age categories are generally used in demographic analysis: (1) 0-11; (2) 12-17; (3) 18-34; (4) 3555; (5) 55 + .20 Prime-time programmers pay little attention to groups 1 and 5; viewing is so prevalent among the very young and old that, as the joke goes on Madison Avenue,these groups will watch the test pattern. Prime-time television programs are created primarily to assemble members of groups 3 and 4 for commercials. While members of group 4 tend to have the most disposable income, group 3 spends more money. Younger adults, presumably building their households, make more purchases of expensive "hard goods" (refrigerators, microwave ovens, automobiles, etc.). This situation was profoundly exacerbated in the late sixties and early seventies by the coming of age of the "baby-boom" generation. The top-rated sitcoms of the 1969-70 season included Mayberry R.FD., Family Affair, Here's Lucy, and The Doris Day Show. Though all four of these programs were in Nielsen's Top 10 that season, their audience was concentrated in groups 1,4, and 5. How could the networks deliver the new primary consumer group to the ad agencies and their clients? Norman Lear provided the networks with a new model that realistically addressed itself to this problem. In Tube of Plenty, Erik Barnouw shows how the timidity of television narrative can be traced directly to the medium's birth during the MeCarthy Era. If the sixties had accomplished nothing else, it had ended the McCarthy scare. The consensus imagery that had dominated the sitcom since the birth of 1V simply could not deliver the new audience as well as the new consensus imagery Norman Lear developed for the seventies. This break in the twenty-year-old style of the genre self-consciously defined itself as "hip." The historian Daniel Czitrom has called this phenomenon "Lifestyle."21 In the fifties and sixties, the sitcom had offered the Depression-born post-World War II adult group a vision of peaceful, prosperous suburban life centered on the stable nuclear family. A generation that had grown up during hard times, and that had fought what Herbert T. Gillis always referred to as "The Big One," had seen its desires fulfilled on the sitcom. The economic, political, and social travail of the thirties and forties had been left behind by the brave new teleworld. Instead, there was a family: a husband and wife raising children. This family was

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white and had a name that bespoke Anglo-Saxon ancestry and Protestant religious affiliation.Surprisingly enough, the darnedest things happened to them. Each week a family memberusually a child-would encounter some ethical crisis or moral dilemma in the course of this relentlessly normal state of affairs. Dennis (the Menace) Mitchell hits a line drive through Mr. Wilson's kitchen window after being warned not to take batting practice in the backyard. Beaver unwittingly discovers a copy of tomorrow's history test, which MissLanders has dropped in the school corridor. The man of her dreams finally asks PattyDuke out for an evening; should she send her twin cousin Cathy to keep her regular date with Richard? These families were all above the pressures usually associated with financial uncertainty. The father was comfortably placed in the professionslawyer, doctor, insurance executive-or sometimes just amorphously well fixed (e.g., Ozzie Nelson). Furthermore, Dad was never in short supply of moral provisos, bromides, and panaceas to alleviate the anxiety of his little citizens-in-training.Mom, who worked for love not wages, though she was rarely shown doing any household tasks more demanding than serving dinner, managed to keep the family's spacious quarters in a state that can be best described as ready for military inspection; she could do it in formal attire to boot. In these shows-Father Knows Best, Ozzie and Harriet, The Donna Reed Show, The Trouble with Father,Make Room for Daddy, et al.-actual humor (jokes or shticks) is always a subordinate concern to the proper solution of ethical crises. They are comedies not so much in the popular sense as in Northrop Frye's sense of the word: No one gets killed, and they end with the restoration of order and happiness." What humor there is derives largely from the "cuteness" displayed by the children in their abortive attempts to deal with problems in other than correct (adult) ways. Sometimes an extra element of humor becomes the task of marginal characters from outside the nuclear family. Eddie Haskell (Ken Osmond) is among the best remembered of these domestic antiheroes. A quintessential wiseguy, Eddie's deviation from the straight and narrow-as walked by WallyCleaver-is implicitly blamed on his parents. The fact that Eddie is uniformly punished by the scriptwriters makes his rebellion all the more heroic. A transformation on this model is the single-parent sitcom.

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Here the same moral universe remains intact. Instead of the traditional mom-and-dad, however, a widow, widower, aunt, or uncle is raising the children (divorce would not come to this subgenre until Norman Lear's One Day at a Time [1975]). This narrative format, pioneered in such shows as My Little Margie and Bachelor Father, makes it possible to augment the cuteness of the children's moral educations with situations involving romantic possibilities for the adult. Though Hays Office standards are rigorously adhered to, some relief is offered from the sexless picture of married life that otherwise prevailed in the genre. Beneath the stylistic variances of Father Knows Best and All in the Family (and Bachelor Father/One Day at a Time), these shows are bound together by their unwavering commitment to didactic allegory. Lear indeed updated the conversation in the sitcom living room, but his sitcoms were actually quite conservative in terms of their form. Like the sitcoms of the fifties, Lear's shows reinforce what Dorothy Rabinowitz calls "our most fashionable pieties. "23 "Fashionable" is the key term. As Roger Rosenblatt has pointed out, the greatest difference between Father Knows Best's Jim Anderson and Archie Bunker is that Jim, the father, is the source of all wisdom for the Anderson family while Archie is more likely to be the recipient of lessons from Mike, Gloria, and Edith.24 In marketing terms, the representation of the higher spending power is consistently heroic. Though didacticism may be a structural feature of the sitcom (and all storytelling), a strain of situation comedy has developed that is less emphatically moralistic and more concerned with being funny. I Love Lucy is one such sitcom; it is the prototype of the "zany" variety.Here, father still knows best, but his task is not so much to preach sermons to the children as to restrain his wife from doing "crazy" things that threaten middle-class order. Lucy is in no way the imperturbable wife and mother embodied in her contemporary, Margaret Anderson. She overspends her budget, acts on impulse, and does not hesitate to drop Little Rickywith Mrs. Trumble at the slightest hint that her dream of something more than a hausfrau existence might be satisfied by an audition for a show at the Tropicana. Lucy refuses to allow bourgeois role destiny to stifle her organic desires, no matter how often she is repressed. Her attempts to escape from what Ricky and society define for her as "her place in the home" turn her into a buffoon, and this is

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the center of the show. Bythe end of each episode she has been whipped back into middle-class-housewife shape. Her weekly lapse into "childish" behavior, however, makes her into a freak whose comic talents are far more compelling than the dismal authoritarian morality that controls her." Though Lucywas copied in such shows as I Married joan and Pete and Gladys, the imitators could not easily come by the comic talents of LucilleBall. To compensate for Lucy'spersonal magic, they frequently turned to the supernatural. In shows such as Bewitched, I Dream of jeannie, Mr. Ed, and ~ Favorite Martian, an otherwise realistic (or at least scientificallyfeasible) vision of middle-class life is invaded not by a mere madcap but by a character (woman, animal, or alien) possessed of supernatural powers. Magic is both the cause of and the antidote to the much-feared curse of zaniness. The relatively naturalistic Lucyoften becomes the victim of her own harebrained scheming and has to own up to Rickyin humiliation before the final credits. On the other hand, Samantha Stevens, a witch, can set things right with a twitch of her nose-with husband Darren often none the wiser. In each case the wife possesses energies and desires that tempt her to rebel against the constraints of middle-class-housewife status. The husbands, both the immigrant striver Ricky Ricardo and the Madison Avenue executive Darren Stevens, are determined to keep their contractual slaves/ lovers locked safely away at home. Though a bandleader himself, Ricky simply forbids Lucyfrom pursuing a show business career. Darren is an even crueler sexist. He constantly expects Samantha to entertain his business contacts at home but forbids her to use her magical powers. Though she can prepare an elegant banquet with a spell (usually one heroic couplet) and a twitch of her nose, he forces her to slave over a hot stove all day for no other reason than to satisfyhis incorrigibly puritanical "principles." The domestic sitcom has strayed from its compelling middle-class center upon occasion. Though the conventions of teleculture define the middle class as a vast amalgamation of all those Americans who neither depend on welfare payments nor have live-in servants, there have been self-consciously proletarian sitcoms, including such early shows as The Life of Riley and The Honeymooners. As the titles suggest, there is little of Clifford Odets in them, though the Kramdens' stark two-room flat

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is notable. Interestingly enough, the working-class sitcom was virtually absent from the networks during most of the sixties. It was Lear who revived the idea with All in the Family. The black sitcom has a similar history. It appeared in Tv's pioneer days (e.g., Amos 'n Andy, Beulah), only to disappear from view during the sixties and then make a comeback under Lear's tutelage. In acknowledgment of the protests of civil rights organizations against the lily-whiteness of the sitcosmos, NBC premiered its julia series in 1968. This was a single-parent situation starring Diahann Carroll as a widowed, professional, middle-class mom; the tokenism of the series was as obvious as its resemblance to The Doris Day Show, which made its debut that same season. Lear and his Tandem Productions restyled and resurrected the black sitcom in Sanford and Son, which premiered in 1972. Other black sitcoms, such as The Ieffersons and Good Times, followed. Faced with the problem of seeming fresh and different without upsetting expectations of the familiar formula, sitcommakers have attempted to bring the form to various settings. In addition to the ubiquitous contemporary middle-classlivingroom, sitcoms have taken place in military barracks, prehistoric caves, tenement flats, mansions, extraterrestrial space, junkyards, offices, police stations, and high school and college classrooms; in New York, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Mayberry, Bedrock, Indianapolis, Moscow, Milwaukee, a Nazi prison camp, and Anytown, U.S.A. The military sitcom has been a strong subgenre. Sgt. Bilko, McHale'sNavy, F Troop, Gomer Pyle, USM.e, I Dream of jeannie, Hogan's Heroes, C.PO Sharkey, .M*A*S*H,and Private Benjamin (to name just a few) have extended the military setting through war and peace, present and past, and every branch of the U.S. armed services, save the Coast Guard. Deviation from "normal" (that is, nuclear family) life also occurs in a subgenre of the sitcom that focuses on single career girls. Early examples include Our Miss Brooks and Private Secretary (also known as The Ann Sothern Show). Likethe blue-collar and black sitcoms, the career-girl sitcom faded from the homescreen during the halcyon days of the middle-class domesticom, only to resurface in the late sixties. That Girl (1966) was at the crest of the revival.Marlo Thomas starred as Ann Marie, a young woman who leaves her parents' suburban New York home to move to

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Manhattan and pursue a career as an actress. Ann's ties to her family, however, were emphasized. Both her father and mother were series regulars who kept a close watch on their daughter's fortunes in Sin City.Her thoroughly innocuous steady boyfriend stood between Ann and promiscuity. It was The Mary Tyler Moore Show and the MTMEnterprises spin-offs that finally presented a picture of women out in the world on their own. The career-woman sitcom became a staple of the seventies. The heroine, freed at last from her role as chief cook and bottle washer, as well as from the moral authority of a husband or father, entered the pantheon of telemythology." For all the stylistic variations on a theme that have characterized sitcom history, the comic success of a show ultimately has depended on the talents of its actors and their collaborative success as a troupe. As performers as diverse as Don Rickles and Jimmy Stewart have learned, the sitcom simply does not work as a one-star vehicle; the laughs-and usually the ratings-have gone to the well-formed ensemble. Andy Griffith's "stardom" fades from memory if isolated from Don Knotts's woefully neurotic Deputy Barney Fife, Howard McNear's apoplectic Floyd the Barber, and the other citizens of Mayberry. Compare the brilliant kabuki-like choreography of the original Honeymooners to the awkward, misplayed revival in the sixties; Audrey Meadows and Joyce Randolph were never quite replaced. Though Lucille Ball was able to stay atop the ratings throughout her sitcom career, she would never again attain the comic heights she had achieved with Desi Arnaz, Vivian Vance, and William Frawley. Lucy's artistic demise was due not only to the inferior comic technique of her later efforts (The Lucy Show and Here's Lucy), which can be explained in show business terms as "inferior timing," but more importantly to the absence of the mythological syntheses of I Love Lucy: male and female (Ricky/Fred vs. Lucy/Ethel); native-born and immigrant (Lucy/ EthellFred vs. Ricky);old and young (the Ricardosvs. the Mertzes); and organic and genteel (Lucy vs. the middle-class world she lived in). These paradigms tightened the interstices of the field of American comedy. The later shows invested all comic tensions in the conflicts between Lucy and the hyperbolically genteel Gale Gordon; they pale in comparison. Perhaps the reason that the sitcom has been looked down

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upon by critics as a hopelessly "low" or "masscult" form is that a search for "the best which has been thought and said" is a wild-goose chase as far as the genre is concerned. R. P Blackmur, though certainly no 1V fan, commented germanely that the critic "will impose the excellence of something he understands upon something he does not understand. Then all the richness of actual performance is gone. It is worth taking precautions to prevent that loss, or at any rate to keep us aware of the risk. "27 Television is not yet a library with shelves; it is a flow of dreams, many remembered, many submerged. How can we create a bibliography of dreams? Blackmur also wrote that "the critic's job is to put us into maximum relation to the burden of our momentum. "28 As a culture, television is the engine of our momentum. It has heaped thousands upon thousands of images upon the national imagination: Gleason rearing back a fist and threatening to send Alice to the moon. Phil Silvers's bullet-mouthed Sgt. Bilko conning his platoon out of its paychecks. Jack Benny and Rochester guiding an IRS man across the crocodile- infested moat to the vault. Dobie Gillis standing in front of "The Thinker" and pining for Tuesday Weld. Carroll O'Connor giving Meathead and modern philanthropic liberalism the raspberries. Jerry Van Dyke settling down in the driver's seat of a Model T Ford for a heart-to-heart talk with MvMother, the Car. Whitman, in Democratic Vistas) called for a new homegrown American literary art whose subject would be "the averge, the bodily, the concrete, the democratic, the popular. "29 The sitcom is an ironic twentieth-century fulfillment of this dream. The "average" has been computed and dramatized as archetype; the consumer world has been made "concrete"; the "bodily" is fetishized as the unabashed object of envy and voyeurism; all of this is nothing if not "popular." The procession of images that was Whitman's own art, and which he hoped would become the nation's, is lacking in the sitcom in but one respect: its technique is not democratic but demographic. The producers, directors, writers, camera operators, set designers,

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and other artists of the medium are not, as Whitman had hoped, "breathing into it a new breath of "life.'?" Instead, for the sake of industrial science, they have contractually agreed to create the hallucinations of what Allen Ginsberg called "the narcotic ... haze of capitalism. "31 The drug indeed is on the air and in the air. Fortunately, the integrity of the individual resides in the autonomy of the imagination, and therefore it is not doomed by this system. The television set plays on and on in the mental hospital; the patient can sit in his chair, spaced-out and hopeless, or get up and push at the doors of consciousness. This is the happy ending for the sitcom.

In Frontof the Curtain "The virtue of all-in wrestling," wrote Roland Barthes in 1957, "is that it is the spectacle of excess."32I have tried to show that the sitcom, on the other hand, is a spectacle of subtleties, an incremental construction of substitute universes laid upon the foundation of a linear, didactic teletheater. Even the occasional insertion of the mirabile or supernatural is underlined by the genre's broader commitment to naturalistic imitation. Presentational comedy, which shared the prime-time limelight with the sitcom during the early years of lV, vacillates between these poles. The comedy-variety show has been the great showcase for presentational teleforms: stand-up comedy, impersonation, and the blackout sketch. This genre is similar to wrestling in that it too strives for the spectacle of excess. Its preelectronic ancestors can be found on the vaudeville and burlesque stages: the distensions of the seltzer bottle and the banana peel; the fantastic transformations of mimicry; the titillations of the physical, psychological, and cultural disorders that abound in frankly self-conscious art forms. But the comedy-variety show does not go to the ultimate excesses of wrestling. Like the sitcom, it is framed by the proscenium arch and accepts the badge of artifice. While the representational drama of the sitcom and its cousins, the action/adventure series and the made-for-Tv movie has flourished to the point that these genres consume almost

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all of the "most-watched" hours, the comedy-variety show has been in steady decline since the 1950s,when it was a dominant genre of prime-time television. Since the self-imposed cancelation of The Carol Burnett Show in 1978, the few presentational variety hours that have appeared in prime-time have been hosted by singers (Barbara Mandrell, Marie Osmond), and comedy has been relegated to a rather pathetic secondary concern on these programs. The demise of the genre has deprived prime time of some of television's most promising possibilities. Stand-up comedy, as developed in the American nightclub, is one of the most intense and compelling of modern performance arts. Eschewing the protection of narrative superstructure and continuity, the stand-up comedian nakedly faces the audience. He truly works in the first person, making no distinction between persona and self. When successful, the monologist offers an awesome display of charismatic power: the lone individual controlling the imaginative and physical responses of millions. By the same token, nowhere is failure more pathetic or painful. The rhythm of the stand-up monologue demands the punctuation of the audience's response; when it is missing, the spectacle of impotence is shattering. The stand-up comedian laying an egg is one of the few phenomena on television or in mass entertainment in general where the visible pressure to produce the desired effect emerges through even the slickest production values. That pressure is unrelenting. Likethe wrestler who must continue to play his role during "interviews" outside the ring, the television stand-up comic is expected to remain in character at all times. After doing "five minutes," he must join Johnny and his guests as "himself," a clown, a wit, a funnyman. The ability to do this often provides satisfying performance art. Failure cracks apart the smooth veneer of 1V "normalcy." Television as a medium is particularly well suited to the presentation of stand-up comedy The comedian is easily framed on the small screen. Perspective can be spontaneously shifted by the director from the full body portrait, which gives the comic the authority of a public speaker, to close-ups that are advantageous to mimicry and face-making. The intermediary teletheater is devoid of drunken hecklers and clattering dishes, making it a propitious showcase for the carefully rehearsed, well-timed routine (though admittedly, for some stylists, this

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loss of spontaneous give-and-take is regrettable). The structure of the show business industry, however, has inhibited stand-up comedy as a television art. Comedians, even the handful who employ writing staffs,must beware the plague of overexposure. A powerful nightclub monologue can become worthless in Las Vegasand AtlanticCityafter even a single television appearance. Furthermore, the fetishization of "dirty words" on television puts severe limits on stand-up text. It is perhaps principally for these reasons that the stand-up comedian has been largely squeezed out of prime time into what the industry terms "marginal hours." On daytime television, for example, stand-up performers abound as players on gameshows and as guests on Merv and Mike. Gameshows such as The Hollywood Squares and Battlestars have even been tailored as stand-up vehicles. The real stronghold for presentational comedy on television, however, has become the late-night spot. In Mayof 19S0,NBCpremiered Broadway Open House in a late-night time period (i.e., 11:30, eastern time), and ever since, this segment of the NBCschedule has been reserved for presentational comedy. It has even become a relatively safe zone for artistic freedom (or at least Tv's equivalent of "blue" material). Alex McNeildescribes Broadway Open House as "a heavy-handed mixture of vaudeville routines, songs, dances and sight gags."33 The cohosts were vaudeville veterans Jerry Lester and Morey Amsterdam, and much of the humor derived from their interplay with the Dolly Parton of early lV, "a buxom blonde named]ennie Lewis,better known as Dagmar,who played it dumb.':" By the midfifties, the program had evolved a more sedate format: a IDS-minute,Monday-through-Friday,"desk-andsofa" talk show known as The Tonight Show. It was hosted by bon mot comedians such as Steve Allen, Ernie Kovacs,and]ack Paar. The opening monologue became an institution, television's only daily comic paratext to The News. In 1981 Johnny Carson continues to deliver the only regularly scheduled comedy monologue on national television, but Johnny's ever-expanding vacation schedule has made even that an iffyproposition; the show has dwindled to a mere one hour due to Johnny's seemingly unquenchable thirst for recreation. The TonightShow sofa, once filled with guests, including two or three comics a show, is relatively empty these days.

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Weekly late-night comedy shows, such as Saturday Night Live and SC1V, have taken up some of the stand-up slack, but the great work of these shows has been to grandly resuscitate 1V blackout. The blackout sketch, or short skit, was pioneered as a distinctive teleform in the early days of1V Before two-hour television movies ate up such a large chunk of network prime time, the viewer did not have to wait for the wee hours of the weekend to see sketch comedy. Milton Berle, Jimmy Durante, Jackie Gleason, Sid Caesar, Ernie Kovacs, Martha Raye, and Ed Wynn were just a few of the comedians who hosted their own weekly comedy hours. These stars were the pampered children of Television Row.Jackie Gleason was able to get CBS to build him a Hudson River mansion during the fifties; later, when he got Sunbelt Fever, CBS chairman William Paley granted him a complete new production facility in Miami Beach. Milton Berle, "Mr.Television," was signed to a thirty-one-year contract by NBC in 1951. The role of Uncle Miltie in the early proliferation of the medium itself is, of course, legendary. His subsequent fall from Nielsen grace parallels the decline of the genre. From 1948 to 1956, the Berle show was a Tuesday night ritual. The first official ratings season was 1950-51, and A C. Nielsen ranked Berlc's Texaco Star Theater as the Number One attraction on television." General Sarnoffs multimillion-dollar investment seemed to be paying off as the show consistently finished among the Top 5 for the next three seasons. However, in 1954-55, it slipped to Number Thirteen, and in 1955-56 it dropped out of the Top 20 altogether. 36 It is too easy to dismiss the Berle phenomenon as merely a case of the public's fickle favor. Not a single comedy-variety hour made the Top 10 in 1955-56. 37 Few variety shows hosted by comedians would finish in the Top 10 ever again. At the end of the 1955-56 season, the unthinkable happened-Berle was yanked off the air. After a two-year layoff, NBC tried him again, this time in a reduced half-hour format; the new show was not renewed for a second season. By 1960, stuck with an expensive long-term contract, Sarnoff was using Milton Berle as the host of jackpot Bowling. Finally, with over fifteen years remaining on his contract, Berle and NBC came to an agreement, and the once indomitable star was let go. Lastplace ABCpromptly signed him for a comedy-variety comeback, but The Milton Berle Show could not survive six months in 1966.

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The early rush to sign the stars for eternity ended as the networks entered the age of entropy. The reasons for the failure of Berle and his "hellzapoppin' " burlesque style of presentation are not obvious. What can be said with some assurance is that this failure took place amid increasing demand for a "product" as opposed to a "show" in the growing television industry. As the prime-time stakes rocketed upward, sponsors, agencies, and networks became less tolerant of the inevitable ups and downs of a star-centered presentational comedy. The sitcom and other forms of rcprescntational drama offer the long-term rigidities of shooting scripts, which make "quality control" easier to impose. Positive demographic responses to dramatic "concepts" are dependable barometers. Performance comedy is only as good as an individual performance; the human element looms too large. Furthermore, the dreaded extremes of presentational comedy can be avoided. Kinescopes of The Texaco Star Theater reveal Berle in transvestite sketches whose gratuitous lewdness rivals wrestling at its most intense. The passionate vulgarity of these sketches could not have been wholly predictable from their scripts. Instead, it derives directly from Berle's confrontation with the camera-his performance. Censorship of such material presents complex editing problems, which are easily preempted in representational drama by script changes. It is my own feeling that the high-tech mystique of televisionitself-the sterile promise of the machine-is what kept the show from crossing the border from "family fun" to pornography in the early days of television. Gilbert Seldes described Berle's comedy as "good clean dirt. "38 Seldes called the early Berle a "stag entertainer," offering this observation: "The basic material of the stag entertainer, whether he dresses in women's clothes, pretends to be homosexual, or develops some other specialty, is still the off-color story, and the basic style is always the public one of maximum projection.'?" Perhaps the blinding gloss of the "modern miracle" of television was becoming subdued during television's second decade. Time, boredom, and the further technicization of the American household were making the future banal enough to generate a critical response. Were the full implications of burlesque beaming into the home becoming a bit too clear for Berle's family audience? Brooks and Marsh have indeed attrib-

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uted the undoing of Uncle Miltie to increasing "sophistication" among the viewing public: "By 1956 the steam had run out for 'Mr. Television.' 1V was by then becoming dominated by dramatic-anthologyshows, Westerns, and private eyes, and the sight of a grinning comic jumping around in crazy costumes [i.e., women's clothing] no longer had the appeal it did in 1948."40 When NBCgave Berle his second chance in 1958,the show was considerably toned down: 26

Two years after his departure from the Tuesday line-up, Berle returned to prime time with a half-hour variety series for NBC. He was a more restrained performer this timeno slapstick or outrageous costumes-attempting to function more as a host than the central focus of the show." The consequence was clear: Berlesque, like wrestling, had been blackballed from television's increasingly genteel prime-time circle. The late fifties, of course, was the heyday of Playhouse 90, The US. Steel Hour, and The Armstrong Circle Theater, the "Golden Age" of respectable drama. 1V then, as now and always, was on the verge of becoming sophisticated. The NBC late-night spot had passed from the wacky vaudevillian Jerry Lester to the neurotically urbane Jack Paar. Berle was certainly neurotic; he simply could not be urbane. A survey cited by Sterling and Kitross shows the number of "Evening Network Television" hours given to comedy-variety shows declining from a high of 21.5 hours in 1951 to 5 hours in 1973.42 The censorship problems I have mentioned have checkered the history of the genre. The case of the Smothers Brothers provides an example. Tom and Dick won their network wings with an innocuous sitcom in the 1965-66 season. When CBS gave them their own comedy-variety show, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, the network suddenly found itself with a severe Standards and Practices crisis. As Brooks and Marsh have written, the show "poked fun at virtually all the hallowed institutions of American society-motherhood, church, politics, government, etc. "43 Controversial guests, such as folk singer Pete Seeger and Dr. Benjamin Spock (after his conviction for aiding draft evaders), were invited to appear on the show. Many segments were severely censored or deleted. An embar-

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rassed CBS canceled the series on a technicality: A tape was delivered past the usual deadline. That tape contained a sequence in which Joan Baez dedicated a song to her husband, David Harris, who was serving a sentence in federal prison for draft evasion." In 1981 the Smothers Brothers were back on the air, the stars of a short-lived representational drama series, Fitz and Bones.

Nat King Cole was a singer, not a comedian, but the peculiar case of his ill-fated variety series makes a stark point about the qualitative distinctions between presentation and representation on network television. Black actors and actresses were not complete strangers to television in the 1950s. Ethel Waters had played the title role in Beulah (ABC, 1950-53), and Tim Moore, Spencer Williams, Ernestine Wade, and the rest of the cast of Amos 'n Andy (CBS, 1951-53) were of course black (the radio cast had been white). Amanda Randolph played the part of Louise (the maid) on The Danny Thomas Show from 1953 to 1964. But when Nat King Cole was given his own variety show in 1956, not a single sponsor could be found. NBC affiliates in the North as well as the South declined to carry the program." Even the appearances on the show of such mainstream white stars of the day as Tony Bennett, Frankie Laine, and Peggy Lee could not dissuade affiliates from their boycott. To its credit, NBCcontinued to air TheNat King Cole Show as a sustaining program for more than a year, juggling its time slot twice in an attempt to find a place for it. But a black entertainer stripped of the representational mask would not be successful in prime time until The Flip Wilson Show (NBC, 1970-74). The comedy-varietygenre never completely died off in prime time. A handful of hits such as The Carol Burnett Show, TheFlip Wilson Show, and George Schlatter's innovative Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In managed to keep it alive. But pop singers, including Sonny and Cher, TomJones, Englebert Humperdinck, Tony Orlando and Dawn, the Captain and Tenille, and Donnie and Marie, took over the lion's share of the dwindling hours given to vaudeville-style presentation in the sixties and seventies. A later full-fledged attempt to revive the comedy-variety hour was The Richard Pryor Show, which premiered on the NBCfall schedule in 1977. It was destroyed by the old comedyvariety devil-censorship-after only five airings.

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Generally speaking, the comedian has had to step back from in front of the curtain, cross the proscenium arch, and don the mask of a representational character to find a place in prime-time television. The networks have thus provided themselves with a modicum of protection from the unreliability of individual personalities. Presentational comedy-performance art-may simply be too dangerous a gamble for the high stakes of today's market. Interestingly, the disappearance from 1V of the clown who faces the audience without a story line has occurred more or less simultaneously with rising interest in and appreciation of performance art in avant-garde circles. In "Performance as News: Notes on an Intermedia Guerrilla Group," Cheryl Bernstein writes: In performance art, the artist is more exposed than ever before. The literal identification of artistic risk with the act of risking one's body or one's civil rights has become familiar in the work of such artists as Chris Burden, Rudolf Schwarzkogler, Tony Schafranzi and]ean Toche." Burden, for example, invites an audience into a performance space where spectators sit atop wooden ladders. He then floods the room with water and drops a live electrical wire into the giant puddle. The closest thing television offers to a spectacle of this kind is Don Rickles, who evokes audience terror by throwing the live wire of his insult humor into the swamp of American racial and ethnic fears. Rickles, for the most part, has been prohibited from performing his intense theater of humiliation in prime time. Twice NBC has attempted to contain him in sitcom proscenia, but these frames have constricted his effect and turned his insults into dull banter. In recent years he has been unleashed upon a live studio audience only during his infrequent appearances as a guest host on The Tonight Show. The erratic quality of Rickles's performances on Tonight offers a clue to the networks' reluctance to invest heavily in the presentational comedy form. Bernstein points to The News as the great source of modern performance art on television. She deconstructs "The Kidnapping of Patty Hearst" by the Symbionese Liberation Army as

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a performance work. The SLAwas a troupe that was formed to create a multimedia work-the kidnapping-principally for television. The mass distribution of food in poor neighborhoods in the San Francisco Bay area (one of the SLA'sdemands), as well as the shoot-outs and police chases that occurred, were all part of a modern theatrical art that can take place only on television. Perhaps the proliferation of The News on television can be tied to the decline of presentational comedy; the two have seemed to occur in direct proportion to each other. The sit-life schlockumentary is the point at which the two genres meet. Furthermore, the bombardment of the homescreen with direct presentations from every corner of the earth has created a kind of vaudeville show of history. The tensions of the nuclear Sword of Damocles create a more compelling package than even Ed Sullivan could have hoped to assemble. The nations of the world have become a troupe of baggy-pants clowns on 1V They are trotted out dozens of times each day in a low sketch comedy of hostility, violence, and affectation. The main show, of course, is the network evening news. Climb the World Trade Center. Flyan airplane through the Arc de Triomphe. plant a bomb in a department store in the name of justice. Invade a preindustrial nation with tanks in the name of peace. Can Ted Mack compare with this?

TheTheaterCollapses Random House, a subsidiary of RCA,publishes a dictionary that defines the verb "entertain" as follows: 1. to hold the attention of agreeably; divert; amuse 2. to treat as a guest; show hospitality to 3. to admit into or hold in the mind; consider 4. Archaic. to maintain or keep up 5. obs. to give admittance or reception to; receive 6. v.i. to exercise hospitality; entertain company Late Middle English: entertene, to hold mutually" The television industry is at the forefront of a vast entertainment complex that oversees the process of coordinating con-

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sumption and culture. "Entertainment" has been established as a buzz word for narratives and other imaginative presentations that make money. It is used as a rhetorical ploy to specialize popular arts and isolate them from aesthetic and political scrutiny; such scrutiny is reserved for "art." An important implication of the definition of "entertain" is the intimate social relationship it implies between the entertainer and the entertained. In 1956 Gunther Anders wrote that "the television viewer, although living in an alienated world, is made to believe that he is on a footing of the greatest intimacy with everything and everybody. "48 The technological means to produce this illusion have since been greatly enhanced. Anders describes this illusion as "chumminess." Television offers itself to the viewer as a hospitable friend: Welcome to The Wonde1ful World of Disney. Good evening, folks. We'll be right back. See you next week. Y'all come back now. As technology synthesizes more and more previously human functions, there is a proliferation of anthropomorphic metaphor: Automatic Teller Machines ask us how much money we need. Computers send us bills. Channel 7 is predicting snow. The car won't start. It is in this context that television entertains. There is an odd sensation of titillation in all this service. Whitman and other nineteenth-century optimists foresaw an elevation of the common man to a proud master in the technoworld. Machines would take care of life's dirty work; this created the prospect of slavery without guilt. Television enthusiastically smiles and shuffles for the viewer's favor. Even bad television programs contribute to the illusion (Le., "We are not amused"). In Faulkner's Absalom) Absalom', Sutpen comes down out of the classless Gemeinschajt of frontier Appalachia and discovers his low station in Kultur when the slave butler of a Piedmont plantation refuses him entry at the front door of the mansion and sends him around back for a handout. Determined never to suffer such an indignity again, he does not return to Appalachia but works single-mindedly until he can buy a gang of his own slaves. These slaves build him a mansion and he becomes a colonel. It was of course cost efficient to buy female slaves and impregnate them personally. One of his white plantation hands finally shoots him. Similarly, the tele-American emerges from the innocence of childhood into his or her first apartment. Success in life is measured largely

Beginning to Begin Again

by the quantity of machines in the quarters. Are all the household chores mechanized? Do you have HBO? Work is minimized. Leisure is maximized. There is more time to watch television-that is, to live like a king. Backstage of this public drama, quite a different set of relationships is at work. In a demography, the marketing apparatus becomes synonymous with the state itself. As the quality of goods takes a backseat to the quantity of services, the most valued good of all-the measure of truth-becomes information on the consuming preferences of the hundreds of millions of consumer-kings. Every ticket to the cinema, every book, every tube of toothpaste purchased is a vote. The shelves of the supermarkets are stocked with referenda. Watching television is an act of citizenship, participation in culture. The networks entertain the viewer; in return, the viewer entertains thousands of notions on what to buy (that is, how to live). The democrat Whitman wrote that "the average man of a land at last is only important.':" The demographer Nielsen cannot agree more: While the average household viewed over 49 hours of television [per week] in the fall of 1980, certain types viewed considerably more hours. Households with 3 or more people and those with non-adults watched over 60 hours a week. Cable subscribing households viewed about 7 hours a week more than non-cable households. 50 Paul Klein, chief programmer at NBCfor many years, characterized his programming philosophy as based on what he called the Least Objectionable Program (LOP) Theory.51 This theory, expounded by Klein in the seventies, downplays the importance of viewer loyalty to specific programs. Instead, it asserts that television watching is more often dependent on a formal decision. The viewer does not turn on the set so much to view this or that program as to fulfill a desire "to watch television." R. D. Percy and Company, an audience research firm, has come to a conclusion that supports Klein's thesis. David Chagall, summarizing Percy's two-year experiment with 200 Seattle television families, wrote: "Most of us simply snap on the set rather than select a show. The first five minutes are spent prospecting channels, looking for gripping images."52 Faced

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with the impulse (compulsion?) to view, the viewer then turns to the secondary consideration of choosing a program. In evolved cable markets this can mean dozens of possibilities. The low social prestige of lV watching, even among heavy viewers, coupled with the remarkably narrow range of what is usually available, inhibits the viewer from expressing enthusiasm for any given show. The viewer or viewers (lV, it must not be forgotten, is one of the chief social activities of the culture) must therefore "LOP" about, looking for the least bad, least embarrassing, or least objectionable program. While I am ill prepared to speculate on the demographic truth of this picture of the "average man," two things are worth noting: Anyone who watches television has surely experienced this; and NBCfell into last place in the ratings under Klein's stewardship. I cite Klein (and Nielsen) to demonstrate the character of demographic thought, the ideological template that ultimately produces most television programs and always is employed to authorize or censor their exhibition on the distribution system. The optimistic democratic view of man as a self-perfecting individual, limited only by superimposed circumstance, is turned on its head. Man is defined as a prisoner of limitations seeking the path of least resistance. This is an industrial nightmare, the gray dream of Fritz Lang's Metropolis reshot in glossy technicolor. Workers return from their multicollared tasks, drained of all taste and personality. They seek nothing more than merciful release from the day's production pressures; they want only to "escape." "Escapism" is a much used but puzzling term. Its ambiguities illustrate the overall bankruptcy of the criticism of television that uses it as a flag. The television industry is only too happy to accept "escapism" as the definition of its work; it constitutes a carte blanche release from responsibility for what is presented. Escapist critics seem to believe that the value of art should be measured only by rigorously naturalistic standards. Television programs are viewed as worthless or destructive because they divert consciousness from "reality" to fantasy. However, all art, even social realism, does this. Brecht was certainly mindful of this fact when he found it necessary to attach intrusionary Marxist sermons to the fringes of social realist stage plays. Is metaphor possible at all without "escapism"? Presumably, the mechanism of metaphor is to call a thing some-

Beginning to Begin Again

thing it is not in order to demonstrate emphatically what it is. When the network voice of control says, "NBC is proud as a peacock," it is forcing the perceiver of this message to "escape" from all realistic data about the corporate institution NBC into a fantastic image of a bird displaying its colorful feathers in a grand and striking manner. This is done on the assumption that the perceiver will be able to sort the shared features of the two entities from the irrelevant features and "return" to a clearer picture of the corporation. Representational television programs work in much the same way.If there are no recognizable features of family life in The WaltoYlS, if there are no shared features of Lifestylein Threes Company, if there are no credible features of urban paranoia in Baretta, then watching these shows would truly be "escapism." But if those features are there-and I believe they are-the viewer is engaging in an act that does not differ qualitatively from reading a Zola novel (though the latter may be more successful in creating a "clearer picture" of society). The escapist argument makes a better point in relation to the structure of narrative in the television series. In the world of the series all problems are not only solvable but usually solved. To accept this as "realistic" is indeed an escape from the planet Earth. But how many viewers accept a 1V series as realistic in this sense? John Cawelti has convincingly demonstrated that the success of popular formula narrative is not based on fooling a dull audience. 53 Interestingly, it is the soap operathe one genre of series television that is committed to an anticlimactic, existential narrative structure-that has created the most compelling illusion of realism for the viewing audience. 54 The survival and triumph of an action series hero are neither convincing nor surprising but merely a convention of the medium. Like the theater audience that attends The Tragedy of Hamlet, the 1V audience knows what the outcome will be before the curtain goes up. The seduction is not "What?" but "How?" Thus far, I have limited my discussion to rather traditional ways of looking at television. However, television-as both a medium and an industry-has made a commitment to relentless technological innovation. The act of viewing cannot remain static in the face of this. The cable converter has already made the twelve-channel VHF tuner obsolete. From a comfortable

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vantage point anywhere in the room, the viewer can scan dozens of channels with a fingertip. From the decadent splendor of a divan, the viewer is less committed to the inertia of program choice. It is possible to watch half a dozen shows more or less simultaneously, fixing on an image for the duration of its allure, dismissing it as its force disintegrates, and returning to the scan mode. Unscheduled programming emerges as the viewer assumes control of montage. It is also clear that program choice is expanding. The grass-roots public-access movement is still in its infancy, but the network mise-en-scene has been at least somewhat augmented by new corporate cousins such as the superstations and the premium services. Cheap home recording and editing equipment may turn the television receiver into a bottomless pit of "footage" for any artist who dares. Michael Smith, the Chicago-born New York grantee/comedian, is perhaps pointing the way in this respect. Whether dancing with Donnie and Marie in front of a giant videoscreen at the Whitney or performing rap songs at the Institute for Contemporary Art in Boston, Smith offers an unabashed display of embarrassments and highlights in the day of a life with television. Mike (Smith's master persona) is the star of his own videotapes (i.e., 1V shows). In "It Starts at Home," Mike gets cable and learns the true meaning of public access. In "Secret Horror," reception is plagued by ghosts. The passive viewerthat well-known zombie who has been blamed for every American problem from the Vietnam War to Japanese technological hegemony-becomes do-it-yourself artist in Smith. If "interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art, "55 parody is the special revenge of the 1V viewer. Whatever the so called blue-sky technologies bring, there can be no doubt that the enormous body of video text generated during the decades of the Network Era will make itself felt in whatever follows. The shows and commercials and systems of signs and gestures that the networks have presented for the last thirty-five years constitute the television we know how to watch. There won't be a future without a past. In Popular Culture and High Culture, Herbert Gans takes the position that all human beings have aesthetic urges and are receptive to symbolic expressions of their wishes and fears." As Simple and obvious as Garis's assertion seems, it is the wild

Beginning to Begin Again

card in the otherwise stacked deck of demographic culture. Buhle and Czitrom have written: We believe that the population at large shares a definite history in modern popular culture and is, on some levels, increasingly aware of that history. We do not think that the masses of television viewers, radio listeners, movie-goers, and magazine readers are numbed and insensible, incapable of understanding their fate or historical condition until a group of "advanced revolutionaries" explains it to them." Evidence of this shared, definite history, in the form of selfreflexive parody, is already finding its way to the air. The television babies are beginning to make television shows. In the signatory montage that introduces SC1V each week, there is a shot of a large apartment house with dozens of televisions flying out the windows and crashing to the ground. As the viewer learns, this does not mean the end of 1V in Mander's sense but signifies the end of television as it has been officially experienced. SC1V is television beginning to begin again. The traditional theatrical notions of representation and presentation that have guided the development of programming genres are ground to fine dust in the crucible of a satire that draws its inspiration directly from the experience of watching television. SC1V was the first commercial network television program that absolutely demanded of its viewers a knowledge of a tradition, a selfconscious awareness of cultural history. In such a context, viewing at last becomes an active process. Without a well-developed knowledge of and sensitivity to the taxonomic framework and individual texts of the first thirty-fiveyears of 1V, SC1V is meaningless-and probably not even funny. In 1953 Dwight Macdonald described "MassCulture" as "a parasitic, a cancerous growth on High Culture."?' By this, I take it, he meant that massconsumed cultural items such as television programs "steal" the forms of "High Culture," reduce their complexity, and substitute infantile or worthless content. The relationship of mass culture to high culture, Macdonald tells us, "is not that of the leaf and branch but rather that of the caterpillar and leaf."59 SC1V bears no such relationship to any so-called high culture. It is a work that emerges out of the culture of television itself, a

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fully realized work where history and art synthesize the conditions for a new consciousness of both. Other media-theater, film, radio, music-do not bend the show to televised renderings of their own forms but instead are forced to become television. The viewer is not pandered to with the apologetic overdefining of linear development that denies much of television its potential force. Presentation and representation merge into a seamless whole. The ersatz proscenium theater used by the networks to create marketing genres is smashed; the true montage beaming into the television home refuses to cover itself with superficial framing devices. The pseudo-Marxist supposition that SCTV is still guilty of selling the products is boringthe show is not. The breakthrough of SCN, as well as the force of such shows as Burns and Allen, Ernie Kovacs, jack Benny, The Honeymooners, and the Saturday Night Live of 1977-79, will be discussed in greater detail in later chapters. I mention SCN now because it is among the first tangible responses born of a critical stance of 1V viewing that is more widespread than a reading of the 1V critics would indicate. 1V was born a bastard art of mass marketing theory and recognizable forms of popular culture. Thirty-five years later, a generation finds this dubious pedigree its identity and heritage. The poverty of 1V drama in all traditional senses is not as important as the richness of the montage in the cubist sense. For the 1V-lifer,a rerun of Leave It to Beaver or I Love Lucy or The TUJilightZone offers the sensation of traveling through time in one's own life and cultural history. The recognizable, formulaic narrative releases the viewer from what become the superficial concerns of suspense and character development. The greater imaginative adventures of movement through time, space, and culture take precedence over the flimsy mimesis that seems to be the intention of the scripts. The whole fast-food smorgasbord of American culture is laid out for consumption. This is not merely kitsch. Clement Greenberg wrote that "the precondition of kitsch (a German term for 'Mass Culture ') is the availabilityclose at hand of a fully matured cultural tradition, whose discoveries, acquisitions, and perfected self-conscious kitsch can take advantage of for its own ends. "60 In fact, this process is reversed in television appreciation. The referent culture has become the mass or kitsch culture. Instead of masscult ripping off highcult, we have art being

Beginning to Begin Again

fashioned from the junkpile. The banal hysteria of the supermarket is capable of elegant clarity in Andy Warhol's "Campbell's Soup Can." Experience is reformed and recontextualized, reclaimed from chaos. Television offers no few opportunities in this regard. The networks and ad agencies care little about these particulars of culture and criticism. The networks promise to deliver heads in front of sets and no more. But, as will happen in any hierarchical or "downstream" system, there is a personal stance that will at least allow the subject of institutional power to maintain personal dignity. In the television demography this stance gains its sustenance from the act of recontextualization. If there is no exit from the demographic theater, each viewer will have to pull down the rafters from within. What will remote control "SOUND:OFF" buttons mean to the future of American retailing? What images are filling the imaginations of people as they "listen" to television on the 1V bands of transistor radios while walking the streets of the cities wearing headphones? Why are silent 1V screens playing at social gatherings? When will the average household using 1V (HUT) be equipped with split-screen, multichannel capability? What is interesting about a gameshow? The suspense of who will win, or the spectacle of people brought frothing to the point of hysteria at the prospect of a new microwave oven? What is interesting about a copshow? The "catharsis" of witnessing the punishment of the criminal for his misdeeds, or the attitude of the cop toward evil?What is interesting about a sitcom? The funniness of the jokes, or the underlining of the jokes on the laugh track? The plausibility of the plot, or the portrayal of a particular style of living as "normal"? What is interesting about Suzanne Somers and Erik Estrada? Their acting, or their bodies? Television is made to sell products but is used for quite different purposes by lonely, alienated people, families, marijuana smokers, born-again Christians, alcoholics, Hasidic Jews, destitute people, millionaires, jocks, shut-ins, illiterates, hang-gliding enthusiasts, intellectuals, and all of the members of the vast heterogenous procession that continues to be American culture in spite of all demographic odds. If demography is an attack on the individual, then the resilience of the human spirit must welcome the test. "To be a voter with the rest is not so much," Whitman

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warned in his Democratic Vistasof 1871.61 The shopper/citizen of the demography ought to know this only too well. Whitman recognized that no political system could ever summarily grant its citizens freedom. Government is a system of power; freedom is a function of personality. "What have we here [in America]," he asked, "if not, towering above all talk and argument, the plentifully-supplied, last-needed proof of democracy, in its personalitiesv'"? Television is the Rorschach test of the American personality. I hope the social psychologists will not find our responses lacking.

The Situation Comedy of Paul Henning: Modernity and the AIIIerican Folk Myth in The Beverly Hillbillies

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Any man thet'll hang onto an old farm jes' 'cause he sort 0' promised his dead mother he'd never sell it, ain't got no business to live in this bustlin', go-ahead, money-makin', devil-take-the-hindermost day of ours-thet's all I've got to say. Josiah Blake, in James A. Herne, Shore Acres (1892) While relatively much critical attention has been given to the "sophisticated" sitcoms of Norman Lear and Grant Tinker, little has been said about what was probably the most popular sitcom-if not the most popular show-in television history, Paul Henning's Beverly Hillbillies (CBS, 1962-71). Even among those critics who do not treat television itself as a pariah, most have treated Henning as one. No less an explicator of popular American phenomena than Russel Nyewrote of Henning's comedies, "They deal in neither sex, nor issues, nor problems, but only in laughter."! This of course is not true, nor could it be. Comedy, like tragedy, cannot take place without a context, with-

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out a relationship to what people believe about themselves and the world. The theater of Beckett, Ionesco, and Pirandello has shown us at least that much. A situation comedy cannot provoke laughter in the same way the tickling of the bottom of the foot does. The 1V maker dreams a world and builds it with scripts and actors and cameras and political constrictions and audience market tests and network transmission lines. The success of The Beverly Hillbillies (and every other series that Henning was ever associated with) cannot be dismissed as coincidental, nor can the failure of dozens of sitcoms each season. Kenneth Burke has observed that drama gets its material from the historical conversation of a given culture.' Televised drama is no exception. The immense popularity of The Beverly Hillbillies and Henning's other creations is worth noting even within the context of mass-produced culture. During the Hillbillies' nine-year production life, it not only occupied a weekly prime-time spot on CBS (almost always in the Nielsen Top 20 and often Number One) but was stripped nationally on the network's weekday morning schedule as well. A glance at the Nielsen pantheon reveals that as late as 1982 nine individual episodes of the series remained among the fifty most watched hours in television history, with ratings comparable to those of Super Bowls. 3 Rivaled only by the family western, Bonanza (NBC, 1959-73), the Henning sitcom was perhaps the most popular weekly series of the 1960s. The program enjoys lively rerun syndication even today. It is distributed by the Viacom Company to stations throughout the United States and other non-Communist countries. As is the case with most 1V shows, very few of the tens of millions who watched The Beverly Hillbillies were aware of the fact that a distinct personality had conceived, written, and produced it. Anonymity of authorship has been a distinctive feature of commercial television; the emergence of an auteur superstar, such as Norman Lear, has been a rare exception to the rule. Geoffrey Hartman has identified this as a general tendency in modern art: The humanists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries created the institutions of criticism as we know it; the re-

The Situation Comedy of Paul Henning

covery and analysis of works of art. ... We are now nearing the end of Renaissance humanism. . .. The notion of unique works of art, certified by the personal, or located in their place of origin ... fades into nostalgia.' Shows indeed come beaming into the living room like visions from some powerful force so mighty that its name cannot even be imagined. The indecipherable roll of credits that spins across the screen at the end of each program serves only to further obscure the mystery. Beneath the slick, mechanical, faceless veneer of network broadcast, however, the sweaty hands of the individual are still to be found at work. Born in 1911 in Independence, Missouri, Paul Henning was a veteran of twenty-fiveyears of sitcommakingwhen he launched what would prove to be his greatest hit. He was the industrious son of midwestern middle-class parents. A boy soda jerk, his customers included Harry Truman. As a student at the Kansas CitySchool of Lawduring the Depression, he supported himself as a jack-of-all-tradesat a local radio station, working as a sound effects man, disc jockey,singer, and scriptwriter for station IO.1BC during the mid-thirties. In 1937 he took his law degree, but that same year his unsolicited manuscript was accepted for production by The Fibber McGee and Molly Show. This gained Henning a regular position on the writing staff of the popular Chicagobased radio sitcom and ended his aspirations for a legal career. Within a year the young writer was off to Hollywood to try his hand at free-lancing. He eventually won a staff job with The Rudy Vallee Show, where he worked with a number of seasoned show business pros, including Abe Burrows. By the late 1940s, Henning had become a successful staffwriter for the top-rated Burns and Allen Show, then airing on NBC Radio. When CBS chairman William Paley lured George and Gracie over to his infant television network for the 1948 season, he got Paul Henning in the bargain.' Here the radio writer learned the nuts and bolts of sitcom production in the new medium. Though Burns and Allen was essentially a showcase for the virtuoso talents of its stars, Henning occasionally managed to make his interest in his Missouri background felt, especially in one cluster of episodes, during which Ronnie Burns became friendly with a "hillbilly" classmate at UCLA,eventually dating his sister from "back

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home." At this time, Henning also collaborated with fellow Burns and Allen writer Stanley Shapiro to create the hillbilly persona

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of "Charlie Weaver" for the late comedian CliffArquette. 6 Henning's hillbilly creations are of course recognizable figures from American popular tradition. The ethical as well as the physical superiority of the backwoodsman to his city slicker cousin has been a popular theme in America since immigrants began leaving European civilization to live in the wilderness of the New World. In fact, this theme found its way to the stage in the very first comedy written and produced in the United States, Royall Tyler's The Contrast (1789). The belief that a life lived close to the land creates a superior moral sensibility-and that this sensibility dissipates in urban experience-is part of a pastoral tradition that can be traced back at least as far as Virgil's Eclogues. The treatment of rustic characters in the comic mode has an even longer tradition, dating back to the Atellan farces of ancient Greece. Since the dawn of the industrial age, many writers, including Rousseau, Chateaubriand, and Coleridge, lamenting the urbanization of Europe, looked to America as an opportunity to regain the spiritual benefits of life in a natural setting. The cyclical movement of time in Arcadia was celebrated by these and other commentators as preferable to the delusion of endlessly spiraling "progress" fostered by city life. In his early American play, Tyler sets up the trade-off in stark terms. The city slickers Dimple and ]essamy have gained nothing from their urban (European) experiences but a superficial air of sophistication. Though at first glance the country bumpkin Jonathan seems to be naive or even dim-witted, he possesses a sense of fairness and decency that more than compensates for his inarticulate style. For Tyler,virtue is indigenous; it grows in the American soil. When the charlatan Dimple chides the heroic country gentleman Manly about his never having been to Europe, Manly proudly replies that he "was never ten leagues from the [American] continent."? The greatest virtues of the frontiersmen are their independence and self-sufficiency; the city slickers, by contrast, are parasitical schemers with little more than pretentious affectations to offer. Tyler's geocultural paradigm became an archetypal American myth. As the frontier moved west from Tyler's inland Massachusetts, this myth followed and developed. It was a common theme among humorists of the Old Southwest, Henning's re-

The Situation Comedy of Paul Henning

gion. When a city slicker armed with his fancy guns tries to make a fool of the frontiersman in Mark Twain's "Dandy Frightening the Squatter," one punch in the nose sends him careening into the Mississippi. In Thomas Bangs Thorpe's "Big Bear of Arkansas," the hillbilly tale-teller exclaims: Some of them thar [in New Orleans] called me greenwell perhaps I am, said I, but I arn't so at home; and I ain't off my trail much. The heads of them perlite chaps themselves wern't much the hardest; for according to my notion, they were real know-nothings, green as a pumpkin vinecouldn't in farming, I'll bet, raise a crop of turnips." There is a strain of Old Southwest backwoods brutality that is largely absent from Henning's comedies; however, like Twain, Thorpe, Augustus Baldwin Longstreet, and other humorists of the region, he is unabashed and hyperbolic in his idealization of backwoods folk. Henning's break as a television auteur came in the midfifties. He created, produced, and wrote The Bob Cummings Show (NBC, 1955; CBS, 1955-57; NBC, 1957-59; ABC, 195961; known in syndication as Love That Bob). Though he did not address himself directly to the country/city paradigm in his first sitcom, Henning did manage to establish a number of his insistent concerns. The show starred Bob Cummings as a Hollywood playboy who shares a house with his widowed sister and her teenage son. Bob Collins is a swinging fashion photographer, constantly on the make for the models and starlets who fill his studio. His style is often cramped, however, by his sister Margaret, who is determined to give her son Chuck (Dwayne Hickman) a wholesome, "old-fashioned" home life. Chuck embodies a Henning dilemma. Drawn to the slick glamour of his Uncle Bob's Southern California life, he is continually reminded of the moral superiority of his mother's "traditional" values, values she has carried with her from the Midwest. Bob, a product of the same midwestern home, seems frustrated but ultimately acquiesces to Middle American righteousness. In this early work, Henning also created the character of the lovelorn dilletante Pamela Livingston for actress Nancy Kulp. She would reprise the role as]ane Hathawayin Henning's next project, The Beverly Hillbillies.

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After flirting with hillbilly characters and themes from time to time throughout his career, Henning finally got the opportunity to explore and exploit the concept fully in his new show. "I've wanted to write something about these lovable people ever since [childhood]," he said of the Hillbillies in the press release that accompanied its premiere on the fall 1962 CBS schedule." According to Henning, the key to success of a sitcom lies in the creation of likable characters: "Youcan hate someone in a movie and enjoy it, but you don't want to see him againor ever. In television, you need characters you'll like and want to see every week for years. "10 He felt sure he had found such a character in a backwoods frontiersman whose virtue would dazzle amidst the decay of modern Southern California life. Henning recalls building his concept into a series "by working out the character of Jed Clampett, patriarch of the hillbilly clan."11 The narrative thrust of Henning's tale is succinctly outlined in the lvrics of the bluegrass song that accompanies the signatory montage opening each episode: Come and listen to my story 'bout a man named Jed, A poor mountaineer, barely kept his family fed, Then one day he was shootin' at some food, When up through the ground come 'a bub-a-lin' crude, -oil that is; black gold, Texas tea. Well first thing you know old Jed's a millionaire, The kinfolk said, 'Jed, move away from there!" They said, "Californie is the place you ought to be!" So they loaded up the truck and they moved to Beverly, -Hills that is; swimming pools, movie stars. [Words and music by Paul Henning. Copyright Hen-Ten Corporation, 1962; used with permission of Carolintone Music Company, Inc.] This etiological exordium was recorded by Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs and released to Country and Western radio stations as "The Ballad of Jed Clampett." It soon found its way to the top of the C&Wcharts. Walt Disney had demonstrated the effectiveness of songs and other cultural artifacts in promoting films and 1V shows (e.g., "The Ballad of Davy Crockett" and the

The Situation Comedy of Paul Henning

Official DavyCrockett Coonskin Cap), and the popularity of this song probably can be credited with helping to establish an immediate and loyalviewing audience. The song contains within it a number of familiar strains of American folklore and, in some ways, is suggestive of Henning's own Missouri-rags-toCalifornia-riches story. In the grandest tradition of American dreaming, we have the story of a poor-but-honest rugged agrarian individual who acquires spectacular wealth. In Jed Clampett's story, however, unlike such earlier American success stories as Owen Wister's Virginian or Chicago's Al Capone, the trials of hard work have been deleted from causality.Jed simply lets go a round of buckshot, misses his prey, and we witness the marvelous OOZingforth from the American soil of the muchprized fossil fuel.We can only speculate whether Henning viewed his own Hollywood fortune as a similar miracle. In any case, in creating the Clampett legend he follows Mark Twain's dictum, "Youcan't throw too much style into a miracle. It costs trouble, and work, and sometimes money; but it pays off in the end. "12 And payoff it did; The Beverly Hillbillies was an instant hit, reaching Nielsen's Top 10 in a matter of weeks. Though the value of oil in the outside "modern" world is unknown to the preindustrial Ozark mountaineer (led fears the black sludge will only ruin his land for farming), corporate geologists who have been scouting the area get wind of the discovery, and a deal is quickly consummated with a multinational conglomerate, leavingJed and his family with $25 million. We see, too, another trek westward by a backwoods family in the epic of American emigration. Here again there is a transformation on the familiar model. The Clampetts reach the golden shores of California not as penniless Okies looking for stoop labor but with their millions already on deposit at the bank and a mansion waiting for them. Yet, despite this invitation to catapult to the heights of the boom-time sixties, Jed is a reluctant emigrant. "A man would have to be a fool to give up all this," Jed says of his log cabin home, despite its lack of electricity and indoor plumbing. "All this," he knows-and the viewer will learn-is a spiritual and not just a physical place. It is Jed's status-conscious Cousin Pearl, a town lady and a piano teacher, who convinces Jed to leave his beloved hills. She does this with three inducements, which form the narrative center of the more than

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200 episodes that will follow. She argues that Jed must move the family to California because only in that promised land can his daughter Elly Mayfind a suitable husband and her own son Jethro a proper career; furthermore (least important to the humble Jed), only in such a place can a man of his newfound means live a fitting Lifestyleamong the "right" people. Like the duty-bound Lincoln departing his beloved Illinois for the burdens and responsibilities of \Xashington,D.C.,Jed wistfullyagrees to follow Pearl's counsel." Jed's Granny, who helped to raise him and has kept his home since the death of his wife, is less easily convinced. Like Steinbeck's Grampa joad, she must be taken forcibly in her rocking chair and placed in the family's flatbed truck. Over the next decade, all of Cousin Pearl's promises remain unfulfilled. EllyMaynever marries. Jethro never settles on a career. Granny never loses her desire to return to the hills. Neither Jed nor the other members of the family are able to establish genuine ties to the "modern" world they enter. The urban utopia proves sterile. An impressive bank account is all they will ever share with their neighbors. 'Jed was to be a tall man of simple, homespun honesty and dignity-the kind of Ozark mountaineer I knew as a boy," Henning recalled. "I had Buddy Ebsen in mind from the beginning. I knew he'd been a dancer, with all kinds of grace and presence, who really knew how to carry himself.':" Ebsen, who had played second banana roles ranging from Shirley Temple's dancing partner in Captain january (1933) to Davy Crockett's sidekick in the 1950s Disney film series, did not disappoint Henning in the starring role. Jed indeed is selfless, honest, fair, and upright, a yeoman beyond the fantasies of Jefferson. Even vast and sudden wealth does not reorder his righteous priorities. Often seen sitting out in front of his thirty-two-room mansion whittling, or attending to menial chores around the grounds, Jed (like Tyler'sJonathan) is more importantly a moral interlocutor than a dramatic protagonist. In him, Henning establishes a vortex of identification. Jed's unshakable moral logic and solid horse sense are constantly contrasted with the various alternatives embodied in the identities of the other characters. Pearl's son Jethro, played by Max Baer,Jr. (son of the onetime heavyweight boxing champion) leaves his mother's home in Bug Tussle to go to California with his rich uncle. He is the

The Situation Comedy of Paul Henning

only truly enthusiastic emigrant. In the early episodes Henning, at his burlesque best, had the brawny Baer double in the drag role of Jethro's twin sister, Jethreen. The plot line had to be dropped, however, when Bea Benaderet, the actress who played the shy jethreen's mother, was spun off into another Henning show. As a young man entering adulthood, Jethro is chiefly concerned with his education and career. He is enrolled in the fifth grade at the Potts School, an exclusive Beverly Hills day school. The genteel principal and faculty are aghast at the very idea of a twenty-year-old hayseed in jeans and a rope belt even entering the school building. They are coerced into enrolling him, however, through the efforts of Milburn Drysdale, the Clampetts' banker, who holds the school's mortgage. There is nothing in Beverly Hills considered so grotesque that it cannot be overlooked in the name of the almighty dollar. Eventually Jethro "graduates" the sixth grade and attempts to pursue careers as a brain surgeon, "double-naught"spy, charismatic leader of a hippie cult, and astronaut. (The Bodines, both mother Pearl and son Jethro, show a streak of status consciousness which is absent from the Clampett character. This may reflect the fact that they are "from town," as opposed to the backwoods Clampetts.) Jethro's aborted career attempts constitute one of Henning's major narrative themes. While Jethro occasionally expresses romantic feelings, he proves hopelessly naive and unsuccessful as a lover, ultimately preferring Granny's cooking to any of the money-hungrycitywomen he meets. LikeAICapp's Li'l Abner, whom he resembles in figure and dress, Jethro's exaggerated physical prowess in no way extends to his love life. Of all the hillbillies, he is decidedly the most sympathetic to the modern, technology-based culture of Southern California. He is the only hillbilly who can drive a car and the only one susceptible to the media fads that seem to dominate Henning's Beverly Hills. Perhaps most to the point in terms ofJethro's role is that despite his "superior education" and "broader awareness," or perhaps because of it, he commits acts of stupidity so gross as to be obvious not only to the viewer but to the other family members as well. Uncle Jed, though uneducated, is a paragon of common sense and is most often Jethro's foil in matters of simple intelligence. At the same time, though he is a strapping young mountain man, Jethro must live in constant fear of his female cousin EllyMaywho repeatedly "whups" him

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in wrestling matches. In this too there is the suggestion of Li'l Abner.As a would-be "modern" youth.jethro often mocks Granny for clinging to the customs of the hills. He has nothing but derision for her home remedies and poultices, yet they invariably prove more effectivethan his "scientific"approaches. Jethro is, in many ways, a striking burlesque of American middle-class values. He is young, strong, handsome, wealthy, a defender of the "modern" point of view, not to mention white, male, and heterosexually inclined, and yet he is, in effect, a total zero, a nebbish of the most pathetic order. Jethro suffers the humiliations of displacement more severely than any of the Clampetts. He has been seduced by urban life, but he cannot become a part of it. The beautiful Elly May (Donna Douglas), a paragon of sweetness and virtue, is more interested in her "critters" than in any of the suitors procured for her through the efforts ofJed, Granny, or the family's banker/next-door neighbor Mr. Drysdale. At one point Jed buys a bankrupt movie studio in the simple hope of discovering at least one contract player who will interest his daughter. Elly, however, is unimpressed by Dash Riprock, Biff Steel, or any of the studio's stable of vapid male ingenues, preferring the company of Cousin Bessy, her pet chimpanzee. Displaying none of the domestic virtues embodied in Granny (Elly is particularly notorious in the kitchen), her Diana-like qualities are regarded affectionately but worrisomely by Jed, who expresses anxiety over her maidenhood. She is not unhappy in her new surroundings, however, as she is able to establish a menagerie of "critters" to love and care for on the mansion grounds. If anything, she is enamored of the exotic forms of wildlife she encounters at the Los Angeles pet shops and zoos. The cages that imprison these animals are the only things that incite her anger; she buys and brings home all the "critters" she can. Elly's character remains virtually undeveloped beyond these simple givens throughout the series. She is rarely the center of dramatic attention. Henning tended to use her primarily as an ornament, offering long D. W Griffith-like portrait shots of her face and dressing her in tight flannel shirts and tighter jeans. For variety, he occasionally outfitted her in swimsuits and even formal evening wear. Granny, as the chief antagonist to modern culture, is per-

The Situation Comedy of Paul Henning

haps the most compelling of the hillbillies. Master chef, housekeeper extraordinaire of the sprawling mansion, natural/organic doctor, and stubborn partisan of the Confederacy, Irene Ryan's Granny is an important element of Henning's sitcosmology.Her role personifies the continuing tensions between the idealized mother-culture community of the hills and the technologically governed Gesellschajtof Beverly Hills. As a displaced priestess of the old culture living in exile among nonbelievers, Granny is not swayed from her faith. She expresses her alienation from the technoworld in no uncertain terms. Atone point she arrives at Drysdale's Commerce Bank with her century-old wheelbarrow, demanding her cut of the Clampett millions in gold, ready to push it across the Rockies in time for the Annual Spring Possum Festival, which, much to her outraged amazement, is uncelebrated in Beverly Hills. It is principally through the efforts of Granny that the old culture remains intact behind the superficial facade of the mansion. Her cuisine-various dishes making use of possum, hawk, gopher, and the like-is considered beyond compare by the family as well as visiting home folks. The culturally narrow moderns react with revulsion to these unfamiliar dishes and rarely stay for dinner. Granny remakes the mansion into a suitable habitat for the familiar culture. The leisure-class billiards room becomes the "fancy eatin' room." Curtains are hung over the entrance to the living room, making it into a traditional parlor, suitable for "courtin' and sparkin'." A root cellar is dug out on the patio. At one point an exact replica of the family's log cabin is built right on the mansion grounds; Granny promptly moves in. But perhaps the most profound transformation is the naturalization of the Olympic-sized swimming pool that sits behind the house into the "cee-mcnt pond." Here the estate merges with nature, such as it is in Beverly Hills. The "cec-mcnt pond" becomes an ersatz ecosystem, surrounded by the evergrowing menagerie of critters brought home by EllyMay.Barnyard chickens cluck around the edges as Elly teaches her cats to swim. An ostrich stares confusedly at Henning's camera. YetGranny is unsatisfied by her relatively circumscript vector of cultural hegemony. In the Gemeinscbaft of the hills, she was respected and depended upon; she was a doctor, midwife, matchmaker, moonshiner, and meteorologist. Beverly Hills has

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respect for neither age nor functional prowess; she is regarded as little more than a crank. Unimpressed by store-bought detergents, she insists on making lye soap in the backyard. Her neighbors find the smell distasteful and call the police. When she practices her proven "doctoring" talents even in the privacy of her own home, she is threatened with legal action by the local chapter of the AMA. The city dwellers cannot accept her methods because they do not conform to industrial-leisureclass standards. As Thorstein Veblen points out, hard work and self-reliance become emblems of shame in a society whose values are pecuniary." Granny is a conspicuous nonconsumer, and this provokes the hostility of neighbors in what WaldoFrank referred to as "our comfort worshipping Republic."16 She is proud and self-confident enough to remain unshaken, though she is resentful that her proven, practical talents are not appreciated. In the age of specialization her diverse capabilities distort her into a lunatic. And yet, in the face of it all, Granny repeatedly triumphs. If Cecil, her weather beetle, indicates that it's going to rain and a television meteorologist predicts zero percent chance of precipitation, the viewer can expect showers within the half hour. Granny's stubbornness and quick temper (she goes for her shotgun at the slightest provocation) remove her, however, from the heroic realm. Henning's persona is clearly the less radical Jed. More intelligent than Jethro, more aware of the ways of the world than Elly May,more tolerant and adaptable than Granny, and stronger, more fair-minded and compassionate than any of the city people, Jed becomes the sole heroic possibility, with the soft underbelly of his naivete as his more frustrating than tragic flaw. Henning makes it easy to become distanced and amused by Jed's never-ending innocence of modern appurtenances, language, customs-and corruption. However, we respect him all the more as the superficiality of these things becomes obvious in the light of his rigorous adherence to a spotless code of crudely stated though elegantly conceived ethics. This is precisely the ploy used by RoyallTyler in his eighteenth-century Jonathan character. Jed-and not the assimilation-mindedJethro-remains the family leader in the new land. UnlikeJethro, who makes a greenhorn fool of himself,Jed does not pretend to understand the styles of the new culture, but his

The Situation Comedy of Paul Henning

dedication to the "code of the hills," a universal and eternal guide to living, allows him to distinguish good from evil and to protect his family's integrity. Outside the Clampett family, Henning creates an ethical landscape of modern society that is a decidedly bleak wasteland. The Clampetts, whose money frees them from daily worry and allows them the luxury of their naivete, wrestle with what Henning treats as the relatively esoteric problems of stubbornness, pride, or vanity.These problems are resolved easilyenough with simple moral homilies delivered by Jed in the traditional sitcom style of a Jim Anderson, a Danny Williams, or perhaps more precisely, a Sheriff Andy Taylor or a Grandpappy Amos McCoy.The city folk, on the other hand, seem far past redemption. Milburn Drysdale (Raymond Bailey), a greedy banker from beyond the novels of Dreiser, is Jed's next-door neighbor and financial charge d'affaires. While Drysdale is fond of touting the virtuous, hardworking ways of the Clampetts in his public rhetoric, he is actuallyshocked and horrified by their ethicallyruled, as opposed to money-ruled, thinking. He often faints dead away at Jed's generous suggestions of charity and fairness, as when Jed insists on paying for his nephew's equipment and training when Jethro faces military induction (Vietnam Period). As the series progresses over the years, Drysdale's greediness grows in both intensity and pettiness. Henning overplays the caricature until it reaches a point of burlesqued hyperbole in the latter episodes. If Mr.Drysdale's capacity for emotion is limited to financial matters, mere money seems beneath the contempt of his wife Margarette (Harriet MacGibbon). Their marriage is singularly loveless. Even the miraculous appearance of Sonny Drysdale ("a perennial college student and playboy?" portrayed by veteran television comedian Louis Nye) does nothing to mitigate the coldness of the only marriage regularly portrayed in the series; we learn he is Mrs. Drysdale's child by a previous husband. Though an emigre herself (from the blue-blooded townhouses of Beacon Hill), Mrs. Drysdale is horrified and disgusted by the "primitive riffraff' who have invaded her exclusive neighborhood. A "true aristocrat," she cares nothing for the Clampett millions lying in her family's bank and objects to the

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hillbillies on frankly class grounds. By contrast, her nouveau riche husband (who is president of the bank by virtue of their marriage) is a fawning sycophant to the Clampetts. Unlike her contemporary sitcom millionairess counterpart, Lovey Howell of Gilligan's Island (CBS, 1964-67), who is also forced by circumstances to live among her inferiors, Mrs. Drysdale is in no way sweet or sensitive beneath her frippery. Pretentious, obnoxious, and antidemocratic, she rarely gains our sympathies, even when suffering self-perceived humiliations at the hands of her uncouth neighbors. In one cluster of episodes, we see the absurdity of her snobbery and class pretension with particular clarity.With the chairperson of her antiquarian society about to pay a visit from New England, Mrs. Drysdale fears that the Clampetts' very presence in the neighborhood will result in her being thrown out of the organization. She unsuccessfully tries every trick she can think of to get them out of town. Madam Chairman (played by Henning veteran Rosemary De Camp) arrives but is far from horrified by the Clampetts. Instead, she is thrilled to discover in them the simple virtues that made America great, not to mention the gold mine of Colonial Period artifacts in daily use at the Clampett estate. The distinctive mark of culture on character is not limited by Henning to his human characters. The Clampett dog, Duke, seems to be a lazy, good-for-nothing old hound; the camera often finds him asleep beneath a bench in the noonday sun. Yet, when called upon by his master, Duke proves himself an able watchdog and hunter. Claude,Mrs.Drysdale's stylishlycoiffed French poodle, on the other hand, pays weekly visits to a psychiatrist and regularly consumes tranquilizers. Both of these addictions are his mistress's as well. When Mrs. Drysdale imports a suitable mate for Claude from the old country (France, of course), the concubine secretlyescapes and spends the evening with Duke, this resulting in a litter of mongrels that sends the unsuspecting Mrs. Drysdale into a swoon. And yet the neurotic obsessions of the Drysdales are merely emblematic of the endless procession of con persons, goldbricks, gold diggers, and otherwise morally debauched city people who cross the Clampett threshhold, palms wide. The only nonhillbilly character worth an ethical slug nickel is the witty and urbane, if terminally dilletantish, Vassar-edu-

The Situation Comedy of Paul Henning

cated Jane Hathaway. Nancy Kulp is brilliant in the role of Mr. Drysdale's self-consciouslyflat-chestedsecretary. As in Love That Bob, she is Henning's personification of Kultur: (Her subsequent effort in Lear and Yorkin's Sanford and Son is a pale reprise.) Though sexually frustrated, Miss Hathaway displays more libidinous energy than any of Henning's other characters. Jethro is the continuing object of her desire, though he never manages to pick up on her more than obvious cues. Of the city folk, she is clearly the moral paragon, berating Mr. Drysdale for his greediness, even at the risk of her job, and clearly opposing Mrs. Drysdale's blind snobbery, often with lofty speeches on the theoretical virtues of democratic attitudes. Despite her hard work and conscientiousness, she is underpaid and overworked by Banker Drysdale. More than once he fires her. Of course she is ultimately indispensable to the operation of the bank, and Drysdale gets her back to her desk by tearfully exploiting her unflagging loyalty.MissHathaway's quest for sexual gratification is painfully pathetic. She is consistently judged by her homely appearance and despised for her "culture" and education-except by the Clampetts. They often do not understand what she is talking about when she breaks into Elizabethan soliloquies on any of a thousand topics, but they do understand MissJane as a "nice" person and are happy to treat her as one of their own. While Jed is the head of the Clampett household because of his moral authority,Jane Hathaway is the least powerful modern as a result of her ethical concerns. The Beverly Hillbillies clearly represents a departure from the formula that dominated the sitcom throughout the 1950s. Sitcoms, especially nuclear-family sitcoms, had most often portrayed idyllic hierarchical families living in homogeneous community settings. A member of the family-usually a childsuccumbs to some hedonistic temptation or a "too easy" solution to some pressing problem. This morally lax attitude or act precipitates a crisis of guilt and alienation, which is then solved by the delivery of a moral pronouncement by the father,mother, or sometimes even another child. Such top-rated sitcoms as The Trouble with Father (CBS, 1950-55), Make Room for Daddy (a.k.a. The Danny Thomas Show; ABC,1953-56; CBS1957-64), Leave It to Beaver (CBS, 1957-63), and The Donna Reed Show

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(ABC, 1958-64), among others, clearly come out of this mold. Father Knows Best (CBS, 1954-55; NBC, 1956-58; CBS, 1958-

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64) is perhaps the sterling exemplar. This tradition, popular since the Andy Hardy movies and radio days, went into decline in the midsixties though a few favorites, notably The Andy Griffith Show (CBS, 1960-68), managed to hang on well into the BeatlesNietnam Period. The Beverly Hillbillies differs from these shows in that the individual crisis of a family member is not the weekly center of narrative concern. Perhaps Henning's break with formula is best illustrated by a comparison with The Real McCoys (ABC,1957-64), a show that appears to share a number of its thematic concerns. Like the Clampetts, the McCoys are poor dirt farmers (in this case from the hills of West Virginia) who come west to make a new start. They settle not on the Southern California Gold Coast but rather on a modest family farm in the Steinbeckian regions of the SanJoaquin Valley.Like most of the series made by Danny Thomas Productions, The Real McCoys never transcends a rigorous obligation to a lighthearted species of social realism. The McCoys remain at least somewhat at the mercy of the cyclical ups and downs of entrepreneurial family farming. As in the Henning series, the narrative focuses on the problems of the emigrant family in adapting to the "modern" cultural climate of California, the perennial bellwether of the future. Its humor, however, is always a secondary concern to the resolution of shame and guilt tensions that arise for the McCoysin their cultural dislocation. The girls at school make fun of the teenager Hassie for her unstylish clothing. Little Luke gets into a fight at school over an arrogant remark about WestVirginia. Pepino, the McCoys'Mexican-American hired hand (who, incidentally, addresses Grandpa McCoy as "Senor Grampa") makes his home in the family barn, an outsider among outsiders. The viewer is invited to empathize with the pathetic and luxuriate in the cathartic triumph of values over pettiness. This is not the case in The Beverly Hillbillies. As millionaires, the Clampetts are not subject to the pressures to adapt and conform that are incumbent upon the McCoys.The feelings of Henning's characters are never really vulnerable to the pathetic sting. Instead, we are invited to turn our attention to their outlooks, beliefs, and methods of coping with the world and

The Situation Comedy of Paul Henning

evaluate these in terms of our own-and official-wisdom. Free of Dickensian emotional identification, The Beverly Hillbillies invites the viewer into the epic arena of testing cultural assumptions. Moral didacticism and humor may indeed be inherent structural elements of the sitcom form. Henning simply reverses the old family sitcom priorities and makes humor the prominent object of the weekly episode, reducing the moral element to a single continuing cultural struggle between the country folk (healthy, good) and the city people (neurotic, bad). The Clampetts will not be corrupted; the Drysdales will not be purified. Establishing these as givens, Henning proceeds to slapstick farce. Grandpappy Amos McCoy (Walter Brennan) is Granny's geriatric counterpart as defender of the old faith and is every bit as stubborn and prideful as she is. But he is forced by the family's modest circumstances to make painful compromises of his beliefs. Granny is insulated from compromise by virtue of her wealth and can continue to live purely by her creed. Amos McCoy often feels the pain of rejection and displacement directly. His farming methods-and indeed his very ideals of family life-are constantly undermined by the California host culture. On the other hand, Granny is not so much insulted by, say,Mrs. Drysdale's rejection of her as she is outraged by such unprovoked hostility from a neighbor. Mrs. Drysdale, a bad neighbor, offends her cultural sensibility, and she simply writes her off as "downright o'nery" Amos McCoycannot afford such an attitude toward his neighbor George MacMichaels;they belong to the same grain cooperative. Jethro, like Big Luke McCoy,is a young man seeking to become successful in life, yet the consequences of failure are never real possibilities for him. WhenJethro decides to become a film director, for example, he simply puts on a beret and shows up for work at his uncle's studio. When he expresses a desire to go into the business world, Mr.Drysdale immediately appoints him Vice-President of the Commerce Bank in Charge of Clampett Money.Jethro can afford to play Hamlet with his life; Luke McCoy'sproblems are far more banal. Even the idealized beauty of EllyMay,when contrasted with the plain-Ianeishness of Hassie McCoy,demonstrates Henning's rejection of sympathetic identification as a dramatic device. In

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The Real McCoys) identification derives from the weekly trials of the various characters. In The Beverly Hillbillies) the plot is

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restricted to farce. Jessica Milner Davis has pointed out that the etymological root of the term "farce" is the Latin verb farcire, "to stuff." Henning conjures a single paradigm, country-folk innocence/city-slicker decadence, and "stuffs" it with slapstick humor. Identification occurs not so much with one character or another as it does with one cultural point of view or the other. The antagonists are cultures. A pitched battle is fought in each episode between the homespun, right-minded values of the Clampetts, which represent a traditional, folkish, "real American" culture, and a cutthroat, money-ruled technocracy, represented by the city people. Though as consumers we may find ourselves coveting the slick and easy value-free luxuries of "modern" Beverly Hills, in our hearts we cannot help but root for Henning's fair and friendly preindustrial culture. Disarming the critical capacity of the viewer with his relentless mockery of modernity, Henning glorifies this folkish vision of a golden preindustrial American past. That such a past ever existed in America or elsewhere is a dubious proposition at best. It is easy to believe in such a past, however, as a relief from the bleak prospects of life in a mechanical world. If we find ourselves on a treadmill running after money, why not blame the machine itself for our corruption? Erik Barnouw writes: To [the critics'] consternation the series [The Beverly Hillbillies] won admirers among sophisticates,who saw it rather as a lampoon on a money-oriented society represented by Beverly Hills. The unchanging ways of the Clampett clan seemed a kind of uncorruptibility." Henning presents us with characters who are charged cultural entities. The children of society are corrupt; the children of the land are noble. The Clampetts are a noble possibility conjured from America's cultural unconscious. Paradoxically,it is the Clampett money, the very symbol of corruption, that protects them from the dissipating influences of the metropolis. It is impossible to take this model seriously if one doesn't have the $25 million. Clampett virtue is, alas, paradise lost for most of us. Henning's vision is not dynamic but merely whimsical

The Situation Comedy of Paul Henning

and nostalgic. He has created a nihilistic caricature of modern life, not a satire. We are mocked but not instructed. This is terrifying and funny, but mostly funny. Given these limitations, the Clampetts' rejection of modern conveniences is still a wild slap at modern decadence. Not only are the hillbillies satisfied by the simple comfort, cleanliness, and cuisine of Granny's preindustrial home (they reject all attempts to supply them with servants), but they cannot even understand the concept underlying many of the modern appurtenances that lie, unused, at their fingertips. Henning often makes this point with abandoned absurdity. For example, the Clampetts are unable to establish a cause-and-effect relationship between the ringing of the mansion's electric doorbell and the arrival of guests: "There's that strange music again, UncleJed," saysJethro. "What is that, boy?"Jed asks his "educated" nephew. "I don't know, but I'll tell you one thing: There's always somebody a'comin' to the door five minutes after we hear it," Jethro replies. Eventually the frustrated visitor pounds on the door with the ornamental knocker. The concept of "ornamental" in such a context is of course culturally alien to the functionally minded Clampetts. The transfiguration of the billiards table into the "fancy eatin' table" logically follows. It is another Veblenesque dig. Confronted with the racks of seemingly useless pool cues on the wall, the Clampetts naturally seek to deduce their function. They are used as "handy pot passers." The head of a rhinoceros mounted on the wall is assumed to be the head of a strange game animal: a "bill-ee-ard." In a similar vein, Granny rejects store-bought products not so much as emblems of laziness and spiritual decay but more emphatically for their inferiority to her homemade products. As viewers, we are teased that the products we strive so hard to afford aren't as good as those we might make ourselves. Henning's barbs at consumerism are of course interrupted by commercials, and this is the value-free ballet of television. Yet the viewer identifies with Granny's point of view because of its obvious moral superiority. The consumer is guilty; the producer is rich. Unlike the McCoysor most Americans, the Clam-

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petts can proudly live their mother -culture lives in the ghetto they establish on the mansion grounds. They refuse to be assimilated.

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Henning continued to treat and exploit these themes in the two series he spun off from The Beverly Hillbillies: Petticoat Junction (CBS, 1963-70) and Green Acres (CBS, 1965-71), especially the latter. Petticoat Junction is in many ways a flaccid retreat to the "realistic" solving of ethical family dilemmas of the 1950s sitcom, as outlined above. Henning conceived the series principally as a vehicle for Bea Benaderet, an actress who had played Henning roles for years, first as Blanche Morton on The Burns and Allen Show and later as Cousin Pearl on the Hillbillies. Petticoat Junction was not a spin-off in the strictest sense of the term; the identity of the key character was completely changed. After a few years, with Cousin Pearl gone and forgotten, Henning was able to initiate crossover episodes between the two shows. Fond of Benaderet's matriarchal qualities, Henning originally had her test for the role of Granny. Though she did not get that role, he was effusive in his praise of her: I'd known Bea and her great talents for twenty years, and I had her in mind for the part of Cousin Pearl. But I told her to go ahead and test for Granny-which she did, along with Irene Ryan and others. Then Bea took one look at the way Irene did the part and said to me, "There's your Granny." Of course she was right-and Bea became Cousin Pearl at the beginning of the series. A year later I tailored the starring role of Kate Bradley on PetticoatJunction for Bea. She was modeled on my boyhood memories of a friendly little woman who operated a rural hotel in Eldon, Missouri. Here again, it was a case of creating likable, memorable characters and telling their problems in a humorous way." Kate Bradley is the widowed proprietress of a tiny backwoods hotel lying on the single-track branch railroad between Hooterville and Pixley.Three daughters meant, of course, endless crises of manners, mores, and morals, and, as can always be expected in the Henning world, the old ways were indeed the best ways. Having moved his setting out of the modern city,

The Situation Comedy of Paul Henning

Henning restricted the possibilities of city/country contrast in this show. The unfortunate result was that the country folk became nauseatingly cute. Only a few elements of Henning's badinage managed to surface in Petticoat junction. Uncle Joe (Edgar Buchanan) is a kind of Social Security-aged Jethro-still searching for a career but without a millionaire uncle to fall back on. His undoing is his incorrigible laziness, a perception of him shared by the other characters and the viewer. Though a failed would-be bourgeois and, in fact, something of a financial burden to the struggling Bradleys, he is indulged, loved, and cared for by the more industrious members of his family and the Hooterville Gemeinschaft. Perhaps more to the point is the character of Homer Bedloe (Charles Lane), the corporate railroad efficiency expert who is bent on closing down the branch line that keeps the Shady Rest Hotel in business. Structurally, he performs the same function as Drysdale in the Hillbillies. However, the immediate threat he represents to an important institution of the "hills" culture makes him a more onerous villain. The vulnerability of the Bradleys, as compared to the invincibility of the millionaire Clampetts, reinforces his evil image. Bedloe is more than merely greedy. His villainy is on the level of the corporate businessmen who take the joads' farm in The Grapes o/Wrath. Armed with "scientific" charts and graphs that condemn the tiny rail line to oblivion in red ink, he cares nothing for the damage its closing would cause the Hootervillians; he can see no farther than the bottom line. Yet the branch is repeatedly saved by the Chairman of the Board of the railroad who, like Henning, despite appearances to the contrary, is just a sentimental hillbilly boy at heart. The greatest contribution of Petticoat junction, however, was not its weak, predictable story line but its establishment of the geographical cosmos of Hooterville that Henning would use to greater advantage in Green Acres. With Green Acres, Henning achieves his wildest and freest vision of American society and values-and his greatest artistic success. By setting Petticoat junction in the backwoods, Henning sacrificed the watershed of his humor: the daily confrontation of American ancient and modern. He recaptured it in Green Acres by bringing a pair of hyperbolic moderns right into the heart of the hills culture. The show is essentially a mirror reversal of The Beverly Hillbillies. Oliver Wendell Douglas (Ed-

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Demographic Vistas

die Albert) is a wealthy New York attorney who decides to give up his lucrative practice and Park Avenue penthouse and "drop out" (1965) of the rat race to fulfill his boyhood dream of working an American family farm. His wife Lisa, a former Hungarian countess played with Stanislavskian passion by Eva Gabor, is not anxious to forsake Metropolis for Hooterville. The opening signatory montage intercuts shots of Hooterville and Manhattan as the principals sing:

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OLIVER: Green Acres is the place to be, Farm livin' is the life for me, Land stretching out so far and wide, Keep Manhattan, just give me that countryside. LISA: New York is where I'd rather stay, I get allergic smelling hay, I just adore a penthouse view, Darling I love you, but give me Park Avenue. OLIVER: The chores! LISA: The stores! OLIVER: Fresh Air! LISA: Times Square! OLIVER: You are my wife . LISA: Goodbye, city life . ENSEMBLE:Green Acres, we are there. [Words and music by Vic Mizzy; © 1965 Fwy Music Company; assigned 1983 to Orion Music Publishing, Inc. * Administered by Fricourt Music Company (ASCAP)] The dapper Douglases arrive in their Lincoln Continental convertible at a ramshackle old farm, which has been sold to them by Mr. Haney (Pat Buttram). The Henning knave figure is familiar. On the scale of a rural drummer, Haney is every bit as much a cutthroat capitalist as Drysdale and Bedloe. He mercilessly bleeds Oliver, the naive city slicker (naivete has come full circle), selling him every manner of device and machine necessary for "modern American agriculture." None of them works. Oliver can see no conflict between his romantic visions of run"Lyricsto "THEME FROM GREEN ACRES."Printed by permission of Orion Music Publishing, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

The Situation Comedy of Paul Henning

ning a "traditional American yeoman's farm" and, at the same time, using all the "latest methods" to do it. "Isn't that," demands the idealistic attorney, "what made America great?" He continually seeks "scientific"advice from the county agent, Hank Kimball. Alvy Moore, in the role of the modern bureaucrat Kimball, provides some of Henning's most hilarious comic moments in classical "double-talk" scenes that follow the tradition of AI Kelly and Professor Irwin Corey. Undaunted, Oliver is resolved to farm by the book-and teach the doubting locals a lesson or two about modern American agriscience. However, the alarming truth of which everyone but urbane Oliver is aware is that cause-and-effect, as preached by such as Newton, Descartes, and Luther Burbank, is simply not the operative principle of the Hooterville universe. Lisa, no empiricist, instinctively comprehends this and, despite her reluctance to become a farm wife, fits in well with the local culture. Perhaps her roots in a traditional, preindustrial European feudal system make this at least somewhat logical. Neither Lisa nor any of the locals has any trouble accepting the fact that at Green Acres one pushes down the toaster to turn on the lights or opens the refrigerator door to light the oven. Fred Ziffel's pig, Arnold, is an avid television watcher and is working on a book. New Yorker Oliver simply stands by and watches in open-mouthed disbelief. Oliver's faith in reason and scientific order is as messianic as Granny's faith in her notion of the universe. AtSam Drucker's General Store (this becomes the center of the Henning universe; it is patronized by the residents of Petticoat Junction and even the visiting Clampetts from time to time), the former barrister can often be seen expounding on these beliefs. Echoing the public-speaking style of Jane Hathaway, he makes romantic speeches about the virtues of American family farming, shamelessly posing for the camera as a heroic country gentleman. A fife and drum strike up "Yankee Doodle Dandy" on the sound track. "Uh-oh," Fred Ziffelsays to the good old boys around the cracker barrel. "There goes that music again. Mr. Douglas is about to make one of his speeches. I've got some chores to do." The farmers shrug and return to their work, getting by with their traditional methods as they always have. Oliver meanwhile must live off his New York bank account. The Douglases attempt to create a "modern" cultural ghetto

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inside their dilapidated old farmhouse, just as the Clampetts create a "traditional" ghetto inside their fabulous mansion. Oliver and Lisa are not nearly so successful. They order a telephone, but the local phone company has only enough cable to reach the top of the telephone pole outside their house. They climb the pole when the phone rings, most often too late to get the call. They bring their "miracle age" appliances from New York, but these prove a bit too much for the farmhouse's electrical system. Their king-size designer bed takes up virtually the entire bedroom so that they must climb over it to cross the room. In Green Acres, Henning subjects the audience itself to cultural dislocation. As citizens of the technoworld, viewers cannot help but identify with Oliver and his faith in rational order, but Henning pulls the rug out from beneath our empirical feet. The laws of scientific thinking may hold true where they are subscribed to as cultural assumptions-in places such as New York and Los Angeles (except for the Clampett mansion)-but then other orders also obtain where they are believed in. "Reality" is merely a function of culture. Henning used the same dramatic formula for Green Acres that he created for the Hillbillies. Russel Nye incorrectly describes this as "the one joke series.'?" In fact, Henning's shows are filled with thousands of jokes. They could more appropriately be called "one dramatic conflict series." In Green Acres, Henning gives us the same dramatic conflict as the basis for humor that he gave us in the Hillbillies: modern culture versus folk culture. In both cases, the object of lampoon is modernity. Both The Beverly Hillbillies and Green Acres were still in Nielsen's Top 20 in 1970. However, they became casualties of the sweeping changes in television programming-and cultural programming in general-that occurred as Vietnam-Era polarization began to stabilize into Me-Decade hip. Refinements in demographic audience analysis techniques pushed the advertising agencies and networks toward a courtship of "hip" and "relevant" programming that would institutionalize the styles of the emerging group of 18-34-year-olds. After twenty years of measuring success in terms of absolute headcount, the term "quality audience" was first heard bouncing between the concrete walls of Madison and Sixth avenues. Henning had not completely avoided the tumult of the sixties. Beatniks, hippies,

The Situation Comedy of Paul Henning

and counterculture types of all kinds had visited the Clampett mansion at one time or another, but these were obvious burlesques and, furthermore, Henning had alwaysmanaged to avoid the direct treatment of immediate political issues. The Clampetts were "above" politics. They were neither liberal nor conservative in any of the modern political senses. Individual virtue and evil were epic, apolitical qualities. The Henning sitcom was the opposite of what the new wisdom called for. CBS, the industry's sitcom pacemaker since its inception, wiped its slate clean of these "rural comedies" at the end of the 1970-71 season in favor of a more "realistic" portrayal of domestic urban/suburban American life2 1-hence the rise to prominence of Norman Lear and Grant Tinker. The political debate of Archie and Mike replaced the absurd conversation of Jed and Jethro. The "believable" dilemmas of career woman Mary Richards displaced the surrealistic dilemma of Oliver Wendell Douglas. The Polarization Era was over, and it was time to make a sitcom of it. The 1971 television season found the prime-time network schedules without new Henning work for virtually the first time in television history. More than a decade later, echoes of Henning's sitcom style could be heard in the corn-pone antics of Boss Hogg and Sheriff Roscoe P Coltrane on Dukes of Hazzard, one of the most popular prime-time series of the eighties.

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The Co me ely of

Public Safety

*a

She's filing her nails while they're dragging the lake, She's watching the detectives, Ooh, he's so cute. Elvis Costello, "Watchingthe Detectives" © 1977 PLANGENTVISIONSMUSICLIMITEDfor the world. The sitcom offers representation of the interior, the domestic, the banal, and the intimate. The genre comments on American society microscopically, portraying the effects of culture on a family, extended family, vocational group, or other microcosmic social unit. Culture is revealed in the opinions and styles of the various demographic components of this grass-roots unit. Periodic revisions of taste in dress, interior decoration, linguistic construction, personal hygiene, and so on, serve the consumerist obligation of the industry. The sexes, the generations, the races, and occasionally the classes confront each other in long-term dialogues. A ritual quality grows out of the singular direction of these exchanges: from the divisive clash of styles to the solidarity of family and community. Husbands and wives yield to the magical democratic centralism of marriage. The young are instructed, the old reminded. A note of racial harmony speaks to a vision of the brighter day. The poor resolve to overcome their dilemma by emulating the rich. The chaotic incompatibilities of personal tastes and desires are exposed as merely superficial. These disjunctions are even celebrated as 65

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the humorous spices of life. A whirlwind resolution of conflicts reaffirms the tantalizing illusion of structural order in family, community, nation, and cosmos, which Plato made popular even before radio. The crimeshow reaches a similarly comic conclusion but does so by means of obverse technique. Its focus is on the exterior, the exotic, and the broadly social. Dramatic conflict is not merely an inflated miniature misunderstanding but a brutal threat to civilization itself, which is deflated to manageable proportions. From a relatively panoramic mise en scene emerges a close-up of individuals-cops/private eyes and criminals-that reaffirms faith in the order of collective security promised by civilization in the form of the state. Much has been written on the mythologyof American crime. John Cawelti, a prolific writer on the subject, has called it our "great imaginative obsession."! Few who read American newspapers or fiction, or watch American film or television, could argue with this statement. American democracy has been repeatedly tested by outlaws,robber barons, gangsters, and crooked politicians; the threats of explicitly revolutionary political ideologies have been minor nuisances by comparison. The two epic arenas of American crimelore have been the Old West and the Inner City. In The Six-Gun Mystique, Cawelti argues that the definition and containment of crime were for more than a hundred years the central problem of the frontier nation.' The continuing glorification of laissez-faire competition and social Darwinist ideology since the realization of manifest destiny has fostered a heroic vision of the man of action that often engenders a benevolent indulgence of rule breaking. Al Capone, Bugsy Siegal, and Vito Corleone stand with Benjamin Franklin, Henry Ford, and the heroes of Horatio Alger's novels in the American pantheon. The nation's history is indeed richly colored by a heritage of crime, or at least legal ambiguity. In the Colonial Period, Anglo-Americawas largely populated by the persecuted practitioners of illegal European religions and felons transported from British jails. As Hawthorne demonstrates with distinctive clarity in "The May-Poleof Merry Mount," the newly freed victims of persecution were often anxious to establish rigid legal codes of their own to legitimize their status. Nationhood itself was achieved through revolution-a blatant act of

The Comedy of PublicSafety

treason against the crown. The first years of the Republic were plagued by the complexities of creating a legal system to replace the one that had been violated. The Constitution of the United States has been used to legalize chattel slavery and the carrying of guns-and to criminalize chattel slavery and the drinking of alcohol. The willingness to break the treaties that established national hegemony on the frontier was at least as strong as the inclination to sign them. The romance of the escape to the garden has been tempered by a passionate fear of the swamp. Thus American legend comes to meaningful crisis at the vanishing point of individualism, nonconformity, zealous willand crime. For every Wyatt Earp there is a Billy the Kid; for every J. Edgar Hoover there is a Pretty-BoyFloyd. A prism of belief separates the mad-dog terrorist from the valiant champion of legitimate rights. Where is heroic excitement? Out on the run with the desperadoes, or in the marshall's office?In the nightclub headquarters of the gangster, or in the interrogation room down at the stationhouse? Who are the heroes? Matt Dillon and Eliot Ness, with their low salaries and high moralities, or Jesse James and Legs Diamond, with their high styles and low-down ways? This rich ambiguity continues to concern American literature; the coexistence of Bellow's Moses Herzog and Mailer's Stephen Rojack underlines it. The movie screen has probably been the greatest scene of this battle for hearts and minds. From Little Caesar and Public Enemy to Bonnie and Clyde and The Godfather, the cinema, a historical cousin to psychoanalysis, has provided compelling glimpses of the criminal point of view and thus heightened the sense of tragedy created by climactic Hays Office punishment. Robert Warshow appropriately titled his essay on this film phenomenon, "The Gangster as Tragic Hero."? Television, however, has thus far been less indulgent of crime or criminals. While the antiserial format of the American feature film provides a hospitable medium for sympathy or even adoration of the criminal, the 1V series, due to its structure, is unable to explore this realm. Tragedy,according to most definitions, is impossible on a weekly series. Rigid convention protects the protagonist from death. If he has a flaw, it is far from a hamartia; in fact, it is usually decidedly comic. Point of

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view is conclusively restricted to the law and its representative. The occasional exceptions to this rule-from Richard Kimball to The A- Team-are so thoroughly designated as victims of bizarre circumstance that the viewer is hard put not to get the point. The vicissitudes of evil are rarely up for discussion. Binary distinctions between sin and psychosis are avoided; both are plotted on the continuum of evil. This is necessary to justify the decisive actions taken by the hero against his antagonist. The cop or private eye must survive to return next week, same time, same station. The criminal's guilt must therefore be established beyond doubt-often beyond sympathy-and he must be brought to the justice of prison or death before the final credits. There is no Kojak without Theo; there are no Rockford Files without Jim. On lV, the series, the law,and their champion constitute a single entity. This is equally true of Joe Friday and Frank Furillo. The death or defeat of anyone of these components cancels them all from the prime-time schedule. This peculiar constraint on a traditionallynoncomic subject has produced a drama so narrowly conservative in its transformational possibilities that it cannot fail to parody itself. The sitcom forthrightly offers familiar personalities involved in day-to-day events, creating a harmony of subject and object in a parlor room comedy of manners. The crimeshow is a more complex vehicle for the delivery of a similar product. It seems to take on the epic struggle of good and evil as its subject matter. The outcome of this struggle is never in doubt, however, and it recedes to the function of a setting for a comic character study. The identity of a given crimeshow grows not out of its comment on the universal, eternal struggle between order and chaos or good and evil but rather from the personality of the lawman as it is revealed in his handling of trivial crises (his "Lifestyle"). As Alexander Pope demonstrated in The Rape of the Lock) the confusion of the epic and the banal is likely to yield an absurd, parodic tertium quid. Some of the compelling attractions of classical crime mystery are forfeited by the 1V crimeshow. Many of the shows are not mysteries in any traditional sense. "Whodunit?" is often a nonquestion. In most shows the perpetrator is obvious enough, even if he is not revealed in the first minute (as in Columbo). This perpetrator will not only be captured but will indeed be a

The Comedy of Public Safety

villain deserving of the punishment he receives. The protoexistentialist innovations in crime narrative made in the name of Darwin by such novelists as Thomas Hardy, Jack London, and Frank Norris do not lend themselves to weekly serialization. Not only will justice triumph on Tv, but the methods of its agent will prove unimpeachable. These methods may be conventional (as in Barnaby Jones) or eccentric (as in Rockford), but it is determined that the devil will lose to the forces of light. It can be argued that the attraction of this apparently flat formula is its ritual affirmation of the potency of law and order in an increasingly paranoid, or perhaps merely crime-conscious, society. A demographic research study by the R. D. Percy Company reveals that a number of viewers often watched only the first six and last six minutes of Police Woman. 4 This radical mode of televiewing would seem to indicate that these viewers have stripped the crimeshow down to two gestalt elements: the "set-up" (danger) and the "wrap-up" (amelioration of danger). The intervening forty-eight minutes (including commercials) are discarded as tedious and irrelevant. I must say, however, that I find this form of crimeshow appreciation bizarre (as must the ad agencies and sponsors who buy time on such programs). With the sequence of action so predictable, the personality (or, in marketing terms, the Lifestyle) of the protagonist-the very concern of those discarded forty-eight minutes-becomes the compelling imaginative attraction of the genre. Convention demands a crime, a series of interviews with witnesses and suspects, and an action scene culminating in an arrest or death. But like a sitcom-which suffers similarly tight conventional constraints-each crimeshow gradually constructs an idiosyncratic cosmos, which gives it a character that betrays homogeneous narrative conformity. The Tv crimeshow is a sitcom in which The Law is married to Chaos. In each episode, Chaos steps out of line, but The Lawwhips her back into shape before the final commercial. Because crime, evil, man's inhumanity to man, social terror, atheism, rebellion, and the impending collapse of civilization are the "situations" of the crimeshow (as opposed to the education of children, spats between friends, and forgotten anniversaries), the crimefighter's attitude toward the handling of evil is a key signifier of personality. Before discussing individual examples of these personalities, it is worth

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noting that they usually can be divided into two broad types, which I will call "hot" and "cool." 1V cops, including such diverse brethren as the law-andorder avengers of Highway Patrol and the community-minded knights of CHiPs, tend toward the messianic. Strong emphasis is given to the lifelong commitment of the cops to their perilous, self-sacrificingwork. The stress of policework can be borne only by an unwavering faith in the righteousness of the law.The cop isn't in it for the money; policework is a calling. The private detective, on the other hand, is for hire. He can take a cooler, more cautious view of the dogma of the law and weigh it against his own standards of justice. Not an employee of the collective security State, the free lancer is able to examine the contradictions of institutional order and human experience with greater detachment. Commenting on the print detectives of Raymond Chandler and MickeySpillane, Cawelti writes: the hard-boiled detective is a traditional man of virtue in an amoral and corrupt world. His toughness and cynicism form a protective coloration protecting the essence of his character, which is honorable and noble. In a world where the law is inefficient and susceptible to corruption, where the recognized social elite is too decadent and selfish to accomplish justice and protect the innocent, the private detective is forced to take over the basic moral functions of exposure, protection, judgment and execution." While 1V private eyes have never reached the extremes of alienation embodied in Phillip Marlowe and Mike Hammer, they have generally distinguished themselves from cops with their cooler, less manic attitude toward the struggle against crime. Compared with Broderick Crawford's messianic Capt. Dan Matthews (Highway Patrol; syndicated, 1955-59), James Garner's Jim Rockford is something of an existentialist. In terms of the 1V western, the same distinction can be made between Gunsmoke's Marshall Matt Dillon and Have Gun, Will Travel's Paladin. Dillon (lames Arness) is the sworn protector of Dodge City; his leadership of the community makes him more than just a man contracting to do a job. Chester, Doc, Kitty,and Festus provide him with a network of friendships that carries into

The Comedy of Public Safety

every sphere of "legitimate" Dodge City life. On the other hand, Paladin (Richard Boone) is a free-lance San Francisco gunfighter. A typical episode of Have Gun, Will Travel opens with him about to enjoy a decanter of fine French wine with an attractive, expensively dressed lady. He is interrupted, however, by his Chinese manservant, Hey-Boy,who presents him with a telegram on a silver platter. Slightlyexasperated, he makes quick apologies to the lady and goes galloping off to Stinking Hole, Arizona, to save the paying customer who has requested his services. In both police and private eye series, however, crime itself is made into a joke. It doesn't pay. It can't win. The criminals are sleazy misfits. Whatever heroic traits they manage to display early in an episode-courage, vision, intelligence-are quickly exposed as superficial affectations. Why do they even bother to try? They must be fools. Don't they watch television? The 1V networks did not quite burst into the world of cops and robbers with guns blazing, Gameshows, variety hours, sitcoms, wrestling, and The News were already established teleforms when Dumont broke the ice with The Plainclothesman in 1949, the fourth season of network telecast. NBC and CBS soon followed with Martin Kane, Private Eye and Man against Crime. These shows bear little resemblance to the expensive, filmedon-location series produced in Hollywood today. Erik Barnouw writes of the early 1V crimeshow: In 1949 all such programs were produced live. Produced in this way, Man Against Crime cost $10,000 to $15,000 per program; a writer usually got $500 to $700. The live production dominance was expected to continue. Both Sarnoff of NBC and Paley of CBS were said to be determined that it should." With radio divisions still bringing home the network bacon, the fledgling 1V honchos were forced to keep a strict eye on production costs; expensive action sequences and filmed outdoor locations threatened the bottom line. Wrestling and boxing were much safer bets than car chases as ways to satisfy the public's hunger for "action." The crimeshows that did emerge during

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the period had to be barebones productions. Though producers tried to use proven radio formulas as models, the inevitable peculiarities of a new medium made this difficult. Time, for example, could easily be measured in radio scripts by counting the words on the page (the rule of thumb, according to Barnouw, was that 150 words equals one minute). The visual action intervals of 1V made this system obsolete. Barnouw points out that Man against Crime contained an obligatory "search scene," which allowed the novice 1V director to compensate for discrepancies in time. This scene would occur just prior to the denouement. Ralph Bellamy,the star, was cued from off camera on just how long to search for a salient clue. "If time was short, he could go straight to the desk where the clue was hidden; if there was need to stall, he could first tour the room, look under sofa cushions, and even take time to rip them open."? This was the brief age of forced experimentation in the genre. On The Plainclothesman, the Lieutenant (the otherwise unnamed protagonist of the series) was merely a disembodied voice, a rather thrifty device, given union rules that lower the pay scale for unseen television performers. This led to a unique narrative format: The technique was camera-as-actor, in which the viewer saw everything exactly as The Lieutenant would. If he lit a Cigar,a hand (his) came toward the camera with a lighted match (even the tip of the cigar could be seen jutting out at the bottom of the screen); if he was knocked down, the viewer looked up from floor level; if he got something in his eye, the camera blinked, flickered and winked clear again. A punch in the nose provided the most spectacular effect for home viewers." Another money-saving device that helped shape narrative technique was the integration of commercials into the story line. In the days before 1V time became prohibitively expensive, individual sponsors often owned whole shows. Martin Kane, Private Eye was under such sponsorship by a tobacco company, and commercials were worked directly into the script. In the middle of a murder investigation, Kane would make a ritual

The Comedy of Public safety

visit to Happy McMann's Smokeshop, located in the lobby of his office building, and find a few minutes to swap praises of Sano cigarettes with Happy, who was a series regular. Tight budgets also meant holding the line on actors' salaries, and surely an interesting effect was achieved by the constant replacing of the title player. William Gargan, Lloyd Nolan, Lee Tracy, and Mark Stevens all played the role of Martin Kane in less than five years. While these early crimeshows, and others such as Racket Squad and FrontPageDetective, achieved moderate success on prime-time schedules, it was not until midseason of the 195152 teleyear that crime found a formula and came into its own on network 1V NBC had been airing an experimental musical sitcom, FordFestival,on Thursday evenings. The concept never took off, and the network decided to replace it with two 1V versions of NBC radio crimeshows, which would alternate from week to week in the spot. Gangbustershad been airing on NBC Radio since 1936. Phillips H. Lord, its creator, producer, and host, appeared each week and introduced the episode in the manner of Rod Serling and Alfred Hitchcock. As in the radio Gangbusters, the episodes were primitive docudramas, "taken from actual police and FBI files."? Perhaps most spectacular of all was the show's distinctive trademark: "At the end of each telecast a photo of one of the nation's most wanted criminals was shown, and anyone having knowledge of his whereabouts was asked to phone the local police, the FBI or Gangbusters. "10 The program was network television's first and only audienceparticipation crimeshow (though in recent years some local stations have revived the practice as part of The News). Gangbusters seemed to be an immediate 1V hit, finishing Number Eight during its first full Nielsen season. However, it was canceled after only eighteen months on the air, leading Brooks and Marsh to speculate that "it probably was the highest-rated program ever to be canceled in the history of television.':" The reason for the cancelation was significant. Gangbustershad been alternating in its thirty-minute prime-time slot with the genre's first full-fledged cultural institution-jack Webb's Dragnet. Webb did for the crimeshow what Mr. Television had done for comedy-variety and what the Incorrigible Redhead had done for the sitcom: He made it a thoroughly familiar packaging formula.

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Dragnet topped Gangbusters, finishing Number Four in the 1952-53 Nielsens, and thereby achieving the highest ratings ever for a crimeshow. A decision was made at NBC to provide Webb's Mark VII Productions with sufficient capital to produce expensive telefilm episodes of Dragnet for weekly telecast. Gangbusters was unceremoniously left to die a slow death with American radio drama, where it lasted until the bitter end, 1957. Dragnet was not merely a hit. It was an ideology, a "look," and an object of satire that made it a household word even in households that did not necessarily tune it in. It was Tv's first big crimeshow money-maker, drawing serious network attention-and cash-to the genre. According to A. C. Nielsen, only I Love Lucy and two of Arthur Godfrey's prime-time shows (Talent Scouts and Godfrey and His Friends) were rated higher in 1952-53. 12 Dragnet commanded consistent viewer loyalty, finishing among the Top 10 during each of its first four seasons before dropping to eleventh place in 1956-57. What is, perhaps, less well remembered about the series is that it was critically acclaimed as Tv's first "realistic" cops and robbers show. It was the first such show to win an Emmy, receiving three consecutively as "Best Mystery,Action, or Adventure Program. "13 "Dragnet's hallmark was its appearance of realism, from the documentary-style narration by Joe Friday, to the cases drawn from the files of a real police department ... to its careful attention to the details of police work."" Webb had moved the lV crimeshow from the thin artifice of tiny New York studios (most were hastily converted radio facilities) to the cavernous sound stages and spacious boulevards of Hollywood. Webb's purchase of an old Republic Pictures studio lot in North Hollywood, where he constructed a new lV production complex, was a sign of the times." Cop, car, criminal, and lV camera would not be separated again. Webb had created Dragnet for radio in 1949. As star, director, producer, writer, and narrator, he was already synonomous with the show when he brought it to television. He developed a distinctive style that would reverberate widely through the decades of lV police drama. Webb took the hard-boiled dialogue of Dashiel Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and James M. Cain out of the mouths of cynical, nonconformist private eyes

The Comedy of Public safety

and rootless drifters, boiled it a few minutes more, and put it into the mouth of a dour, laconic LosAngeles plainclothesman: "My name's Friday. I carry a badge." Brooks and Marsh claim that Webb was the first televisionmaker to bring the language of the stationhouse directly into the living rooms of America: "Can you give me an M.O.?Book him on a 358." Most importantly, however, Sgt. Joe Friday was a relentless crimefighting consciousness. Life on Dragnet was a corporate fight between Good and Evil,and Friday's boss was Good. The ferociousness of the battle left little room for sympathy for the twisted vermin who opposed the public order of the City of Los Angeles, the United States of America, and God Himself, all of whom Friday had sworn "To Protect and to Serve." Alex McNeilwrites that Friday was "a cop who seemed to have no personal life and no interests other than police work. "16 A soldier enlisted in the war against evil, he simply did not expect the luxury of a personal life separate from duty. Friday's single-minded goal-the eradication of crime-often led him to interrupt even friendly witnesses with his monotone admonition of 'Just the facts ma'am." He had no time for anecdotes or the personalities they revealed. Webb constantly reminded the viewer that the criminals who preyed on the innocent citizens of his Los Angeles were real and were out there: "Whatyou are about to see is true ... " Narrative continuity was maintained in journalistic chronology: "10:51: I was working the graveyard shift at Homicide." At the end of each episode, sentence was pronounced upon the criminal as an iron hammer of justice pounded the point home. Perhaps it should not be surprising that this vividly paranoid vision of a Manichaean struggle for the American street was welcomed by many as "realistic.'?" After years of the highly stylizedtheatrical artifice of Martin Kane and Man against Crime, it must have seemed so. At the same time, Friday was a perfect, laconic all-American foil to the sneaky, double-talking (dream) Communists who were threatening American life from within and without. Barnouw has often made the point that 1V came into being during the McCarthyEra and continues to have the birthmarks to prove it. Red Channels had been published by Counterattack magazine in 1949, providing the networks with

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Demographic Vistas

their first comprehensive blacklist of "Red" performers and frightening them into meek submission with threats of product boycotts:

76

Networks and agencies grew weary of being attacked and decided to take charge of the whole business themselves. Blacklist administration became a part of the built-in machinery of the industry. CBS,which in 1950 established a sort of loyalty oath, followed this in 1951 with the appointment of an executive specializing in security. At NBC the legal department assumed similar duties." The Red-baiters made no distinctions among television genres. Dancers, singers, and comedians were banned from The Ed Sullivan Show. Jean Muir was prevented from playing Mom on The Aldrich Family, Philip Loeb from playing Papa on The Goldbergs (he eventually took an overdose of sleeping pills). The blacklists of course included producers, writers, and technicians as well as actors. Caution became a by-word in the industry. The crimeshow, which is forced to deal with implicitly political issues to a degree that sitcoms and variety shows are not, had to be particularly sensitive to the pressures of the witchhunters. Dragnet was a series made in McCarthyiteheaven. But there was also an abundance of evidence that the comic aspects of Webb's unabashed hyperbole were not completely lost. Takeoffs on Dragnet became a staple of American comedy. Radio comedians such as Stan Freberg and the team of Bob and Ray did sketches and made record albums based on the show. Daffy Duck and Porky Pig starred as Sgt.Joe Friday and Officer Frank Smith in a 1954 Warner Brothers cartoon by Chuckjones. It is a testimony to Webb's powerful skill as an imagemaker that the scores of stand-up routines and variety shows inspired by Dragnet were instantly able to invoke the show with its four-note musical morpheme: Dum-de-dum-dum. (The show's theme music, "The Dragnet March," was composed by Walter Schumann; the piece is also known as "Danger Ahead.") The spontaneous comic imagery of those musical notes has been frequently used in commercials as well. In the early 1980s, for example, Turns, the heartburn remedy, transformed it to "Tum-

The Comedy of Public Safety

te-tum-tum." Pain-relief commercials are often tragicomic; the invocation of Webb, in this case, provides the comedy. Dragnet of course had a tremendous influence within the genre as well. The Webb attitude toward crime provided a formulaic structure for such shows as Highway Patrol, M Squad, and The Lineup. Broderick Crawford's famous signature, his barking of "Ten-four!Ten-four!" on Highway Patrol, can be indirectly attributed to Webb's introduction of police jargon to television. Following in Webb's footsteps, Lee Marvin started his own production company and starred in and narratedM Squad. Desilu's Lineup, yet another half-hour crimeshow in the Dragnet mold, so closely followed the model that Webb was moved to quip, "It's pretty much a direct copy ... Dragnet with the Bay Bridge thrown in.?" Outside the immediate sphere of the crimeshow, other dramatic serial genres were affected as well. Medic, an early doctorshow written by Webb's friend and onetime collaborator, Jim Moser, was commonly referred to as "Drugnet.'?" Webb's rock-ribbed law-and-orderconservatismeven drew a response in kind from liberal quarters. No less a professional "progressive" than David Susskind produced a series called justice (NBC, 1954-56), which followed the Dragnet docudrama formula but drew its "actual cases" from the files of the National Legal Aid Society. The series starred Gary Merrill as a socially conscious lawyer, a political and social mirror image of Sgt.Joe Friday. Despite its unprecedented success, Dragnet seemed to go the way of all television programs at the end of the 1958-59 season. During its seven-and-a-half-year run, Webb's Mark VII Productions had managed to place only one other series on the air. This was Noah's Ark, the adventures of Dr. Noah McCann, a messianic veterinarian. In true Webb fashion, episodes were based on "actual cases" from the files of the Southern California Veterinary Association and the American Humane Society.After Dragnet, Webb's career went into an apparent tailspin. His Pete Kelly'sBlues (the story of a 1920s speakeasy trumpeter) and The D.A. 's Man (an ex-private eye working undercover for the New YorkDistrict Attorney's Office) both premiered in 1959;neither lasted a season. Though Webb had played Pete Kelly both on radio and in the movies, he appeared in neither of the two

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Demographic Vistas

series. Perhaps he was attempting to solidify his position as an off-camera auteur. He commented to TV Guide:

78

I have always been inclined toward production, but in the case of Dragnet it was necessary for me to direct. I'd always directed the radio show and I wanted the 1V show to remain the same. No one does a good job wearing two hats. If anything, I am probably a better director than actor, but I don't consider myself a good actor. Acting and directing in the same show is a little like learning to pat your stomach and rub your head at the same time." After these failures, however, Webb was once again persuaded to appear on screen. General Electric Theater, a long-running CBSdramatic anthology package hosted by Ronald Reagan, was plummeting in the ratings in the early sixties as "The Golden Age of Television Drama" came to an abrupt close. In an attempt to rescue the series, GE yanked Reagan, altered the premise and name of the series to General Electric True, and hired Jack Webb to hammer home the point for the 1962-63 season. The show was not renewed. Webb would not produce a major hit again until he resurrected Dragnet in the Age of Aquarius. Dragnet '67 premiered just a few months prior to the Summer of Love;it was indeed a brilliant stroke. Now, not only could Sgt. Joe Friday contend with murder, robbery, and the banalities of traditional vice, but he could confront hippies, revolutionaries, marijuana, and LSD as well. Webb had never been shy about expressing his political opinions. Red Nightmare, a film he made with Jack Warner for the Defense Department in 1965, was a blunt attempt to keep McCarthyismalive during the Johnson administration. He frankly welcomed the increasingly political public rhetoric of the late sixties. In the years between the two Dragnets, shows such as Naked City, The Defenders, and East Side, West Side had at least introduced the notion to 1V drama that it was psychosis and not the Devil that motivated crime. But Webb was having none of this. In what is probably the archetypal episode of the new Dragnet, an infant dies, drowned in the bathtub while his hippie parents revel in hedonistic decay at a pot party. It was the poetry of polarization: The "unhip" applauded this statement

The Comedy of Public safety

for decency; the "hip" laughed their heads off.Dragnet skyrocketed back from the graveyard into the Nielsen Top 20. Webb got hot. In 1968 he premiered a new series, Adam-12, keeping to his thirty-minute format long after sixty-minute episodes had become standard in the genre. The show was yet another terse rejoinder to the burgeoning counterculture, this time in the persons of two young policemen, Pete Malloy and Jim Reed, crimefighting examples for America's youth. Malloywas played by Martin Milner,who had appeared on television a few seasons earlier as Tod Stiles, a vagabond playboy who roamed the American road in a Corvette on Route 66 with co-swinger George Maharis. Webb's transformation of Milner into the model of square propriety was politically didactic. Stripping Milner of flashy leisure clothes and sports car, he dressed him in a uniform and put him behind the wheel of a black-and-white.Webb's third (and final) comeback hit was his first hour-long series, Emergency!, which concerned the cases of two L.A.Fire Department paramedics. In both series, the traditional Webb voiceover narration is dropped. Instead, we follow the men in uniform through "a day in the life" of their jobs (i.e., one shift), as they monotonously go about the work of saving the pathetically vulnerable lives of wayward Angelenos. One case-the big case-acts as an anchor for each episode, but its development is punctuated by a series of minicases, or subplots, which are handled with bored professionalism by the Webb heroes. Quinn Martin is another crimeshowmaker who has left an indelible signature on the genre. While Webb's hits were all Los Angeles cop shows done for NBC, Martin has produced both cops and private eyes for all three networks. His work is easily recognizable. No other 1V seriesmaker has had the monumental show biz chutzpah to further punctuate the commercials in weekly 1V shows with the titles "Act I," "Act II," "ActIII," "Act N," and "Epilogue" segueing the viewer back to the story line. If Webb's Joe Friday was an avenging proto Moral Majoritarian, Martin's Lew Erskine, Frank Cannon, and Barnaby Jones are more in the mold of upper-middle-class suburban Republicans. An early Webb influence, however, is evident in Martin's first show, The Untouchables, which he produced for Desilu just as Dragnet was completing its original run. Like Dragnet, The Untouchables was a raw, unmitigated struggle between good

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and evil. The cases were "real," adapted for prime time from Oscar Fraley's worshipful biography of Eliot Ness,the otherwise undistinguished G-man who nailed AI Capone for tax fraud in 1927. The barking, breathless narration of no less an institution of American journalism than Walter Winchell bestowed Dragnet-like legitimacy on Martin's narrative. Ness, like Friday,was simple and unpretentious in manner and dress, passionate only about his mission: to wipe out crime. The Untouchables was a notable event in American history in at least two ways: The show "was, by itself, almost entirely responsible for the Congressional investigation into the effects of television violence during the early 1960s.... the high rate of violence on the show (almost five violent deaths per episode, not counting various maulings, beatings and incidental gunplay) was roundly condemned and helped contribute to the show's eventual cancellation. "22 At the same time, the show drew critical fire from Italian-Americans. Having suffered through the Kefauver hearings and several spectacular Mafia busts during the previous decade, many were resentful of the weekly national focus on Italian-American mobsters. Frank Nitti, the turgidly evil capo who kept watch on Capone's Chicago cosa nostra while Big AI sweated at The Rock,was played by Bruce Gordon with a smirking hyperbole that gave the show a xenophobic touch. FBI agent Enrico Rossi, Ness's right-hand man, was little compensation. But the cancelation of The Untouchables was for the most part due to its ratings, the only truly respected critical barometer in a demography. Though the show managed to finish Number Eight during its second season, it otherwise finished out of the Top 20 altogether during its four-year run, the victim of such head-to-head competition as Thejack Benny Program, Groucho Marx's You Bet Your Life, The Tennessee Ernie Ford Sbou: and Sing Along with Mitch. After the demise of The Untouchables, Martin left Desilu and formed his own QM Productions. The new company's first hit, The Fugitive, made QM a force to be reckoned with in 1V crime for fifteen years. Robert Stack had played the brooding, tight-lipped Eliot Ness; an equally popular star was secured for the new series. David Janssen had already established credentials in the genre as Richard Diamond, Private Detective (CBS, 1957-59; NBC, 1959-60) when he was signed to play Dr. Rich-

The Comedy of Public Safety

ard Kimball, the title role of The Fugitive (ABC,1963-67). The series was a unique one-crime concept, which Martin had bought from another producer. As the series narrator reiterated each week over the signatory montage, Kimball had been unjustly accused and convicted of the murder of his wife. On his way to the death house, he escapes from custody by grace of a railroad catastrophe. Exiled from the world of bourgeois respectability, the fugitive travels the American underworld searching for the one-armed man whom he had spotted leaving the scene of the crime. Martin went out of his way to qualify this seeming miscarriage of American law and order. The cop who pursues Kimball, Lt. Philip Gerard (Barry Morse), actually suspects that the doctor is innocent but pursues his man in single-minded, Webblike service to his job. When The Fugitive reached the down side of its entropy curve, Martin took the unprecedented step of ending a long-running series with a climactic macrodenouement in which Gerard hears the one-armed man's confession and ends up shooting him to save Kimball's life. The American system may err at times, but with Quinn Martin on its side, ultimately it cannot help but render justice. With his ideology established in these two early series, Martin created a successful formula from which he varied little thereafter. Lew Erskine (Efrem Zimbalist,Jr.), the dapper G-man of QM's FB~ rid America of Commies, Nazis, and other assorted common criminals for no less than nine seasons. Cannon, the rotund private eye and man of taste, spent most of his five seasons on CBS waddling after athletic young murderers and petty racketeers. This show was QM's first private eye vehicle. Martin's conservatism is underscored by Cannon's excellent relationship with the police department. Martin added a third concurrent hit to The FBI and Cannon with The Streets of San Francisco (ABC,1972-77). Karl Malden was brought to television as Lt. Mike Stone; Michael Douglas got his first national exposure as the hard-bitten veteran cop's young sidekick, Inspector Steve Keller. On a roll, Martin pulled yet another casting coup de main when he coaxed Buddy Ebsen out of post-Jed Clampett retirement to play the title role in his next private eye series, Barnaby Jones (CBS, 1973-80). Jones epitomized Martin's work in the seventies. The staid geriatric opponent of evil was omniscient and humorless, an upright pillar of the community with neither the time nor

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the inclination for fun and games. Jones had come out of retirement after his son Hal was killed by criminals while working on a case. Though he quickly avenged the murder in the series' pilot episode, Barnaby could not help but remain on the front lines in the battle against evil. In one of Martin's fewacknowledgments of changing times, he gave the grandfatherly crimestopper a female protege (BettyJones, Hal's widow) and a young male sidekick (his nephew Jedediah). Jones, like Cannon, enjoys superb relations with the police. The trademark of all the QM protagonists-Feds, city cops, or private eyes-is a relentless seriousness, which is emphasized by their asexual lifestyles. Though the QM hero is not as manic as Joe Friday (and has been progressively less so since Eliot Ness), he is nonetheless engaged in an equally intense life-or-death struggle with the absolutely unmitigated evil of the modern criminal. By contrast, good and evil are separated at a more differential threshold in the work of RoyHuggins. Huggins has been called "the most consistent and prolific 1V creator, "23 a title the record can support. He began his career as a middling novelist, screen writer, and director in Hollywood after World War II. Perhaps his best-remembered film was his last, Hangman's Knot, a 1954 western starring Randolph Scott. In 1955 he left the cinema to become a 1V producer for Warner Brothers, which was making a late and desperate effort to establish itself as a network television supplier. Huggins scored huge successes for the studio with his westerns and crimeshows. Cheyenne, a western series assigned to Huggins, finished Number Twelve in 1957-58; it was Warners' first Top 20 show. Granted the opportunity to create his own series, he developed a private eye concept, 77 Sunset Strip, from his novel of the same name. The series achieved popularity despite the fact that it ignored many tenets of the television treatment of crime that had become de rigueur in the Dragnet decade. The private investigators, Stuart Bailey (Efrem Zimbalist,Jr.) and Jeff Spencer (Roger Smith), were suave, urbane, and fun loving, a far cry from such feverishly consumed gangbusters as Joe Friday and Broderick Crawford. Their office abutted the driveway to the parking lot of a nightclub, Dine's Lodge, and the playboy sleuths were not above dropping in for a highball. The purviews of the sitcom and the crimeshow quietly intersected in the parking lot of

The Comedy of Public safety

Dino's, A casting innovation that helped achieve this was the

introduction of a regular character who functioned as the investigators' comic sidekick. Gerald LloydKookson III, known to all as Kookie (Edd Byrnes), was the parking lot valet. Brooks and Marsh accurately describe the jive-talking Kookie, who obsessively combed his slicked-back hair, as "a kind of Fonzie of the 1950s."24Alex McNeil notes that "the character ... was not intended to be a recurring one, but public reaction (chiefly from teenage girls) was so strong that Byrnes was given a regular role."25This of course is a rote procedure in demographic art. Sex-dealt with only as a crime by the police gangbusterswas introduced into the lives of the private eyes. Not only did they have a sexy female secretary, but beautiful women were bound to show up in the course of any case. Stu and Jeff even went out on dates. The rewards of battling evil are not merely spiritual in Huggins's L.A. Warners Television had found its biggest hit to date; the self-consciously cool crimeshow finished Number Seven in its first season. In a mad dash to capitalize on what it hoped was the coming trend in the genre, Warners cloned a handful of replicas for equally anxious ABC,the perennial third-place network of the fifties (see table 1). Though only Hawaiian Eye came close to matching 77 Sunset Strip's success, Huggins had secured a new archstyle for the 1V crimeshow. His private eyes were every bit as effective in capturing criminals as the hardtack gangbusters of the McCarthyEra, but their livescontained broader concerns as well. Stu Bailey held a doctorate in modern languages from an unspecified "Ivy League" university;Jeff Spencer had taken his degree in law. The change in styles is well summarized in the difference in theme music between Dragnet and 77 Sunset Strip: The ominous "Dum-de-dum-dum" of "The Dragnet March" yielded to the white-jazzy finger-snapping of MackDavid and Jerry Livingston's "77 Sunset Strip." Edd Byrnes even managed to put out a Top 40 single entitled, "Kookie, Kookie, Lend Me Your Comb." The theme music to Hawaiian Eye featured bongo drums, in cooptive homage to the beatnik underground. The McCarthy-inspired iceberg of law and order melted a bit in the glare of emerging Sunbelt glamour. In 1963, after five successful seasons on the air, 77 Sunset Strip's ratings began to decline. In an ironic twist of demo-

83

Tom Lopaka Tracy Steele

Kazuo Kim

Cricket

Honolulu

Cal Calhoun Rex Randolph

Kenny

Melody

New Orleans

Stuart Bailey Jeff Spencer

Kookie

Suzanne

Hollywood

HIP PRNATEEYES:

OFFBEAT SIDEKICK:

BEAUTIFUL SECRETARY:

SUNBELTLOCALE:

Miami

Daphne

Cha-Cha O'Brien

Ken Madison Dave Thorne Sandy Winfield

SURFSIDE SIX (ABC, 1960-62)

Crossovers: After the cancelation of Bourbon Street Beat) Rex (Richard Long) became a partner in 77 Sunset Strip for a year. After the cancelation of Surfside Six) Troy Donahue, who had played Sandy, became Det. Philip Barton in Hawaiian Eye. Kookie graduated to detective status in 77 Sunset Strip in 1962; he was replaced in the parking lot by J. R. Hale (Robert Logan), who matched Kookie's hip talk by speaking in initials (e.g., "C-U-L," meaning, "See you later."). There were many other crossovers among the Huggins shows.

HAWAIIANEYE (ABC, 1959-63)

BOURBON STREET BEAT (ABC, 1959-60)

77 SUNSET STRIP (ABC, 1958-64)

SHOW:

Table 1. Life of the Huggins Hip Private Eye Concept

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The Comedy of Public safety

graphic aesthetics, Warners hired none other than Jack Webb to save it. True to form, Webb stepped in and cleaned house, firing not only the politically suspect Kookie but the entire cast, save Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. Zimbalist, who a few years later would become Quinn Martin's no-nonsense FBI agent, Lew Erskine, obviously passed conservative muster with Webb. Beside the star and the title, little else familiar was retained in the series. The bad-but-not-evilunderworld of bookies, loose women, and street types that was centered in Dino's parking lot was scissored by the puritanical Webb. Bailey was transformed into an international agent who traveled the world to foil dope smugglers and equally sinister subversives. The show quickly lost what audience it had and was canceled after just one season of its "new look." At about the same time that Webb was attempting to recast 77 Sunset Strip in his own image, another Huggins concept, The Fugitive, was bought by Quinn Martin, who produced it in his own distinctive style. One cannot help but wonder what the show would have looked like if Huggins had kept control of the project. Surely the high-sphincter pressure of the GerardKimball chase would have been tempered by a modicum of glamour and romance. Huggins continued to remain active in other projects, even during the Sunset Strip years. The most important of these was A1averick (ABC, 1957-62) which he created and produced. In this western saga of a trio of goodhearted gambling brothers, Huggins developed the heroic schlemiel persona for James Garner that would later be updated and reprised in The Rockford Files (NBC, 1974-80). Alias Smith and Jones (a loose adaptation of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid), which Huggins produced and wrote, was the only new western series to play on network 1V for more than one season during the seventies. The Huggins touch is again apparent. The cowboy heroes are handsome, suave, and articulate. Former outlaws themselves, they debunk the white hat/black hat dichotomy. Like Jim Rockford, they often find themselves working for the law while the legal establishment works against them. Before turning to a more detailed discussion of Jim Rockford, Huggins's antihero extraordinaire, it is first necessary to discuss what happened to the genre in the years between 77

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86

Sunset Strzp and The Rockford Files. That can best be summed up in a name and a decade: Aaron Spelling and the sixties. Spelling synthesized and restyled the Los Angeles crimeworld of Webb, Martin, and Huggins, integrating it racially and sexually and decisively shifting the measure of justice from "good versus evil" to "healthy versus sick." In the process, his name became synonymous with ABCcrime drama for a decade, helping the network to become the programming-and ratings-leader in the midseventies. While The News had provided sensationalistic coverage of the Vietnam War and the Civil RightsMovement, representation of these historical phenomena in prime time did not get seriously underway until 1968 when Spelling's Mod Squad premiered on ABC. As Bob Schneider writes in his provocative essay, "Spelling's SalvationArmies,"

By 1968 the Vietnam War, and its media-induced spinoff, the generation gap, had sorely divided the nation. It was in fact so divided that it was in the process of electing Nixon, the Gollum in a Brooks Brothers suit, who had, in a moment of zen inspiration, co-opted the militants' V-sign and subtitled it with the phrase "bring us together." It was ... the news that had made a hit of the war and of the protests. It also fell to 1V to "bring us together," to minimize the murderous potentials of the ideologically induced yet psychically sanctioned split in the generations. Within this context the mondo-jingo world of Webb was no longer tenable . . . . [Such] shows in fact became another in the series of constantly escalating provocations that were pushing both sides of the generation gap ever more deeply into the trenches of their media-manipulated Maginot Line. What became necessary were mediative shows. In the area of action/adventure this call ... was answered by Aaron Spelling. His Mod Squad featured the best of both worlds in a visionary compromise. Youthful exuberance modified by adult [parental] pragmatism presented a paradigm of intergenerational cooperation in the post-co's world. At the same time it presented visions of the family affirmed." Not only had Spelling managed to stage a parent/child reunion right in the S.C.PD.Metropolitan Division stationhouse, but he had fused the polar strains of the 1V crimeshow as well. Hug-

The Comedy of Public safety

gins coolness met Webb messianism, and the result was hip law and order. Schneider describes the Squad: [Its]central characters were all ex-hippies who had decided to apply their searing social consciences to the saving of souls of a more muddled mettle-by joining them [the police] as undercover cops. They worked under Captain Greer, a strong father-figure, who always made the right decision at the psychologically proper moment. The squad was made up of Pete, a rich kid and frat member, who had [at one time] fallen into drugs; Line, an appropriately named former black militant; and Julie, the show's sexual fulcrum ... [a] dreamy-eyed blonde with a long mouth and big heart, who had gone through some unspecified young adult trauma." This neo-Popular Front, consisting of a hip white male, a black militant working through the system, and a quasi-liberated woman, all under the direction of a father figure from across the generation gap, was not quite uniquely Spelling's. Cy Chermak's Ironside (NBC, 1967-75) contained a similar alliance of new wave policepersons. The difference was emphasis. Ed, Mark, and Eve (later Fran) were basically straight arrows. At the same time, they were so prone to youthful error that they repeatedly had to be saved by their wheelchair-ridden father figure. The Chief (Raymond Burr, straight from nine omniscient years of Perry Mason) was the center of the series, the source of wisdom and moral judgment, not unlike the father in a fifties sitcom: "What would you have done to those people in the Boston Tea Party?" asks the idealistic young policewoman Fran Belding. "I'd have arrested them; they broke the law," replies the Chief. In The Mod Squad, the heroic focus was on youth. Captain Greer was not a "police genius" like Robert Ironside; he merely advised from behind a desk. The Squad went out and maintained law and order pretty much on its own. The great theme of Spelling's work was rehabilitation-a

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new theme for the 1V crimeshow. Evidence of Spelling's obsession with the idea can be found in his first television show, a western,johnny Ringo (CBS, 1959-60). Its protagonist, a onetime outlaw, becomes the crusading sheriff of Velardi,Arizona. As Schneider implies, Spelling recognized that Webb's teleworld, as it was recrystallizing in Dragnet '67) had become something other than seriously dramatic to a significant segment of American consumer purchasing power. How could "least objectionability" be achieved among a polarizing viewership? Spelling did for the crimeshow what Norman Lear would later do for the sitcom: He introduced The News into primetime representation and established the emerging consumer power (18-34-year-olds) as the moral power. As Warners had done with 77 Sunset Strip) Spelling-Goldberg Productions spun off its successful new formula for all it was worth. In Spelling's next ABC hit, The Rookies) the cooption process has evolved another step. The Mod Squad turns in its street threads and puts on police uniforms. Pete resurfaces as the painfully serious MikeDanko;Julie as the committed angel of mercy,Nurse Danko; and Line as the community-minded soul brother, Terry Webster. They are all under the direction of pater familias Lieutenant Ryker.Webb's Friday is married, but his wife is never seen on screen, and Huggins's private eyes are unattached swingers. But in The Rookies) both worlds are brought together. Mike (Sam Melville) and Nurse Danko (Kate Jackson) are typical Spelling protagonists. They are young, good-looking, fun-loving, and idealistic, dedicated to law and order because of-and not despite-their "searing social consciences." To compensate for the fact that the white leading man was married, a new element was added: Officer WilUe Gillis, played by male ingenue Michael Ontkean. Unmarried, he invited romance from the audience as he stood on a ravished ghetto street after a riot, wondering about the relevance of Thoreau's Civil Disobedience. As Quinn Martin had done in The FBI, Spelling branched out from the humdrum felonies of homicide and armed robbery to the more controversial crimes of terrorism and civil disturbance. In S.WA. T) Spelling's next effort, these Walter Cronkite crimes become the center of the narrative field. Here, the viewer is more likely to run into the PLOthan into a pickpocket. The exhippies had indeed walked a long road; in S.WA. T they have

The Comedy of Public safety

become a crack paramilitary unit. Yet even here an element of social worker mingles with gangbuster. Crime, though no less wrong than it ever was, is more pitiable than contemptible. By the time we get to Starsky and Hutch) Spelling seems to be suggesting that it is downright uncool not to be a cop. Cruising the Strip in their pin-striped musclecar, flaunting their designer Lifestylethrough every climactic collar, Starsky and Hutch clearly belong to different demographic taste groups than Webb's Reed and Malloy, their contemporaries in the fight against Southern California crime. Things have "progressed" so far in postrevolutionary America that the blond surfer-boy cop and his curlyheaded jewish partner find their father figure in Captain Dobey, an Afro-American. All through the early seventies, Spelling built a vision of an America that would continue to be America because of-and not despite-the idealism of its young people. The Spelling hero is a post-Charles Reich young American who has learned that the best way to save the world for Consciousness III is to become a cop. The next hit of this cycle was Charlie's Angels) Spelling's first venture into the private eye world. If hippies could fight crime, so could Farah FawcettMajors. In keeping with Spelling ideology, the show begins each week with an ascerbic swipe at the institutional sexism of the police department, which forced the three female supersleuths to leave their stereotyped jobs and become private eyes: the show's opening sequence depicts the "Angels" as unsuited for mundane duties as policewomen, and their subsequent transformation by Charlie who "took them away from all that" to give them glamor and status as private investigators with fashionable clothes, cars and money."

Charlie's Angels began to close the page on the Spelling revision of the sixties. Hip idealism was decaying into egotistical glamour. By the midseventies, the sixties were finally coming to a close on prime time. In Hart to Hart) the last crimeshow of the cycle, the Spelling crimefighters are a conspicuously middle-aged-though rigorously glamourous-millionaire husband-and-wife team. Jonathan and Jennifer Hart practice crime detection as a leisure-time pursuit, not unlike hang gliding or weekend cross-country skiing. Earth-tone aristocrats, they do it

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for kicks-a release from the taxing tensions of their jobs (Ionathan is the head of a multinational, Jennifer an author). From the mainstreamed revolution of The Mod Squad to the MeDecade voyeurism of Hart to Hart, the Spelling crimeshows are a kind of cultural historical story cycle of the baby-boom generation, told by means of the familiar cops-and-robbers metaphor. Spelling relentlessly pursued the concept of "hip" until it became diffuse beyond meaning. Perhaps tiring of the quest, he shifted the direction of his work toward a bizarre, as yet unnamed program genre; The Love Boat and Fantasy Island are both Spelling productions. The end of the age of social consciousness in the 1V crimeshow did not signal a return to strict law and order. The Pandora's box of the crimefighter's "feelings" had been opened. The preeminent 1V crimeshow of the late seventies was The Rockford Files, a series created by Roy Huggins and Stephen]. Cannell and produced by Meta Rosenberg. Eschewing messianism, glamour, and social consciousness in favor of dogged, sometimes bumbling, but always determined individualism,Jim Rockford is the first detective to successfully emerge on 1V from the American film tradition, a kind of postnuclear Sam Spade. Rockford lives in what appears to be a broken-down mobile home; inside, it is furnished like a state-of-the-art American single person's efficiency condo. He is the harried everyman of modern America, alienated from institutional bureaucracy, just staying alive, trying to make a living as a private eye. His retired father, Rocky (Noah Beery), wants him to give up this private eye nonsense and follow him into interstate trucking. The police are not much help; Rockford has already done five years for a crime he never committed. He has more trouble collecting fees from clients than capturing criminals. The Rockford Files takes a giant step past 77 Sunset Strip in the direction of the sitcom. Sitcomic scenes involving father and son in the tiny enclosed space of the mobile home share the hour with L.A. car chases. The host of semiregular characters in the series reads like a sitcom cast list: Beth Davenport, the slightly spacedout, bleeding-heart lawyer; Angel Martin, the paranoid, doublecrossing ex-con and can man; LanceWhite, the goody-twa-shoes private detective; John Cooper, the unjustly disbarred lawyer; Dennis Becker, the overworked but sympathetic police detec-

The Comedy of Public safety

tive. These characterizations give flesh to the conventional car chases, shoot-outs, and arrests that otherwise compose the setting of Rockford's Los Angeles. Like Dragnet) The Untouchables) 77 Sunset Strip) The Mod Squad) or any successful, long-running series, The Rockford Files has a clearly identifiable ambience and attitude, mood and cosmos. This, not cathartic release at the defeat of evil, is the experience of the 1V crimeshow. A hypothetical episode of Dragnet opens: 91 Pan of Los Angeles harbor Friday [Voice-over]:This is the city-Los Angeles.More cargo is handled by its piers than any other port on the Pacific coast. Sometimes people steal some of it. That's where I come in. I carry a badge. [Music: "Dum-de-dum-dum"] [Full-screen close-up of L.A.PD. badge]

A Rockford episode opens: Pan of abandoned solitaire game on cluttered table Telephone answering machine [Voice-over]: Hello, Rockford? This is Acme One-Day Martinizing. If you don't pick up your shirts by Wednesday afternoon, 5:00 P.M., they will be donated to a reputable charity. [Music:Synthesizer plays "The Rockford Files"] [Shot)from driver's seat) offreewayoverpass]

The "wiping out of crime" has become a moot point on The Rockford Files. Evil,a noncommittal bag of psychosis and sin, is here to stay, as much a fact of life as greed, lust for power, or any of a thousand human traits. Christopher Wicking and Tise Vahimagi, in their study of television directors, give much of the credit for the existential style of Rockford to Stephen]. Cannell, Huggins's collaborator: "Cannell [has the] ability to write convoluted plots in the Chandler manner, at the same time concentrating on human foible rather than darker evils."29 A look at Cannell's career reveals his versatility in the genre and provides an insight into the incestuously small circle of individuals responsible for most network crimeshows:

Demographic Vistas

If Roy Huggins is the King of light entertainment, Cannell must be the heir apparent. In his ten year career he has risen from a humble scribe to the executive producer, mainly through his connection with first, Jack Webb (Adam 12, Chase), then the Huggins empire tToma, Baretta, Rockford Files, City of Angels), before striking out on his own with Richie Brockelman and Black Sheep Squadron. 30

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Having worked with both Webb and Huggins, Cannell clearly chose the more lighthearted path of the latter. In Black Sheep Squadron, he turns the battle for air supremacy in the Pacific during World War II into a wild, macho bachelor party starring Robert Conrad ("Knock these batteries off my shoulder; I dare ya."). Subsequent Cannell efforts include The GreatestAmerican Hero, a tedious synthesis of The White Shadow's ideology and The Six Million Dollar Man's special effects, and The A-Team, whose macho vision goes beyond Robert Conrad to the precipitate of Mr. T. If Cannell is indeed "the heir apparent" to Huggins, Jack Lord kept Webb's Manichaean tradition alive with Hawaii Fiveo (CBS, 1968-80), "the longest continuously running police show in the history of television."? Though we see a share of sumptuous shots of Hawaiian beachscape, the day-to-day glamour of life in the Aloha State (which is harped upon in Huggins's Hawaiian Eye) is largely missing from the show. Asexual and messianic, Lord's Steve McGarrett suggests Ioe Friday in the rhythm of his ritual climactic line, "Book him, Danno." Though it can be argued that "serious" drama of any kind has always required comic relief, the balance lately has been so tipped in favor of the comic on most 1V crimeshows that the crime often seems like a dreary appendage to the comedy. Whatever sense of foreboding the crime may inspire is instantly mitigated by a surrealistic certainty that the perpetrator will soon be removed from society; the malignancy will be extracted. Kojak will be back in the squadroom sucking Tootsie Roll Pops with Crocker, Stavros, and Captain McNeil. Rock Hudson and Susan St. James will be giggling about the case from under the covers. Columbo will stumble off in his ratty raincoat, having taught yet another millionaire criminal that the specter of proletarian common sense is haunting Southern California

The Comedy of Public safety

crime. Harry-O will gingerly hop a bus home after removing a criminal from behind the wheel of a sports car and sending him home to the joint. The portly, aging Cannon (William Conrad once played Matt Dillon on the radio) will sit down to a cardiac-arresting meal after running down yet another evil mesomorph. McCloud, having taught both the criminals and cops of New York City another lesson in Old West law enforcement, will ride his horse down Broadway into the NewJersey sunset. The strict constraints of the 1V crimeshow formula have led to increasingly absurd gimmickry in recent years. A genre that had prided itself on "Realism" seemed to be self-destructing during the late 1970s. Cartoon superheroes began to replace cops and private eyes. The Six Million Dollar Man, The Bionic Woman, The Incredible Hulk, and Wonder Woman achieved the same arrest records as Joe Iorrester and Police Woman, but they allowed a chance for something "fresh and different"-special effects. With antiviolence protests from parents, groups on the rise," the technical bravado of laser beam rays and miraculous transformations provided a safe avenue for the genre's expansion. Thus the crimeshow gradually lost its identity to the action/adventure show, a broader category that includes a variety of action-oriented series types. In 1978- 79 not a single Newtonian cop or private eye made the Nielsen Top 20.

Given this trend, it is not surprising that cops and private eyes began showing up in sitcoms in the midseventies. Barney Miller premiered on ABC in 1975 and became one of television's most popular shows. Danny Arnold, the creator/producer of the show, has strict sitcom credentials; his credits include The Real McCoys and Welcome Back, Kotter. In Barney Miller, Arnold took Kojak's multiethnic New York police squad, cut out the bullets and car chases, and built a strong, well-written, politically progressive sitcom out of stationhouse banter. In Fish, a Barney Miller spin-off, the detective played by Abe Vigoda retires from the force to run a home for a bunch of madcap juvenile delinquents. If international war could be fun (M*A*S*H, Hogan's Heroes, Black SheepSquadron), so could the domestic war against crime. As is usually the case when a new variation on a proven formula is deemed sellable, a slew of ridiculous crimecom attempts followed. In Holmes and YoYo,John Shuck,

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Rock Hudson's right-hand cop in Macmillan and Wife) becomes an experimental robot policeman. Randolph Mantooth (formerly of Jack Webb's Emergency!) starred in Detective Scbool, a sitcom about "a low-budget school for fledgling gumshoes."33 Yet another ill-fated sitcom, Big Eddie) featured veteran film heavy Sheldon Leonard as a reformed gangster bringing up a granddaughter (as if Meyer Lanskyhad replaced Brian Keith in Family Affair). Though none of these shows come close to the heights of comic farce achieved by Nat Hiken in Car 54) Where Are You?) an early classic of this type, they emblemize, in their numbers, the decisive turn toward the frankly comic representation of cops and robbers that prime time experienced in the late seventies.Police Squad (ABC,1982), a frank, no-holds-barred satire of the crimeshow genre was, perhaps, inevitable. While it and most of the cops-and-robbers sitcoms were instant failures, humor has come to play an increasingly important role in the crime series of the eighties. If the "serious" cop and private eye are not to go the way of the sheriff and the western gunfighter and disappear from prime-time television, their future is likely to be determined by the fortunes of the effusively celebrated copshow, Hill Street Blues (NBC, 1981-). Perhaps not surprisingly, the show is produced by a studio that made its name in sitcoms, MTM Enterprises. Blues is indeed an innovative blend of sitcom, soap opera, and traditional crimeshow. John Gabree, writing in 1V Guide) reports that the concept for the show originated in a request by Fred Silverman, then president of NBC Television, for a series about Fort Apache, the Bronx police precinct famous throughout the world for its crime rate. The concept, however, went through many changes before becoming a show. Steve Bochco, executive producer and writer, recalls, He [Silverman] asked us to do a show about an inner-city precinct. We didn't want to do it. Wewere sick of doing cop shows.... We said we couldn't do a good cop show if we were shackled by a lot of broadcast standards. We sort of got a promise from them to leave us alone." Curiously enough, the Bronx location was dropped. Though MTMhad achieved its initial notoriety partially by stressing def-

The Comedy of Public safety

inite locales other than New York or Los Angeles (Minneapolis, Indianapolis, Cincinnati), Hill Street Blues was not located in any particular city. In a parody of the fifties sitcom device that placed families in the homogeneous suburban community of Anytown, U.S.A.,Bochco and his partner Michael Kozoll placed their eighties police show in the high-crime streets of Anyinnercity, U.S.A.Borrowing a technique from Webb, the show does not concentrate on anyone particular crime but instead gives us "a day in the life" of the precinct. Each episode begins with the day shift receiving its assignments in the squadroom. This is followed by the signatory montage, which consists of shots of patrol cars speeding out of the precinct yard to tangle with destiny. The show departs radically from the Webb formula, however, in that the resolution of plot conflicts by the end of an episode is by no means assured. While there is little glamour in the lives of the policepeople (in the sense of the early Huggins private eyes), more narrative attention is given to the personal lives of the crimefighters than to the crimes. As in Joseph Wambaugh's Police Story, the cop is shown to be an unappreciated hero living between the rock of dangerous criminals and the hard place of public abuse. There is even a bit of Spelling idealism to be found in the series, particularly in the person of Joyce Davenport, the public defender who doggedly pursues Miranda cases by day and a meaningful relationship with divorced precinct captain Frank Furillo by night. The name "Davenport" may be a reflexive allusion to Beth Davenport, the liberal lawyer on Rockford. Perhaps the most radical innovation of Hill Street Blues is the show's decentralization of personae. While this type of narrative structure has always been a formal element of daytime soap opera, it has never before been used in the crimeshow genre. Though Huggins wrought his private eyes in twin pairs and Spelling cloned his do-good cops in communal squads, Bochco and Kozoll have created a prime-time series with many centers, following the trend set by such recent family melodramas as Lee Rich's Dallas and Dynasty. Captain Furillo (Daniel]. Travanti) is the picture of 35-49-year-old success. His threepiece suits, trips to the gym, and capacity to make effective judgments under pressure with equal parts of pragmatism and morality, coupled with the tireless energy that allows him to put

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it to the public defender both in court and in the bedroom, make him a candidate for college-educated, middle-management-executive Man of the Decade. Sgt. Philip Esterhaus (Michael Conrad) is the show's slightly older, working-class hero. Not only is he possessed of a vast untutored intelligence, but beneath his blue collar lies a fifty-year-oldbody that can excite and satisfy both a forty-year-old woman and an eighteen-yearold cheerleader. His gentle concern for his fellow human beings is expressed each week in the opening squadroom sequence. After hearing the day's agenda, the cops begin to leave their seats to hit the streets. Esterhaus calls them back to order, as if to deliver an overlooked piece of important information: "Hey, ... be careful out there." All elements of The Mod Squad are represented in the Hill Street stationhouse, hipsters, blacks, and women abound, all capable of acts of heroism, all sensitive to insult. Ed Marinaro and Michael Warren, as two dashing young officers, should do for 12-17-year-old girls in the eighties what the Spelling heroes did so profitably in the seventies. There is even a S.WA.T.team leader, thrown in for primarily comic purposes. Rednecks, Jews, Hispanics, and a member or two of virtually every demographic category are to be found among Hill Street's finest. Given what is for television the relatively "non-perspectival, non-centered, and radically de-symbolized" structure of Hill Street Blues, it might more accurately be titled "The Post-ModSquad."35 The show's unabashed emphasis on police sexuality is selfconsciously justified by its commitment to "realism." The cops live in the "real world" of the eighties-as it has been created by television. They are obsessed with psychological health and self-improvement. When personal dysfunction occurs, vocational dysfunction cannot be far behind. A similar justification is used for the show's portrayal of violence. When Bochco complained of being "shackled by a lot of broadcast standards," he was talking about the twin constraints on sex and violence that combine to form the perimeters of 1V narrative. John Gabree writes, As with sex, so with violence. A policeman's life involves

risk; and to be true, the producers say, their stories must be violent. They must also be accurate: death must come,

The Comedy of Public safety

as it does to real cops, randomly, unexpectedly, tragically. In the first episode, for instance, two officers are suddenly blasted by a gunman in the middle of a gag about having their squad car stolen. In a later show, a troubled youth who is befriended by a gruff undercover cop hangs himself in his cell. Instead of the numbing throb of violence that is the pulse of most action shows, Hill Street's violence erupts with the shocking impact of a police strobe on a bloody corpse. "Actually,"says Kozoll, "there are few incidents of violence on the show and none of it is gratuitous."36 In the tradition of Emile Zola, Bochco and Kozoll have justified their frank portrayal of sex and violence on the basis that the show is, as the U.S. Supreme Court demands, "of redeeming social value." At first Hill Street Blues lived a tenuous existence on network television. The pilot episode premiered as a twohour made-for-lV movie in the spring of 1981. A few episodes followed, and the series achieved a ranking of eighty-ninth in the 1980-81 Nielsens, a signal for routine cancelation. The show won an unprecedented eight Emmies, however, and last-place NBC renewed it, professing a concern for art (the opening squadroom sequence is shot with a hand-held camera). Grant Tinker, the head of MTMEnterprises, has since replaced Silverman at NBC; the executive producer demonstrated as much patience with the show as its conceptual artist, and the ratings improved handsomely. The show may have an important asset in terms of current trends in the television industry and in demographic theory in general: CBS carried the low-rated 60 Minutes as a "prestige" albatross for years until it eventually built the show into a Top 10 finisher. Once the show's newsmagazine format proved itself at the bottom line, ABCand NBC followed with similar efforts (20120 and NBC Magaeme). More recently, NBC carried Saturday Night Live for a number of seasons until that show began to build a class, if not mass, audience. When weekend late-night satire attracted target advertisers, Fridays and SCN Comedy Network soon followed.Continuing refinements in demographic wisdom are being made in the direction of creating "quality" audiences for the sale of Lifestyle products. If Hill Street Blues can deliver an identifiably upscale demographic viewership, it may not have to pull "forty shares"

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to stay on the air; it may bring the targeting technique right to the heart of prime time. Mercedes-Benz, for example, became a regular Hill Street Blues sponsor in 1983. The threat of cable "taste culture" channels has forced the networks to consider this alternative to "pure quantity." If successful, Hill Street Blues is likely to shift the direction of the crimeshow away from sitcomic gimmickry and toward the emotional distensions of the soap opera. John Gabree is correct if he is implying that tragedy (in the Aristotelian sense) is at least technically possible on the show; a heroic character indeed may die. If Hill Street Blues is to do this, however, it must first create a hero and then be willing to kill him or her. Thus far, only afternoon soap operas have voluntarily allowed such deaths.

Gleason's Push

*4

Translated to the big time, he began to press in all directions, a process known generally as throwing his weight around, which is an exact description of Gleason's most characteristic movements before the camera. He is a heavy man with the traditional belief of heavy men in their own lightness and grace, and he sashays and pirouettes with a faint and entirely inoffensive suggestion of effeminancyhe is so definitely one of the mob. Gilbert Seldes, The Public Arts 1 was in New York and 1 had a little dough and 1 wanted to gamble. 1 called a joint in Las Vegas and 1 said to the guy, "This is Jackie Gleason. Will you please put a hundred on the red for me?" and the man said, 'Just a minute, Mr. Gleason. Hold the phone." 1 waited, and in a minute he was back. "Sorry, Mr.Gleason," he said, "Youlost." "Thanks, pal," 1 said. "I wired the hundred to you half an hour ago." That's class. Jackie Gleason, in Jim Bishop, The Golden Ham

The television personality develops in one or more of three general modes: the representational, in which he dons the mask of a frankly fictional character; the presentational, in which, as "himself," he addresses the audience within the context of theatrical space; and the documentary, in which his "real life"-

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his exploits, his opinions on matters of public concern, his Lifestyle-becomes the subject of other television programs or presentations in other media. Gleason, like many of the early 1\T clowns, went the grand route of developing all three. Modern TV sitcom stars such as John Ritter, Robin Williams, and Henry Winkler are, by comparison, technicians in an age of specialization. The pioneers, having come to television from the four corners of the entertainment world, created personal vehicles for themselves; not needing a more precise term, they simply called them "shows." The specifics of such packaging formulas as "the sitcom" and "the variety hour" had not yet gained their current importance in the business world. Jack Benny opened in front of the curtain doing stand-up and discussing the week's "show" in the presentational manner of Carson opening Tonight. After the first commercial, however, he reappeared miraculously transported into a sitcom in which he remained 'Jack Benny" while an actor named Eddie Anderson played his valet, Rochester. Moreover, the subject of the ensuing sitcom narrative was often a problem encountered in preparing that week's "show." The Burns and Allen Show, which like TheJack Benny Program and Tonight was directed by Fred de Cordova, achieved a similar synthesis of modes. The "show" was transformed at will by George, who could at any moment call the narrative to a halt and shift into the presentational mode with long stand-up soliloquies, self-reflexive commentaries on plot, or even digressive non sequiturs. Like Fielding's authorial voice in joseph Andrews) George Burns is an interlocutory narrator who casually intervenes in the story line for comic purposes. George and Gracie, like their contemporaries Gleason and Benny, carried their personae across the proscenium curtain: They live in a sitcom world with their neighbors Harry Morton (Hal March; later, John Brown; later, Fred Clarke; later, Larry Keating) and Blanche (Bea Benaderet), they close the "show" on a stage, performing one of their vaudeville routines. The Abbott and Costello Show was structured along similar lines. Red Skelton, whose comedy depended largely on caricatures of the inebriated and the mentally deficient, self-consciously returned from the sketch world at the end of each "show" to thank the audience for allowing him into the privacy of its homes. Declaring a halt to the willing suspension of disbe-

Gleason's Push

lief, his clown makeup dripping out of place, he closed with his trademark line, "Good night ... and God bless." Ernie Kovacs, perhaps the most self-conscious artiste yet transmitted by the network system, often showed videotapes of his "works," personally presenting these on camera from the director's chair of a studio booth. As often as not, he appeared as an actor in these blackout sketches. The most interesting of the early 1V comedians were artists who had sneaked in under the gun of the marketing formulas that would eventually come to dictate form. The same had been true of Chaplin, Keaton, and Lloyd in early Hollywood. Their films are exhilarating celebrations of what is possible in a technically complex mass medium before the bureaucracy of quality control has been established. They came upon a new technology and invented instruments to produce dreams. There is a joyful sense of tinkering in their work that stands in stark contrast to the gloom of modern Research and Development projects. There is an implicit hope-especially in Chaplin's work-that the world will finally get the joke and be moved to such uncontrollable outbursts of laughter that evil itselfwill die, broken and forgotten. The 1V pioneers, having only recently witnessed World War II and its excruciating excesses of human cruelty, were understandably more jaded. 1V stars, at least until Alan Alda, were more on the order of gratuitous tricksters than idealists. The specter of McCarthyhung over the business. Who hadn't played a benefit for some "antifascist"group during the thirties? There was little room for utopian vision in a medium where cast members and even technicians had to be approved on political grounds by network officials.' The television clowns had not been hired to draw people into the play world of a theater; their only job was to assemble millions for the selling of toothpaste and automobiles. The television industry had promised its customers "the great middle class." The object was its subject as well. Benny's "cheapness," for example, was a studied middleclass spoof. There was a distance between artifice and reality; Benny overplays the joke and asks the audience to laugh at it with him. The star's philanthropic activities,including his many benefit concert performances, were public knowledge. Benny merged the representational and presentational but established

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a separate documentary identity. In a similar vein, Gracie's astounding "stupidity" reveals itself as deep intelligence; her humor is based on a foundation of complex language play, Elizabethan in proportion and style.Milton Berle dressed as a woman and camped across the stage but took diligent pains to remind the viewer that he was laughing at "those people" and not acting out any organic fantasy of his own. He accomplished this distance by means of his unremitting hyperbole. Gleason, of all the clown-auteurs of the fifties, put the least distance between himself and his "act." He worked so hard at this that it is meaninglessly reductive to call him a "primitive." He was Brooklyn's answer to Le bourgeois gentilhomme. Opening his show with a Busby Berkeley-style number by the June Taylor Dancers, entering from the wings amidst an entourage of his personally auditioned Glea Girls, daintily lifting a coffee cup from a saucer to take a sip of you-know-what, the Great One bellowed, "How sweet it is!" and mugged for the camera while his audience-often composed of old neighborhood cronies brought in from across the river-went berserk.' Ostentatiously displaying his expensive tastes in booze, broads, and life itself, the Cincinnatus of the Brooklyn tenements wallowed in the admiration of the masses. Gleason was a uniquely American comic original. In both life and art he projected the persona of the Depression-bred blue-collar ethnic who demanded the right to live like a king. Like a Damon Runyon mobster, he held daily court at Toots Shot's Times Square restaurant for the New York press. His car? An immense Cadillac, complete with bar and chauffeur-a personal gift to The Great One from Frank Sinatra himself. Given to a neurasthenic fear of flying (he had survived an emergency landing in the 1940s), Gleason traveled the country on personal appearance tours in private railroad cars. The compelling pathos of Ralph Kramden, Gleason's greatest mask, derives in large part from the painful spectacle of a Jackie Gleason rendered impotent by lack of money. In 1948 Jackie Gleason was a thirty-two-year-old nightclub comedian whose career seemed stalled at a dead end. A rambunctious professional loudmouth who had been spawned in the fertile comic garden of Brooklyn railroad flats, Gleason had launched his career as a wisecracking teenage host of amateur night shows at the Halsey Theatre in his Bushwick Avenue

Gleason's Push

neighborhood. His credentials from the school of hard knocks are impeccable. His father, John Herbert Gleason (for whom Jackie was named), was a hopeless alcoholic, a forlorn clerk working at an insurance company by grace of a successful brother. He failed to return home from work one day and was never heard of again; the case remains open in New York police files. Jackie, the family's only surviving child (a brother, Clemence, had died of consumption), was eight years old. Mae Gleason, a teenage bride who had never held a job, was forced into the work world. A local Irish precinct boss secured her a job as a token seller at the Lorimer Street station of the BMT Canarsie Line. Gleason was indeed a child of the streets. He dropped out of high school, and later vocational school, after just a few weeks, preferring to spend his time with the Nomads, a Bushwick "athletic club." As a gang member, he gained a good reputation: "He would give or lend whatever he had to a friend; he had a spitting contempt for boys who did not 'belong.'''3 He was a familiar figure on the Bushwick Avenue of the 1930s, known for his sharp tongue, "dandy" dressing, and virtuoso pool playing. Though a voracious eater ("He ate more than Mae could afford to have him ear"),' Gleason was something of an athlete and not fat as a youngster. As a teenager, he developed a reputation as a ladies' man. Mae Gleason died in 1935 when Jackie was nineteen. At this time he was making about six dollars a week hosting amateur shows at various spots around the New York area: A sensible boy would have gone to see the nearest politician and asked for a job on a WPAproject at $25 a week. Or he might have gone to a grocery store and offered to work days for $20 a week. But Jackie Gleason was not sensible economically; he would never understand the value of money" Under the tutelage of Sammy Birch, a local comic who acted as his agent, Gleason developed an act as "Iumpin' Jack Gleason." He achieved his first important success as master of ceremonies at a rowdy Newark saloon, the Club Miami,where he was known to mix it up with hecklers in dark alleys after the late show. What seemed to be a real break came in 1941 when Jack Warner

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caught his "off-color" act at Manhattan's Club 18. Perhaps a bit drunk, Warner signed Gleason-by now a twenty-five-year-old "fat-man comic"-on the spot. The ensuing early adventure in Hollywood ended disastrously. As a contract player at Warner Brothers, Gleason simply failed to impress the brass. Jack Warner couldn't even remember who he was. He was buried as a third banana in such forgettable movies as Navy Blues} Larceny} Inc., Orchestra Wives} and Springtime in the Rockies and was let go barely a year later. Back in New York, minor roles in minor Broadway musicals led nowhere. Even his nightclub bookings were beginning to dry up. Jim Bishop, a Broadway gossip columnist for the New York Daily Mirror who wrote a 1956 biography of Gleason entitled The Golden Ham} called 1948 the low point in the star's life: On the personal side, he had lost his wife, his manager, his valet. On the professional side, he was a funnyman whom no producer took seriously; an artistic bum who could be substituted when a better man was sick; a comedian of no particular character; a theatrical personality who was almost a star. This was bad, because Gleason was too big for the small clubs and not big enough for the $5000-a-week places. It added up to unemployment." Less than four years later, he was living in a Fifth Avenue penthouse duplex, his name had reached coveted "household word" status, and Jackie Gleason was generally acknowledged to be among the hottest properties in show business, an institutionalized star who was rapidly approaching the level of Bob Hope. The deus ex machina that had saved Gleason from the obscurity he so deeply feared was of course television. As Bishop indicates, Gleason had a history of making pinchhit appearances for bigger-name comedians who were unable to fulfill bookings. The crowning moment of his early career had been a two-week engagement substituting for Milton Berle at Greenwich Village's Carnival Club in 1946. His first television break came under similar circumstances. Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer had decided to bring its successful NBCRadio sitcom, The Life of Riley} to NBC Television for the 1949-50 season. William Bendix, who had played The Working Stifffrom Brooklyn for a

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decade in such Hollywood films as Guadalcanal Diary and Kill the Umpire) had created the radio role of Chester A. Riley, a blue-collar Brooklynite who follows the booming postwar aircraft industry to the suburban reaches of Los Angeles. Bendix, however, was enjoined from performing on television by his movie contract, and a new Riley had to be found. Having been recently dropped by his New York agent, Gleason had come under the management of Bullets Durgom, a West Coast promoter with connections in the embryonic Hollywood telefilm industry. Durgom got him the part, and though Gleason was apprehensive about the role he was in no position to refuse it. Gleason's apprehensions were well founded. Bendix had created Riley as "a lovable dope who was always making the wrong moves with the best of Intentions." Gleason's nightclub act had been based on sharp-tongued insults and wisecracks. He was able to exhibit little of his talent during his short tenure as Chester Riley. Gleason had always been much more of a "personality" than an actor. He had failed utterly in representational cinema. Though convincing of course as the displaced Brooklynite, his attempt to portray a dim-witted schlemiel is dismal. He wanders around in front of the camera, ill at ease, with little to do but look "bug-eyed." The show was often stolen from Gleason by second banana Sid Tomack,who played nextdoor neighbor Jim Gillis.Tomack,in the role of the smart aleckthe role in which Gleason excelled-subjects the dumbbell Riley to psychic torture, conning him into ridiculous schemes. In The Honeymooners) this is precisely what Gleason would do to Art Carney's Ed Norton. After producing only twenty-six episodes, Pabst dropped the sitcom in favor of boxing. Three years later, after Bendix had played out his film contract, NBCrevived The Life of Riley with the show's old radio star and a completely new cast; it was a hit that played five seasons in prime time. In a tribute to Gleason's subsequent phenomenal success, the old Gleason Riley still enjoys a life in syndication. Reruns of it are especially popular in New York, which has always been Gleason's stronghold. For the second time in less than a decade the comic returned home to New York from Hollywood, having come up empty in his push to become a national star. The television industry, however, was rapidly expanding in New York in 1950,

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and another opportunity soon presented itself. That year, as Brooks and Marsh write, "big-budget variety shows seemed to be taking over television."? Milton Berle, who had been Gleason's early idol from his nightclub days, reigned as Mr. Television on The Texaco Star Theater. Eddie Cantor, Jimmy Durante, and Fred Allen were among the many stars preparing to take the plunge. In 1949 the DuMont Network, the American Motors of the early 1V oligarchy, was struggling to keep up with the competition. One of its few bona fide successes had been a comedy-variety package known as The Cavalcade of Stars. The show had premiered in 1949, starring Jack Carter, a loudmouth Brooklyn comic of the Berle variety. As soon as Carter began showing impressive numbers, however, corporate giant NBC stole him away to host its Saturday Night Revue, a similar show that aired opposite Cavalcade. Plucky DuMont moved Cavalcade to Friday night and countered with Jerry Lester, a veteran New York burlesque comedian. When Lester began to build an audience, once again NBC stepped in and cheated DuMont of its success; Lester became the host of Broadway Open House, the original late-night desk-and-sofa show, which prefigures The Tonight Show. Whelan Drug Stores, Cavalcade's sponsor, expressed a willingness to stay with the series, and yet another host had to be found. The show's producer, Milton Douglas, chose Peter Donald, a radio personality with a reputation as "a wit and raconteur,'?" but Donald refused the job, describing himself as a "low-voltage guy" who was not compatible with the manic pace of 1V comedy-variety. Once again Gleason got a break as a second-choice substitute. Producer Douglas was so doubtful of Gleason's talents that he offered him only a twoweek contract, hoping to find someone better in the interim. Bullets Durgom, after tough negotiations with DuMont, was able to persuade the network to stretch the deal to a whole month. For four one-hour shows, Gleason was to be paid $3,000; he actually turned down a higher-paying nightclub gig to take the job. The comedy-variety show was too great a temptation to refuse. It offered many of the freedoms of the nightclub stage before a national audience (though Gleason's tendency toward off-color ad libs would have to be held in check). In Bishop's estimation, this was the chance he had been waiting for:

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he ... knew that there was some sort of mist between him and the people. He reached for them, but they couldn't see him, Always when his big chance came to appear before multitudes of them, he was somebody else; he was not Jackie Gleason. Someone handed him a sheaf of pages and said, "Say this," and he said it, but the words were alien and the laughter was distorted and he took the money and went back to his hotel and sent some to his wife and some to the landlord and saved some for a party and wondered if this wasn't the end of the road." Despite the Riley fiasco, Gleason continued to have a gut feeling that he was made for television. The audience-unlike that of the nightclub or the Broadway stage-was grandly infinite. He would not be bound to represent some "artificial" character, as in the movies. He would finally get a chance to give "himself' to the masses." The Cavalcade of Stars starring Jackie Gleason premiered on DuMont's quasi-national television network on Saturday, 8 July, 1950, in the 9:00 P.M. (EDT) spot. The guest star was the perennially inimitable Rose Marie. Gleason rose to the occasion, breaking up the studio audience and even the crew in a parody of Italian neorealist cinema entitled "Stromboli" after Roberto Rossellini's film. After the second show, the four-week contract was torn up and Gleason was signed for the season. During his two years on DuMont, Gleason created the masks and the trappings that were to become his stock in trade. The show was telecast live each Friday night from the stage of the Adelphi Theater on West Fifty-fourth Street. Gleason assumed complete charge of the production and divided his four writers into two groups working on alternate projects, all subject to the collaboration, editing, and final approval of the star. In form, Cavalcade did not differ significantly from Berle's Texaco Star Theater; it was the star's vehicle. He developed an almost ritualistic format of presentation, which became his forever. The show began with a dance production number, followed by Gleason's royal entrance. After doing five minutes in front of the curtain, the star called for "a little travelin' music" and flew into a crazed Egyptian belly dance to the burlesque music of

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Ray Bloch's orchestra. Freezing his 260 pounds at the stage's edge in a storklike pose, he announced, "And awa-a-aywe go ... ," leading the viewer into the sketch world. The show's most popular continuing sketch was "The Honeymooners." According to Bishop, Gleason "had an idea for a sketch that would revolve around a married couple-a quiet shrewd wife and a loudmouthed husband. "13 Various titles were suggested, including "The Lovers," "The Beast," and "The Couple Next Door"; Gleason finally came up with "The Honeymooners." The irrepressible auteur even designed the set: They got a little flat in Brooklyn. Flatbush Avenue, maybe. Cold-water flat. Third or fourth floor. Hell, I lived in these joints. I know where the sink should be, the icebox-and don't forget the drip pan underneath-the sideboard and the round table. The little gas range. You know? Maybe we got something." Gleason personally selected Pert Kelton to play the wife, Alice, and Joyce Randolph for the part of Trixie Norton. Art Carney, already a regular in the show's repertory troupe, became Ed Norton. Other Cavalcade creations include Reginald Van Gleason III, Joe the Bartender, and The Poor Soul. All these characters are undisguised fantasies of a childhood in the Brooklyn slums. Reggie Van Gleason, the deliberately magnificent millionaire in high hat and cape, is a pungent working-class satire of pretentious American gentility.Joe the Bartender was based on Jimmy Proce, in whose Bushwick saloon Gleason had spent much of his youth. Mr.Dennehy (pronounced "Dun-a-bee"), the unseen barfly with whom Joe converses in the sketch, takes his name from Pop Dennehy, the father of young Gleason's first girlfriend. Dennehy was a tenacious drinker who had opposed Gleason's courtship of his daughter Julie, predicting that the neighborhood kid's show business aspirations would leave him a worthless bum. The Poor Soul, played in pantomime, was a down-and-out loser of the Brooklyn streets. This nameless character was a projection of the pathetic image that haunted every slumkid who held self-conscious ambitions-the image of "the bum." The Bachelor, another character created on Cavalcade

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(which later disappeared from the star's repertoire), was also drawn from experience. In 1936 Gleason had married a former showgirl, Genevieve Halford, when he was working regularly at the Club Miami. The marriage had flourished while Gleason had steady work in NewJersey, and the couple had two daughters during this period. Things fell apart, however, after Gleason left Newark to go on the road. Gen refused to accompany him, and the comedian's frequent romances became regular items in the New York papers. Both practicing Catholics who refused to divorce, the two were separated for years (Gleason would finally divorce and remarry twenty years later). As a consequence, Gleason had lived most of the last decade as the Bachelor: "Typical routines, all in pantomime, were 'The Bachelor Gets His Own Breakfast,' 'Doing the Laundry,' and 'Dressing for a Date,' all to the soft music of 'Somebody LovesMe.' "15 During this fertile creative period, the orphaned prodigal son maintained close ties with the old Bushwick gang. Television had made him the hero of the neighborhood. He delighted in making spectacular appearances in the streets, sitting in the back of his Cadillac, chatting with "his people." Becoming a kind of show business godfather, he contributed generously to local charities, especially Saint Benedict's Church, and "loaned" money to old chums (notes that were never called). For those who couldn't make it over to the Adelphi to cheer on the pride of Bushwick Avenue in person, Jimmy Proce installed a television at his bar. When NBCprogrammed The Gillette Cavalcade of Sports, a boxing series, against Gleason, Proce was forced to put in a second 1V set at the other end of the bar and play the two programs simultaneously. Meanwhile, back at the front office, DuMont once again became the victim of its own success. This time CBS raided its number one star. Network chairman William Paley,taking note of the fact that Gleason's Cavalcade of Stars had knocked off CBScompetition in every market in which DuMont was able to compete, more than quadrupled the $1,600-per-week salary Gleason was receiving from DuMont, offering him $8,000 a week to star in The jackie Gleason Show. The CBS deal meant more than cash. On Columbia, his show would reach beyond the string of big cities covered by DuMont to virtually every HUT in the country. Moreover, CBSwas the network of Edward

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R. Murrow, Arthur Godfrey, Frank Sinatra.jack Benny, and Burns and Allen; CBS meant "class." Gleason jumped at the chance. Subscribing to the adage, "If it works, don't fix it," Gleason brought with him as many members of his DuMont cast and crew as contractual obligations would allow. Art Carney, Pert Kelton, and Joyce Randolph were all retained for the CBSshow. Kelton, who had created the role of Alice Kramden, fell victim to a heart attack during the summer before the premiere, however, and a new Alice became a sudden priority. "The Honeymooners" had been the anchor of his success, and Gleason worried about the effect of a new Alice on the "magic" of the skit. Audrey Meadows, an actress Gleason had briefly dated a few years earlier, was suggested for the role, but Gleason rejected her as too glamourous to play the haggard hausfrau. Meadows wanted the role and paid a photographer to come to her home at six o'clock in the morning and capture her au naturel. As much impressed by her pluck as by the photographs, Gleason overruled his initial instinct and hired her immediately. Though he had been the de facto auteur of The Cavalcade of Stars) Gleason's new CBS contract institutionalized his position:

Jackie agreed to devise a one-hour network show, for which he would hire the writers who would write the sketches; retain the orchestra to play the music and tell them what music to play; do the casting and hiring of the actors, be responsible for the lighting, the director, the producer, the camera work, the properties, the electricians, the stagehands, the carpenters, the dancing girls, the dances, the guest stars, the sets." In addition to his salary, he was given the lavish budget of $120,000 a week to produce the show. Despite the costs, major sponsors, including Schaeffer pens, Schick razors, and Nescafe coffee, instantly lined up to foot the bill. The Great One had arrived. Because of the relatively small number of DuMont affiliates, it was almost impossible for any of the network's shows to achieve Nielsen Top 10 status. CBS shows, of course, had no such problem. However, The jackie Gleason Show, airing Sat-

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urday evenings in the eight-to-nine spot, was given no easy task in the ratings war of 1952-53. Its chief competition came from NBC's All-Star Review, a rival comedy-variety hour that featured Jimmy Durante, Martha Raye, Georgie jesscl, and Tallulah Bankhead, among others, as rotating hosts. The stiff competition, especially on weeks when Durante was featured, kept Gleason out of the Top 20 during 1952-53. The two comedy-variety packages split the audience; each was held back from "hit" status. Gleason, however, managed to hold his own, outpointing AII~Star Review and knocking it off the air. From then on, it was clear sailing. The Gleason Show skyrocketed into the top 10, finishing Number Eight in 1953-54 and Number Two in 195455 (this was I Love L'UCy'sthird consecutive Number One season). With superstardom achieved, Gleason began to expand his efforts in directions he had previously only dreamed about. Though he did not read music, he always believed he could be a composer and arranger. In 1953 he created "Melancholy Serenade," which has been his theme song ever since. He hummed out the tune while an unnamed composer "wrote it down." His next project was a record album. Selecting a group of popular standards that he felt had done well for him during personal seductions, Gleason rented a recording studio and the services of a large orchestra. Entitling the collection For Lovers Only, The Great One wielded the baton at the recording sessions. The tunes included "I'm in the Mood for Love," "Body and Soul," and "My Funny Valentine," all arranged by the maestro to include "violins dripping tears of love. "17 Several major recording companies, including Decca, from whom Gleason had leased his studio space and orchestra, laughed at the idea of marketing an album of romantic music by an overweight 1V comedian. Capitol Records finally bought the album for $l,OOO-it had cost Gleason $8,000 to produce-in the hope that the television star could be persuaded to book Capitol recording acts on his CBS show. Gleason even had to pay the company an extra $3,500 to get the record pressed. Needing sales of 60,000 to break even, For Lovers Only sold 500,000 copies. Any doubts in the marketing world about the golden touch of The Great One were thus dispelled. More records, Hollywood film offers (how sweet that must have been), and even]ackie Gleason dolls followed. Rich-

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ard Gehman, in a three-part TV Guide retrospective of Gleason's career, wrote in 1962:

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Gleason is so many different people, he makes Steve Allen seem Simple as a paramecium .... ridiculed for fat, unable to live in a marriage his Catholic conscience would not permit him to dissolve, Gleason nevertheless has survived exuberantly because he has been able to train his troubles into helping afford him the energy he requires to be not merely a lV comedian but a superb actor, a conductor, a writer, a talent scout, a businessman, an l l-handicap golfer, a student of psychic phenomena, boozeophile and bon vivant.18 lV, of course, remained the wellspring of Gleason's incredible rapport with the public. Like most of the comedians of his day, he was not a sex symbol who could be sold to the public on his good looks alone. Yet, unlike many of his contemporaries on lV, neither was he a long-time "institution" whose career had been established in other media (e.g., Bob Hope or Jack Benny). Aside from Gleason's gaudy presentational and documentary personae, his greatest life in the public imagination was as Ralph Kramden, the hapless Brooklyn bus driver. "The Honeymooners" segment of the comedy-variety hour was its most popular feature; sometimes as much as half the comedy-variety hour was given to the sketch. It was so popular, in fact, that for the 1955-56 season "The Honeymooners" was repackaged as a separate representational sitcom. Donning the mask of Ralph Kramden, Gleason left behind the pomp of his vaudeville theater to come home to the bottom circle of blue-collar Brooklyn, where he suffered the indignities of pre-food-stamp working poverty while dreaming American Dreams deluxe. The Kramdens' tenement walk-up apartment, located at 328 Chauncey Street (an address that had once been the Gleasons'), was a bare-bones flat the likes of which the consumer medium has not seen since. Bycontrast, Archie Bunker, Norman Lear's working-class antihero of the seventies, would live in bourgeois comfort. Gleason's own life had mirrored history; he had climbed the ladder of success from the bottom rung of the Depression to the pot of postwar gold. Though The Honeymooners was

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nominally set in "the present," Kramden poverty eternally bore the mark of the thirties. Alex McNeildescribes the apartment: Almost all of the action took place on a sparsely furnished set: the Kramdens' living room contained little more than a bureau, table and chairs, sink, stove, and icebox. Rarely did additional characters appear (Ioyce Randolph [Trixie] did not even appear in some sketches), and rarely were any needed; the timing and interaction of the regulars worked almost magically." The Honeymooners was filmed before a live audience in the ballroom of the Park-Sheraton Hotel in New York, world headquarters of Jackie Gleason Enterprises. Like most sitcoms even today, the show was televised theater, but there is a distinctly theatrical, almost "Broadway"flavor to the program. The audience, for example, applauds the first entrance of each of the principal players. Double takes-of which there are manyare held for extra seconds to squeeze the maximum reaction from the live audience and clear the noise for subsequent dialogue. The set functions in much the same way as an eighteenth-century French neoclassical stage; in fact,some episodes adhere to Aristotelian unities of time and place. The Kramdens' kitchen/living room is the locus. It contains three entrances: the front door (up center), through which most entrances and exits are made; the bedroom door (down right; that is, to the viewer's left), which serves the function of isolating characters from dialogue without sending them out of the apartment; and the kitchen window (up left), leading to the fire escape, which serves both as an avenue for comic escapes and as a means of communication with neighbors. Though the "unities" are not strictly observed, whole episodes often take place in this single setting, and time even occasionally correlates directly with the length of the teleplay.As in Comeille's Le Cid or Racine'sPbedre, major actions do not take place on the stage itself; instead, the characters' discussions of actions are the body of the drama. The Honeymooners characteristically opens with Ralph's return from work. Decked out in his bus driver's uniform, carrying his lunch pail in hand, having just survived yet another rush hour behind the wheel of a Madison Avenue bus, he de-

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mands his dinner in no uncertain terms. Wife Alice, forbidden by the King of the Castle from pursuing a career outside the bare walls of the two-room flat, looks down at her apron, waits for Ralph to finish his latest tirade, and snaps out of her stoic trance just long enough to cut him down to size with a fat joke: "Youknow why I deserve that promotion, Alice?I'll tell you why I deserve that promotion, Alice: Because I got it here," bellows Ralph, pointing at his head. "And here ... and here ... and especially here," responds Alice, pointing to each of her hips and her stomach. Then-video poetry-the Gleason explosion: "Pack your bags, Alice. You're goin' on a trip-right to the moon. Bang, zoom, smash-right to the moon, Alice." Art Carney, as upstairs neighbor Ed Norton, provided Gleason with the perfect foil. Sewer worker Norton possessed the patience of the dull, which the manic, irritable, hyperactive Ralph simply could not bear. Another supreme Gleason moment is his slow burn as Norton takes impossible seconds to remove gloves, shuffle cards, or limber his fingers to play the piano. "GETOUT,"roars Ralph, desperately gesturing at the door. Two narrative subjects dominate TheHoneymooners: Ralph's attempts to become rich and his attempts to assert authority over Alice. The dream of Ralph Kramden is not so much to move to Park Avenue as to impress Alice and Norton with the potency that only money emblemizes. For example, when he finds a suitcase containing a million dollars in the back of his bus, he merely redecorates the tenement flat with gaudy new furniture and fills it with expensive appliances. He has a telephone installed, fulfilling one of Alice's long-time dreams. He hires Norton as his chauffeur and then buys a car. Not satisfied just to quit his job, he calls Mr.Marshall,president of the Gotham Bus Company, to tender his resignation: "Hello, Mr. Marshall?" he says in his calmest voice. "You mayor may not remember me, but this is Ralph Kramden, one of your bus drivers. For the past fifteen years I've worked for you, never missing a single day, never getting a raise or a promotion. I just called to tell you that I have decided to terminate my employment at the company. [Pause] Oh yes, and just one other thing, Mr.Marshall: You ARE A BUMMMM."

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The money of course turns out to be counterfeit. The Honeymooners remains one of the few genuinely urban sitcoms to have appeared on American television. In the seventies, MTMEnterprises made a practice of producing flashy signatory montages to establish urban settings for its shows: Mary parading around Nicollet Mall in downtown Minneapolis; vistas of the Loop at dusk introducing Bob Newhart; portraits of the Cincinnati riverfront opening WKRP.None of these expensive location shots accomplishes the job nearly so well as the minimal expressionist gesture of Brooklyn tenements and clotheslines barely visible through the small square of 'the Kramdens' kitchen window. The MTM characters are for the most part upper-middle-class suburbanites who choose to live in the city because of their taste for urban Lifestyle;the Kramdens are creatures of the urban world. Ralph is a lonely dreamer of get-rich-quick schemes. Alice is a fatalist, convinced that only hard work can lead to success, and if it doesn't, the matter is settled. Her puritanical intuition tells her that something is fishy when Ralph finds the money on the bus; as usual, she is right. Norton is more than satisfied with a sewer worker's lot in life. He buys what he wants on credit, and when it is repossessed, he goes to another store and starts all over again. But Ralph demands something more out of life. His schemes include investing in a New Jersey uranium mine, opening a chain of "diet pizza" parlors, and marketing downstairs neighbor Mrs. Manicotti's "beef stew" (it turns out to be homemade dog food). These schemes of course must be kept secret from Alice, and a reluctant Norton must be conned into partnership. The other desire of Ralph's heart is prestige. This usually comes at Alice's expense. Ralph likes to go out with the boys, to spend his evenings bowling or drinking with the guys down at the Raccoon Lodge. But Alice,who subsists without the aid of a vacuum cleaner, washing machine, television set, or any other modern convenience, expects some attention when Ralph returns home. Demanding a 1V set in one episode, she says, "I'm tired of looking at these four walls all day. I want to look at Liberace." Ralph adamantly rejects Alice's demands as self-indulgent or, worse, attempts at female domination. He blusters at Norton for kowtowing to Trixie, but, as in his attempts to get

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rich, he must eat crow at the episode's conclusion. In one of the few episodes that contains an "outdoor" sequence (a stage set), the Raccoons decide to go on a fishing trip. Shooting off his mouth, Ralph demands that wives be banned from the outing and humiliates the lodge brothers into agreeing. Alice and Trixie stowaway in the back seat of the borrowed car. In another episode, a telegram arrives, saying, "I'm coming to visit. Love,Mom." Ralph explodes, demanding that Alice prevent her mother's visit. She refuses, and in a fury Ralph leaves the apartment and moves in upstairs with the Nortons. The visitor turns out to be Mother Kramden, whom Alice treats with the utmost warmth and respect. .L~ usual, Ralph must face Alice in humiliation at the episode's end, embrace her, and admit, "Baby,you're the greatest." There is a ritual, ceremonial, almost kabuki-like flavor to The Honeymooners. Each story is told by means of a series of twenty or thirty highly stylized morphemic units. At the same time, the show is not without its moments of spontaneity. Gleason was a quick study with a notorious reputation for refusing to rehearse. He felt rehearsal hurt his spontaneity and took the edge off his performance. Since the show was filmed before a live audience, missed cues were not uncommon, and the actors carried on in Broadway "trouper" style. Gleason's flamboyant personal habits (Lifestyle had not yet been invented) were another source of concern. Al Stump of TV Guide writes: Shortly before another show, Gleason hadn't been seen at CBS for several days. And again script delivery was "delayed." [Gleason had to personally approve all scripts.] Walking into Jackie's penthouse hotel suite, Audrey found him presiding over a party for 80, and well-buzzed on martinis. On the next Honeymooners, Gleason was to hit Audrey in the face with a pie. And few in the company gave him a better than a 6-1 chance to do it with accuracy. "I knew he'd miss by two feet," she says, "so when he wound up, I stumbled, managed to fall in front of his wild throw and saved another scene.":" By the mid-1950s,Gleason signed a three-year contract with CBS for $11 million, then the highest price ever paid for any

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series. He moved to an $800,000 Hudson River mansion in Peekskill, New York, that was built to his personal architectural specifications and contained twelve bars and a basement television studio so The Great One could make filmed commercials for the show without having to go down to the city. Unfortunately, however, his most creative period was behind him. What followed was a series of restless attempts to transcend his proven talents and achieve status as an artist. Despite the artistic success achieved in The Honeymooners during the year it was liberated from variety-show packaging, Gleason was forced to return to the comedy-variety format for the following 1V season. The problem was in the ratings and was probably due to scheduling. The half-hour Honeymooners aired at 8:30 on Saturday evenings, the second half of what had been the old Gleason hour. NBCcounterprogrammed the hourlong Perry Como Show) which started at 8:00. Como, an old friend of Gleason's who had shared nightclub stages with him at Jersey shore resorts, was a huge success. Apparently, many viewers were unwilling to cross over from Como to Gleason at the midway point of the singer's show; The Honeymooners finished only twentieth in the 1955-56 Nielsens, a steep drop from the ratings of previous seasons. The return to the old format in 1956-57 did not solve the problem. The Perry Como Show, now head to head with Gleason for a full hour, climbed to Number Nine, while Gleason dropped out of the Top 20 altogether for the first time since his slow start in 1952-53. Como, whose slow-motion style is an early incarnation of the "mellow sound," was becoming a "personality" to be dealt with in his own right. The "Perry Como sweater," a loose, long-sleeved sweater that buttons at the waist, was becoming de rigueur in the sportswear world, and a weekly segment during which Perry sang a requested song drew millions of letters ("Letters, we get letters / We get stacks and stacks of letters"). Como's victory over Gleason was a sign of the times. Lawrence W Lichty and Malachi C. Topping have shown that the number of network quarter hours (their bizarre unit of measurement) devoted to "Variety" declined from 278 in 1955 to only 161 in 1958; during the same period, quarter hours devoted to "Music" increased from 52 to 99.21 Berle himself would feel the programmer's ax at the end of the 1958-59 season. I have speculated earlier on the cause

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of the sudden decline of presentational comedy; suffice it to say that not only Gleason but his entire school of telecomedy was in the process of decline. NBC and CBS, the industry giants, were both stuck with "obsolete" vaudeville-style comic personalities whom they had signed to long-term contracts during the fifties boom. At least CBS did not put Gleason through the indignity of hosting jackpot Bowling, as NBChad done to Berle, but Gleason was actually forced to sit out the 1957-58 season before Paley offered him another chance: 118

Jackie was back in the fall of 1958 with a modified halfhour comedy-variety format. Gone were all the regular cast members from previous seasons and Buddy Hackett was added as Jackie's second banana. The chemistry wasn't there and after three months on the air, this short version of The jackie Gleason Show expired." Thus began a four-year hiatus in The Great One's television career. Despite his setbacks, however, Gleason had built an Fscore during the years on the tube that had made him a star of enormous proportions. He had moved product before, and a track record is never taken lightly in demographic circles. Gleason ached to settle his old score with Hollywood and immediately headed for the Coast. The only success he had ever achieved in California had been as a nightclub entertainer at Slapsie Maxie's on Beverly Boulevard, but now the film industry welcomed him with open arms. His first role was as Minnesota Fats in TheHustler (1961), directed by Robert Rossen. Though the film was a vehicle for Paul Newman, then at the peak of his career, Gleason did well as a "natural" in the character role. Newman plays the title role of a young pool shark out to defeat "The Greatest." Gleason was tailor-made for his part as a streetwise champion who defends his supremacy in a billiard parlor. Having spent a good deal of his youth in Brooklyn pool halls, Gleason was able to perform many of his own shots for the camera. Most important in terms of his new career goals, he had played a noncomic role successfully in a hit movie and had been given featured billing with such movie stars as Newman and George C. Scott. Few believed he had the talent to do it. Gilbert Seldes, the most intelligent and sympathetic 1V critic of

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the 1950s, had loved Durante and even found many good things to say about Berle, but he had rejected Gleason as gnawing and aggressive. He would admit no more than this: "I find Gleason distasteful and prodigiously skillful, and the combination is irritating."23Though now a millionaire and a superstar, Gleason's lifelong desire "to go first class'?' was pushing him toward what he felt were greater things. Acting, which Gleason had once disdained as too constraining on his "personality," offered an avenue that led beyond stardom to the hallowed halls of artistry. The following year, Gleason found a film vehicle that he hoped would establish the "seriousness" of his talent: Gigot. The film was directed by Gene Kelly,and according to Bosley Crowther, John Patrick's script was "from a story provided by Mr. Gleason.":" Gigot smacked of more "artistry" than most critics-or moviegoers-could bear. The story concerned a dirty, unshaven mute of the Paris streets who befriends and protects a prostitute and her young daughter. "Is this beginning to sound like an old Charlie Chaplin film?" Crowther asks. He answers his own question, writing of Gleason: it is evident that his characterization of a lonely, unspeaking vagabond, who hungers for social acceptance and the warmth of somebody's love is modeled after Chaplin.... But, unfortunately,Mr.Gleason, for all his comic skill when it comes to cutting broad and grotesque capers, as he does now and then, does not have the power of expression or the subtleties of physical attitude to convey the poignant implications of such a difficult, delicate role." Far from becoming the "classic" it self-consciously set out to be, Gigot is hardly remembered at all; it is rarely even shown on

1V Gleason was simply unable to translate the short 1V blackout sketches of his Brooklyn bum, The Poor Soul, into a featurelength Parisian clochard for the cinema. The critics would not grant him the genteel pedigree he was seeking. One cannot help but think of subsequent great television comedians-especially Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi-forsaking their medium to make mediocre movies in search of the cinema's greater status. Gleason's best performance during his Hollywood renais-

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sance was as Maish Rennick, the double-dealing manager of Mountain Rivera (Anthony QUinn), an over-the-hill fighter. The film, Requiem for a Heavyweight, was adapted for the large screen by Rod Serling from his original Playhouse 90 teleplay. Maish sells out his fighter, telling him to take a dive in the fifth, but the punch-drunk Mountain, like Hemingway's]ack Brennan in "FiftyGrand," is unable to reverse the instincts of his lifelong career in the ring; he doesn't go down until the seventh. Maish is beaten by thugs and given a few days to recover the mob's losses. Despite the admonitions of Mountain's cut man, Army (Mickey Rooney), Maish signs Mountain to take on the role of a wild Indian in a professional wrestling show. Returning to his familiar cosmos of cheap rooms, bars, and New York streetlife, Gleason is powerful in the role. Reviewing the film for the New York Times, A. H. Weiler wrote: "Asthe manager.jackie Gleason contributes a brilliantly underplayed role of a ruthless, yet realistic and terrified man ready to rob the dignity of the fighter to whom he is basically devoted. "27 During this period, Gleason made two more films: Papa's Delicate Condition, in which he plays a small-town turn-of-thecentury alcoholic (a role originally written for Fred Astaire)28 and Soldier in the Rain, in which he plays an army sergeant opposite Steve McQueen. Both pictures were "light dramas" laced with doses of comedy. Though Gleason had not broken any box office records, he was apparently satisfied that he had rectified Hollywood's earlier impression of him: They love me here. We came in with it [Papa's Delicate Condition] five days ahead of schedule, saved about $120,000, and they could throw it out in the gutter and still make money with it. Every studio in town is after me: "Produce, write, direct, write your own ticket, my boy!":" One can only guess at Gleason's motives for returning to the television grind. In the 1956 biography, Bishop had claimed that "a passion for constant approval" was Gleason's deepest priority." Perhaps the contracting film audience could not satisfy his need; his hunger for recognition on every street corner won out over his desire for "class." Gleason attempted to achieve both in his return to television by following a master.

Gleason's Push

Groucho Marx had come to television, like many famous film and radio comedians, in the gold rush of the early 1950s, but his vehicle differed radically from those of his fellow pioneers, You Bet Your Life (NBC, 1950-61) was neither a variety hour nor a sitcom but a low-budget quiz show that acted as a frame for Groucho's piercing wit. The camera focused on the famous cigar, moustache, and glasses as the band struck up "Hooray for Captain Spaulding," Groucho's theme from Animal Crackers. George Fenneman, the show's announcer, like Margaret Dumont before him, stood by, at the mercy of Groucho's relentless wisecracks. The famous duck, in Groucho disguise, descended from above bearing the weekly "secret word." Fenneman ushered in the contestants ("Won't you please come out and meet ... Groucho Marx?"),and it immediately became apparent that they were handpicked straw men for the great raconteur. Even during the era of The $64,000 Question and Twenty-One, the prizes on You Bet Your Life rarely added up to more than a few thousand dollars; the "game," in fact, was changed in format from year to year. So thoroughly did this show depend on the unique phenomenon of Groucho's personality that the networks were unable to duplicate its success by means of a structural formula. Groucho had not only conquered television with a decade-long series, he had done it with "class." The cancelation of You Bet Your Life was slated to take place at the end of the 1960-61 season, and perhaps it seemed logical to both CBS and Gleason that The Great One could fill what would soon be an empty space in teleculture. In any case, a quiz show vehicle was developed for Gleason. You're in the Picture premiered as a midseason replacement for an ill-fated half-hour adventure series on 20January 1961. The four celebrity panelists on the show were situated behind an oversized comic cutout of the kind found in amusement park photography booths. They had no idea what the picture through which they had stuck their heads, and sometimes their hands, represented. The object was for the panel to guess what the picture was by asking questions of the host/emcee Gleason. When they had successfully identified the picture, a new one would be substituted and they

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would start over. Jackie's wit was supposed to add to the humor of the show,which was played primarily for laughs."

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Gleason had indeed returned to television in grand style; the show was canceled after only one telecast. Though the following week's TV Guide listed You're in the Picture for Friday, 27 January 1961, at 9:30 P.M., viewers who tuned in saw "only a bare stage containing an armchair in which 'The Great One' sat. 'I apologize for insulting your intelligence,' Gleason told his astonished viewers. 'From now on 1 promise to stick to comedy.' "32 Like Ralph Kramden begging Alice's forgiveness at the conclusion of a Honeymooners episode, Gleason shuffled before the camera with pathetic humility. He did not exactly keep his promise, however. Though the title of the program reverted to TheJackie Gleason Show, for the next three months the half hour became a talkshow during which Gleason philosophically engaged such guests as Jayne Mansfield,MickeyRooney, and Bobby Darin. Ironically, Groucho Marx,the inspiration for You're in the Picture, returned to television the following fall with a similar talkshow format. But Tell It to Groucbo, like Gleason's interview vehicle, lasted only half a season. It was becoming apparent that the Nielsen families were losing their taste for the big-name comic "personalities" who had dominated early 1V NBC's Saturday Night at the Movies had premiered in September of 1961, offering made-for-theater feature films-in color-to the prime-time audience. Its success led NBC to program another two-hour block of prime-time air for Hollywood films on Mondays.ABCsoon followed with a Sunday night movie series. The star comedians of the fifties were disappearing as fast as the two networks could purchase blockbuster films from the studios. CBS,probably due to its leadership in the ratings,was slower to join the movie bandwagon; the network would not program a weekly movie package until 1966. Columbia's pioneer starsRed Skelton, Lucille Ball, Danny Thomas-were still finishing in the Top 10 in the early sixties. Gleason's contract stipulated that he collect $100,000 a year in compensation if CBSdid not use him in a series. Network officialswere thinking in terms of occasional Gleason specials (or "spectaculars," as they were then called), but the star yearned for a weekly series: "I guess

Gleason's Push

you have to put it this way," he told TV Guide, "I'm just too much of a ham to stand by and watch all the action goin' on. I got to get into it."33 Gleason was given yet another chance in the 1962-63 season. Still somewhat anxious to transcend his status as a "lowbrow" entertainer, he entitled his new Saturday night series jackie Gleason 's American SceneMagazine, promising an hour of topical satire, a commodity that was indeed sorely lacking on American television. In fact, however, the new show contained little that could be called either topical or satirical. Instead, for the first time in five years, all the old Gleason trappings were brought out of mothballs: The June Taylor Dancers opened the show, and the traditional overhead shot of the dance formation again appeared. The Glea Girls were back as well. The star entered, "coffee cup" in hand, and did five minutes in front of the curtain. The old trademark lines that had been developed more than a decade earlier at DuMont ("How sweet it is," "A little travelin' music," "And awa-a-a-ywe go") were once again heard on Saturday evening network air. Reginald Van Gleason III, Joe the Bartender, and The Poor Soul returned from the grave. What was missing, of course, was Ralph Kramden. Gleason attempted to develop a new sketch, "Agnes and Arthur," with Alice Ghostley in the role of the wife. It bore a pale resemblance to "The Honeymooners" and was unceremoniously dropped. But during this era of contracting comedy-variety fare, the show was able to find an audience and finished a respectable seventeenth in the ratings during its first season. Gleason would hold down his time slot for a total of eight seasons; his most mediocre effort would be his longest-lived Nielsen success. "American Scene Magazine" was dropped from the title after a few seasons, and Gleason settled in for season after season of shadowy reprises of his once vibrant comedy. The kid from the Brooklyn slums had long ago lost touch with the old neighborhood, and his attempts to play street characters became more and more stylized. In 1964, like many successful Brooklynites, he left New York for Miami Beach, where CBS created a complete new production facility for The Gleason Show. Traditionally, announcer Johnny Olsen had introduced the show with the dramatic line, "From New York, the entertainment capital of the world";

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now the show emanated "From Miami Beach, the sun-and-fun capital of the world." The tough kid from Bushwick Avenue became a golf-playing Sunbelt millionaire. Whereas once Gleason had played only "himself," he now played a series of paper-thin imitations of his old creations. Nowhere was the decay of his artistic persona more evident than in the painful revival of "The Honeymooners" in 1966. After a nine-year absence, Gleason persuaded Art Carney to rejoin him. Audrey Meadows, however, now married to an airline executive and retired from show business, was no longer interested in the part she had once coveted. Sheila MacRae became the third Alice Kramden; Jane Kean played Trixie. The "magic" was gone. Though the audience whooped and hollered at every threat to send Alice to the moon (and the nostalgia of the Gleason-Carney reunion propelled the series to a Number Five finish in the ratings that season), the hour-long sketches simply lacked the manic intensity of the fifties Honeymooners. Gleason's weight fluctuated wildly. He kept three complete wardrobes: for 260 pounds, 220 pounds, and 180 pounds. At times he displayed less spare tire than the aging Carney, and this created what were perhaps the revival's funniest moments. Ever the artiste, Gleason came up with the innovation of playing "The Honeymooners" as a musical comedy, and he commissioned songwriters Lyn Duddy and Jerry Bresler to compose original songs for the weekly episodes. They were, quite simply, awful. Worst of all, the once immutable cosmos of the original "Honeymooners" was tampered with. At one point, Ralph won a trip around the world, leading to a series of musical theme episodes C'Gay Paree," 'Jolly Olde England," etc.). The eternal loser was traveling the world in distinctively "first-class" style. The final destruction of Gleason's greatest creation took place in the last episode, in which Ralph Kramden receives his longawaited promotion to dispatcher at the Gotham Bus Company. The cancelation of the final]ackie Gleason Show took place at the end of the 1969- 70 season. According to television historian Les Brown, Gleason-like Paul Henning-was a victim of CBS'splan to "modernize" its schedule and capture a greater share of the 18-34-year-old audience with "hip" and "relevant" programming." The string had run out on Gleason nostalgia; his audience was large, but too old to interest the CBS brass.

Gleason's Push

Red Skelton, the only other pioneer still holding down a comedy-varietyseries, was likewise dropped by CBSthat year. (Skelton was picked up by NBCbut after one season was again given his walking papers.) Gleason was furious. He had turned his back on the potential he had shown for a "serious" acting career in The Hustler and Requiem for a Heavyweight in favor of weekly television.Though he would continue to collect $100,000 per year in forced exile, his career was in limbo. In a December 1970 TV Guide article entitled 'Jackie Gleason's Plea: Why Pay to Keep Me off the Air?"which featured a drawing of The Great One in prison uniform with a CBS"eye" shackled to his ankle, Gleason told reporter Robert Musel: I've no way of getting through to the public if I'm without a network. They say I can't appear on television other than with CBS because they're paying me a sum of money. I consider this to be something wrong. I don't think they should be able to keep me off the air. Contracts with networks are like romances. It's like going with a broad. Sometimes the relationship between the network or the broad and yourself is reasonable. But in my case it isn't. They have control over me for four more years. In other words they are emasculating me from appearing before a 1V audience. I could have gone to ABC or NBC, but I'm tied to CBS. Suppose CBS kept me off four years? They could destroy my career." Reporters, who had always been fond of the loose-talking Gleason, kept rumors flying about the star's imminent return to television. Robert K. Doan, whose "Doan Report" was for many years a regular feature of TV Guide) seemed to be waging a personal campaign to get Gleason back on the air. In September of 1970 he reported that "inside gossipers insisted" that Gleason would soon be made host of a new CBS late-night desk-and-sofa show that would compete directly againstJohnny Carson's Tonight Sboui" Nothing came of it; CBS opted for movies and reruns of police shows. In 1973, with Gleason's CBS contract finally approaching expiration, Doan announced that Gleason had already signed a long-term pact with NBCto do made-for-Tv movies. An excited Doan reported, "'We're

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going after Gleason as an actor,' an NBCspokesman exulted."37 No such deal was ever made. In fact, Gleason would not appear in prime time again until 1976, two years after he had gained his "freedom." On the twenty-fifth anniversary of the creation of Ralph Kramden, ABCaired a one-hour special, "The Honeymooners-The Second Honeymoon." Though Audrey Meadows emerged from retirement to play Alice, the show was yet another dreary, misplayed revival. It is often said that any personality-and especially any comedian-who becomes a star on television is apt to "burn out." An entropy curve may be drawn on which to plot the life of a 1V program or star. Gleason, always larger than life, leaves us two such careers to consider. As an advertising vehicle for the sponsors who bought time on his programs, he generally delivered in yeoman fashion. He faltered, even faltered badly, and recovered, and this in its own way is remarkable in an industry notorious for discarding yesterday's headliners. As an artist, he achieved superb moments in front of the television camera, moments that are likely to outlast the hours of mediocrity that were the product of the second half of his career. The bare walls of the Kramdens' tenement apartment linger as an image of the sitcom at its most powerful: a tiny door into a world at once exotic and banal. Reruns of the thirty-nine halfhour episodes of The Honeymooners made during the 195556 season are always a treat. The viewer is sure to recognize the plot in a matter of moments or may even know the lines of dialogue by heart. But the place can only be visited by television. The place is too tiny a physical space for slapstick, yet not a stage for stand-up monologues. With the noise of the wildly appreciative studio audience cluttering the sound track, it is too artificial a place to be believable, yet the emotional highs and lows created within it are too piercing to ignore. Gleason had failed in his early attempts at the cinema because "he was made to play somebody else." As Ralph Kramden, he offers the viewer the pungency and poignancy of naked psychodrama. Without the gaudy, vulgar nouveau who paraded the prizes of conspicuous consumption in front of the curtain, Ralph Kramden is emptied of his most compelling dimension. Gleason still emerges from his Florida estate to take on character roles in Hollywood films. A generation born after the

Gleason's Push

cancelation of the final jackie Gleason Show knows him as Sheriff Buford T.Justice of Smokey and the Bandit I (1977) and II (1980). The Smokey films, which star Burt Reynolds and Sally Field and are built on a foundation of car chases and CB lingo, are set along the highways between Florida and Texas.This may seem a curious setting in which to find the pride of Bushwick Avenue. But after a dozen years as a southerner, Gleason-who has always based his best characters on his "real life" experiences-has achieved some notoriety in the role of a corrupt, overweight redneck sheriff. Lawrence Van Gelder of the New York Times writes, "With Mr. Reynolds playing it cool and Mr. Gleason doing his burns and investing the film with a certain raunchy humor, the rest is up to the vehicles."38 Despite the longevity and general success of his show business career, Gleason was never able to achieve the critical success that would enshrine him in the comedy pantheon as "a classic clown." Horace Newcomb, the so-called "guru of the academic critics,"39avoids him completely in his major work, TV: The Most Popular Art; Gleason's name does not even appear in the book's index. In Television: The Critical View, a large collection of critical articles by various writers edited by Newcomb, not a word about The Great One is to be found. Russel Nye mentions Gleason but once in The Unembarrassed Muse, as part of a list of "early fifties" comedians, despite the fact that Gleason's show was still on the CBS Saturday night schedule when Nye's book was published. "Radio's 'comedy hour' format fitted television perfectly," Nye writes, "all that had to be done was to film it."40 Apparently Fred Allen never figured this out. "The Gleason Case," as Gilbert Seldes entitled his 1956 essay, is a fabulous American Dream, the story of a 260-pound Gatsby seeking the love of 200 million Daisies. LikeFitzgerald's tragic hero, The Great One had been driven by his heart's desire to rise from poverty and obscurity to the heights of boom-time America: He had come a long way to his blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in the vast obscurity beyond the city,where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night."

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Perhaps more to the point is the epigraph to Fitzgerald's novel, lines credited to Thomas Parke d'Invilliers (actually the author's friend]ohn Peale Bishop): Then wear the gold hat, if that will move her; If you can bounce high, bounce for her too, Till she cry, "Lover,gold-hatted, high-bouncing lover, I must have yoU!"42 128

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*5

Suchlike 1 love ... 1 loosen myself and pass freely ... and am at the mother's breast with the little child, And swim with the swimmer, and wrestle with the wrestlers, and march in line with the firemen, and pause and listen and count. WaltWhitman, "I Sing the Body Electric" 1 say to myself, "Of the innumerable effects or impressions,

of which the heart, the intellect, or (more generally) the soul is susceptible, what one shall I, on the present occasion, select?" Edgar Allan Poe, "The Philosophy of Composition" Whitman and Poe were the major urban poets of nineteenth-century America. Their visions are diametrically opposite. Whitman saw a new beginning for humankind in the teeming polyglot masses of the new nation; Poe was horrified by its chaotic formlessness. The imaginative agenda of identification that Whitman chants in the lines above may be answered in a broadcast day consisting of Nova, The Wide World of Sports, Georgia Championship Wrestling, and a rerun of Emergency! One imagines an America without television, an America mutating the ideas, customs, styles, religions, genotypes, and leisure habits of the world, yet unable to "normalize" these creations instantly by representing them to every citizen in every corner 129

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of the Republic. Whitman's call for an indigenous American art was surely motivated by an impulse to share news of the great experiment in democracy with those whom he called "the Americans of all nations."! The key to heterogeny-and therefore to the success of democracy itself-was the power of identification, the power to imaginatively merge self and other. Malcolm Cowley writes of Whitman:

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The poet sees far into space and time; . . . he ranges over the continent and goes speeding through the heavens among tailed meteors. His secret is the power of identification. Since everything emanates from the universal soul, and since his own soul is the same essence, he can identify himself with every object and with every person, living or dead, heroic or criminal.' One hundred years before Gleason, Whitman walked the streets of Brooklyn. The array of characters he encountered at this gate to the New World ignited in him an electric charge of identity and gave birth to a new poetry. The poet saw himself as Adam in the Garden, naming Creation. Poe, by contrast, was a magazinist. His method and work contain an explicit rejection of Whitman's panoramic stream of consciousness. Poe writes of his modus operandi, "In general, suggestions, having arisen pell-mell, are pursued and forgotten in a similar manner."3 Instead, he sees the writer as a grand manipulator of a "susceptible" audience." The magazine industry, which had been engaged in a kind of proto-demographic marketing since the rise of Grub Street in eighteenth-century London, demanded a literature that would sell in mass quantity, or that at least could be targeted at specific readership groups. It is therefore not surprising that Poe's detective and horror fiction should have had so profound an influence on popular American film and television narrative. Whitman wrote that Poe's works, "by final judgment, probably belong among the electric lights of imaginative literature, brilliant and dazzling, but with no heat. "5 Emerson called Poe "the jingle man."? Whitman, once a successful newspaperman, dropped out of "the market" and published the idiosyncratic Leavesof Grass(1855). With the Leaves, he offers himself to the reader as a lover, pledging his body and

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soul. Poe, on the other hand, is a master technician whose chief concern is sensation. Both artists seek to seduce the reader; the difference is that of the amateur and the pro. The television viewer, a rough number, a jerking knee in the voodoo poetry of Madison Avenue, sits, reclines, makes love, eats, fondles a handgun, smokes marijuana, snores in front of the set. Convenient and eclectic, television is a crisis of consciousness. Confronted with everything the cultural traffic will allow, the imagination engages or avoids. Engagement means completing the circuit of transmission through the neural system to mind and emotion; avoidance constitutes abortion of the image, isolation of the senses, satisfaction with mere relief, and a surrender of cognitive capacity at the hands of an increasingly ugly world. NBC initiated daily network radio service on 16 November 1926, with a broadcast anchored from the grand ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York, where a thousand invited guests in formal attire danced to orchestra music and listened to crooners.' They were joined by half a continent in various states of undress. To emphasize the miracle of "the network" to a public that had become more or less familiar with radio over a period of twenty years, remote pickups were featured in the show. Will Rogers stood at a microphone in Kansas City,then the westernmost frontier of network coverage, and did stand-up comedy for thirty states from the shores of the Missouri River. Did minds skip across the continent with those electric waves from New York to Chicago to Kansas City and back again? Or had the multitudes been manipulated through a voyeuristic evening at the Waldorf? Forty-three years later, network coverage had become audiovisual and had been extended to the Moon. Das Iernseben, the German word for the television set, means "the thing to see far with." The rest is up to the viewer. On the premiere episode of See It Now (CBS, 1951-55), Edward R. Murrow presented live images of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. "We are impressed by a medium," he commented, "through which a man sitting in his living room has been able for the first time to look at two oceans at once." The passage to India that had eluded Columbus, Hudson, and the others was achieved by a feat of communication. Sylvester C'Pat")

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Weaver, an early NBC programming strategist who is the conceptual auteur of such shows as Today and Tonight, had a similar vision of television as "the window on the world." "Weaver," writes Alex McNeil, "saw the Today show as a program that few people would watch from beginning to end; instead, it was to be designed so that viewers could eat breakfast and get ready for school or work without devoting all of their time to the television set."? It originated from a studio on the ground floor of the RCABuilding in Rockefeller Center; windows allowed viewers the spectacle of a midtown Manhattan street during morning rush hour. An entourage usually waved and mugged for the camera, like a family celebrating its new 8-mm homemovie kit. Behind these "actors," the imperturbable streetlife of New York paraded past, a continuous, evolving event, recorded in its earlier stages by Whitman's pen. Wide Wide World, another Weaver concept, developed this mode of presentation even further: "On the October, 1955 premiere the topic was 'A Sunday in Autumn,' and reports were made from Lake Mead, the Grand Canyon, Weeki Wachee (Fla.), Dallas, San Francisco, St. Louis, Gloucester (Mass.), Cleveland, Omaha, and New York Ciry.'"? The list is Whitmanian, and the concept as well. Steve Allen, the first host of Weaver's Tonight show, delighted in training a camera on the street and verbally extemporizing a narrative frame to suit whatever personalities and events the urban moment might yield. Dave Garroway stood in front of a large painting of a magic carpet, anchoring a series of transcontinental pickups. One edition of Garroway at Large (NBC, 1949-54) originated from the rooftop of NBC's Chicago studios and consisted of long pans of the evening skyline." Recently, however, the casual "window on the world" has all but disappeared from network television. Sunday Morning with Charles Kurault is perhaps a notable exception. Kurault delights in Weaver-like pans of regional landscapes, especially during seasonal splendor. Otherwise, "firsthand reports" have become an almost exclusive province of "hard news." Whitman claimed, "The United States themselves are essentiallythe greatest poem. "12 This is the supposition of a show such as "A Sunday in Autumn" and of Weaver's work generally. But the dramas of international egos, crime, cruelty, death, and disaster offer dependable narrative continuity, and this has made them more

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suitable for contemporary marketing. The economic stakes have become too high to trust Whitman's open-collared Muse on network air. The schlockumentaries (Real People, That's Incredible!) actually debase the window-on-the-world concept. They are composed of segments that are window-dressed to resemble firsthand images but are so painstakingly staged and edited that they are actuallydisguised representational dramas. In 1981 That's Incredible! began adding a disclaimer to its final credits, which, in the space of a second or two, informs the viewer that what he or she has seen are "actual events" that have been "reenacted" for the camera. Local stations, especially those with remote minicam units, still occasionally express the primal video urge simply to "show things." In the spring of 1980, for example, station WMT-1V, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, used its new minicam to present the longest freight train to ever pass through town. As the six o'clock edition of Action News opened, the anchorman cut to a reporter who stood in the foreground while the freight train rolled past. At intervals of approximately six or seven minutes throughout the half-hour telecast,the anchor returned to the trackside scene. The train kept up its steady pace as the sign-off credits rolled vertically across it. Neither the engine nor the caboose ever appeared. Perhaps the event that violated the innocence of network 1V's "window on the world" was the first Kennedy assassination. Its status as the heaviest event that had happened to America since Pearl Harbor was secured by the fact that it precipitated the extended suspension of all regular network programming. The relentless representationalism of daily transcontinental 1V ceased for the first time since the medium had achieved ubiquity. Furthermore, it remained unclear for days as to when or even whether traditional proscenium distance would be reestablished. But even this regimen seemed to normalize, establishing a loose taxonomy of dramatic genres of its own: the long commentaries by patriarch anchormen such as Cronkite and Huntley; "The Funeral," marked by john-lohn's madefor-1V salute; "The Assassination of Oswald," network television's first snuff film; the endless biographies of Oswald and Ruby,each inspired by the revelation of a new "fact" ("Oswald had lived in the Soviet Union"; "Ruby did have underworld

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connections"). During all of this, the mystique of the U.S. Constitution notwithstanding, television was in charge of the country. The possibilities of coup d'etat or some other radical development of the assassinationwere controlled by network telecast. The mere fact that Walter Cronkite was narrating the event suggested that no serious damage had been done to the structure of the state. After three days of such programming, 1V turned the reigns of power over to LyndonJohnson, and Perry Mason came back on the air. Television had demonstrated its central position in American culture to a degree that was no casual matter. A more recent example of the political significance of a national television transmission system can be found in the failed Spanish coup d'etat of 1981.Armed members of the Civil Guard entered the chambers of the Cortes, sprayed the ceiling with machine-gun bullets, and took the legislators hostage. Informed of the attempt, KingJuan Carlos appeared on national television in support of the constitutional monarchy, effectively isolating the Fascists in the parliament building. As Enzensberger has written, "control of capital, of the means of production, and of the armed forces ... is no longer enough." He continues: When an industrially developed country is occupied or liberated today, whenever there is a coup d'etat, a revolution, or a counterrevolution, the crack police units, the paratroopers, the guerilla fighters do not any longer descend on the main squares of the city or seize the centers of heavy industry, as in the nineteenth century, or symbolic sites, like the royal palace; the new regime will instead take over, first of all, the radio and television stations, the telephone and telex exchanges, and the printing presses." The implication of Enzensberger's statement is that power has become a matter of information. The "fact" (or normalcy) of state control is more effectivelyestablished by a television screen viewed by millions than by the barrel of a gun pointed at a mere crowd. Television's greatest power, as I have suggested earlier, is its ability to select and legitimate the "normal." The importance of normalcy cannot be overestimated in the mod-

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ern political state. It is the principle that regulates the character of all mass-produced consumer goods and services. It is the state of affairs that defies unbearable paranoia and allows business-as-usual to be conducted even under the hydrogen threat. The daily collection of horror stories selected as The News is pointedly anormal; it is The News. On the other hand, the representational theater of familiar characters solving recognizable problems in conclusive ways is normal; it happens continuously every day, every hour, every minute. Repetitious announcements of "gangland slayings" and "guerrilla kidnappings" flatten such events into slightly dissonant rhythms that are absorbed by the monolithic wall of normalcy. Would the same be true of the "shows" that would be telecast on a channel whose programming consists of permanent live coverage of the Times Square subway station or a suburban shopping mall's videogame parlor? It is no wonder that the television industry has shied away from the dangers of discovery and committed itself to the ideology of demographic magazinism. Network researchers would certainly agree with Poe's assertion that the relationship between audience and art is "the desire of the moth for the star,"!' a determined reaction, a tropism. Their jobs depend on it. Poe writes of art, "With the Intellect or with the Conscience, it has only collateral relations. Unless incidentally, it has no concern whatever with Duty or with Truth.?" It is hard to imagine a bolder manifesto for the American television industry.

Cradleto Grave The lives of the vast majority of Americans born since the defeat of the Axis forces have been accompanied by a continuing electronic paratext to experience. This shadow memory is interactive with individual memory; it provides images that function as personal signifiers (e.g., the music or 1V show that played during a certain sexual experience) and at the same time serves to document and redocument collective experience. 1V is the central source of this companion record to experience, but it would be naive to minimize the contributions of other media. Radio, which was once a primary delivery system offering broad ranges

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of representational and presentational programming, gradually yielded many of its functions to television during the decade following Hiroshima and became a thoroughly formatted medium. Most radio stations gave up the broadcast of diverse programrning. Each station adopted a single program that became congruent with its identity:all-Top40, all-C&W,all-AOR,all MOR, all-Muzak, all-Classical,all-News, all-Talk,et cetera. Today,only a handful of eclectic commercial radio stations exist." The demographically successful radio station adopts a single format which makes it a cultural locus in its market; this is as true of "Top 40" as it is of "Classical."This change parallels the shift in the magazine industry from "general interest" periodicals (Life) Look) to "target interest" periodicals (Skiing) Apartment Life). Though radios that receive 1V sound, and even televisions that plug into automobile cigarette lighters, have become generally available, driving continues to be one of the few conscious activities that is structurally isolated from telecast. Since almost all Americans live in areas served by poor or nominal mass transportation systems, the car radio fills an important coverage gap in the message distribution system. Competition for listeners is particularly intense in the radio industry during what is termed "drive time," a period roughly equivalent to what used to be called "rush hour." Radio also holds a special significance because of its role in the national puberty rite. McLuhanites often describe television as a modern hearth, the center of domestic life in the homes of the global village. This is more than a metaphor at times. In New York City,for example, a local independent station offers its viewers what Jim Hoberman describes as "a three-and-a-half hour Christmas Eve telecast of a log burning in the Gracie Mansion fireplace, accompanied by seasonal Muzak. This epic transmission (actually a 10-second loop repeated 1200 or so times) was conceived by the WPIX chairman of the board 'in the hope that viewers would make a tradition of coming together as a family on Christmas Eve.' " Hoberman concludes that "The Yule Log is evidence that daily life in America has surpassed surrealism and broken through into science fiction."17 Though television has recently been criticized by the Fundamentalist Right as a force divisive to family life, watching television together is an important family activity in many American households. As teenagers enter sexual

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awareness, they rebel against television to some degree, as they do against all symbols of family authority. A. C. Nielsen reports that Females 12-17 and Males 12-17 (in that order) are the demographic age units that watch the least television.18 Alladult groups, as well as children below the age of twelve,watch more. The taboos surrounding sexuality become associated with the taboos inherent in a "special music" that parents cannot share with teenagers. Though sitcoms such as The Partridge Family (ABC, 1970-74) and The Brady Bunch (ABC, 1969-74) have attempted to make rock and roll a wholesome family activity, an implicit rejection of family order accompanies the search for sexual identity, and television, as a center of family life, must bear a share of adolescent resentment. Rock and roll has come closest of all the electronic arts to fulfilling the dream of an indigenous American art, an art severed from the umbilical cord of European culture. It is a music that takes place in what]ack Kerouac called "the great American night." Its moments of unabashed celebration of racial, gender, and class integration, and its pervasive obsession with sexual expression, rival Whitman's. Rock music is such an organic component of the American cultural landscape that, if one has grown up in the U.S.A., it is possible to compose one's autobiography by listing a series of all-time personal favorite songs. By means of radio, each rock and roll subgenre develops its own archive of golden hits; these are periodically recycled into contemporary play lists. While driving around, the listener may spontaneously encounter a song that compellingly suggests a particular time, place, event, or person; this is one of the great pleasures of North American civilization. Until quite recently, televisionwas unable to present music-rock or any other kindin an attractive way. For a public well-equipped with stereo components, the tiny monaural speakers of 1V sets offer little satisfaction. This may partially explain the demise of the musically oriented 1Vvariety show,which was popular until the midsixties, the era of mass stereoization. The 1V industry, however, having conquered its own parent, owns the radio industry, and the hits just keep on coming-in stereo, on cable, etc. The American cinema, which shared mass message distribution responsibilities with radio during the years between the first two world wars, has also become a relatively peripheral,

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though still important, medium of American mass culture. Except for a dozen or so blockbusters each year, movies can usually hope only to break even at the box office;profit margins are established by sales to television. This situation has affected not only the subject matter of films but the editing technique as well. Narrative continuity must be planned for commercial interruption in almost all major studio releases. Ironically,every time a moviegoer "gets away from the 1V set for a night" and lays down as much as five dollars for a ticket at the box office, he or she is paying for the privilege of participating in a market test that will be used to determine the price of the film's sale to television: If so many people are willing to pay to see a picture, then so many more are presumed to be willing to watch it for free. Whereas once all feature-length films were completely dependent on the sale of tickets directly to the public, direct marketing is now only a component of a larger marketing strategy. The made-for-1V movie forgoes direct marketing completely. Like radio, the cinema plays an important role in the teenage puberty rite. In a nation where live theater, in the relatively few places it is available, is outlandishly expensive, the movie has become the definitive date, rivaled only by the more expensive rock concert. The darkened theater is a free zone for petting; the privacy of the car at the drive-in is convenient to coitus. But after the erotic problem of parental restraint is solved, the movies become less important and the convenience of television reasserts itself. Nielsen's "National Audience Demographics Report" shows that from the age of eighteen until death time spent watching television steadily increases." Eventhe once unique experience of "the great screen" is challenged by home video projection systems. The carefully coordinated relationship of television, radio, the movies, the audio and audiovisual recording industries, the print media, and all the components of what Enzensberger calls "the consciousness industry" is underscored by the interlocking directorates and lateral agreements that control them. Competition among media is nominal; it is the same kind of competition that exists among the Chevrolet, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Buick, and Cadillac divisions of the General Motors Corporation. Everyone must drive, and everyone must imagine; the market has been carved up according to rational marketing theo-

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ries. The early antagonisms between the radio and recording industries, and later between the television and movie industries, have been replaced by an industrially mature relationship that establishes a collaborative, productive role for each medium in the total marketing blitz of American culture. The result is complete coverage of the population. On the Left, Herbert Marcuse has damned this phenomenon as a brainwashing system that leads to "one-dimensional man." Ernest van den Haag, a conservative, bemoans the "monotony" of the media blitz but blames it on "the mounting political power of the poor," who demand constant semiliterate recreation." Yetviewers who cannot find it in their souls to become thoroughly alienated from the images that have filled their senses since before the advent of their consciousnesses, or who lack the wealth to protect themselves from media ubiquity, are likely to find little useful in either of these politically motivated analyses. Memory-the sensual recall of image-is too valuable a resource to discard. Artful uses for this cultural heritage can be found.

The StarsComeOut at Night Each week, the A. C. Nielsen Company publishes Fast Weekly Household Audiences Report for its corporate customers. It contains, among many things, a chart entitled "% 1V Households Using 1V (Average Minute)," which catalogs each hour of the previous television week by the quarter hour, indicating the percentage of households with televisions that Nielsen believes is watching (anything) during an average minute of each fifteenminute period. The following information is taken from the report issued for the week of 12-18 December 1977 (eastern time): At 6:00 P.M., only about 50 percent of households with television sets in the United States were playing at least one of them. By 9:00 P.M., the percentage had risen to approximately two thirds of all HUTs. At 11:00 P.M., as prime time ended, the percentage of households watching had returned to the level of about one half of the population. By 1:00 A.M., less than 20 percent of Americans were "using TV" The sharp drop-off of viewership that normally occurs during the period following the late local news has traditionally defined "late night" as a

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marginal period. This has occasioned a relatively greater degree of programming experimentation than has occurred in the economically crucial hours of prime time. For many years, only NBC bothered to program network telecasts after 11:30. The relative lack of interest in the time period was of course a direct result of its reduced potential for assembling large audiences. Sponsors pay by the head; each one that falls to the pillow diminishes the pot of gold by another speck. This is easily demonstrated by comparing the performances of a primetime show and a late-night show: On 13 December 1977, both Laverne and Shirley and The Tonight Show "won" their time periods. Garry Marshall's sitcom achieved a rating of 34.6;more than one third of all U.S. HUTs (i.e., 25,220,000 households) were tuned in to this prime-time tale of the two Milwaukee brewery workers. The Tonight Show Starring johnny Carson also led its competition but with a rating of only 10.0 (or 7,290,000 households). Furthermore, Nielsen reports that total television viewership steadily declined during The Tonight Show's 11:301:00 time period, while it increased during Laverne and Shirley's 8:30-9:00 period." Finally, it is taken for granted that the size of each household steadily diminishes as sleep comes to individual members of the unit. As the evening dissipates into the wee hours, the television audience gradually loses some of its "mass" characteristics and takes on a more demographically specific profile. "Who is watching at 1:00 A.M.?" is not as difficult a question to answer as "Who is watching at 9:00 P.M.?" Traditional show business wisdom, predating television, has always held that the "late show" can be a bit raunchier (i.e., more "sophisticated") than the early show. Indeed, NBC hired none other than a burlesque comedian to host Broadway Open House (1950-51), network 1V's first late-night show.jerry Lester, a veteran of the New York bump-and-grind scene, based much of the show's humor on his lewd physical and verbal reactions to the fifty-inch chest of Dagmar, "the show's biggest star next to jerry. "22 Dagmar, actually an actress named jennie Lewis (nee Virginia Ruth Egnor), had been cast and rechristened by Lester to play the burlesque role of the buxom blonde airhead to the comic emcee's lascivious wiseguy. Her "part," in what otherwise appeared to be a presentational show, called for her to read "inane poetry with a deadpan delivery" while

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Lester heckled. But television played strange tricks on burlesque tradition. The camera lingered longer on the zaftig Dagmar than on funnyman Lester. "She was an instant hit and became a regular feature, her salary rising quickly to the point where only Jerry made more.":" Lester resented being upstaged by a second banana and tried to undercut Dagmar by adding another blonde bombshell, Barbara Nichols, whom he rechristened "Agathon." Still distraught by Dagmar's throbbing celebrity, Lester demanded that his own creation be given her walking papers. The network refused. Used to having his own way on the runway, Lester quit the show, leaving the upstart 1V executives to stew in their own juice. 1V, after all, seemed a shaky proposition in 1951;burlesque would never die. NBC did not attempt another late-night network venture until three years later. This time, a carefully groomed 1V personality was made host. Steve Allen, first host of The Tonight Sbou: singlehandedly invented the art of desk-and-sofa as it is still practiced today. A stand-up comedian, composer, musician, author, and actor, Allen brought a range to the role that has never quite been matched. Johnny Carson still does characters invented by Allen; David Letterman pays homage to "Steverino" each time he throws a pencil at the phony window behind him and sets off the sound effect of glass being broken. Allen's comedy is a synthesis of vulgar erudition and erudite vulgarity. He is equally at home ad-libbing with guests or taking a pie in the face. Allen often opened his show with outrageous physical stunts, such as diving into a giant vat of Iell-O or stuffing his sixfoot frame into a front-loading automatic washer for a turn. Settling down at his desk, he might conduct intelligent discussions of jazz or even books, yet he could not resist punctuating these with wild outbursts of adolescent noises (his seagull imitation' "Shmock, shmock," is memorable). He had broken into national1V as cohost, with Jan Murray, of Songsfor Sale (CBS, 1951), a talent scout vehicle in which the songs of unknown composers were performed by name vocalists and judged by a panel that included Duke Ellington and Mitch Miller. In 1953 he became host of another amateur show, Talent Patrol (ABC), which featured acts by U.S.armed forces personnel. That same year, NBC selected him to host Pat Weaver's experimental New York late-night talk/variety show known as Tonight. This pilot

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market test yielded positive results, and the show went network the following season. True to his talent scout origins, Allen "discovered" many new stars while behind the Tonight Show desk, including comedians Don Knotts, Louie Nye, Tom Poston, and Bill Dana (who unveiled Jose Jimenez to the world as a Tonight Show sketch). But in the midfifties, Tonight Show audiences rarely numbered as high as half a million households. For Allen, the show was merely a stepping-stone to the more desirable heights of prime time, and in 1956 NBC granted him a conventional comedy-variety show. Allen took many of his Tonight Show regulars with him and created one of the funniest comedy shows in prime-time history. Its mixture of continuing sketches (Allen's "Man on the Street Interviews" with Knotts, Nye, Poston, and Dayton Allen are perhaps the most widely remembered) and stand-up comedy make it a prototype for the late-night comedy shows of the eighties. Unfortunately,The Steve Allen Show faced no less an opponent than The Ed Sullivan Show, and it lasted only three years. When the prime-time show went into production, Allen did not quit as Tonight Show host but cut his appearances down to three times a week (a precedent Johnny Carson would eventually follow). On Mondays and Tuesdays in late 1956, Tonight was given over to Ernie Kovacs. In the vast junkpile of television history, perhaps no individual stands out as so original an artist as Kovacs. The mustachioed, cigar-puffing performer/writer/ director/producer was the master of the nonnarrative television comedy blackout sketch. He was the first commercial television artist-perhaps the only-to significantly scratch the surface of the unique visual possibilities of a medium effectively ruled by techniques borrowed from radio, stage, and cinema. Tuning in to a Kovacs show, the viewer might be treated to four or five minutes of a man sucking a single strand of spaghetti to the tune of Beethoven's Fifth, or a woman gingerly enjoying a bubble bath while a procession of midgets emerge from beneath the suds. Narrative resolution, the burden of much televised comedy, was never as important to Kovacsas achieving sublime moments of beauty on the ugly little black-and-white screen. Kovacs'swork shares more spiritually with the avant-garde theater of Richard Foreman than with the comedy-variety of Caesar, Gleason, or Berle.

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Allen left The Tonight Show altogether in January of 1957, just four months after the rotating Allen-Kovacsarrangement had been initiated. Kovacsdisappeared from the show as well. It is worth noting that Kovacsmanaged to stay on the air (on a succession of ABC shows, which included a stint as a primetime gameshow host) until his death in an automobile accident in 1962. He has the distinction of being the only popular comedian in television history whose work has been aired on PBS.A ten-part retrospective of Kovacs'ssketches was shown in hour-long episodes in 1977. In 1957 NBCattempted to redesign The Tonight Show completely. It was renamed Tonight! America after Dark and was brought closer to the concept Pat Weaver had envisioned in 1953: Its original host was Today veteran Jack Lescoulie. There were reports by contributing columnists in New York,Chicago, and Los Angeles, and live coverage from all three cities and elsewhere via remotes. Interviews with personalities in the news, in politics, or in show business were interspersed with live visits to night clubs, Broadway openings, or such places as research hospitals and planetariums. Regular features were Bob Considine's summary of the news of the day, "The World Tonight,";a Hy Gardner interview segment, "Face to Face,"; and news commentary, human interest stories and interviewson "Considine'sCorner.'?' Taking a quick nose dive in the ratings, the show was canceled less than six months after its premiere. Of the four late-night styles that had been tried, Allen's had clearly been the most successful. NBC returned to the desk-and-sofa format with a new host, Jack Paar. As Jack Gould of the New York Times wrote, Paar was "not the traditional trouper" but "a creation of television."25 Indeed, Paar had no discernible show business talent; he was neither actor, comedian, singer, dancer, animal trainer, nor ventriloquist; nor did he have any kind of "act" that people, over the centuries, have paid to see. What he could do was talk-often right at the camera. He talked mostly about his friends and his enemies. An early booster of both Fidel Castro and John Ken-

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nedy, he occasionally made forays into politics. He looked tearfully into the camera to quit his job on three separate occasions on issues ranging from salary to censorship. In the preface to his autobiography, I Kid You Not, Paar describes himself this way:

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I've never been a Communist or alcoholic and I've never been psychoanalyzed. Actually I'm a pretty ordinary guy. I'm just like any other fellow with a wife and daughter, pleasant suburban home, a Mercedes-Benz convertible, twenty-seven pairs of imported sunglasses, and who has an hour and three-quarters 1V show every weekday night." Surrounding himself with a clique of midcult raconteurs (Hugh Downs, Alexander King), second-rate ingenues (Genevieve, Florence Henderson), and third-rate comedians (Ioey Bishop, Peggy Cass), Paar constructed a remarkably banal fantasyworld of angry feuds and sentimental affections that became the subject of the show. He used the show as a soapbox from which to denounce his enemies, who included Dorothy Kilgallen and Ed Sullivan and almost anyone who wrote for a newspaper. In the context of pre-Kennedy assassination television, Paar's Tonight Show was a sophisticated glimpse into the petty world of New York show biz life. No other network star has ever used a show in quite this way. Under Paar, the desk-and-sofa show emerged as an important showcase for the American entertainment industry at large. While variety show hosts were forced to pay big-name stars thousands of dollars to appear on their prime-time shows, the same comedians and singers gladly appeared on Tonight for minimum union scale (less than $500). The reason for this lay in a formal aspect of the desk-and-sofa arrangement. While being "interviewed" or "chatting" with the host, the performer could freely plug his or her concert and club dates. These de facto advertisements were worth far more than the few thousand dollars sacrificed by agreeing to appear at scale. Ed Sullivan, the dean of variety show hosts, angrily accused Paar of exploiting entertainers; the two became mortal enemies over the issue. The conflict also points to an interesting distinction

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between the presentational and documentary modes on television. One regrettable Paar innovation, which would affect latenight television for decades, was to change Tonight from a "live" to a "live-on-tape" show. The live-on-tape concept is a remarkable television original. It purports to document an in-studio performance "as it happened" but gives network censors the opportunity to "bleep out" objectionable material. It also allowed Paar to cut production to four shows a week. The price was the loss of television's only daily, live, nonrepresentational show outside the purview of The News. On Friday nights, Best of Paar reruns were shown, establishing The Tonight Show's painful and ever-expanding tradition of reruns. While the cosmology of a representational series is enriched by the rerun, the desk-and-sofa episode becomes drearily dated by it. Like Steve Allen, Paar "graduated" to prime time with The Jack Paar Program in 1962. During the spring and summer of that year, while the host-designate, Johnny Carson, played out the string on his ABC contract as emcee of the daytime gameshow Who Do You Trust?, two dozen temporaries played musical chairs on Tonight. This was perhaps the show's most interesting period. Groucho Marx (who had turned down an offer of the permanent job) did a week, along with such diverse comers as Art Linkletter,Joey Bishop, Merv, Soupy Sales, Arlene Francis, and Jan Murray.Jack E. Leonard explored the commercial limits of insult humor that Don Rickles would later violate. The C&Wcrowd was offered Jimmy Dean; beatniks, Mort Sahl. The country club set was even offered Peter Lind Hayes and Mary Healy.Jerry Lewis, just in the process of making an important career move from the cinema to the charity drive, brought his special psychotheater to Tonight. The night of 2 October 1962 marked the establishment of Tonight Show normalcy: Johnny Carson took over. Carson's success was immediate. Kenneth Tynan writes: With the public, Carson's triumph was ... non-pareil. Under the Paar regime, the show had very seldom been seen by more than seven and a half million viewers .... Under Carson, the program averaged seven million four hundred

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and fifty-eight thousand viewers per night in its first six months. 27

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John Horn, 1V critic of the New York Herald Tribune, was not as impressed by Carson as the Nielsen families: "He exhibits all the charm of a snickering small boy scribbling graffiti on a public wall.'?" Whereas Steve Allen, Ernie Kovacs,and lack Paar, each in his own way, strove for a 1V species of eastern gentility, Carson's persona is strictly Middle America, a midwestern core with a touch of California thrown in for style. The modus operandi of Carson's humor seems to involve an invitation to the audience to see things from his point of view. Once accepted, this becomes a license to tell selfconsciously weak jokes. These jokes then become objects of derision, which both Johnny and the audience laugh at from the perch of sound common sense. It is fruitless to try to compare Carson to any other comedian in history. His continuous, almost daily appearance before millions for over twenty years puts his work in a genre of its own. No one has done it before, and no one is likely to do it in the future. Carson's consistent ratings have enabled him virtually to dictate the terms of his contract-and the form of The Tonight Show. In 1972 he moved the show from New York to Burbank out of personal preference. The network had opposed the move, but Carson proved to be bigger than the show. The official title has been changed to The Tonight Show Starringjohnny Carson, and this is used even on the many nights when guest hosts occupy The Prince's chair. In the show business world, an appearance on The Tonight Show has become as important for a performer as an appearance on the evening news is for a politician with national aspirations. Mel Brooks, who rarely appears on other 1V shows, has said of him: "From the word go, Carson could tell when you'd hit comic gold, and he'd help you mine it. He always knew pay dirt when he saw it. The guys on other shows didn't.:"? Even Woody Allen, who has had little flattering to say about television or the 1V industry, remarked of Carson, "He loves it when you score.":" The strikingly negative effect, however, of Carson's twentyyear triumph on Tonight has been precisely his longevity. With yeoman energy he has succeeded in robbing the late-night pe-

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riod of the specialness (non-prime-timeness?) of its early extremes. Carson is not as vulgar as Lester, as erudite as Allen, as visionary as Kovacs,or as emotional as Paar.His sparingly used masks-Carnak (derived from Allen's "Answer Man"), Art Fern (Allen made the name "Fern" famous), Aunt Blabby (Ionathan Winters's "Maude Frickert"), and Floyd Turbo (a shotgun-toting redneck, Carson's only original)-can be funny, but the viewer has no hope of seeing established limits transcended. As an interviewer, he is neither a witty raconteur nor a brainless praiser of guests. In 1969 the other two networks attempted, for the first time, to compete directly with The Tonight Show. ABCtried to go over Carson's head with YalieDick Cavett;CBSattacked from beneath with Merv Griffin. Cavettwas packed off to PBS.Merv was exiled to permanent syndication. Johnny is the Chevy of late-night lV, the Quarter-Pounder, the 65 percent polyester white shirt. Expectations are low enough that mere efficiency is appreciated and failures are easily forgiven. The best the other networks are willing to offer against him are Ted Koppel and reruns of QUincy. Maybe one of the guests will be good tonight. Why not at least watch the monologue? Johnny Carson, like Walter Cronkite, has been a potent totem in the iconography of American normalcy. Having spent the fifties dutifully building their F-scores-Johnny as a daytimer, Walter as a goody-two-shoes reporter in the shadow of enfant terrible Edward R.Murrow-they captured the desks of Tonight and The CBS Evening News in 1962, creating a presentational frame around prime time that would last from the Kennedy moment to the first Reagan budget. A grand videotape or even transcription of the thousands of daily Carson monologues and Cronkite news scripts would offer a comprehensive guide to the boundaries of culturally acceptable subjects, political positions, and tastes that defined institutional (official?) American culture for twenty years. According to Performer QJ the annual survey of the recognizability and popularity of media personalities (it is used by the networks to make casting and salary decisions), photographs of Carson and Cronkite were correctly identified by 88 percent of the American population; the two had exactly that same F-score in 1977.31 Walter opens the television evening with a story on the increasing hydrocarbon con-

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tent of air in metropolitan Los Angeles ("The Environmental Protection Agency revealed today ... "); Johnny closes with a story on the air pollution in Burbank C'How thick was it?"). Tragedy, the lesser form in the canon of demographic aesthetics, precedes comedy, which gets the last word. The events of history-from Oswald to Stockman-are reduced to mere content by this monumental form. Walter is the frown, Johnny the smile, on the great icons at the left and right margins of the American proscenium. Cronkite's retirement in March of 1981 and Carson's gradual retirement, which progresses with each new contract, bring this era to an end. Who will replace these emigrants from the Old World of Radio/Cinema who came as young men to the Golden Land of Television and made it so big? Whoever they are, they will be native-born. David Letterman and Ted Koppel are apparently among them.

Boomers Television's growth and development as a mass medium, industry, and art form have occurred more or less simultaneously with the nuclear threat against all life as we know it. The unspeakable horror that palpable Armageddon conjures for the rational mind makes comedy particularly appealing. Under the threat of faceless end-of-the-world button pushing, there is an honest urge, if not a responsibility, to be a wiseguy, to find a use for the static energies of cynicism. The bomb itself is best written into daily consciousness as a kind of punch line to history. The imagination tires and shrinks from exploring the tragic possibilities of the latest reports, whether they are presented on ABC's World News Tonight or in the New York Review of Books. Laughter is a control of the hysteria that deeper contemplation of existing conditions causes. Awell-wrought joke is a welcome reminder of the heroic possibilities of the imagination. The young Faulkner wrote The Sound and the Fury and Absalom) Absalom!; facing death, he wrote The Reivers and adapted short stories for Lux Video Theatre (CBS, 1950-57). A new generation of artists, brought up in a culture of doom, has produced notable works of comedy and is promising more. In contrast, representational 1V tragedies, usuallypackaged as made-

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for-1V movies, rarely reach the midcult "heights" achieved by Paddy Chayefskyand Rod Serling on Playhouse 90 a quarter of a century ago. The first glimpses of baby-boom comedy on national television were seen on NBC's Saturday Night Live during the late seventies. The show premiered in October 1975; it marked an experimental effort by NBC, the late-night leader, to expand into the Saturday late-night period, long a preserve of local movie showcases. In 1973 the network had made its initial foray into weekend late-night programming when it launched The Midnight Special, a rock-variety package hosted by bubble-gum radio disc jockey Wolfman Jack. The show aired after Johnny Carson on Fridays. Don Kirshner's Rock Concert premiered in syndication that same year, and the fight for post-Vietnam 1834-year-old consumers had come to the marginal hours of the late-night weekend time period. Visions of relatively educated, moneyed, and ready-to-spend boombabies, hungry for motorcycles, water beds, and an extra can of Mountain Dew, attracted advertisers who had been priced out of the spiraling primetime head-count market. The problems of music on 1V, however, remained. While the PBStelevision network and National Public Radio have simulcast many programs, allowing viewers with 1V sets and FM receivers to watch operas and symphony orchestras and listen to the performances in stereo, this option is limited in commercial network broadcasting. For example, an NBC simulcast of The Midnight Special was not likely to be carried by an NBCradio affiliate that maintains an all-Muzakor all-Newsformat. (This problem can be readily avoided on cable 1V; MlV offers permanent simulcast of rock music in video and FM cable stereo to subscribers.) Furthermore, Wolfman Jack and Don Kirshner were hardly credible as "hip" personalities. The late-night rockshows had used stand-up comedy acts as tangential features. Saturday Night Live was an attempt to climb farther up the demographic scale by reversing the ratio of music and comedy. Media-child good taste would always prefer the stereo system to monaural 1V music; on the other hand, 1V performance of stand-up comedy can compare favorablyto the comedy record album. What other than music might draw the rock audience? The early episodes of Saturday Night Live were erratic. The

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show seemed to be intended as a revolving showcase for upscale target group draws. One early episode, guest-hosted by Paul Simon (no "guest stars" on this earth-toned show), was more a musical concert than a comedy show. Richard Pryor, George Carlin, and Buck Henry, comedians once considered fringe mass audience performers but now in the boomer mainstream, were among the early guest hosts. The fact that the show had a repertory troupe, the Not Ready For Prime Time Players, was itself no guarantee of innovation; one need only recall the painful horrors of the Ace Trucking Company. But as the show developed, the Not Readies gradually transcended their initial supporting role. Their send-ups of 1V shows and commercials, which appeared with increasing frequency,were something more than the blind distensions of the comedy spots on Donnie and Marie and TbeFlip Wilson ShOUJ.Lorne Michaels,Saturday Night's producer, was bringing about a renaissance of the 1V blackout sketch. Marc Eliot has compared Saturday Night Live to Max Liebman's Your Show of Shows starring Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca (NBC, 1950-54): Saturday Night Live brings live 1V variety full cycle. Its ensemble cast is no less effective than Caesar's, sometimes better, willing to go further out on a limb. Whereas Caesar's humor was equally effective when dealing with suburbia, the movies, or television, the Saturday Night crew is, at best, uneven. When they are good, they're great, when they are bad, they're awful. Their only legitimate realm of satire was television itself.32

Chevy Chase, who quickly developed the highest F-score in the ensemble cast, emerged as the de facto "star" of the show in its first two seasons. He was the most visible regular, having been given the plums of delivering the show's trademark opener (Trve from New York ... it's Saturday Night!") and the anchor position on the obligatory newsshow satire, "Weekend Update." Chase's pratfalls and his institutionallyoffbeat humor often turned the show into an FM version of The Tonight Show. His Nielsen textbook good looks repeatedly stole the camera from the cast's superior comic talents. When Chase left the show to become a respectable Hollywood movie star in 1976, however, the writers

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and performers of Saturday Night Live were freed of the albatross of showcasing a "next Johnny Carson." They created a shadow play of cultural memories that is capable of exquisite power. Having passed through the looking glass, comedians who had grown up watching television offered the first art to emerge from this definitive experience of the postbomb world. In one episode, Desi Arnaz plays Frank Nitti in an Untouchables sketch. His wife turns out to be Lucy (Lucille Ball played by Gilda Radner). She has left Little Nitti with Mrs. Trumble to come down to the club with his machine gun. Upon finding that Lucy-ever the zany redhead-has brought him a machine gun loaded with blanks, Desi/Nitti/Rickyexplodes in anger. Gilda! Lucythen unleashes a resounding morpheme on American telecultural consciousness, Lucy's epic surrender to deep and unavoidable trouble: "Whaaaaaa!"The "total television" of the performance is enriched by Lorne Michaels's thoughtful production. Like The Untouchables, the sketch is telecast in black and white, which itself is a vehicle for time travel when inserted into a color show; Nielsen estimates that 85 percent of American HUTs are color equipped." The show closes with Arnaz offering an inspired rendition of RickyRicardo'slegendary theme song, "Ba-ba-lu," and leading the cast off the stage in a samba line. For the lifelong viewer, this technique simulates the effect of the nekyia, the ancient Greek passage into Hades, where the ghosts of the past are conjured and consulted. In The Dream and the Underworld, a psychological study of the daily human relationship with the dead, James Hillman writes: Our culture is singular for its ignorance of death. The great art and celebrations of many other cultures-ancient Egyptian and Etruscan, the Greek of Eleusis, Tibetan-honor the underworld. We have no ancestor cult, although we are pathetically nostalgic. We keep no relics, though collect antiques. We rarely see dead human beings, though watch a hundred imitations on the television tube. The animals we eat are put out of sight. We have no myths of the nekyia, yet our popular heroes in films and music are shady underworld characters."

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The nekyia myth that Hillman feels is absent may be buried beneath the "hundred imitations" he mentions. The "dead" of 1V are not the guest criminals blown away by Eliot Ness, Kojak, or T.]. Hooker; they are, rather, the canceled series and their characters. They rise from the grave regularly-on reruns, in conversation, and through impersonation. Only a few hours, days, or weeks before seeing the Desi Arnaz sketch on Saturday Night Live) the viewer may have seen the ghost of Lucy-dressed in toreador pants, chatting with Ethel in the kitchen-walk through anyone of a hundred familiar rituals. To then see the ghost resurrected to video flesh, reacting to new situations, revealing new aspects of her intimately familiar persona, is a giddy experience, a redemption of a thousand Lucy-watching hours. Dan Aykroydemerged as a virtuoso of teleshadow comedy. Never decisively committing his technique to either hyperbole, naturalistic imitation, or understatement, he often uses all three to create a single character. His imitation of Tom Snyder is a performance that not only reviews the experience of watching Snyder on television but urges the imagination to appreciate the existential dilemma of having nothing else to watch at one o'clock in the morning. Snyder, a living testament to Roman Hruska's famous defense of mediocrity, has let it be known publicly that he is offended by Aykroyd'simitation. In itself, this points toward the radical innovation of Aykroyd's work; it has traditionally been considered an honor to be mimicked by a fellow performer, regardless of the imitation's content. Similarly, Barbara Walters has complained of Gilda Radner's "Baba Wawa,"and Elizabeth Taylorof]ohn Belushi's finger-licking imitation. These impersonations tend to strip their objects of "normalcy" by filtering out the blindingly glossy rays of network slickness. At their best, they break the trance of stardom. Performance telerealism of appearance, voice, gesture, and camera address constitutes one of three essential elements of this comedy. The degree to which the image is convincing also depends on the excellence of television theatercraft-makeup, costuming, lighting, set design-in suggesting the object of imitation. These characters, scenes, et cetera, are themselves largely the products of network artifice; with care-and the same technology that created the originals-the imitators can

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compellingly reconstruct them. And yet, as is the case with all art, technical brilliance alone is not satisfying. Fully realized boomer telecomedy demands a narrative context in which the image can achieve animation and complete resurrection. The third element is often achieved by means of hyperbolic incongruity.Kenneth Burke, discussing literature, describes this method of recontextualization as "perspective by incongruity."35 In the best sketches, the dazzling technical achievement of "perfect imitation"-the goal of most 1V-self-destructs by placing itself in an impossible context that undermines and tests belief. For example, Snyder/Aykroydappears with his mother (played by Jane Curtin); they are guests on a special Mother's Day episode of The David Susskind (Bill Murray) Show. The other panelists are Henry and Mother Kissinger (Iohn Belushi and Laraine Newman) and Leon and Mother Spinks (Garrett Morris and Gilda Radner). Mrs. Snyder, like her son, chain smokes and is dressed in a white leisure suit. She is a fantasy inspired by Aykroyd'simitation of Snyder.What begins as mimicry develops a germinating cosmos of its own, which not only is more interesting than the original but gives watching the original new depth. Snyder's distinctive laugh, a cornerstone of the Aykroyd imitation, has been indelibly underlined; this costs Snyder a measure of his manipulative power, which he derives from an ability to make his point of view normal. One of the show's finest sketches made excellent use of guest host Ricky Nelson, who had grown up on television in front of the current primary consumer group. The sketch's blackand-white image-now as much a signifier of the fifties as Eisenhower or Edsel-is a baroque fifties sitcom kitchen. Ricky Nelson enters through the back door to what will obviously be a spoof of Ozzie and Harriet. He goes to the refrigerator for some milk and brownies, but the mother who enters is not Harriet Nelson but June Cleaver (Curtin). Leave It to Beaver music-the original-plays on the sound track. The camera swings over to Dan Aykroyd, who is Rod Serling. In a turgid recuperation of Serling's painstaking voice inflections C'Submitted for your approval ... "), he informs us that RickyNelson, a sitcom son in search of his sitcom home, is actually lost in The Twilight Zone. The ancient Twilight Zone audiovisual signature takes over, descending from outer-space bongo drums

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back to the sitcom kitchen. RickyNelson enters and goes to the refrigerator for milk and brownies. This time he has landed in Father Knows Best, complete with Robert Young (holding a coffee cupl), a BudlBelushi, and a classic simpering breakdown from Betty Anderson (Laraine Newman). AykroydlSerling reappears, offering further commentary. Descending once again from the Twilight Zone heavens, the camera picks up the empty kitchen. RickyNelson enters, and this time it's the Danny Thomas home. After appropriate homages to Uncle Tonoose (Bill Murray) and Louise the Maid (Garrett Morris), Belushi, as Danny Thomas/Danny Williams, spits his coffee all over the table. Aykroyd meanwhile has gone to makeup; he comes back as George Burns (an astounding performance) and offers vaudeville explication de texte. Sitcom action resuming, RickyNelson this time finds himself in no less a shrine of sitcom ancestor worship than the Ricardo home. "You're not my Ricky," shrieks Lucy/ Gilda at Nelson. Ricky is bringing home Cesar Romero for dinner, and she's burned the roast! "Whaaaa!"Aykroyd,now Alfred Hitchcock, steps forward from the line-drawing profile to pronounce the hopelessness of the situation." These direct imitations of personalities and programs were complemented by indirect imitations-or epitomizations-whose objects were television forms. The sitcom, center of longitudinal television consciousness, is consistently invoked by use of archetypal sets. Saturday Night Live developed a number of ursitcoms that pushed the genre to thoughtfully absurd precipitates. "The Coneheads" was perhaps the most popular of these sketches. An alien family from the planet Remulak, the Coneheads take up residence in a suburban American housing tract. Their foot-high coneheads notwithstanding, they explain their lack of knowledge of local culture to their naive EarthlingAmerican neighbors as stemming from the fact that they are emigrants from France. Their mission-to scout Earth culture as a prelude to Remulakian invasion-includes participantinformant anthropological duties. While Beldar and Primat nostalgically pine for the Old World, daughter Connie is seduced by American culture, developing a taste for male humans and rock and roll (in one episode she dates Frank Zappa, exclaiming, "Oh, bay-bee, oh bay-bee!"). Undercover as a typical American family, the Coneheads appear as contestants on Family

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Feud. They defeat a family of romaine lettuce enthusiasts from

Delmar RayVista, California. "The Wide-ends" is in some ways the most interesting of these sketches. Vintage fifties sitcom dialogue and plot are played with poker faces; however, the backsides of the family members are overstuffed to enormous proportions. This single physical sight gag explodes all sitcom convention. The audience is treated to the spectacle of the genre making an ass of itself in no uncertain terms. Saturday Night Live reached full flower during the 197778 and 1978-79 seasons. Though, as Eliot contends, television memory art was the show's chief source of power, other features were artfully cultivated as well. The show offered parodies of hit movies. Original short films were presented. Continuing sketches such as "We Are Two Wild and Crazy Guys" and "Cheeseburger, Cheeseburger" are related to television memory only in the sense that they are images of modern American culture and social structure. Many of the best comedians in show business-Steve Martin, Rodney Dangerfield, and Lily Tomlin among them-did their best 1V work in the relatively "liberated" atmosphere of the show. Musicians who rarely appeared on 1V-the Band, the Rolling Stones, Peter Tosh, Patti Smith, and others-found no image problems in performing on Saturday Night Live. One need only see a kinescope of Elvis Presley rolling his eyes in embarrassment as Milton Berle hugs and praises him on the 1956 Berle Buick Show to understand the reluctance of some musical artists to appear on 1V comedy shows. Though Saturday Night Live had no formal commitment to the comedy of television memory, the show brought it before a mass audience and used it as the centerpiece of an eclectic review of life in contemporary America. Navigating the Scylla and Charybdis of preachy intellectualism and blind distension, the writing and performance in Lorne Michaels's show found a path between the two. The gross-out joke (e.g., John Belushi's Elizabeth Taylor choking on a chicken bone) emerged as babyboom slapstick. Bill Murray,who joined the show in 1977, demonstrated a mastery of American wiseguyisms, especially while dealing out nuggies as Lisa Lupner's boyfriend, Todd Delamuca. His Nick the Nightclub Singer, a sublimely third-rate postmodern crooner who works airport lounges, Arctic airbases, and

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Pocono hotels, is a fabulous embarrassment to professional entertainment. Murray rarely achieves photorealism in his television imitations in the manner of Aykroyd or Radner; he is, rather, a consummate suggester of moods and styles.Jane Curtin took on the role of the beleaguered straight arrow, struggling to maintain dignity amid the show's endless procession of gross-out jokes. She is the foil, for example, for the phlegm-ball ecstasies of Radner's Rosanne Rosannadanna. Laraine Newman rarely strayed from her California burnout persona, wandering listlessly through the fallen postsixties world. Garrett Morris, the cast's only black member, self-consciously performed a comedy of tokenism, playing all black roles, male and female, and even doing duty as Hispanic baseball player Chico Esquillar. John Belushi's drug jokes and physical comedy made the show palatable to some of the less sophisticated elements of the burgeoning pot-smoking community. Belushi became the comiculture's first martyr since Lenny Bruce when he died of a drug overdose in 1982; with a Jimi Hendrix, one wonders, can a Janis Joplin be far behind? At the end of the 1978- 79 season, Aykroydand Belushi left Saturday Night Live-and television-for Hollywoodfeature films. This was an unfortunate mistake for both their careers-and for 1V Excellent video comedians who were capable of using the medium's mythology and technology to great advantage, they went to Hollywood to make a series of bland, mediocre movies, such as The Blues Brothers, 1941, and Neighbors. The Blues Brothers, an attempt to make a two-hour movie out of a solid five-minute 1V blackout sketch, squandered the power of the original. The few good moments in the film are the musical performances of Aretha Franklin, RayCharles, and James Brown. The Blues Brothers offers a lavishlyproduced car chase through the middle of an enclosed suburban shopping mall; Saturday Night Live had done a far better job of destroying malls in its series of sketches about one that contains a Scotch Tape Boutique and a franchise of the Barry White Big Man's Clothing Store chain. Aykroydin particular is wasted on the large screen. His remarkable talents as a mimic and his thorough mastery of 1V language, both verbal and physical, go completely unused. As long as 1V's most talented artists are seduced by the easier money and relative respectability of the cinema, 1V comedy is

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not likely to transcend the familiar horizons of David Brenner or Ruth Buzzi. Woody Allen, who first gained national attention for himself as a performer of stand-up comedy on TheEd Sullivan Show in the midsixties, seems to have set a standard of gentility for video comedians. Annie Hall) Allen's tour de force, contains among its many themes an indictment of television for crimes against art. In Manhattan) Allen plays a loosely veiled Saturday Night Live writer who quits the show in disgust at its sell-out mediocrity. Allen's well-deserved success in the movies is understandably a far more attractive vision of the future for a 1V comic than ending up as the host of Jackpot Bowling or, like Gleason, beating to death twenty-year-old routines. Few, however, have been able to make the transition as gracefully as Allen has. Looking back in television history a few more years, one finds that George Schlatter's Rowan and Martins Laugh-In (NBC, 1968- 73) suffered a similar fate at the hands of the movies. At a time when The Dean Martin Show and The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour passed for comedy-variety, Schlatter attempted to rethink prime-time presentational comedy. Dan Rowan and Dick Martin, the show's title players, did not function as its stars in the traditional sense. Instead, they were hosts for a strong repertory troupe that performed lightning-quick blackout sketches ("Sock It To Me," "Here Come de]udge," "The Party"). Though Lorne Michaels slowed Schlatter's blistering pace considerably and invested his material with a far keener intelligence, the shape of Saturday Night Live in some ways is foreshadowed by Laugh-In) especially its no-star, repertory style. Laugh-In's demise also foreshadows the end of Saturday Night. One by one, Laugh-In lost its funniest comedians to the movies, including Lily Tomlin, Henry Gibson, and Goldie Hawn. Only Tomlin has been equal to the test. Curiously, Laugh-In's Eisensteinian editing pace, the very aspect of Schlatter's work rejected by Michaels, survives in such shows as Hee-Hau: and SesameStreet. Schlatter finally gave up on comedy-variety after an aborted attempt to revive Laugh-In in 1978; he went on to produce Real People) the first of the modern schlockumentaries. Despite its premature death, the concrete innovations in video performance art achieved by the actors, writers, and tech-

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nicians of the original Saturday Night Live were in accordance with avant-garde demographic aims. The show's audience was discernibly young, upscale, and hedonistic. It was an audience that institutions as diverse as Tampax, Honda, Memorex, and the United States Army wanted to talk to. The show eventually received the ultimate demographer's stamp of approval-it inspired imitators. In 1980, ABCpremiered Fridays, a ninety-minute late-night comedy show telecast "live" from Los Angeles. It soon revealed itself as an AMversion of Saturday Night. Bill Lee, who coproduced the show with John Moffitt,promised Rolling Stone magazine that Fridays would be built on "ground-breaking humor that's hopefully an extension of what Saturday Night Live has done.':" Fridays' weak writing, erratic performance quality, and, most of all, its self-congratulatory,ain't-we-artiststone made it a painful reminder of how fragile a commodity originality is in a mass medium. NBC, showing even less class than a television network is supposed to, has retained the name "Saturday Night Live" for two new shows (new producers, new casts) since the original died of Hollywood fever. Saturday Night Live II (1980-81), produced by Jean Doumanian, seemed to be based on a theory of viewer inertia that held that the loyal "Saturday Night" audience would not notice that the new show was not funny and would just continue to watch out of habit. Saturday Night Live III (1981-), produced by Dick Ebersol, is something of a rebound from Doumanian's quick disaster. However, only two of its players, Joe Piscopo and Eddie Murphy, are capable of getting laughs. When they are off camera, the show is every bit as bad as Saturday Night Live II. While these shows have made the original Saturday Night Live their model-and failed to greater and lesser degrees to live up to that standardanother late-night comedy show, SC1V Comedy Network (NBC, 1981-83), committed itself completely to the comedy of television memory and defined the frontier of commercial video art.

A light fromMelonville For the most radical and elaborate American media theory, one must look to the work of ... Canadians. Daniel]. Czitrom, Media and the American Mind

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It's the community contained within the station cum network itself that really matters. SC1V builds on the recognition that we don't so much watch 1V as live with it, and anyone who refuses to invest a few weeks simply living with SC1V is unlikely to develop a real taste for the show. After that, it's either addiction or signing off permanently. Richard T.Jameson, Film Comment As the central collective image bank of national culture, televi-

sion has been a natural subject for lampoon among both professionals and amateurs since American homes became HUTs, but the monologues and improvisations of the baby-boom comedians who began to come of age during the third decade of telecast have been obsessed with it. Whereas once, perhaps (if Hollywood films are to be trusted), nascent clowns sneaked into tent shows and vaudeville houses to watch the pros, the rookie crop of boomer stand-ups who cracked the nightclub circuit in the early seventies had, in the privacy of their own homes, spent their lives witnessing the greatest barrage of nonstop entertainment in history. In The Age of Television) Martin Esslin calls this phenomenon "the drama explosion. "38 Second City,a nightclub that has enjoyed a reputation for fostering avant-garde mass comedy ever since Mike Nichols and Elaine May appeared there in the fifties, became an early commercial testing ground for television-age humor. In addition to Second City's original Chicago club, "an enterprising Torontoite named Andrew Alexander . .. bought the Canadian rights to the Second City monicker and set up shop in a disused firehouse."39 The Chicago and Toronto Second Cities became the salons of telememory comedy. Dan Aykroyd,Gilda Radner, John Belushi, and Bill Murray were all Second City graduates when they came to Saturday Night Live. They demonstrated that the revery of memory to which an audience could be brought by means of live imitations on a bare nightclub stage could be augmented and intensified by use of an actual 1V network's arsenal of artifice. To imitate Eddie Haskell was one thing; to bring that imitation to a Leave It to Beaver set and present it on the tube to the nation was quite another: total teletheater. Furthermore' the commercial success of Saturday Night Live showed that the Muses of Art and Demography were in rare harmony.

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While Saturday Night Live was making headlines in both the trade papers and the rock and roll magazines, a group of Toronto-based Second Citycomedians began a syndicated show of its own. Andrew Alexander produced it right in the old firehouse. The original Second City Television, which premiered in 1977, was a thirty-minute program that many local stations scheduled immediately followingSaturday Night Live. Baby-boom comedy was establishing the wee hours of the weekend as its programming ghetto. Though Second City was shown across Canada, no more than fifty-fiveU.S. stations were carrying it (some of these PBS affiliates, who inserted public service announcements in the commercial slots). In 1981, however, NBC picked up SC1V for U.S.network telecast. The show was hyperextended to ninety minutes and given a 12:30-2:00 A.M. slot on the Friday night schedule, replacing the canceled rock showcase, The Midnight Special. The big mouth had won an impressive, if temporary, victory over the electric guitar in the battle for the boomer consumer; the rock 'n roll video revolution was yet to come. When a rather ragged NBCpeacock is pushed aside by the gleaming, statuesque SClV logo, there is an acceleration of imaginative pace that does not occur elsewhere on television. The split-screen montage of SClV's own history-scores of flashing lV impersonations, televisions flying out of apartment house windows, tableaux of SClV station personnel-warns the viewer that any show, commercial, event, gesture, style, or moment that has gone out over the air since there has been television may suddenly reappear. SClV, a beleaguered network, a station found beyond the UHF band at Channel 109, a show with a shamelessly phony laugh track, is an entrance into the modern Hades of televised civilization. The chaos of this underworld is familiar enough to suggest order. In the tradition of professional wrestling and The Burns and Allen Show, constant tension is maintained by the integration of the presentational and representational modes. "The station cum network," as Jameson calls it, is an epic synthesis of all lV genres. SClV president Guy Cabellero, riding his wheelchair like Chief Robert Ironside, is part Fred Silverman and part Don Corleone. Johnny La Rue, in monogrammed bathrobe, wanders the halls of network corporate headquarters dreaming of concepts (Johnny

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La Rue's All-Girl Pajama Party), pining for crane shots C'Polynesiantown could have been a great film!"). Bob and Doug Mackenzie, though possessing the hoser soul of Canada itself on The Great White North) envy smarty-pants Brian St. Johns, who is blessed with a respectable topic for his show: money. Lola Heatherton, who greets most men on camera by exclaiming "I want to BEARYOUR CHIlD!"attempts to transcend the prison of her fabulous body by interviewing Sister Theresa in a Bombay Hospital; she is angered when a dying untouchable fails to recognize her. The spirit-and vocal cords-of Ethel Merman lives beneath the leopard-skin pillbox hat of station manager Edith Prickly. The seven comedians who performed and wrote SC1V at the show's peak-John Candy,Joe Flaherty, Eugene Levy,Andrea Martin,RickMoranis,Catherine O'Hara, and DaveThomasare all superb masters of television nuance. Collectively, the cast may playas many as a hundred roles in one ninety-minute episode. "Among them," writes Jameson, "they constitute a repository of pop-cult incunabula embracing decades of film and television, and some of their best concepts have flowered as a result of lunatic cross-pollinations. "40 There are three major types of SClV characters: frank imitations of actuallV personalities (Ricardo Montalban, Walter Cronkite, Brooke Shields); epitomizations of 1Vtypes (Count Floyd,host of Monster Chiller Horror Theater; Libby Wolfson, host of Youl) a daytime SClV women's program; Bob Wink, host of many gameshows); and the frankly fictional SCIV personnel (Cabellero, Prickly,La Rue). These three dimensions-television history, television myth, television fiction-are, in the best episodes, seamlessly textured into a rich drama of life with the medium. The performers only appear as "themselves" briefly in the opening credits, yet they manage to carry core personae through their endless transformations. The three elements of electronic shadow memory comedy are brought to optimal synthesis during the show. The recreation of 1V mise-en-scene is painstakingly photorealistic. Performance portraiture is of equal quality, mixing elements of hyperbole, naturalistic depiction, and understatement to resurrect audiovisual images. Moreover, SC1V's peculiar structure, its double life as a representational narrative and a presenta-

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tional comedy show, allows it to create intricate and fantastic recontextualizations. James Wolcott of the Village Voice, one of the few 1V critics to appreciate the show's richness, describes one of these:

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With a giant typewriter serving as a backdrop, bushy-browed Gene Shalit (Eugene Levy) opened his first variety special by kicking his feet and shaking his bottom like nobody's business, belting out the lyrics from Misteroger's Neighborhood . . . . Joining Shalit on his special were guest critics Roger Ebert (Dave Thomas) and Gene Siskel(Ioe Flaherty), who did a fingersnapping version of "Ieepers, Creepers" which ended with Siskel pointing to Shalit's atomic afro and asking, "leepers, creepers-where'd you get that hair?" Also on hand was Miss Rona herself, played to a devastating "T" by the superlative Catherine O'Hara. Praised by Shalit for her stirring rendition of "I've Grown Accustomed to His Face," Miss Rona replied, "Adefinite dichotomy of feelings come into play here Gene, on the one hand ... "-as easily accurate a rendering of Barrett's pretentious diction as one could dream of." G. Gordon Liddy appears as a guest on Mrs. Falbo's Tiny Town to favor the children with a fairy tale about frontal assault on a defended position. Indira Gandhi and Slim Whitman appear in a commercial for their touring Broadway smash, Indira (Txm't cry for me, Rawalpindi ... "). The Solid Gold Dancers and Divine make guest appearances on Dusty Towne's Sexy Christmas Special. Bob Hope (Dave Thomas) and Bing Crosby (Ioe Flaherty) are actually two rock and roll stars who go to Fantasy Island to become comedians. Mr.Roarke (RicardoMontalban/EugeneLevy) puts them in "The Road to Casablanca," where they meet Humphrey Bogart (john Candy) and Ingrid Bergman (Catherine O'Hara). Sylvester the Cat appears as a corpse on Quincy, Cartoon Coroner. David Brinkley hosts a science special, Walter Cronkite's Brain.

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The epitomizations or stereotypes of lV functionaries are broad-stroke caricatures. Mrs. Falbo (Andrea Martin) is Mister Rogers gone berserk. Instead of quietly entering the studio and putting on a cardigan sweater, she zooms up in a fuel-injection Dodge Charger. Billy Sol Hurok (Candy) and Big Jim McBob (Flaherty), the farmer-critics of Farm Film Review, show an aesthetic bias toward movies where people "get blowed up real good ... real good." The Sammy Maudlin Show is the epitomization of epitomizations. Sammy (Flaherty) is the sum of the Hollywood Ratpack, equal parts Dean Martin,Joey Bishop, and Sammy Davis,]r. Maudlin and his Ed McMahon,William B. (Candy's homage to an obscure New York disc jockey), are alternately moved to gales of laughter and streams of tears by the funny stories and humanitarian accomplishments of their guests. Jameson writes: One of the severest cases of hyperventilation I ever experienced followed Bobby Bittman's guest appearance on the Sammy Maudlin talkshow to promote his dramatic lV-movie debut, a remake of On the Wateifront. Now,Bobby Bittman is Eugene Levy'smasterpiece-a rampantlyloathsome singercomedian who comes out flashing rings, chains, smiles and inane how-are-yas, invariably interrupts his act to pontificate "in all seriousness" about something, and more often than not ends up berating the audience for failing to appreciate that he's "giving 110 percent up herei?" In another of Bittman's appearances on the Maudlin Show, the comedian brings kid brother Skip along to make his lV debut. Skip, however, blows his monologue and, back at the sofa, insists on calling Bobby "Herschel," his pre-show biz name. The two lapse into an argument in Yiddish, creating "dead air," the ultimate sin of any talkshow. Sammy, a master of normalcy, is put to the test; he recaptures control by proclaiming that such a stirring event as two brothers arguing in their "native ethnic language" on national television could happen "only in America." The SClV station personnel are used to create representational narrative superstructures for a typical episode's collection of shows, commercials, and promos: CCCP-1,a Soviet

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television network, is jamming SClV with its racist anti-Uzbek sitcom Hey Corgi! and its big-rubles gameshow Uboscrabblenik; aliens have infiltrated SClV through the body of Conrad Bain's brother, who has recently been signed to star in a rip-off of Diff'rent Strokes (NBC, 1978-); a gang war has broken out between SClV and the "Big Three" networks over SClV's refusal to back Ugazzo Home Vision, a Mafia-controlled pay-lV system. Despite all this, the SClV broadcast day must continue as normal. The absurd representational framework is forced to cohere by the compelling telerealism of the inpersonations and the aesthetic truths of the epitomizations: Catherine O'Hara, one of the few comediennes who can doll herself up to mock glamorousness, slipped on a jungle-mane wig and did a killing parody of brat nymphet Brooke Shields. As the host of The Brooke Shields Show, O'Hara petulantly played with her feet as her mother (Rich Moranis in drag) nudged her on the arm, hoping to draw Brooke's attention back to her guests. Brooke's first guest was Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill, played byJohn Candy in a toupee that looked as if it had been dipped in sugar frosting. "Tip O'Neill, that's a really silly name," said Brooke, idly toying with her toes. "Can I call you Tip 'Ioenail/":" While other late-night comedy shows sacrifice sketch continuity to dutifully "present" their "all-time-great" rock and roll acts, SClV works the music right into its narrative framework. Wendy O. Williams and the Plasmatics go to the woods with Gil Fisher on The Fisbin' Musician; AlJarreau plays the Jolson role in the final remake of The jazz Singer; violinist Eugene Fodor even appeared in New York Rhapsody, a send-up of the John Garfield/loan Crawford film, Humoresque. "Friends call me now and say, 'I can't believe you're doing what we used to do when we were kids,' " Rick Moranis told Rolling Stone." Indeed, SCTV is the ultimate trivia game, acting out a pageant of television history as a dare to the viewer's memory. It is a farce in the sense that it is "stuffed" with jokes from beginning to end; yet it goes against all previous industry wisdom in that it is full of unexplained allusion. The remarkable quality of SCTV is that enough of it is available to a large

Self-Reflexiveat Last

enough audience to sustain it as a commercial venture. The critics who claim that television has given the American public nothing are proved wrong; television has given us itself. When Rick Moranis appears as Merv Griffith, a simultaneous impersonation of Merv Griffin and Andy Griffith, and interviews Floyd the Barber (Eugene Levy),a mythological event takes place that is intelligible only to the faithful. Wolcott describes Levy'sFloyd the Barber as "a mythic bore," "a comic monster out of Ring Lardner.':" Wolcott's jump from American television to American literature is well made; the two are branches of the same tree. When SC7V returned for 1982-83, its third season on NBC, it was without the services of Rick Moranis, Catherine O'Hara, and Dave Thomas. Once again, the lure of le cinema-or perhaps the odiousness of 1V itself-had cheated American television of its best video artists. Martin Short joined the cast, but his astounding impressions (especially of Jerry Lewis in Martin Scorscese Presents jerry Lewis Live on the Champs Elysee) and the new set of original characters he added to the show's repertoire could not balance the losses. The equilibrium of Catherine O'Hara's wildly sexy energy and Andrea Martin's studied neuroses was broken. Without Moranis and Thomas, Bob and Doug Mackenzie, probably the show's two most popular characters, were lost; this dealt the show's chances to stay on network air a fatal blow. At last word, SC7V was bound for a fall 1983 premiere on HBO's deluxe upscale cable target service, Cinemax. Perhaps it should not be surprising that the rise of electronic shadow memory comedy on television occurs as the Network System we have become accustomed to goes into decline. As NBC, CBS,ABC,PBS,and the big-city independents are joined by HBO, ESPN,ART(!),CBN,WHT,USA,CNN,and the rest yet to come in the alphabet soup of the cable converter, the forty years or so during which scores of millions of people watched the same 1V shows day in and day out are likely to be remembered as a quaint, naive period. Cable innovations will allow the demographer marketeers to decentralize structure and even to isolate and attack pockets of aesthetic resistance (the highly educated are among the early prominent target groups). But

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whatever television's future, Paul Henning, Jack Webb, Jackie Gleason, and their contemporaries will remain television's past. Evolution inevitably breeds an interest in primitive beginnings. In an article for The Critic in 1884, Whitman wrote: "That America necessitates for her poetry entirely new standards of measurement is such a point with me, that I never tire of dwelling on it."46

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*6

A SignalCastBroadly Like the national debt, the homeless population, gun ownership, and job insecurity, television grew prodigiously in the 1980s. In terms of quantity, a steadily increasing number of channels served a steadily increasing number of audiences who were putting their sets to a steadily increasing number of uses. In terms of quality, programming got simultaneously much better and much worse than it ever had been, establishing a fresh context for the mediocrity that still dominates it (and every other artistic endeavor thus far attempted). Ironically, during this period of prolific expansion in the form, function, and spectrum of television, broadcasting steadily diminished in importance. This is neither a joke nor an academic language trick, but rather an apparently invisible fact. American culture was conquered and dominated for more than five decades by common-band broadcast transmission. Two technological innovations ended that reign: closed circuit delivery systems (e.g., cable) and self-programming options (e.g., the VCR). The diminishing importance of broadcasting in American mass communication has directly paralleled profound economic restructurings and social polarizations that have reshaped society. A perplexing question crystallizes in the face of this: how can an expansion in the number of cultural options accompany a contraction of democratic values and institutions? 167

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"General interest" broadcasting, much like universal suffrage, retains inherently democratic potentials, even though the process is often manipulated toward anti-democratic ends. The spectacular feat of rhetoric, music, drama, and the other stuff of culture being "cast broadly" to a full complement of citizenry should have marked the crossing of an important threshold in the development of democracy. Structured for transdemographic address, broadcasting solicits rich and poor, egghead and illiterate, gang member and unaffiliated, theocrat and atheist, offering all parties abrupt association as members of a single audience, and adding the security of physical isolation from each other in the bargain. Before the rise of the commercial broadcasting networks in the late 1920s, only the great transnational religious networks, such as Christianity and Islam, had ever pitched a cultural tent so wide. An entire nation-state addressed by its leader as one big audience is a distilled image of the twentieth century, likely to share prominence in CD-ROM textbooks with the camps, the mushroom clouds, and the automobile. The remembered figures of the century will surely be broadcast figures, including radio characters such as Hitler, Churchill, and Roosevelt as well as 1V characters such as Cronkite, Reagan, and Oprah.' In the case of the radio stars, heads of state imitated a quainter state of technology: the passionate address to the crowd in the public space. By contrast, the 1V people have tended to function as spokespersons and interlocutors, calmly promoting the ways of life and points of view of their corporate sponsors. Mussolini did his radio work from a balcony; Pat Robertson makes eye contact from a studio chair. It is already a cliche to mention that what we have come to call The News was created in print during the nineteenth century as the telegraph allowed newspapers to gather information instantaneously from distant points without having to transport it. The character of the daily news has since that time been altered repeatedly by a sequence of adaptations to electronic media: broadcast radio, broadcast television, cable television, on-line services, and so on. Less attention, however, has been paid to what cumulative effects the resulting imago mundi might have on the imagination of history, which now can be thought of as the mega-news. We have already seen how the audio-visually documented

What Was Broadcasting?

assassination of John F. Kennedy levitated him and his presidency into an historiographical mythosphere once occupied only by the likes of Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln. By contrast, William McKinley never had a chance. The 0.]. Simpson trial is assured a place in the popular history of twentiethcentury American jurisprudence that few if any Supreme Court rulings might hope to occupy; Judge Ito has already eclipsed Oliver Wendell Holmes in recognition factor. Father Coughlin will have generated far more usable material than Pope John XXIII, and Billy Graham more than both. Who is likely to be a more dominant presence in the digital archives? Albert Einstein or Carl Sagan? Dr. Freud or Dr. Ruth? Charles Darwin or Pat Robertson? Mother Teresa already has a higher F-score than Albert Schweitzer. In the future the past will belong to the audio-visually reproducible. The giants of the arts and sciences who, for whatever reason, failed to climb the transmission towers of the twentieth century can expect to be remaindered to the specialists' bin. If the current thrust toward market-specific communication persists, then the kind of transdemographic fame achieved so cheaply in the mass broadcasting environment is less likely to occur. The ubiquity achieved in their time by Jackie Gleason, Jack Webb, or Paul Henning's sitcom characters is becoming a goal coveted primarily by national politicians who must still play by the rules of mass culture because of the legal constraints of universal suffrage, a system instituted during the same year (1920) that the first radio station went on the air.' Whereas the term "crossover" once referred to the launching of a personality or a work from a particular taste culture base to mass distribution, now the term is used more often to refer to the cross-fertilization of two or three taste cultures. Examples from the early 1990s include such coups as Tony Bennett's capture of youth market music share and the revival of cigar smoking among 18- to 34-year-old white-collar males. The Broadcast Era, a period roughly stretching from the establishment of network radio in the 1920s to the achievement of 50 percent cable penetration in the 1980s, becomes more historically distinct every time another half dozen channels are added to the cable mix. It is the culture of broadcasting that made Elvis and the Beatles possible, and it is the decline of broadcasting that

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makes such personalities less feasible all the time. In both cases the artists began their careers as demographically particular phenomena. But their wild successes in the nicheoriented record industry, part of the newly splintered culture of broadcast radio, were viewed as indications of their readiness for the massest of all cultures: pre-cable broadcast network television. They emerged from the night spots of Memphis and Hamburg to appear on The Ed Sullivan Show. In the cable environment, however, The Ed Sullivan Show is no longer possible. As its vulgar expressions of mass ness become more exotic, the Broadcast Era may become enshrined as a kind of biblical era of mass communications, a heightened past during which miracles occurred and rules were handed down to carry generations into future millennia. An archival item such as Edward R. Murrow's onsite accounts of the London blitzkrieg, broadcast over the CBS radio network, may assume etiological proportions, a prophetic foreshadowing of Peter Arnet's reports from Baghdad on CNN during the Gulf War. In terms of marketing technology, the Murrow audiotape of 1941, while technologically primitive, was produced at the critical mass of mass culture, while the Arnet videotape of 1991 functioned more as a special interest item for war fans and other parties drawn in by a knowledge of the seriousness of the situation or the involvement of relatives. M1V, HBO, The Nashville Network, and a dozen other cable channels completely ignored the war (i.e., did not carry it), inviting their viewers to do the same. "Total war" of the old 1914/1939 variety, like the mass culture that spawned it, has splintered into a collection of specialinterest conflagrations: a terrorist bombing here, an ethnic war there, a volley of retaliatory assassinations, and so on. In an age dominated by entertainment on demand, the effect of war on any given demographic tribe-whether grouped by age, income, race, religion, leisuretime pursuit, or whatever-is likely to determine the extent and character of coverage. No doubt an audience for war-war regardless of content-will identify itself. That audience may consist of such interested groups as history buffs, chauvinists, pacifists, and weapons enthusiasts. An audience in perpetual denial of such presentations is equally inevitable. It might include drug or sex addicts, certain religious zealots not concerned with the vanity of secu-

What Was Broadcasting?

lar events, and the maniacally embittered survivors of busted romances. Others, perhaps most viewers, may dutifully integrate the war into their daily viewing habits or perhaps give it some extra minutes of pause while channel-surfing. Now that broadcasting is slipping to the technological margins of a national communication system characterized by discriminate targeting, it is easy to forget that radio emerged from the laboratory as a wholesaler's market-specific product. First known as the wireless telegraph or radiotelegraph, it was primarily sold as a wholesale military-industrial tool that extended the capabilities of telegraphy to ocean-going vessels, providing revolutionary solutions to shipping problems that had been on record at least since the time of Homer. For more than two decades following Marconi's celebrated demonstration of 1896, little serious attention was given to the possibilities of broadcasting as a cultural medium. First of all, the original broadcasts consisted of aural dots and dashes and not everyone found decoding a user-friendly activity. Meanwhile, the military applications of the invention were clear enough; the U.S. Navy began lobbying for control of wireless telegraphy as early as 1905, taking note of the promise it was showing in the Russo-Japanese War. Though no previously existing entertainment company was involved in the early development of American broadcasting' some of the pioneer patents were issued to the United Fruit Company, which established a string of stations-the first radio network-for ship-to-shore broadcasting in the Caribbean basin and Eastern seaboard, the farm-to-market expanse of its tropical fruit business. The company's high-tech communication system was money well spent. Bad weather, overstocked markets, and other problems endemic to moving around hundreds of tons of bananas were directly addressed.' With the Radio Act of 1912, the U.S. government in effect claimed ownership of the airwaves, that otherwise empty space hanging over the nation and stretching up into the ionosphere or beyond. To civil libertarians and anarchists such a presumption may seem absurd, something like the claims of Virginia, Massachusetts, and other early coastal colonies to legal hegemony over every inch of the North America occupying their latitude coordinates across the continent to the Pacific. But the concept of government ownership of the air (or "ether"

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as it was then called) was accepted without much argument. While most of the general public had little idea of the implications of this concession, it appealed to both the laissez-faire capitalists and the progressive reformers who occupied the center of American political bureaucracy and debate. Big business was naturally friendly to the idea of turning something that seemed virtually intangible into a material commodity that could be measured, bought, and sold. A Marxist of the period might say that the commodification of air gave the robber barons something new to rob. But there were attractions for socialists and fellow-travelers as well. If air was a natural resource, like copper for telegraph wires or forests for newsprint, it could theoretically be regulated for the good of the commonweal. Culture could be put within the reach of the common person. Market or public trust? The Wilson Administration made its position clear when it assigned radio oversight to the Department of Commerce (Bureau of Navigation) in 1913. Any new means of communication is bound to become a means of personal expression, and even at this early juncture there were active broadcasters whose purposes were neither industrial nor civic. Approximately 8,500 licenses were issued to individuals in the U.S. between 1913 and 1917. The amateurs entertained each other with speech, music, and whatever else they could think of that might send a joyful noise hurtling out into space, and they did so with no apparent means of making money in return. Quite to the contrary, there was an irretrievable ante to be paid by the independent licensees. Broadcasting emerged as a techno-hobby, a late-nightand-weekend pastime for upscale hardware owners, much like current-day Internet surfing. Comparing the geographical range of backyard transmission equipment became a tinkerer's sport known as DXing. In the spirit of competition, Maine and Texas found something to say to each other. Isolationists, Anglophiles, and supporters of the Kaiser made their points in the original cyber chat-room. It was even reported that the early patent-holder Dr. Lee DeForest courted his wife by installing a receiver in her home and airing his professions of love from a rooftop transmitter.' However, before World War I, entertainment broadcasting was an activity to spend money on, not to make money from.

What Was Broadcasting?

As always, some were quicker than others to see the possibilities of turning a buck. In a 1916 memorandum filed to his boss at the American Marconi Company (later RCA), David Sarnoff proposed that the wireless telegraph be made into a "household utility in the same sense as the piano or phonograph." 5 Calling this adaptation of broadcasting to the domestic market a "Radio Music Box," he proposed that it "be placed on a table in the parlor or living room." Sarnoff was moved to speculate on further applications of the technology: 173

The same principle can be extended to numerous other fields as, for example, receiving of lectures at home which can be made perfectly audible; also events of national importance can be simultaneously received and announced." Advertising, it must be noted, played no role in Sarnoff's diversification scheme. The economic purpose of the Radio Music Box was to turn a specialized wholesaling operation into a vast retail supermarket by creating an incentive for every consumer to buy a set. American Marconi would then meet the newly created demand by assembly-line techniques. What Henry Ford's Model T had done for personal transportation, Sarnoff's Music box would do for culture and communication: create a mass market." The selling of commercial time had no recognized advocates in the radio industry at this time. The revolutionary pivot that would put advertising executives and tradespeople in positions of direct authority over the form and content of drama, music, and other primary cultural activities for the balance of the twentieth century was too distasteful for Victorian sensibilities to support, if not too bizarre to grasp. Sarnoff's idea was to offer the music service gratis, to pull the consumer in off the street to buy a radio; he had reimagined culture as a loss leader for the sale of a home appliance. The Music Box Memo was not treated seriously by management when it was filed, and even if it had been, no immediate action could have been taken on it. Only months later, the U.S. formally entered World War I, and President Woodrow Wilson, by executive order, had all broadcasting equipment impounded, sealed, and placed under the direct control of the Department of the Navy. By contrast, not a single printing press was put under lock and key, ink being explicitly protected by

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a Constitutional Amendment-and the very first one at that. More significantly, not a single piece of film equipment was seized, even though the movies, like radio, did not enjoy specifically protected status. This refusal to extend free speech to broadcasting set an unblushing precedent for government control of radio (and eventually of television). It was the right of every American to make a speech in a public square; reading that same speech into a radio microphone could bring federal retribution. After the Armistice, Wilson unlocked the box. The Navy had hoped to retain its management of the federal government's new air supply, but the Harding Administration kicked radio back to the Commerce Department, which was headed by Herbert Hoover. Had the Navy successfully made its case that radio constituted a primarily military-industrial strategic asset, broadcasting might have remained the exclusive domain of admirals, manufacturing CEOs, and backyard inventors. Commercial entertainment broadcasting could have been delayed for years. Instead it moved hastily along. Westinghouse jumped in first with KDKA, constructing the station's studio in a canvas tent on the roof of its Pittsburgh headquarters. Other startingline players included General Electric (WGY, Schenectady), AT&T (WEAF, New York) and RCA (WJR, New York). Its prewar reluctance notwithstanding, when RCA did move into home entertainment, it did so in a big way; it dominated the business until the 1970s.8 In 1927 the company trumped its competitors by establishing two coast-to-coast network services that would eventually be capable of delivering entertainment programming to every corner of the nation. The original forms of radio broadcasting-ship-to-shore and backyard-continued to grow. Most countries soon compelled flag vessels to carry full interactive radio capabilitiestransmitters, receivers and licensed personnel who could operate them. Amateur broadcasting meanwhile was recognized as a bonafide hobby and a small set-aside was made on the radio spectrum for "hams." A few philanthropic and educational institutions took to the air as well. But the growth area of broadcasting as an industry, art, and technology shifted decisively to the commercial distribution of mass communication. Broadcasting took on the task of developing a mass

What Was Broadcasting?

culture, an appropriate software for the functional capabilities of its hardware. With manufacturers offering free software to any and all consumers, personal radios sold like hotcakes during the 1920s. The NAB estimates that 60,000 American households had radios in 1922; by 1929, the number topped ten million." Owen D. Young, the president of RCA,characterized the popularity of mass entertainment broadcasting as the "surprise party" of the radio industry.'? Young had imagined a different future for the medium, personally lobbying Washington for a federal charter that would grant his company a full monopoly on radio transmission for reasons of national security." It is no stretch to find in all this a kind of recapitulation of the genesis of the American film industry: the country club blue-blood had underestimated the appetite of the unwashed masses for culture, while the immigrant child from the Lower East Side of Manhattan (quite arguably America's unwashed masses capital) knew from firsthand experience that such an appetite could not be overestimated. The "surprise party" would be fun while it lasted, but market saturation was of course inevitable. The long-term challenge to the emerging mass broadcasting industry was this: once a radio in the parlor was as common as a chicken in every pot, how could a buck be made off the thing? Various plans were proposed. Sarnoff, never at a creative loss, advocated a system based on the model being developed in Britain, where set owners paid license fees which were turned over directly to a state enterprise, the British Broadcasting Company. Sarnoff's special twist for the American version, however, would be that the license fees would be turned over to a private sector corporation-his. In essence, the tax-collecting powers of the federal government would be put at the disposal of RCA.The scheme was a show biz variation on Owen Young's national security concept." While Sarnoff lobbied his plan, however, AT&T,which already had its share of highly-evolved relationships with the federal government, was putting in a creative claim of its own. Radio, Ma Bell pointed out, was part of its "natural monopoly." Broadcasting? Merely a form of telephone service that did not use wires. But, anticipating resistance to this imaginative interpretation of the new technological environment, the telephone

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company hedged its bets. As early as 1922, AT&T's New York station began exploring the possibilities of "toll broadcasting," or charging fees in return for airing commercial messages. Among its first customers were a co-op apartment house development in Queens and American Express." Eventually the telephone company was persuaded to get out of the software end of the broadcasting business in return for a "natural monopoly" on connecting the stations to the networks. Radio advertising, which in effect appointed retail salespeople as gatekeepers to the most potent communication system in the culture, did not appeal to everyone. In fact, it was almost as distasteful to traditionalist conservatives as it was to Marxists. Eugene V. Debs and Secretary of Commerce Hoover, to name one unlikely pair, could be counted among its opponents. Debs and others on the Left of course saw the privatized airwaves as another public asset stolen from The People by The Capitalists. This is easy enough to grasp. Rightwing opposition to radio advertising might be a bit more difficult to fathom in the neo-conservative 1990s. However, to Old Right conservatives the very idea that the purveyors of toothpaste, floorwax, automobiles, and the like-tradespeople-should have any say at all in the nation's cultural programming was nothing less than abhorrent and far too revolutionary to be counted as conservative thinking. Herbert Hoover's support of the free market would become the stuff of legend during the Great Depression. But his faith in laissez-faire economics did not extend to the arts. The regulation of culture was best left to academics and clerics. Hoover went so far as to tell the Radio Conference of 1922 that he found it "inconceivable that we should allow so great a possibility for service and for news and for entertainment and education ... to be drowned in advertising chatter." Seventyfive years later, acceptance of the direct hegemony of trade over culture is the fundamental distinction separating Neocons from Traditionalists. In Britain, where class prerogative allowed traditional cultural gatekeepers greater entree into the corridors of power, the BBC had been created precisely to avoid such a disaster for English culture (and theoretically for Scottish and Welsh culture as well). In the United States, a far less secure intellectual

What Was Broadcasting?

class made little noise on the subject. A look at scholarly reaction reveals that radio figured more prominently in the imaginations of physicists during the 1920s than in that of rhetoricians or critics. This failure of American intellectuals to take an early activist interest in the aesthetic formulation and cultural impact of radio broadcasting would be repeated thirty years later with television. Gilbert Seldes was a notable exception to the general neglect of responsibility. He recognized radio drama as a form of national theater almost as soon as network broadcasting began. When TV arrived, Seldes would find himself at the forefront, alone, once again. As early as 1937 he published a piece in the Atlantic Monthly under the sci-fi title, "The 'Errors' of Television." 15

The Closingof the AmericanCircuit The period during which broadcasting thoroughly dominated mass communications and culture in the United States lasted for approximately sixty years. Historians usually divided it into its two most apparent components: radio (c. 1925-55) and television (c. 1955-85).16 The rises, descents, and plateaus of the two broadcasting media have many parallels: • Each technology was the product of private-sector corporate competition that was accelerated by war-time government research-and-development money. • Each was retailed to the public as a free home entertainment system whose transmission and production costs would be borne by advertisers, leaving only the cost of the receiver to be paid directly by the user. • Each saturated the entire nation, region by region and household by household, with centrally controlled, rigidly proscribed programming genres, rhetorical idioms, and content boundaries. • Each established itself as a primary venue of American culture in an astonishingly short time. • Each was displaced from its preeminent position by its own technological offspring. • Each survived its brief golden age by reconditioning its pro-

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gramming to supplement, complement, and otherwise accommodate the new medium that was eclipsing it.

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In short, broadcast television forced broadcast radio to define a subordinate role for itself in a new communication environment; thirty years later cable television forced broadcast television to do the same. Broadcast TV then can be seen as a transitional bridge between the primitive system of audio-only broadcasting and the currently expanding spectral frontiers of closed circuit and self-programmable video. As such, broadcast television shares conjunctive and disjunctive relationships with both. Perhaps the generational progression of the three communication technologies has provoked so little critical comment because of the almost obsessive focus of writers on the traumatic cleavage that subordinated print to audiovisual media in all areas of American life (except formal education) over the course of the twentieth century. It is perhaps only natural that writers have been more sensitive to the marginalization of literacy than to the particulars of how it was accomplished. Marshall McLuhan was an exception to this rule. Writing at the chronological and spiritual heart of the Broadcast Era, he offered himself as an unabashed eyewitness to the technological amendments to Western epistemology that were deemphasizing the functions of print in day-to-day life. One of the very few intellectuals not suffering chronic denial over the crucial ebb of literacy during the 1950s and '60s, he was well prepared to watch the new electronic culture sheperd its audience from radio-centered to television-centered lives. Despite the space-age mythology that grew up around him, McLuhan was essentially a literary person, a conservative of the old school who found electronic popular culture "monstrous and sickening," personally preferring the rarefied ink of Joyce, Eliot, or Hopkins. 17 But as a traditionalist, his interest in media effects was shaped by a strong concern for the future of language in general and English in particular. Whereas his critical contemporaries (Dwight Macdonald, T. W. Adorno, et al.) harped on "mass culture" and focused almost exclusively on the cultural dislocations caused by the shift away from print, McLuhan was at least as interested in finding the continuities that bind media as he was in their disjunctive relationships. A

What Was Broadcasting?

Cambridge Ph.D. in English led him to a vision of 1V as an elliptical return to the "normal" focus of human perceptionwhich was audio-visual-after some three odd centuries of abstract literacy. Fond of publicly testing ideas-in-progress, McLuhan rarely took the trouble to distinguish the local and ephemeral from the universal and eternal in his "probes," as he called them. For example, he linked radio and television as two "acoustic" (or sound-dominated) media. Despite the addition of visual image, McLuhan found watching 1V an essentially aural experience." This observation, however, may have been more topical than structurally intrinsic. McLuhan was, after all, a member of the cusp generation of 1V watchers, and most early television was conceived and produced by (former) radio artists to attract (former) radio listeners. McLuhan himself often pointed out that the first content of any new medium is a previous medium. Of more enduring interest is the distinction McLuhan found separating the two forms of broadcasting: There is a basic principle that distinguishes a hot medium like radio from a cool one . . . like 1V. Hot media are . . . low in participation, and cool media are high in participation or completion by the audience 19 Radio, as a hot medium, forces the listener to imagine the source of communication (i.e., to create a visual image). Among people who can both hear and see, ear data naturally stimulate a need for eye data, a sensory cueing sequence not difficult to trace to survival needs in the woods or the city. One hears a new sound; one looks to see what it is. This, in McLuhan's view, is not full involvement with the image, but rather a distraction from the sounds the listener is actually hearing. By imagining the missing visual component, the listener abandons the real sounds coming from the radio (or "the sound image") to embark on an instinctual search for sense, order, security, or whatever your religious inclination demands you call it. This turns radio images (words, music, tone, volume, inflection, signal quality, and so on) into mere cues for the construction of personally imagined faces, bodies, movements, settings, sound-making implements, and so on. The lis-

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tener is not participating in radio; radio is participating in the listener, stimulating idiosyncratic memories and reconstructions. The listener is in truth abandoning the authentic sound coming out of the radio. Radio does not embrace (or "involve"); it propels. To use radio, the listener must create a kind of cyber-image on an internal screen (or what in quainter times was called the imagination). This description of the mechanics of human perception may help account for such otherwise bizarre phenomena as the popularity of ventriloquism and dancing on network radio during the 1930s and '40s. A full range of sensory involvement with radio is impossible because of its demand for an internally-generated cerebral picture that rationally satisfies the externally-generated sound. This need for focused mental activity at the expense of full sensory involvement (only the ear counts) makes listening somewhat like reading, which also uses only one sense to collect data (the eye) and makes even greater demands for imaginative thought because both sound and picture must be internally generated from the suggestions of ink. Degree of intellectual activity tends to be a measure of status in Western civilization, putting reading at the top of the list. It also explains the relatively high status of radio among TV-age intellectuals (a status it did not generally enjoy during the radio age). "The arts without intellectual context," wrote T. S. Eliot as radio was moving over for televison, "are vanity." 20 Since only aural cues are available from the radio, the sensorum (as McLuhan called the full range of sensory capacity) contracts from its multiple capabilities to concentrated focus on the ear. The internal energy expended on forcing rational context on physical sensation-the working imagination processing the data provided by a single sense-generates the "heat." This correlates well with the nostalgic folk wisdom that scolds TV with the axiom, "You still need an imagination to enjoy a radio drama." TV, a "cool" medium, delivers images whole. This leads to greater sensory (as opposed to rational) participation. Video communication requires little or no active contribution from the viewer's cerebral capacities to satisfy the need for primary meaning. Offered no direct challenge or role in immediate comprehension, the conscious mind is invited by television to

What Was Broadcasting?

give itself freely to the image and to seek the unimpeded savor of visceral response. Man Thinking, to borrow an image from Emerson, yields to Viewer Kicking Back. Furthermore, reassured by both aural and visual satisfaction, other sensory capacities are free to playfully simulate visceral involvement with the televisual image. McLuhan was especially keen on TV's extraordinary effect on involving the viewer's tactile sense. The meteoric rise of television as a primary medium of pornography almost immediately following the introduction of the VCR seems to bear him out. The relaxation of abstract cerebral activity allowed by televiewing is further augmented by the cool setting it typically allows. Pornographic cinema has pretty much been put out of business by home video. While the sleaziness of the dark public space was no doubt an attraction for some, millions more were impeded from enjoying audio-visually stimulated masturbation by those conditions. Film is simply too hot a medium for this purpose; full participation in the image is blocked by threatening social and even legal concerns. The VCR turned the trenchcoat into an antique symbol overnight. But pornography is merely one example of the many tactile options afforded by television. The medium is commonly used to achieve numbness or even narcosis in hospitals, airports, and geriatric institutions. Some years after McLuhan's death the personal computer screen added the tactile pleasures of hand-eye coordination afforded by the joystick and the mouse button. By requiring so little collaborative imaginative energy to convey meaning, TV is extremely, perhaps overwhelmingly, user friendly. The need for control (ego) is ameliorated in favor of the pleasure of automatic response (id), The high degree of low effort participation allowed by TV viewing is its "coolness."

Ed SullivanIsNo LongerPossible In contrast to the perceptual gulf McLuhan found separating televiewing from radio-listening, the two have a fundamental ideological similarity when specifically used as broadcast media, a bond that has been revealed in the context of closedcircuit prevalence. Broadcasting by its nature is an evangelical

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activity, whether it is used to preach the gospel of consumerism (commercial TV) or the gospel of ethical culture (PBS). A broadcast typically invites everyone who can receive its messages to sympathize, empathize, learn the creed, buy the products, and join the fold. In contrast to broadcasting's intrinsic catholicism, narrowcasting is structurally biased toward sectarianism. It balkanizes the massive inclusionary twentieth-century public created by broadcasting into exclusionary tribes, castes, sects, interests, and "lifestyles." Narrowcasting is more suitable for preaching to the converted than for the kind of street-corner appeal apropos to over-the-air transmission. A quintessentially Modern system, broadcasting presents the democracy of indiscrimination. It makes a standing offer to all. In the wired world, however, such cultural broadside seems clumsy, corrupt, naive, and vulgar (in no particular order). Narrowcasters eschew the commercial carpet bombing of broadcasting strategy in favor of surgical demographic strikes. Viewers are sorted and flattered with various suggestions of inside respect for their special identities of age, sex, race, leisure pursuit, and so on. Ironically, narrowcasting turns even religious evangelism, one of its founding interests, into sectarian cheerleading. Who watches the religious cable networks in the first place? Agnostics? Atheists? Skeptics? Unitarians? Viewers carrying such profiles have likely erased the Family Channel, the Trinity Broadcasting Network, and other religious services from their sequential tuning memories (those of them, that is, who can follow the operating manual). It is unlikely that the severe social dislocations and polarizations that have taken place in American society since the end of the Broadcast Era are merely coincidental to this carving up of the nation-as-audience into a nation-of-audiences. Whether cable TV is cause, effect or both in the deterioration of public life that has accompanied it is by no means clear. But the subject seems ripe for probing. A germinating example of this historical congruence can be found in the climax of the anti-segregation civil rights struggle and the rise of various forms of neo-separatism that ensued. This movement from an ideal of public citizenship to an ideal of consanguine solidarity occurred during roughly the same window of time that includes the climax of the Broadcast

What Was Broadcasting?

Era and the ensuing ascendancy of cable TV.Many integrationists who had given their energy to grand inclusionary causes such as breaking Jim Crow, insuring universal suffrage, and establishing citizenship-based rather than race-based education systems were shocked by the abrupt tide of the new separatism. The academics among them especially went into a state of active denial, re-imagining this backlash against integration as a progressive innovation: cultural pluralism. CP, it was contended, would stimulate pride and self-confidence in minorities and at the same time educate myopic majorities. Some theoreticians held that CP might bring about a re-lateralization of cultural exchange between racial and ethnic groups as a remedy to the top-down verticalism of commercial mass cultural programming. 21 In practice, however, the new focus on the cultivation of micro-identities came at the direct expense of more inclusionary identities, such as polis, nation, and civilization. The absolutely inclusionary identity-humanity-was particularly hard hit. The spectacle caused by isolation from macro-identity has been mostly bizarre and atrocious: anti-abortion "pro-lifers" murdering doctors; anti-racists establishing segregated lunch tables in university cafeterias; anti-vivisectionists valuing life too much to consider the interests of the sick; the administering of racial quotas by advocates of fairness. Far from empowering the citizenry, cultural pluralism has deprived society of citizens. CP has proved its greatest effectiveness as an instrument of social control, perhaps the definitive framework for maintaining the status quo in an information-based, consumptionoriented society. Cultural pluralism turned out to be a Postmodern performance of a reliable old technique: divide and conquer. The SOO-channel prophecy promises more of the same. In terms of aesthetic quality, the Broadcast era of the mid-twentieth century presented the same problems, writ mass, that have plagued democratically minded art fans since the eighteenth century revolutions in America and France. Tocqueville observed that as the total number of consumers of any product Cart included) increases, the percentage of what he called "fastidious consumers" decreases." To increase the

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total number of consumers is the logical, not to say structural goal for a technology designed, quite literally, to "cast a signal broadly." When broadcasting is successful on its own terms, a decline in the influence of the fastidious can be taken for granted. There is of course evidence from the Broadcast Era that contradicts this point - I have tried to include some of it in this book-but the paucity tends to prove the rule. Broadcasting in the United States developed as the most unadulterated form of mass culture in history. Such purity is not likely to be seen again. By the late 1920s the broadcasting industry had defined its cash product as sheer human tonnage; the goods were delivered to the customer in bales and bushels for more than half a century. Any aesthetic quality that programming might manifest-whether judged high, low, or otherwise-could be considered no more than a byproduct of the transaction. When the demand for quantity did happen to yield Hi-Q (let's say, Edward R. Murrow, Playhouse 90, The Honeymooners, Green Acres, or Hill Street Blues), that was a cause for celebration and self-congratulation: a shining case for freemarket capitalism's compatibility with a fine democratic culture. Here, ladies and gentlemen, was Madison Avenue making real the visions of Walt Whitman. When the system yielded something less, which it did prolifically, well, tough shit. If there is a particular quality among audiences that the masters of the Broadcast Era grew to value and cultivate, it was "non-fastidiousness" precisely in Tocqueville's sense. The best audience for broadcasting emerged as an audience with as little discriminatory capability as possible in matters of taste (the programs) and rhetoric (the commercials). Sarnoff's hedge against the total mass culture of broadcasting, the Blue Network, proved unnecessary. Maestro Toscanini retired and the NBC Symphony Orchestra was disbanded. Divested of "high culture," the Blue Network became ABC. This ordering of priorities gave rise to an institutionalized focus in broadcasting on the production of programs that could attract enormous audiences in which "fastidious" consumers shrank to statistical insignificance. If a network televison program in 1961 alienated a couple of million people with the banality of its dialogue, the moral obtuseness of its plot or the decibel level of its laughtrack, what did it matter? The three-network oligarchy split the difference and the "rejec-

What Was Broadcasting?

tion" hardly showed up in the numbers. If and when an egghead was captured by 1V's coolness (and let's face it, sooner or later most were), he or she didn't have many places to go on the dial. PBS was established in the late 1960s as a holding pen for such viewers. Sarnoff, Paley, and other leading commercial broadcasters were enthusiastic contributors to public television. Why not let the taxpayers pick up the obligations of commerciallicensees? Under the new conditions of narrowcasting, however, there is no such thing as a marginal audience for commercial television. Now that they are prepared to make a profit from its audience, commercial interests are anxious to privatize PBS and get government off their backs. The appreciation of originality and complexity had always been the province of the few, and remained so despite the theoretical opportunities for change offered by broadcasting. Simplicity was ever the watchword in both drama and news: good was better than evil; beauty more attractive than ugliness; safety more desirable than danger. The more vulnerable the audience to oversimplified, outrageous, absurd, or nonsequitorial claims about the general uses and specific attributes of salable products-the better. The hunger for fictional, non-fictional, and purposely confused narratives that would present life as some kind of comprehensible or less frightening experience was not new. Vertically organized religions and oral folklore traditions had addressed themselves to satisfying it for millennia. Since the Enlightenment, a canonical secular culture had emerged among the reading middle classes that served much the same purpose. But broadcasting brought with it a commercial incursion into domestic space that was unprecedented. The parlor magazine rack, a nineteenth-century invention, had established a beachhead for advertising in the household. But broadcasting began an onslaught that finished the home as a viable refuge from commerce. The incursion of advertising into the home begun by the newspaper and magazine was turned into a full-scale invasion by radio. By the time visual image, color, stereo, remote control, big screen, cable, VCR, and online computer services had been added, the very clothing on people's backs had become flourishing advertising media. Broadcasting was instrumental in creating this revolution.

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It shifted the primary concern of American society from productivity to consumption. All this may have been good for business, but partisans of the arts found it bad for culture. The bad dream of the Old Right had come true; the tradespeople were indeed in charge. As for the Left, it proved a fatal nightmare; the consciousness of the People had become the product of a privately-owned factory. The objections that were raised to such a system were mostly set in print and therefore not well known. When complaints were made by a T. S. Eliot or a Norman Thomas it was easy to dismiss them as the subjective judgments of antidemocratic snobs and social engineers who can't or won't get the jokes. With full TV saturation in reach by the end of the 1950s, the broadcasting industry was only too glad to cultivate images of its opponents as snobs, eggheads, and patronizing dogooders. In 1957, for example, this editorial pronouncement was made by Television Age, a trade publication: Television is a mass medium-a medium for the masses, not for that minority of superior gentry with spherical crania who dwell in ivory towers of pseudo-intellectualism and drool over Strindberg." Leading industry executives, mostly graduates of exclusive and expensive colleges, did what they could to equate criticism of the quality of TV shows with attacks on democracy. Robert Sarnoff, working in Dad's shop, dismissed the naysayers as "dilettantes" enamored of "phony social philosophy in plays about beatniks and characters full of self-pity." 24 Dr. Frank Stanton of CBS went so far as to tell the FCC that for broadcasters to recognize criteria other than ratings in their programming decisions would be tantamount to "turn(ing) our back on democracy." An affiliate station owner was quoted in Variety as complaining of high-brow "autocrats who would set up a cultural tyranny." 25 This model of thinking has outlived the Broadcast Era to become a template through which the "natural" order of an information society emerges. The old differentiation of "high culture" and "popular culture" is rephrased as a distinction, between "culture" and "entertainment." In matters of entertain-

What Was Broadcasting?

ment, business is perceived as serving the public, while the arts-and-education establishment is seen as teasing the public about culture. (Non-establishment artists and educators are seen as just plain nuts.) As a result, opposition to television is opposition to the free market and, by easy extension, opposition to freedom itself. It may seem ironic that at the same time most people readily admit that "TV is bad for you." But examples of this kind of contradiction are everywhere: alcohol, tobacco, firearms, and so on. Invoking the Frankfurt School or the Cambridge AngloCatholics in discussions of contemporary culture (i.e., TV) is like expecting baseball players on Old-Timers' Day to perform as they did during the careers that got them invited." The Traditionalist Right worships individualism and promotes conformity. The Left (Old, New, or Middle-aged) promotes unpopular stances in the name of popular will. An understanding of this futility of superimposing print-based Left-Right arguments on contemporary media analysis is the foundation of what has become neo-conservatism. Neocons relate to television and entertainment much as old-fashioned conservatives related to religion. The movement has its true-believers and its cynics; the former accept the spiritual legitimacy of consumerism, the latter are willing to tolerate and even cultivate a measure of bread and a surfeit of circuses for the sake of preserving generalorder. The economic viability of television is more easily proven than are the medium's capacities for cultural attainment. The businessfolk can prove their point with charts and graphsdocuments that carry the force, if not exactly the mantle, of reason and even science. As for the artfolk, a paralyzing addiction to moral relativism hasn't helped make a case for aesthetic worth as the rightful concern of a democratic society. The primary justification for the arts in public life had been defined: investment opportunity. Those who believe it is something more or other than that must be prepared to answer some questions. What do you have in mind? The advance of the human spirit? The improvement of the soul? The betterment of humankind? These concepts have been reduced by relativism to the status of voodoo. People with faith in that kind of stuff might have better luck calling the Psychic Friends Network. The balance of anarchy

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and order-always the meat-and-potatoes issue in getting through the day-depends on reason negotiated from material objectives, not from the pleasure of a vision. Walt Whitman could not see a difference between the two; today hardly anyone suspects similarities. Narrowcasting, though also principally aimed at the selling of things, avoids many of the "hyper-democratic" by-products that broadcasting inevitably yields in its commitment to maximum distribution. The broadcaster makes a pitch to an entire nation, people, or culture. To the narrowcaster, this kind of sheer quantity is occasionally a virtue but rarely a paramount goal. The narrowcaster seeks not all, but a rightly constituted group: a subculture, a segregated element, a gang, or an affinity center of some sort which contains its own variations on right and wrong, which has its own interests to pursue and to protect and its own acknowledgment that its principle of organization is a fundamental asset. The definitive footage of America's Broadcast Era is a montage of extraordinary moments of national galvanization: a JFK press conference; The Ed Sullivan Show; homeboy walks on the moon; Roots; Nixon resigning; thousands of shticks, gestures, and logos familiar across the neighborhood lines of the transdemographic village. Broadcasting was a national theater for a nation that emphatically refused to have one. This kind of thing can still be attempted in the narrowcasting environment, but only on well promoted special occasions: the final episode of Cheers; the Gulf War; certain championship sporting events." For any single event, channels that do not carry will always outnumber channels that do carry. Is the civil defense system prepared for these new conditions? A Martian is addressing the UN General Assembly. All the channels in the basic cable package that bother with news coverage (maybe ten of the fifty) are carrying it live. But just in case I'm not in the mood, I can exercise my freedom to change the channel. HBO's got Close Encounters. The Comedy Channel is showing clips of stand-up routines about aliens. On The 700 Club, Pat Robertson is revealing the prediction of the alien's visit in scripture. Beavis and Butthead invite the space dude home and make fun of dated videos such as "Major Tom" and "Rocket Man." USA is sticking with professional wrestling, though a Martian contender may soon challenge the champ.

What Was Broadcasting?

Bravo is taking no note of the event. Top management at the Sci-Fi Channel debates whether this thing will be good for business or destroy the company. Highlights of the Martian's speech are bound to replay for days on Headline News. C-SPANwill surely rerun the whole thing. Each tribe beats its own drums to spread the news. The Broadcast Era is kaput.

Appendix: Broadcast Network Prime Time Viewing Suggestions 1984-96 The Simpsons (Fox, 1989-present) brings the white noise of consumption-centered life to thundering crescendos. Law and Order (NBC, 1990-present)

is so well-written that following daily reruns may improve attention span.

NYPD Blue (ABC, 1992-present) offers better acting and writing than most live theater, and it's a lot cheaper.

There are surely other series from this period that will be worth watching in the future for all kinds of reasons, but these share the virtue of being humane.

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Notes

Introduction to the Revised Edition

1. Actually, RCAlaunched two national networks in 1927 through its National Broadcasting Company subsidiary: the Red Network (known to the public as simply "NBC") and the Blue Network. The Blue Network was divested in 1943 as a result of an anti-trust suit. It became the American Broadcasting Company. The two radio networks that competed with NBC in the interim were CBS (c. 1928) and the Mutual Broadcasting System (c. 1934). 2. To a remarkable extent David Sarnoff (NBC) and William Paley (CBS) personally procured and defended the closed television market. ABC, a relatively younger and less powerful company, was forced, early on, to make an accommodation with Hollywood, merging with United Paramount Theaters in 1955 (after that division was divested under legal mandate by Paramount Pictures). Leonard Goldensen, a former movie executive, became CEO at ABC and forged production deals with Warner Bros. and Disney. These more than likely saved ABC from the fate of Dumont. 3. Christopher H. Sterling and John M. Kittross, Stay Tuned: A Concise History of American Broadcasting, 2nd ed. (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1990), p. 636. 4. J.Fred MacDonald, One Nation Under Television: TheRise and Decline of Network 7V(New York: Pantheon, 1990).

Preface to 1984 Edition

1. William Carlos Williams, In the American Grain (1933; rpt., New York: New Directions, 1956), p. 75. 2. John Fiske and John Hartley, Reading Television (London: Methuen, 1978), p. 14.

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3. Stan Wilk, "Coming of Age in Sonora," American Antropologist79, no. 1 (1977): 84. 4. See Michael R. Real, "Cultural Studies and Mediated Culture,"

Journal of Popular Culture 9, no. 2 (1975): 81-85. 5. See Malcolm Cowley, ed., Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass": The First (1855) Edition (New York: Penguin Books, 1976), including

l 92

Cowley's introduction. 6. Robert Sklar, Movie-made America: A Cultural History (New . York: Vintage Books, 1975), p. 86. 7. Tylor defined "culture" as "that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, custom, art, law, morals, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society";

Primitive Culture: Researches into the Development of Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Art, and Custom (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1877), 1: 1.

Chapter 1: Beginning to Begin Again

1. As cited by Christopher H. Sterling and John M. Kinross, Stay Tuned: A Concise History of American Broadcasting (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1978), p. 372. Minow coined the phrase in this passage: "I invite you to sit down in front of your television set when your station goes on the air and stay there without a book, newspaper, profit -and-loss sheet or rating book to distract you-and keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you will observe a vast wasteland." 2. Nielsen Report on Television, 1981 (New York: A. C. Nielsen Company, 1981), pp. 3,6. 3. Hans Magnus Enzensberger, The Consciousness Industry (New York: Seabury Press, 1974), p. 9. 4. Edward Shils, "Daydreams and Nightmares: Reflections on the Criticism of Mass Culture," Sewanee Review 65 (1957): 568-69. 5. James M. Cain, The Postman Alioays Rings Tioice (1934; rpt., New York: Vintage Books, 1978), p. 96. 6. "A mass medium can only achieve its great audience by practicing ... cultural democracy ... by giving a majority of the people what they want"; Dr. Frank Stanton, the president of CBS, as cited by Gilbert Seldes, The Neui Mass Media: Challenge to a Free Society (Washington, D.C.: Public Affairs Press, 1968), p. 17. 7. Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," in Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt (New York: Schocken Books, 1969), p. 218. 8. In Skyscraper Primitives (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan lJniversity Press, 1975), Dickran Tashjian writes, "While Waldo Frank's despair that America is Dada may have been exaggerated, the chaos of Dada illumines America's essential conflict with tradition and may even lend intelligihility, if not significance, to our contemporary chaos

Notes

in the arts." See also Waldo Frank, "Seriousness and Dada," 1924 3 (1924). 9. See Marshall McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1962), esp. pp.255-63. 10. Sterling and Kittross, Stay Tuned, p. 147. 11. Robert Warshow, The Immediate Experience (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1962), p. 128. 12. Dwight Macdonald, "A Theory of Mass Culture," Diogenes, no. 3 (1953), pp. 1-17; reprinted in Mass Culture: The Popular Arts in America, ed. Bernard Rosenberg and David Manning White (New York: Free Press, 1957), pp. 59-73. 13. Roland Barthes, Mythologies, trans. Annette Lavers (New York: Hill and Wang, 1972), p. 17. 14. Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh, The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network TV Shows, 1946-Present, rev. ed. (New York: Ballantine Books, 1981); see "Prime Time Schedules." 15. Barthes, Mythologies, p. 15. 16. David Chagall, "Reading the Viewer's Mind," TV GUide, 7 Nov. 1981, p. 48. 17. Barthes comments on this subject: "The public knows very well the distinction between wrestling and boxing; it knows that boxing is a Jansenist sport, based on a demonstration of excellence .... A boxing-match is a story which is constructed before the eyes of the spectator; in wrestling on the contrary, it is each moment which is intelligible, not the passage of time. The logical conclusion of the contest does not interest the wrestling-fan, while on the contrary a boxing-match always implies a science of the future"; Mythologies, pp.15-16. 18. Jack Gladden, "Archie Bunker Meets Mr. Spoopendyke: Nineteenth Century Prototypes for Domestic Situation Comedy," Journal of Popular Culture 10, no. 1 (1976): 167-80. 19. A notable exception to this is the silent "Mr. and Mrs. Jones" series made by D. W. Griffith for Biograph in 1908-9. Robert Sklar describes these films as "situation comedies" in Movie-made America, p.106. 20. Groups 4 and 5 are sometimes constituted as "35-49" and "49 +"; in recent years, "35-55" and "55 +" have been increasingly in use. 21. Daniel Czitrom, Media and the American Mind: From Morse to McLuhan (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982), p.190. 22. See Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (Princeton, N.].: Princeton University Press, 1957). 23. Dorothy Rabinowitz, "Watching the Sitcoms," in Television: The Critical Vieu: ed. Horace Newcomb (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), p. 55. 24. Roger Rosenblatt, "Growing Up on Television," in Newcomb, Teleuision, p. 351.

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25. In 1961 Saudi Arabian State Television refused to show 1 Love Lucy on the grounds that Lucy dominated her husband. This misinterpretation of the text was later revised, and 1 Love Lucy was shown on Saudi Arabian TV in the seventies. See Bart Andrews, Lucy and Ricky and Fred and Ethel: The Story of "1 Love Lucy" (New York: Fawcett Popular Library, 1977), p. 13. 26. For a review of the changes in the image of the American woman signaled by the popularity of The Mary TylerMoore Sbou: see Carol Traynor Williams, "It's Not So Much 'You've Come a Long Way, Baby'-As 'You're Gonna Make It after All,'" in Newcomb, Television, pp.64-73. 27. R. P. Blackmur, "A Burden for Critics," in Lectures in Criticism, ed. Elliot Coleman (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1949), p.189. 28. Ibid., p. 188. 29. Walt Whitman, Democratic Vistas (1871; rpt., London: Walter Scott, 1888), p. 83. 30. Ibid., p. 5. 31. Allen Ginsberg, "Howl," HouJI and Other Poems (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1956), p. 11. 32. Barthes, Mythologies, p. 15. 33. Alex McNeil, Total Television: A Comprehensive Guide to Programming from 1948 to 1980 (New York: Penguin Books, 1980), p.112. 34. Ibid. 35. "Ratings," in TV Guide Almanac, ed. Craig T. Norback and Peter Norback (New York: Ballantine Books, 1980), p. 546. 36. Ibid., pp. 547-48. 37. I am including neither The Ed Sullivan Show, which was a "straight variety" show, nor TheJack Benny Program, which was an eccentric self-reflexive sitcom, in the comedy-variety category. 38. Seldes, New Mass Media, p. 143. 39. Ibid. 40. Brooks and Marsh, Complete Directory, p. 496. 41. Ibid. 42. Sterling and Kittross, Stay Tuned, pp. 528-29. 43. Brooks and Marsh, Complete Directory, pp. 692-93. 44. McNeil, Total Television, p. 647. 45. Ibid., p. 502. 46. Cheryl Bernstein, "Performance as News: Notes on an Intermedia Guerrilla Group," in Performance in Postmodern Culture, ed. Michel Benamou and Charles Caramello (Madison, Wise.: Coda Press, 1977), p. 79. 47. The Random House College Dictionary, 1975 ed., p. 441. 48. Gunther Anders, "The Phantom World of TV," in Rosenberg and White, Mass Culture, p. 365. 49. Whitman, Democratic Vistas, p. 33. 50. Nielsen Report, 1981, p. 7. 51. A concise description of Klein's "LOP Theory" is given by Les

Notes

Brown, The New York Times Encyclopedia of Television (New York: Times Books/Quadrangle, 1977), p. 228. For an example of how Klein applies the theory himself, see Paul Klein, "Why You Watch, What You Watch, When You Watch," TVGuide, 24 July 1971, pp. 6-10. 52. Chagall, "Reading the Viewer's Mind," p. 48. 53. See John G. Cawelti, Adventure, Mystery, and Romance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), esp. chap. 1, "The Study of Literary Formulas," pp. 5-36. 54. When I worked at NBC Television corporate headquarters in New York during 1976-77, I was shocked to learn of the kind of mail and telephone calls received by the Audience Response Department from soap opera viewers. Fans would ask for automobile directions to mythical soap opera towns. Letters were often addressed to characters, not actors, and these letters routinely offered advice concerning "decisions" the character was facing in the story line. Soap opera villains have been physically assaulted on the streets of New York and Los Angeles. For a catalog of some of these bizarre events, see David Johnson, "The Real and the Unreal," Day timers, Nov. 1981, p. 17. For a more comprehensive analysis of art/life confusion among Americans, see George Gerbner and Lawrence Gross, "The Scary World of TV's Heavy Viewer," Psychology Today, Apr. 1976, p. 74. 55. Susan Sontag, Against Interpretation (New York: Delta, 1966), p. 7. 56. Herbert Gans, Popular Culture and High Culture (New York: Basic Books, 1975), p. 65. 57. Paul Buhle and Daniel Czitrom, Editorial, Cultural Correspondence 4 (1977): 1. 58. Macdonald, "Theory of Mass Culture," p. 59. 59. Ibid. 60. As cited by Macdonald, ibid., pp. 59-60. 61. Whitman, Democratic Vistas, p. 25. 62. Ibid., p. 23.

Chapter 2: The Situation Comedy of Paul Henning

1. Russel Nye, The Unembarrassed Muse: The Popular Arts in America (New York: Dial Press, 1970), p. 412. 2. As cited in Sherman Paul, Repossessing and Renewing (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1976), p. ii. 3. Norback and Norback, TV Guide Almanac, p. 570. 4. As cited in Grant Webster, Republic of Letters (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976), p. 3. 5. For a discussion of the circumstances surrounding the defection of a number of major NBC Radio stars to CBS Television in 1948, see Erik Barnouw, The Golden Web:A History of Broadcasting in the United States, 1933- 53 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968), pp.242-45. 6. Biographical data on Paul Henning were gathered from two

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sources: CBS Television Network Press Information, 19 Sept. 1962; and The 1981 International Television Alamanc, ed. Richard Gertner (New York: Quigley Publishing Company, 1981), pp. 116-17. 7. Royal Tyler, The Contrast (New York: Dunlap Society, 1887), p. 78 (act 4, scene 1). 8. Thomas Bangs Thorp, "The Big Bear of Arkansas," in Native American Humor, ed. Walter Blair (San Francisco: Chandler Publishing Company, 1960), p. 338 (italics in original). 9. CBS Television Network Press Information, 19 Sept. 1962. 10. Ibid., 2 Oct. 1968. 11. .Ibid. 12. As cited in Constance Rourke, American Humor(New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1931), p. 216. 13. The ties between the Jed Clampett character and the Lincoln legend are perhaps obvious. A hardworking, log-splitting, rigorously honest "common sense" democrat, Jed, like Lincoln, rises from a backwoods log cabin to a great mansion in the city. What is perhaps less known is Buddy Ebsen's obsession with Lincoln. In 1966 Ebsen authored and produced a stage play, The Champagne Generation, in which he starred in the role of Lincoln. 14. CBS Television Network Press Information, 13 Sept. 1962. 15. Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899; rpt., New York: New American Library/Mentor, 1953), esp. chap. 3, "Conspicuous Leisure." 16. Waldo Frank, The Re-discovery 0.[ America (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1929), p. 110. 17. CBS Television Netuiorh Press Information, 19 Sept. 1962. 18. Erik Barnouw, Tube of Plenty: The Evolution of American Television (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975), p. 307. 19. CBS Television Network Press Information, 2 Oct. 1968. 20. Nye, Unembarrassed Muse, p. 412. 21. In recognition of the likelihood that Iny description of the CBS decision might provoke some argument, I cite the description of the move by Sterling anbd Kittross: "CBS dropped rural programs in the 1970's because they appealed to too old an audience to attract advertisers" (Stay Tuned, pp. 402- 3).

Chapter 3: The Comedy of Public Safety

1. Cawelti, Adventure, Mystery, and Romance, p. 51. 2. John G. Cawelti, The Six-Gun Mystique (Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green University Press, 1970). 3. Warshow, Immediate Experience. 4. Chagall, "Reading the Viewer's Mind," p. 49. 5. Cawelti, Adventure, Mystery, and Romance, p. 152. 6. Barnouw, Tuhe ofPlenty, p. 131. 7. Ibid.

Notes

8. Brooks and Marsh, Complete Directory, p. 603. 9. Ibid., p. 275. 10. Ibid. 11. Ibid. 12. Ibid., p. 802. 13. Dragnet might have continued winning Emmies, but the category of "Best Mystery, Action, or Adventure Program" was revised in 1955 to include such a broad range of shows that the Webb series was beaten by Walt Disney's Disneyland that year. 14. Brooks and Marsh, Complete Directory, p. 217. 15. For a glimpse of just how important a power Webb had become in television, see "The Office that Jack (Webb) Built," TV Guide, 2 Feb. 1957, pp. 20-21. 16. McNeil, Total Television, p. 207. 17. See Horace Newcomb, TV: The Most Popular Art (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor/Doubleday, 1974), pp. 91-94. 18. Barnouw, Tube of Plenty, p. 129. 19. Dan Jenkins, "Jack Webb Revisited," TV GUide, 10 Jan. 1959, p.11. 20. "Jack Webb's Blues," TV GUide, 23 July 1955, p. 5. 21. "Actors Try Director's Chair for Size," TVGuide, 31 May 1958, p.28. 22. Jeffrey S. Miller, "Watching the Detectives: The Development of the Modern Television Detective Hero" (unpubl, ms.), p. 5. 23. Christopher Wicking and Tise Vahimagi, The American Vein: Directors and Directions in Television (New York: E. P. Dutton and Company, 1979), p. 63. 24. Brooks and Marsh, Complete Directory, p. 673. 25. McNeil, Total Television, p. 629. 26. Bob Schneider, "Spelling's Salvation Armies," Cultural Correspondence, no. 4 (1977), p. 27. 27. Ibid. 28. Cathy Schwichtenberg, "A Patriarchal Voice in Heaven," [umpcut, nos. 24/25 (1981), p. 13. 29. Wicking and Vahimagi, American Vein, p. 54. 30. Ibid. 31. Brooks and Marsh, Complete Directory, p. 320. 32. For a discussion of the anti-Tv-violence movement and its effects on network programming, see Sterling and Kittross, Stay Tuned, esp. pp. 461-63. 33. McNeil, Total Television, p. 185. 34. John Gabree, "Can Hill Street Blues Keep Dodging the Nielsen Bullets?" TV GUide, 31 Oct. 1981, p. 28. 35. Michel Benamou offers this definition of postmodernism in "Presence and Play," in Performance in Postmodern Culture, ed. Benamou and Caramello, p. 6. 36. Gabree, "Can Hill Street Blues Keep Dodging?" pp. 29-30 (emphasis added).

197

Notes

Chapter 4: Gleason's Push

198

1. Barnouw, Tube of Plenty, p. 129. 2. Jim Bishop, The Golden Ham: A Candid Biography of Jackie Gleason (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956), pp. 219-20. 3. Ibid., p. 53. 4. Ibid. 5. Ibid., p. 83. 6. Ibid., p. 176. 7. Ibid., p. 195. 8. Brooks and Marsh, Complete Directory, p. 432. 9. Ibid., pp. 137-38. 10. Bishop, Golden Ham, p. 199. 11. Ibid., pp. 196-97. 12. "One's Self I sing, a simple separate person,/Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En-Masse." This is Whitman's first "Inscription" in Leaves of Grass (1871); Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, ed. Sculley Bradley and Harold W. Blodgett (rpt., New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1973), p. 1. 13. Bishop, Golden Ham, p. 217. 14. Gleason, as quoted by Bishop, ibid. 15. Brooks and Marsh, Complete Directory, p. 138. 16. Bishop, Golden Ham, p. 235. 17. Ibid., p. 263. 18. Richard Gehman, "The Great One" (second of three parts), TV Guide, 20 Oct. 1962, p. 11. 19. McNeil, Total Television, p. 356. 20. Al Stump, "It Was Chaos, Crazy!- The Honeymooners Reminisce," TV Guide, 24Jan. 1976, pp. 13-14. 21. As cited in Sterling and Kittross, Stay Tuned, p. 532. 22. Brooks and Marsh, Complete Directory, p. 371. 23. Gilbert Seldes, The Public Arts (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956), p. 161. 24. Bishop, Golden Ham, p. 141. 25. Bosley Crowther, review of Gigot, New York Times, 28 Sept. 1962, p. 26, col. 1. 26. Ibid. 27. A. H. Weiler, review of Requiemfora Heavyweight, New York Times, 17 Oct. 1962, p. 35, col. 1. 28. Steven H. Scheuer, ed., Movies on TV, 9th ed. (New York: Bantam Books, 1981), p. 519. 29. Gehman, "The Great One," 20 Oct. 1962, p. 11. 30. Bishop, Golden Ham, p. 141. 31. Brooks and Marsh, Complete Directory, p. 848. 32. Maxene Fabe, TV Game ShouJs./(Garden City, N.Y.: Dolphinl Doubleday, 1979), p. 292. 33. Gehman, "The Great One," 20 Oct. 1962, p. 13. 34. Les Brown, Televi$ion: The Business behind the Box (New

Notes

York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1971), p. 209. The words "hip" and "relevant" are my own. 35. Robert Musel, "Jackie Gleason's Plea: Why Pay to Keep Me off the Air?" TV Guide, 12 Dec. 1970, pp. 37- 38. 36. Robert K. Doan, "Something New in Talk Shows: Jackie Gleason" (The Doan Report), TV GUide, 5 Sept. 1970, p. A-I. 37. Robert K. Doan, "Gleason Signs Long NBC Pact, May Get Series" (The Doan Report), TVGuide, 22 Sept. 1973, p. A-I. 38. Lawrence Van Gelder, review of Smokey and the Bandit, New York Times, 20 May 1977, sec. 3, p. 8, col. 5. 39. Hal Himmelstein, "Horace Newcomb: Guru of the Academic Critics," in On the Small Screen: New Approaches in Television and Video Criticism (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1981), pp. 87 -113. Interestingly, Gleason's name does not appear in Himmelstein's index, either. Praeger Publishers is a division of CBS, Inc. 40. Nye, Unembarrassed Muse, p. 412. 41. F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1925), p. 182. 42. Ibid., title page.

Chapter 5: Self-Reflexive at Last

1. In Cowley, Whitman's "Leavesof Grass, "p. 5. 2. Ibid., Introduction, p. xix. 3. Edgar Allan Poe, "The Philosophy of Composition," reprinted in American Literature. ed. Richard Poirier and William L.Vance (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1970), 1: 659. 4. Poe's cynicism toward writing, a mirror reversal of Whitman's idealism, is well expressed in his story, "How to Write a Blackwood Article," in which the editor informs the writer that "the soul of the whole business" is "the filling up" of the page with phony erudition meant to impress a paying readership. A darker vision of Poe's horror and fear of the emerging "mass man" can be found in his painful story, "The Man of the Crowd." 5. Walt Whitman, "Edgar Poe's Significance," in Specimen Days (1882); reprinted in The Portable Whitman, ed. Mark Van Doren (New York: Penguin Books, 1977), p. 584. 6. As cited in The Oxford Companion to American Literature, 4th ed. (1978), s.v. "Poe, Edgar Allan." 7. Sterling and Kittross, Stay Tuned, p. 107. 8. Brooks and Marsh, Complete Directory, p. 670. 9. McNeil, Total Teleuision, p. 715. 10. Ibid., p. 778. 11. Brooks and Marsh, Complete Directory, p. 277. 12. In Cowley, Whitman's "Leavesof Grass, "p. 5. 13. Enzensberger, Consciousness Industry, p. 7. 14. Edgar Allan Poe, "On the Heresy of the Didactic," in The

199

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200

Poetic Principle (1850), reprinted in Poirier and Vance, American Literature, 1: 668. 15. Ibid., p. 669. 16. While many noncommercial radio stations have adopted "allClassical formats, others offer eclectic broadcast agendas that include various types of music as well as informational dramatic programming. The radio stations licensed to the Pacifica Foundation in Berkeley, Los Angeles, New York, Houston, and Washington. D.C., are notable in this respect. 17. J. Hoberman, "Medium Cool Yule," Village Voice, 29 Dec. 1976, p. 129. 18. Nielsen Report, 1981, p. 9. 19. Ibid. 20. Ernest van den Haag, "Of Happiness and of Despair We Have No Measure," in Rosenberg and White, Mass Culture, p. 504. 21. All information on viewership levels and specific program ratings in this section is taken from "Fast Weekly Household Audience Report, Week of December 12-18," Nielsen National TV Ratings (New York: A. C. Nielsen Company, 1977). 22. Brooks and Marsh, Complete Directory, p. 112. 23. Ibid. 24. Ibid., p. 770. 25. As cited in Jack Paar (with John Reddy), I Kid You Not (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1959), p. 224. 26. Ibid., Introduction, p. xv. 27. Kenneth Tynan, Show People: Profiles in Entertainment (New York: Berkley Books, 1981), p. 112. 28. Ibid. 29. Ibid., p. 111. 30. Ibid. 31. Performer Q, 1977 (Port Washington, N.Y.: Performer Q Company, 1977). 32. Marc Eliot, American Television: The Official Art of the Artificial(Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor/Doubleday, 1981), p. 31. 33. Nielsen Report, 1981, p. 3. 34. James Hillman, The Dream and the Underuiorld (New York: Harper and Row, 1979), p. 64. 35. Kenneth Burke, Attitudes toward History (New York: New Republic, 1937), vol. 2. On pp. 201-2, Burke defines "perspective by incongruity" as follows: "A method for verbal 'atom cracking.' That is, a word belongs by custom to a certain category-and by rational planning you wrench it loose and metaphorically apply it to a different category." 36. It is worth noting that in his depictions of Serling, Burns, and Hitchcock, Aykroyd has played the major on-camera narrators of American television history. 37. Ben Fong-Torres, "Live ... from Los Angeles, It's Fridays," Rollin!!,Stone, 15 May 1980, p. 37.

Notes

38. Martin Esslin, The Age of Television (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman and Company, 1982), p. 1. 39. Richard T.Jameson, "Satire Comes to Video," Film Comment, no. 17 (1981), p. 76. 40. Ibid. 41. James Wolcott, "[eepers, Creepers-Where'd You Get That Hair?" Village Voice, 11 Aug. 1981, p. 48. 42. Jameson, "Satire Comes to Video," pp. 76-77. 43. James Wolcott, "Mayberry, the Town that Time Forgot," Village Voice, 22 July 1981, p. 53. 44. Christopher Connelly, "Two Nerds from Canada," Rolling Stone 4 (1982): 23. 45. Wolcott, "Mayberry, the Town that Time Forgot," p. 53. 46. Whitman, "A Backward Glance on My Road," in Democratic Vistas and Other Papers, p. 99.

Chapter Six: What Was Broadcasting?

1. By characterizing all six of these examples as "broadcast figures," I do not mean to gloss over the differences separating radio and television characters. In Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (New York: Signet, 1962), for example, McLuhan writes, "Had TV come first, there would have been no Hitler at all" (p, 261). 2. The Westinghouse Corporation's Pittsburgh station, KDKA, is generally recognized as the first regularly operating commercial station offering daily radio service to the public in the United States. It is still in operation today. 3. Sterling and Kittross, 2nd ed., p. 35. 4. Empire of the Air, prod. Ken Burns (Radio Pioneers Film Project, 1991). It might also be noted that Dr. and Mrs. DeForest were divorced within a matter of weeks, perhaps an omen of things to come in terms of love in the information age. 5. Sterling and Kittross, Stay Tuned, 2nd ed., p. 43. 6. Ibid. 7. See The American Automobile: A Brief History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965): In 1908 Ford sold 5986 Model T automobiles at $859 a car; in 1916, with the price down to $360, the company sold 577,036. 8. Ironically, the undoing of RCA was another home entertainment project, this one at the end of the Broadcast Era: the video laser disc. Hoping to beat its competitors to the starting line in selfprogrammable television, the company introduced a stylus-based system. The system never caught on. Instead it was overwhelmed by the success of the Japanese VHS and Beta videotape systems. In 1985, after a $500 million loss, RCA was forced to give up on its videodisc system; General Electric swallowed the company whole in less than a year. See Erik Barnouw, Tube of Plenty, 2nd rev. ed., pp. 505-10.

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9. Sterling and Kittross, Stay Tuned, 2nd ed., p. 656. 10. As cited by William Boddy, Fifties Television: The Industry and Its Critics (Champaign-Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993), p.24. 11. Barnouw, Tube of Plenty, 2nd rev. ed., p. 24. 12. Various frameworks were proposed in the United States during the 1920s for rationalizing "natural monopolies" in a system that otherwise professed dedication to the "free market." See Robert A. Caro, The Pouier Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (New York: Knopf, 1974) for the most audacious and successful of these plans. 13. Barnouw, Tube of Plenty, 2nd rev. ed., pp. 40-50. 14. Herbert Hoover, Speech to First Washington Radio Conference, 27 February 1922, as quoted in Czitrom, Media and the American Mind, p. 76. 15. Gilbert Seldes, "The 'Errors' of Television," Atlantic Monthly (May, 1937): 531-41. 16. The parameters of these two thirty-year periods are approximate but by no means arbitrary. By 1925, there were 571 radio stations broadcasting in the United States and over a third of American households were equipped with receivers. RCAwas already planning its National Broadcasting Company for a 1927 coast -to-coast debut. As for television, the freeze on new stations that began in 1948 ended in 1952 and as a result a flurry of new transmitters followed. Between 1952 and 1955, the number ofTY stations rose from 108 to 422, and almost two-thirds of American households had purchased sets. Also, 1955 was the year Dumont went dark, leaving the three-network broadcasting system that would utterly dominate television until the end of the Broadcast Era. (All figures taken from Sterling and Kittross, Stay Tuned, 2nd ed., Appendix C1-B, Appendix C8-A.) 17. Philip Marchand, Marshall McLuhan: The Medium and the Messenger (New York: Ticknor and Fields, 1989), p. 43. 18. McLuhan discusses the "acoustic" nature of television in McLuhan: The Man and the Message, a 1985 CBC documentary produced by Stephanie McLuhan and Tom Wolfe. It is conceivable that had McLuhan lived to see three developments he might have changed his mind on this: • the improved home television image (color, stereo, bigscreen, etc.): • evolved visual skills and techniques used by television artists; • a shrinking appetite for narrative by audiences preferring montage and other forms of visual stimulation to catharsis, the restoration of harmony, or other traditional dramatic climaxes and satisfactions. 19. Marshall McLuhan, [Jnderstanding Media: The Extensions of Man, 2nd ed., especially Introduction to the Second Edition, vii - Xi, and Chapter Two, "Media Hot and Cold," 36-45.

Notes

20. T. S. Eliot, "Notes Toward the Definition of Culture," Christianity and Culture: The Idea of a Christian Society and Notes Toward the Definition of Culture (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1948), p. 95. 21. Born in the midst of the "cultural pluralism," the Internet creates an instant gulf between Users and Non-users and then sorts Users by their biases. It has proved an excellent communication system for rightwing extremists. Given the relatively high level of literacyreading, writing, thinking in sentences, typing-necessary to operate the system, mass usage is not likely in the foreseeable future. 22. In commercial broadcasting the "product" is audience attendance, which is manufactured wholesale under the auspices of the broadcasters and then delivered by them to retailers. Art-drama, music, rhetoric, and so on-can be understood in this context as a byproduct of that process. Tocqueville's characterization is, however, is still applicable. 23. As cited in Boddy, Fifties Television, p. 237. 24. Ibid. 25. Ibid., pp. 236-37. Ironically, many of these same charges of "elitism" are today leveled not by the entertainment moguls but against them, often by religious fundamentalists. 26. I have covered the characterization of "Left vs. Right" as a medium-specific print debate in some detail in "Mass Memory: The Past in the Age of Television" (Chapter Two), Bonfire of the Humanities: Teleuision, Subliteracy, and Long-Term Memory Loss (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1995). 27. In coining the term "global village," McLuhan may have had the entire globe in mind; indeed, since his death, that concept has become technologically feasible and progressively easier. However, I am using the term "global" somewhat metaphorically to refer to the transdemographic nation rather than the planet.

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21 2

Tashjian, Dickran. Skyscraper Primitives. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1975. Terrace, Vincent. The Complete Encyclopedia of Television Programs, 1947-19762 vols. South Brunswick, N.].: Barnes, 1976. Thorpe, Thomas Bangs. "The Big Bear of Arkansas." 1841. Reprinted in Blair, Native American Humor, pp. 337-48. Tonnies, Ferdinand. Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft. 1887. Reprinted as Community and Association, translated by Charles P. Loomis. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1955. 1VGuide(weekly, 1953-). Twain, Mark. "The Dandy Frightening the Squatter." 1854. Reprinted in Meine, Tall Tales of the Southwest, pp. 445-48. Tyler, Royall. The Contrast. Publications of the Dunlap Society, no. 1. New York: Dunlap Society, 1887. Tynan, Kenneth. Show People: Profiles in Entertainment. New York: Berkley Books, 1981. van den Haag, Ernest. "Of Happiness and of Despair We Have No Measure." In Rosenberg and White, Mass Culture, pp. 504-36. Van Doren, Mark, ed. The Portable Whitman. New York: Penguin Books, 1977. Van Gelder, Lawrence. Review of Smokey and the Bandit, directed by Hal Needham. New York Times, 20 May 1977, sec. 3, p. 8, col. 5. Variety (weekly, 1905-). Veblen, Thorstein. The Theory of tbe Leisure Class. 1899. Reprint. New York: New American Library/Mentor, 1953. Warshow, Robert. The Immediate Experience. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1962. Webster, Grant. Republic 0/ Letters. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976. Weiler, A. H. Review of Requiemfora Heavyweight, directed by Ralph Nelson. New York Times, 17 Oct. 1962, p. 35, col. 1. Whitman, Walt. Democratic Vistas and Other Papers. London: Walter Scott, 1888. ---. Leaves of Grass. 1871. Reprint. Edited by Sculley Bradley and Harold W. Blodgett. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1973. Wicking, Christopher, and Tise Vahimagi. The American Vein: Directors and Directions in Television. New York: E. P. Dutton and Company, 1979. Wilk, Max. The Golden Age of Television: Notes from the Survivors. New York: Delacorte Press, 1976.

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Glossary

The glossary includes definitions and clarifications of several terms used in the text that may be unfamiliar, or whose usages may be unfamiliar, to some readers. Most entries are terms commonly used in the American mass communications industry; these are marked with a single asterisk (*). Others are terms I have found it necessary to invent to describe certain television and cultural phenomena; these are marked with two asterisks (**). Still others are critical terms that have been used in particular ways in relation to television; these are marked with three asterisks (***).

*AOR. Literally, "album-oriented rock." A series of FCC rule changes, initiated in 1964 and implemented over the following decade, required that FM stations cease duplicating AM broadcasts and offer programs of their own. Many station owners who held joint AM-FMlicenses fulfilled the requirement by programming music from rock and roll albums on their FM outlets, as opposed to the long-standing practice of programming AM outlets with Top 40 45-rpm singles. *Broadcasting. Literally "to cast a signal broadly"; that is, to transmit an audio or audiovisual signal that may be received legally by the general public with readily available reception equipment. * Comedy-variety show. A presentational television series featuring various types of show business "acts," including stand-up comedy, sketch comedy, music, magic, trained animals, and so on. The show is hosted by a comedian, singer, or comedian/singer. *** Cosmology. The peculiar form of the narrative television series

215

*

G!ossary

216

may result in scores or even hundreds of hours of teletext devoted to the same characters, setting, and narrative line. The sum of a series' many details, built up over the course of its production run, is its cosmology. Often, the peculiar details of one series are used to create another, known as a spin-off. Thus an auteur may extend a cosmology across two or more series (e.g., MTM Company's Mary TylerMoore Sbou: Rhoda, and Phyllis). * Crossover. A term used to describe an episode of one series that uses one or more characters from another series and in which these characters maintain their established identities (e.g., Jed Clampett of The Beverly Hillbillies visits Hooterville in an episode of Green Acres). Crossover episodes are often used by studios to introduce new programs (e.g., Spelling-Goldberg Productions introduced S.WA. T by placing the S.WA. T characters on an episode of The Rookies). This allows researchers to test public reaction to the new characters before going into production of a new series. *Demographics. Literally, "a picture of people." This term is used as the name of a social science that purports to describe the audience for a particular cultural item (i.e., a TV show) in terms of salient marketing characteristics such as age, sex, income level, education level, religion, race, and so on. *Desk-and-sofa show. A TV programming format that synthesizes the talk show and the comedy-variety show. "Acts," such as stand-up comedians or singers, may be presented and sketches may be performed, but the body of the show consists of interviews with personalities, politicians, and experts in various fields. The term derives from the show's archetypal stage set. Some long-running desk-and-sofa shows are The Tonight Show, The Merv Griffin Show, and The Mike Douglas Sbou: *Downstream/upstream. Terms used to describe the character of a communications system. Network television is a downstream system; the image flows in one direction-from the transmitter to the viewer. Cable-TV technology, however, is capable of creating upstream systems, in which viewers may instantaneously respond to a downstream transmission. For example, Warner Brothers' Qube system, currently in use in Columbus, Ohio, allows viewers to "vote" on questions posed on a TV show or to purchase goods offered on the screen by pushing a button. Upstream television is also known as an interactive system. ***Entropy curve. Since a series will play until its ratings no longer justify the desired price for commercial time, the life of any series

Glossary

may be plotted on an entropy curve (or bell-shaped curve). Time is the only variable. The decay of a series' popularity is considered inevitable. The networks attempt to slow this decay by conducting tests on popular series to discover what viewers like most and least about them. This information is then "passed on" to the production company; script changes, such as the downgrading or upgrading of a particular character or episode type, are often the result. These tests are known as Series Maintenance Studies. *F-score. Every six months a study is done by an independent company to test a personality's familiarity to the public. If, for example, 86 percent of the test group can identify a picture of Alan AIda, he has an F-score of 86. Those in the test group who make the correct identification are then asked a series of questions about the personality. If the personality is a favorite, he or she is then given a Q point. If half of the 86 percent who have correctly identified Alan AIda "agree" with a statement such as "I would make a special effort to watch a show on which Alan AIda appears," then he would have a Q-score of 50. F is familiarity; Q is love. F-scores and Q-scores are used extensively in casting and salary decisions in the N industry. * The Freeze. In 1948, under pressure from NBC and CBS, the FCC placed a two-year freeze on the issuance of new television station licenses. That order was renewed for another two-year period in 1950. Though the reason for the Freeze was ostensibly to allow the existing broadcasters to solve technical problems, it had the effect of securing control of the industry for the existing broadcasting companies. ***Gemeinschaft/Gesellschaft. I use these terms as they were defined by the German sociologist Ferdinand Tonnies in his 1887 study, Gemeinschajt und Gesellschaft. Gemeinschajt (literally, "community") refers to an organic community in which social relations and constraints are defined by uncodified traditions. Gesellschaft (literally, "corporate association") refers to a postindustrial community in which social relations and constraints are defined by written laws. *Happy talk. A format for news presentation that first appeared on local television in the early 1970s; it features light chatter and even jokes among the anchorpeople and reporters instead of the traditional straight-faced segues. *HUT Literally, "household using N." This is an industry term for any household that contains a working television set. The A. C.

217

Glossary

Nielsen Company projects that over 98 percent of American homes are HUTs.

218

***Lifestyle. A term that came into widespread use in America in the 1960s as a catch-all noun to describe the way various people live (e.g., "alternative lifestyle," "hippie lifestyle," "gay lifestyle"). However, it gradually became an important signifier of individuality in American advertising rhetoric ("We have products to fit your lifestyle"). This usage emphasized a connotation of superior discretion and taste on the part of the consumer of massproduced products. This connotation allows usage of the term as an adjective. For example, a store that sells water beds, expensive imported coffees, and sexually suggestive greeting cards may be referred to as a "Lifestyle boutique." Three's Company (ABC 1977-), in which a man and two women share an apartment, is a "Lifestyle sitcom." *Minicam. A small, relatively inexpensive mobile camera unit, which is used by many local stations to originate remote pickups from around their viewing areas. *MOR. Literally, "middle of the road." This is a radio format featuring a species of popular music that is a synthesis of Tin Pan Alley and rock and roll. MOR performers include Neil Diamond, Barbra Streisand, and Barry Manilow.

*Narrowcasting. Literally, "to cast a signal narrowly"; that is, to transmit an audio or audiovisual signal that may be received legally only by paid subscribers or others designated by the transmitting party. The term is also used metaphorically to refer to target marketing, even when that is practiced by means of broadcasting. *Premium service. A cable-TV channel that costs a subscriber an extra fee above basic service. Time-Life's Home Box Office (HBO), which for the most part shows recent, unedited, uninterrupted Hollywood releases, is currently the most successful. The number of premium services is expected to increase as the United States continues to be wired by cable in the coming years. *Production values. A consciousness-industry term for the quality of technical craft in a given film, TV program, audio recording, or other production. For example, most made-for-TV movies have excruciatingly familiar and maudlin plots and show little originality in their verbal and visual language; however, their smooth "textbook" editing is evidence of their high production values.

Glossary

*Q-score. See F-score. **Schlockumentary.

The quest for "reality" in television programming led in the late seventies to a new genre. Borrowing the form of the newsmagazine (e.g., 60 Minutes) and filling it with staged enactments of tabloid events, the scblockumentary strives to offer representational films as presentational reports. Real People (NBC, 1979-) and That's Incredible! (ABC, 1980-) are two notable schlockumentaries. The ancestry of the form can be traced to the frankly representational neenactments of You Are There (CBS, 1953-57, hosted by Walter Cronkite) and the sensationalism of You Askedfor It (DuMont, 1950-51; ABC, 1951-59; syn., 1981-83). The schlockumentary has also been called infotainment, and sit-life. **Signatory montage. A term I use to describe the opening sequence of a representational show that is repeated each week before the narrative commences. *Simulcast. Simultaneous transmission of a program on television and radio (usually FM stereo). *Special effort. An important term in market testing. The multiplechoice questions posed in test questionnaires often contain a statement such as "I would make a special effort to watch ... " or "I would make a special effort to buy ... " If a television show or toilet bowl cleanser gets a significant special effort response, it is thought to have high profit potential. *Strip. A show made for weekly telecast that is scheduled to be rerun on a daily basis. *Superstation. When a local, independent station is fed to many cable systems and thus gains a national audience, it is known as a superstation. WTBS,Atlanta, became the first superstation when its owner, Ted Turner, bought transponder space on the Satcom satellite in 1977 and made the station's signal available to cable systems around the country. The Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) uses this technique, making the signal of its local Virginia Beach, Virginia, station available, free of charge, to any cable system that will take it. The superstation phenomenon demonstrates how technologically obsolete the network/affiliate system is becoming. *Sustaining program. A show that cannot generate enough advertising revenue to justify its continued transmission but is kept on the air for other reasons (public relations, culture, civic responsibility, ctc.). *Syndication. A term referring to the creation of a "syndicate" of 10-

219

Glossary

cal stations to carry a particular show. The stations may be affiliates of any or all of the networks, or they may be independent stations. Sometimes new programs are presented nationally or quasi-nationally by means of syndication (e.g., Norman Lear's Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman; the original Superman starring George Reeves; the gameshow, The Joker Is Wild). However, most syndicated shows are reruns of network series that have gone out of production. The Viacom Company is the largest independent syndicator in the American television industry.

220

* Targetgroup. The traditional definition of mass culture has characterized its audience as an undifferentiated assemblage. Increasingly, however, demographic marketing research has aimed at isolating potential customers for a given product by breaking down the mass according to various features. For example, a feminine hygiene deodorant manufacturer spends its advertising dollars more efficiently by sponsoring a program that appeals to women; a sports car ad seeks an audience of unmarried people making more than $30,000 a year; sugar-coated breakfast cereals are marketed to children under the age of twelve; and so on. Any group with a potential common consumer interest is a target group. * Upscale. A differential term in demographic rhetoric that refers to higher income groups. For example, since the average income of HBO subscribers is well above the national mean, HBO subscribers constitute an upscale group. Most credit cards are thought to be marketed to upscale groups, and this is the reason that credit card bills come stuffed with shop-by-mail advertisements for luxury items. * Viewer loyalty. A term referring to a show's ability to create, build, and hold an audience that will make a special effort to watch it. For example, in 1971 ABC canceled The Lawrence Welk Show, principally because of the age of the program's audience. However, The Lawrence Welk Show commanded intense viewer loyalty from its audience and was able to go into national syndication successfully. Hee-Haw and Saturday Night Live are other examples of shows with strong viewer loyalty.

Main Index

Author's names appear in parentheses next to the names of their fictional works. Fictional personae appear in parentheses next to the names of the actors with whom they are identified.)

(NOTE:

ABC television network, 83-85, 8690,93,97,122,125,126,147,158, 165 abolitionist television criticism, 2- 3 Absalom, Absalom!(Faulkner), 30, 148 Ace Trucking Company, 155 action/adventure series, 21, 93. See also crimeshow Adorno, T. W., 178 Age of Aquarius, 78 Albert, Eddie (Oliver W. Douglas), 59-60 AIda, Alan, 101 Alexander, Andrew, 159, 160 Alger, Horatio, 66 Allen, Dayton, 142 Allen, Fred, 106, 127 Allen, Gracie. See Burns, George, and Gracie Allen; Burns and Allen Show, The Allen, Steve, 23,112,132,141-43, 146-47

Allen, Woody, 146, 147 American Dream (Mailer), 67 American Medical Association, 50 Amsterdam, Morey, 23 Anders, Gunther, 30 Anderson, Eddie "Rochester," 100 Andy Hardy film series, 11, 54 Apartment Life magazine, 136 Aristotle, xiv, 98, 113 Arlen, Michael, xiii Armagedd0n, 4, 136, 148 Arnaz, Desi, 151-52 Arness, James, 70 Arnet, Peter, 170 Arnold, Danny, 93 Arquette, Cliff, 41 ART (cable TV service), 165 Astaire, Fred, 120 authorship of TV series, xv-xvi, xviii, 6, 40-41, 77-96 passim, 102, 108-10,131-32. Seealsounder "cosmology" in the Glossary Aykroyd, Dan, 119, 152-53, 154, 156, 159 "Ba-ba-lu," 151 baby-boom generation, 14,148-66 passim Baer, Max, Jr. (Jethro Bodine), 46 Baez, Joan, 27

221

*

Main Index

Bailey, Raymond (Milburn Drysdale), 51 Bain, Conrad, 164 Ball, Lucille, 19,73, 122. See also Here s Lucy; I Love Lucy; Lu(V Shaul, The

222

"Ballad of jed Clampett," 44 Band, The, 155 Bankhead, Tallulah, III Barnouw, Erik, 3, 14, 56, 71, 75, 195n.5 Barrett, Rona, 162 Barthes, Roland, 6,9,21, 193n.17 Beckett, Samuel, 39 Beery, Noah (Rocky), 90 Bellamy, Ralph, 72 Bellow, Saul, 67 Belushi, john, 119, 152- 56, 159 Benadaret, Bea (Blanche Morton), 100; (Cousin Pear!), 59 Bendix, William, 105 Benjamin, Walter, 6 Bennett, Tony, 27, 169 Benny, jack, 20, 100-102, 110, 112 Bergman, Ingrid, 162 Berkely, Busby, 102 Berle, Milton, 24-26,73, 102, 104, 106-7, 142, 155 Bernstein, Cheryl, 28 "Big Bear of Arkansas" (Thorpe), 42-43 Billy the Kid, 67 biograph studio, 193n.19 Birch, Sammy, 103 Bishop, jim, 99, 104, 106, 120 Bishop, joey, 144-45, 163 blacklist, 76. See also McCarthyism Blackmur, R. P., 20 blackout sketch, 21, 24, 101, 119, 142, 150, 156-57 blacks on television, 18, 27,87,96, 156 Bloch, Ray, 108 Bob (Elliot), and Ray (Goulding), 76 Bochco, Steven, 94-98 Bogart, Humphrey, 162 Boone, Richard (Paladin), 71 bourgeois gentilbornme, Le (Moliere), 102

boxing, 71,104-5, 193n.17 Brecht, Bertholt, 32 Brennan, Walter, 55 Brenner, David, 156 Brinkley, David, 162 Brooks, Mel, 146 Brooks, Tim, and Earl Marsh, xiv, 25, 106 Brown, james, 156 Brown, Les, 124 Bruce, Lenny, 156 Buchanan, Edgar (Uncle joe), 61 Buhle, Paul, 35 Burbank, Luther, 61 Burden, Chris, 28 Burke, Kenneth, 153, 200n.35 Burns, George, and Gracie Allen, 100,102,110 Burr, Raymond (Ironside), 87 Burrows, Abe, 41 Buttram, Pat (Mf. Haney), 60 Buzzi, Ruth, 156 Byrnes, Edd (Kookie), 83 cable TV, 12,98, 164-66 Caesar, Sid, 24, 142, 150 Cain, james M., 3, 74 Calhoun, Haystacks, 9 C & W (country and western), 44, 136, 145 Cand~john, 161-64 Cannell, Stephen]., 91-92 Cantor, Eddie, 106 Capitol Records, III Capone, AI, 45, 66, 80 Capp, AI, 47 Captain and Tenille, 27 Carey, james, xii Carlin, George, 150 Carney, Art, 104, 110, 124 Carroll, Diahann (julia), 18 Carson, johnny, 23, 125, 140-42, 145-48,149,151 Carter, jack, 106 Cass, Peggy, 144 Castro, Fidel, 143 Cavett, Dick, 147 Cawelti, john, 33, 66, 70 CBS television network, 13, 40, 41,

Main Index

44,63,71,97,109-10,116,117, 118,121,122,123,124,125,147, 165, 192n.6, 195n.5, 196n. 21 censorship of IT programming, 25, 27,80,96-97 Chagall, David, 31 Champagne Generation (Ebsen), 196n.13 Chandler, Raymond, 70, 74, 91 Chaplin, Charlie, 101, 119 Charles, Ray, 156 Chase, Chevy, 150-51 Chateaubriand, 42 Chayefsky, Paddy, 149 Chermak, Cy, 87 Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), xiv, 165 Cid, The (Corneille), 113 cinema as IT market test, 138 Civil Disobedience (Thoreau), 88 CNN, 165, 170 Coca, Imogene, 150 Cole, Nat "King," 27 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 42 Columbus, Christopher, 131 comedy-variety show, 11,21-29,71, 100,107-12,117-18,127,155, 194n.37 com media dell 'arte,9 commercials, 57, 76-77,110 Communists on IT, 75, 81, 144 Como, Perry, 117 Conrad, Michael, 96 Conrad, Robert, 92 Conrad, William (Cannon), 93 Considine, Bob, 143 Constrast, The (Tyler), 42-43 Coolidge, Calvin, 103 Corey, Professor Irwin, 61 cosmology, the notion of, on a series, 5,12-13,69-70,153 Costello, Elvis, 65 Counterattack magazine, 75 country and western. See C & W Cowley, Malcolm, 130 Crawford, Broderick, 77, 82 Crawford, Joan, 164 crime in American mythology, 66-69 crimeshow, xv, 65-98 passim

Critic, The, 166 Crockett, Davy, 44, 46 Cronkite, Walter, 88,133,147-48, 161, 162 Crosby, Bing, 162 Crowther, Bosley, 118-19 cultural pluralism, xxi, 183 culture, xiii, xvii, 9, 13, 49-50, 6162, 129-30, 134, 137, 154, 192n.7 Curtin, Jane, 153, 156 Czitrom, Daniel]., 14,35, 158

223 dada, 6, 192-93n.8 Daffy Duck, 76 Dagmar, 23, 140-41 Dana, Bill, 142 "Dandy Frightening the Squatter, The" (Twain), 42 "Danger Ahead." See "Dragnet March" Dangerfield, Rodney, xvii, 155 Danny Thomas Productions, 54 Darin, Bobby, 122 David, Mack, and Jerry Livingston, 83 Davis, Jessica Milner, 56 Davis, Sammy, Jr., 163 Dean, Jimmy, 145 Debs, Eugene V., 176 DeCamp, Rosemary, 52 Decca Records, 111 de Cordova, Fred, 100 DeForest, Lee, 172 Democratic Vistas (Whitman), 1, 20, 37 demography, demographics, 5-6, 14,31,35,37,69,83-85,96-98, 124,135-38,148-49,157-59, 165, 193n.20 Depression, the, 14, 104 Descartes,Ren~,61

Desilu Productions, 77, 79 desk-and-sofa show, 23, 106, 125, 141-47, passim, 190 Diamond, Legs, 67 Dickens, Charles, 6, 55 D'Invilliers, Thomas Parke (pseud. Bishop, John Peale), 128 Disney, Walt, 44. See Disneyland; Disney, The Wonderful World of

Main Index

224

Divine, 162 Doan, Robert K., "The Doan Report," 125-26 documentary mode, 74, 79, 133 Donahue, Troy, 84 Douglas, Donna (Elly May), 84 Douglas, Michael (Inspector Steve Killer),81 Doumanian, Jean, 158 Downs, Hugh, 144 "Dragnet March," 76-77, 83 Dreiser, Theodore, 51 Duchamp, Marcel, 4 Duddy, Lyn, and Jerry Bresler, 124 Duke, Patty, 14 Dumont, Margaret, 121 DuMont television network, 11, 71, 106-7,109-10,123 Dunciad(Pope),6 Durante, Jimmy, 24, 106, 111, 119 Durgom, Bullets, 105-6 DXing, 172 Earp, Wyatt, 67 Ebersol, Dick, 158 Ebert, Roger, and Gene Siskel, 162 Ebsen, Buddy (Jed Clarnpett), 46, 196n.13; (Barnaby Jones), 81 Eclogues (Virgil), 42 "Edgar Poe's Significance" (Whitman), 130 Eisenhower, Dwight D., 153 Eisenstein, Sergei, 157 Eliot, Marc, xiii, 150, 155 Eliot, T. S., xxi, 186 Ellington, Duke, 140 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, xxi-xxii, 130 Emmy Awards, 74, 97 entertainment, the notion of, 29- 31, 130-31,138,155 Enzensberger, Hans Magnus, 2, 134 escapism, criticism of TV as, 32-33 ESPN (cable service), 165 Esslin, Martin, xvii, 159 Estrada, Erik, 37 evil, the nature of, on TV, 37, 68-69, 78, 79-80, 82-85, 87 -88 exhibition sports. See roller derby; wrestling

farce, 56-57 Farnsworth, Philo, T., 7 fascism, 6, 134 Faulkner, Willian1, 30, 148 Fawcett, Farah, 89 Federal Communications Commission (FCC), XXVi,2, 186 Fenneman, George, 121 Field, Sally, 127 Fielding, Henry, xvii, 8, 100 fifties, 26,83,95,142,147,153,155 "Fifty Grand" (Hemingway), 120 Fiske, John, and John Hartley, xi Fitzgerald, F. Scott, 127 Flaherty, Joe, 161-63 Flash Gordon film serial, 11 Flatt, Lester, and Earl Scruggs, 44 Fleischer, Max, 9 Fodor, Eugene, 164 Ford, Henry, 66 Foreman, Richard, 142 For Lovers Only (record album), 111 Fraley, Oscar, 80 Francis, Arlene, 145 Frank, Waldo, 50, 192-93n.8 Franklin, Aretha, 156 Franklin, Benjamin, 66 Frawley, William (Fred Mertz), 19 Freberg, Stan, 76 frontiersman. See hillbilly in American folklore Frye, Northrop, 15 F-score, 147, 150 Fundamentalist Right, 136 Gabor, Eva (Lisa Douglas), 60 Gahree, John, 94, 98 gameshow, 23, 37,71,121-22 Gandhi, Indira, 162 Gans, Herhert, 34 Gardner, Hy, 143 Garfield, John, 164 Gargan, William (Martin Kane), 73 Garner, James, 85 Garroway, Dave, 132 Gehman, Richard, 112 Gemeinschajt und Gesellschajt (Tonnies), 49, 59 General Motors Corporation, 138

Main Index

Generation Gap, xvi, 86-87 Genevieve, 144 Gerbner, George, and Lawrence Gross, 195n.54 Gibson, Henry, 157 Ginsberg, Allen, xvii, 21 Gladden, jack, 11 Gleason, Genevieve Halford, 109 Gleason, jackie, xv, xx, 20, 24, 99128 passim, 130, 142, 157, 166, 169, 199n.39. See also Cavalcade of Stars; Honeymooners; Jackie Gleason Show; You're in the Picture Godard, jean-Luc, 6 Godfrey, Arthur, 110 Gordon, Gale, 19 Gorgeous George (George F. Wagner),9 Gould, jack, 143 Grapes of Wrath (Steinbeck), 46,59 Great Gatsby, The (Fitzgerald), 127-28 "Green Acres Theme," 60 Greenberg, Clement, 36 Greenfield, jeff, xiii Griffin, Merv, 145, 147, 165 Griffith, Andy, 19, 51, 165. See also Andy Griffith Show, The Griffith, David Wark, 48 Gross, Lawrence. See Gerbner, George, and Lawrence Gross gross-out joke, 155 Hackett, Buddy, 118 hamartia,67. See also tragedy on TV Hamlet (Shakespeare), 33 Hammett, Dashiel, 74 Harding, Warren G., 174 Hardy, Thomas, 69 Harris, David, 27 Hartley, john. See Fiske, john, and john Hartley Hartman, Geoffrey, 40 Hawn, Goldie, 157 Hawthorne, Nathanial, 66 Hayes, Peter Lind, and Mary Healy, 145 Hays Office, 67

HBO, 31,165,170 Healy, Mary. See Hayes, Peter Lind, and Mary Healy Hearst, Patty, 28 Hemingway, Ernest, 120 Henderson, Florence, 144 Hendrix,jimi, 156 Henning, Paul, xv, 39-63 passim, 124, 165, 169. See also Beverly Hillbillies; Bob Cummings Show; Green Acres; Petticoat Junction Henry, Buck, 150 Herne,james, A., 39 Hickman, Dwayne, 43 Hiken, Nat, 94 hillbilly in American folklore, 41-43, 56 Hillman, james, 151 hipness, hippies, 13, 14,78-79,87, 90,96 Hiroshima, 136 Hitchcock, Alfred, 73, 154 Hoberman, J., 136 "Hooray, for Captain Spaulding" (Groucho's theme), 121 Hooterville, 58-63 passim Hoover, Herbert, 176 Hoover, J. Edgar, 67 Hope, Bob, 104, 112, 162 "Hop Frog," (Poe), 7 Horn, john, 146 Howl and Other Poems (Ginsberg), 21 "How to Write a Blackwood Article" (Poe), 199n.4 Hruska, Roman, 152 Hudson, Henry, 131 Hudson, Rock, 92, 94 Huggins, Roy, 82-86,87,90-92,95 humanism and TV, 3, 37-38,40-41 Humperdinck, Englebert, 27 Huntley, Chet, 133 H.D.T. (household using TV), 37, 109, 139-40, 151, 159, 191 Internet, 172 Ionesco, Eugene, 39 "I Sing the Body Electric" (Whitman), 129

225

Main Index

226

jackson, Kate (Nurse Danko), 88 james, jesse, 66 jameson, Richard T., 159, 161 jansenism, 193n.17 janssen, David, 80 jarreau, AI, 164 jessel, Georgie, 111 johnson, Lyndon, 133 jolson, AI, 164 jones, Chuck, 76 jones, Tom, 27 joplin, janis, 156 joseph Andreus (Fielding), 100 juan Carols (king of Spain), 134 june Taylor Dancers, 102 Kean, jean (Trixie Norton), 124 Keating, Larry (Harry Morton), 100 Keaton, Buster, 101 Kefauver hearings, 80 Keith, Brian, 94 Kelly, AI, 61 Kelly, Gene, 119 Kelton, Pert (Alice Krarnden), 108, 110 Kennedy, john F., 133-34, 147 Kerouac, jack, 137 Khomeini, Ayatollah Rohallah, 6 Kilgallen, Dorothy, 144 King, Alexander, 144 Kirshner, Don, 149 Kissinger, Henry, 153 kitsch, 36- 37 Klein, Paul, 31-32 KMBC,41 Knotts, Don, 19, 142 "Kookie, Kookie Lend Me Your Comh," 83 Koppel, Ted, 147, 148 Kovacs, Ernie, 24, 101, 142-43, 146-47 Kowalski, Killer, 9 Kozell, Michael, 94-98 Kulp, Nancy (jane Hathaway), 43, 52-53 Kurault, Charles, 132 Laine, Frankie, 27 Lane, Charles (Horner Bedloe), 56

Lang, Fritz, 32 Lansky, Meyer, 94 late-night television, 23-24, 139-65 passim laughtrack, 11, 160 Lear, Norman, 14, 16, 18,39,63, 112 Leaves a! Grass (Whitman), 131, 198n.12 Lee, Bill, and john Moffitt, 158 Lee, Peggy, 27 Leonard,jack E., 145 Leonard, Sheldon, 94 Lescoulie, jack, 143 Lester, jerry, 23, 26, 106, 140-41, 147 Letterman, David, xviii, 141, 148 Levy, Eugene, 161, 162, 165 Lewis, jerry, 6, 145, 165 Liherace, 115 Lichty, Lawrence W., and Malachi C. Topping, 117 Liddy, G. Gordon, 162 Liebman, Max, 150 Life magazine, 136 Lifestyle, xvi, 14,69,115-16 LitAbner, 47-48 Lincoln, Abraham, 46, 196n.13 Linkletter, Art, 145 live-an-tape format, 145 Lloyd, Harold, 101 Loeb, Philip, 76 London, jack, 69 Longstreet, Augustus Baldwin, 43 Look magazine, 136 LOP Theory. See Klein, Paul Lord, jack, 92 Lord, Phillips H., 73 Mcr.arthvism, McCarthy Era, xvi, 14, 75-76,78,83, 101 Macdonald, Dwight, 8, 35 MacDonald, Fred, xxxi McDonald's, 4. See also Quarter Pounder MacGihhon, Harriet (Mrs. Drysdale), 51 Mack, Ted, 29 McLuhan, Marshall, xxix, 136, 17881, 193n.9, 201n.l

Main Index

McMahon, Ed, 163 McNear, Howard (Floyd the Barber), 19, 165 McNeil, Alex, 75 McQueen, Steve, 120 Macrae, Sheila (Alice Krarnden), 124 made-for-Tv movie, xvii, 21,125, 138,148-49 Maharis, George, 79 Mailer, Norman, 67 Malden, Karl (Lt. Mike Stone), 81 Mander, Jerry, 3, 35 Mandrell, Barbara, 22 "Man of the Crowd" (Poe), 176n.4 Mansfield, Jayne, 122 Mantooth, Randolph, 94 Marconi, Guglielmo, xxv, 171 Marcuse, Herbert, 139 Marie, Rose, 107 Marinaro, Ed, 96 Mark VII Productions. See Webb, Jack Marsh, Earle. See Brooks, Tim, and Earle Marsh Marshall, Garry, 140 Martin, Andrea, 161, 163, 165 Martin, Dean, 163 Martin, Quinn, 79-82 Martin, Steve, 155 Marx, Groucho, 80, 121, 145 mass culture, 2-4,8,35-37,97, 130-31,135-39,155,158-59 mass stereoization, 137 May, Elaine. See Nichols, Mike, and Elaine May "Maypole of Merry Mount" (Hawthorne),66 Meadows, Audrey (Alice Kramden), 19,110,124 "Melancholy Serenade" (Gleason's theme), III Melville, Sam, 88 Merman, Ethel, 161 Merrill, Gary, 77 Michaels, Lome, 150-51, 155, 157 Miller, Mitch, 140 Milner, Marty, 79 Minow, Newton N., 2, 192n.1 Mr. T., 92

Montalban, Ricardo (Mr. Roarke), 161, 162 Moore, Alvy (County Agent Hank Kimball), 61 Moore, Tim (Kingfish), 27 Moranis, Rick, 161, 164-65 Morris, Garrett, 154, 156 Morse, Barry (Lt. Phillip Gerard), 153 Moser, Jim, 77 movies and 'rv, 9, 69, 77,122,13738, 142, 150, 156-57 MTM Enterprises, 19,94,97,115 MlV,170 Muir, Jean, 76 Murphy, Eddie, 158 Murray, Bill, 153-56, 159 Murray, Jan, 140, 145 Murrow, Edward R., 110, 130, 170, 184 Musel, Robert, 125 narrowcasting, 182 Nashville Network (cable service), 170 National Legal Aid Society, 77 National Public Radio (NPR), 149 Nazis on 'rv, 18, 81 NBC: radio network, 41, 131; television network, 23,26,27,31,32, 71,79,94,97,104-5,109,117, 118,125,126,132,140-41,143, 149, 158, 160, 165 nekyia, 151-52 Nelson, Ozzie and Harriet. See Ozzie and Harriet, Adventures of Nelson, Ricky, 153-54 neoclassical stage on Tv, 113 Network Era, xxvii-xxxi, 165-66 Newcomb, Horace, xiii, 3,127 Newman, Laraine, 153, 154, 156 Newman, Paul, 118 News, The, 23,29, 71,135,145 Newton, Sir Isaac, 61,93 NeuJ York Daily Mirror, 104 New York Herald Tribune, 146 New York Review of Books, 148 New York Times, 120, 127 Nichols, Barbara, 141 Nichols, Mike, and Elaine May, 159

227

Main Index

228

Nick-at-Nite, xxviii Nielsen Company, A. C., Nielsen ratings, 24, 31-32,40,45,62, 73, 74, 79,93,97,110,111,117,122,123, 138, 139-40,150, 151,200n.21 Nixon, Richard, 86 Nolan, Lloyd (Martin Kane), 73 normalcy, the notion of, on Tv, 5, 11, 22, 134, 145, 147, 153, 163 Norris, Frank, 69 Not Ready for Prime Time Players, 150-58 passim Nye, Louis, 51, 142 Nye, Russel, 39, 62, 127 O'Conner, Carroll (Archie Bunker), 20,63 Odets, Clifford, 18 O'Hara, Catherine, 161, 162, 164, 165 Old Southwest humor, 42-43 Olsen, Johnny, 123 O'Neill, Tip, 164 "On the Heresy of the Didactic" (Poe),135 Ontkean, Michael, 88 Orlando, Tony, Tony Orlando and Dawn, 27 Ortega y Gassett, Jose, 1 Osmond, Donnie and Marie, 22, 27 Osmond, Ken (Eddie Haskell), 15, 159 Oster, Harry, xvii Oswald, Lee Harvey, 133, 148 Paar, Jack, 23,143-46 Pacifica Foundation, 200n.16 Paley, William, 24, 41, 71,109 paratextuality of Tv and life, 147-48 Paramount Studios, xxvi Parton, Dolly, 23 Patrick, John, 119 Paul, Sherman, 171n.2 PBS television network, 147, 149, 160, 165, 185 performance art, 28, 34. See also presentational mode; stand-up comedy Performer Q, 147

perspective by incongruity, 153, 200n.35 Phaedre(Racine),113 Philosophy of Composition (Poe), 129 Pirandello, Luigi, 39 Piscopo, Joe, 158 Pixley. See Hooterville Plato, 66 Poe, Edgar Allan, 7, 129-31,135, 199n.4 Pope, Alexander, xvii, 6, 68 Popeye the Sailor Man, 9 Porky Pig, 76 Poston, Tom, 142 presentational mode, 21-29,99,100, 101,118,136,160-62 Presley, Elvis, 155 Pretty Boy Floyd, 67 proscenium, 11-12, 36. See also representational mode Pryor, Richard, 150 Psychic Friends Network, 188 QM Productions. See Martin, Quinn Quarter Pounder, 147. See also McDonald's QUinn, Anthony, 120 Rabinowitz, Dorothy, 16 Radio Act of 1912, 171 radio and lV, 9, 36, 71, 74, 77, 135-37, 142, 200n.16 Radio Conference of 1922, 176 Radner, Gilda, 151-54, 156, 159 Randolph, Amanda (Louise the Maid),27 Randolph, Joyce (Trixie Norton), 19, 110,113 The Rape of the Lock (Pope), 68 Raye, Martha, 24, 111 Reagan, Ronald, 78 realism in police shows, 74-75, 97-98 Red Channels, 75 Reivers(Faulkner),148 representational mode, 11, 13,25, 99,101,107,112,133,135-36, 148, 153, 160-62, 164

Main Index

Reynolds, Burt, 127 Rich, Lee, 95 Rickles, Don, 19,28, 145 Ritter, John, 100 Robertson, Pat, 189 rock 'n roll on television, 137, 149, 155, 160, 164 Rogers, Will, 131 roller derby, 9 Rolling Stone magazine, 164 Rolling Stones, The, 155 Romero, Caesar, 154 Rooney, Mickey, 120, 122 Rosenberg, Meta, 91 Rosenblatt, Roger, 16 Rossellini, Roberto, 107 Rossen, Robert, 118 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 42 Rowan, Dan, and Dick Martin. See Laugh-In, Rowan and Martin s Ruby, Jack, 133- 34 Runyon, Damon, 102 Ryan, Irene, 49-50, 58 Sahl, Mort, 145 St.James, Susan, 92 Sales, Soupy, 145 Sarnoff, David, 4,24,71,175 Sarnoff, Robert, 186 Saudi Arabian State Television, 194n.25 Schafranzi, Tony" 28 Schlatter, George, 27, 157 schlockumentary, 10, 29, 133, 157, 192 Schneider, Bob, 86-87 Schwarzkogler, Rudolf, 28 Scorscese, Martin, 165 Scott, George C., 118 Scott, Randolph, 82 Scruggs, Earl. See Flatt, Lester, and Earl Scruggs Second City. See SC1V Seeger, Pete, 26 Seldes, Gilbert, xiii, 7,25,99,11819, 127, 177 serial nature of programming, 1112,67-68 Serling, Rod, 73, 120, 149, 153

seventies, 14,89-90, 149, 159 shadow memory, television as, 135, 151-64 passim Shakespeare, William, xiv Shalit, Gene, 162 Shapiro, Stanley, 41 Shields, Brooke, 161, 164 Shils, Edward, 3 Shor, Toots, 102 Shore Acres (Herne), 39 Short, Martin, 165 Shuck, John, 93 Siegal, Bugsy, 66 signatory montage, 35, 44, 60, 81, 95, 115, 193 Silverman, Fred, 94, 160 Silvers, Phil (Sgt. Bilko), 20 simulcasting, 149 Sinatra, Frank, 102, 110 Siskel, Gene. See Ebert, Roger, and Gene Siskel Sister Theresa, 161 sitcom, 25, 39, 65-69,71,82,87,90, 94,98,100,112-13,153,154,164, 193n.19, 194n.37 sixties, 13,78,86-90, 156 Skelton, Red, 100, 122, 124-25 Skiing magazine, 136 Sklar, Robert, xvi Smith, Michael, 34 Smith, Patti, 155 Smith, Roger (Jeff Spencer), 82 Smothers Brothers, 26-27 Snyder, Tom, 152-53 soap opera (daytime), 12, 33,94,98, 195n.54 Solid Gold Dancers, 162 Somers, Suzanne, 37 Sonny and Cher, 27 Sound and the Fury, The (Faulkner), 148 Spelling, Aaron, 86-90, 95 Spelling-Goldberg Productions. See Spelling, Aaron Spillane, Mickey, 70 Spinks, Leon, 153 spinoff, 58, 86 Spock, Dr. Benjamin, 26 Stack, Robert (Eliot Ness), 80, 82

229

Main Index

230

stand-up comedy, 7,9,21-23,76, 100, 126, 131, 141-42,149, 157, 159 Stanton, Dr. Frank, 168n.6 Steinbeck, John, 54 Sterne, Lawrence, 8 Stevens, Mark (Martin Kane), 73 Stewart, Jimmy, 19 Stockman, David, 148 Stump, AI, 116 Sullivan, Ed, 20, 144, 181 Sunbelt, 83-84, 124 Susskind, David, 77. See also David Susskind Show, The Swift, Jonathan, xvii, 6 Sylvester the Cat, 162 Symbionese Liberation Army, 28-29 syndication,S, 147 Tashjian, Dickran, 168n.8 Taylor, Elizabeth, 152, 155 teenagers and television, 136-38 televiewing, radical modes of, 8, 3334,37, 195n.54 Terrace, Vincent, xiv Thomas, Danny, 122. See also Danny Thomas Show, The Thomas, Dave, 161-62, 165 Thomas, Marlo (Ann Marie), 18 Thomas, Norman, 186 Thoreau, Henry David, 88 Thorpe, Thomas Bangs, 142-43 Tinker, Grant, 39, 63, 97 Tache, Jean, 28 Tocqueville, Alexis de, 183 Tomack, Sid (Jim Gillis), 105 Tomlin, Lily, 150, 155, 157 Toscanini, Arturo, 185 Tosh, Peter, 155 Tracy, Lee (Martin Kane), 73 tragedy on television, 67 -68, 148 transvestism on TV, 25, 102, 164 Travanti, Daniel)., 95 trivia as TV appreciation, 12, 164 Truman, Harry, 41 TV Guide, 10,94, 112, 116, 122, 123, 125 Twain, Mark, 42, 45

Tyler, Royall, 42,50 Tylor, Edward Burnett, xviii, 192n.7 Tynan, Kenneth, 145-46 USA (cable service), 165 U.S. Army, 158 U.S. Constitution, 66 U.S. Defense Department, 78 U.S. Supreme Court, 97 Vance, Vivian (Ethel Mertz), 19 van den Haag, Ernest, 139 Van Dyke, Jerry, 20 Van Gelder, Lawrence, 127 Veblen, Thorstein, 50, 57 Viacom Company, 40 Vietnam War, 51, 54,86,149 Vigoda, Abe, 93 Village Voice, 162 violence, Congressional investigation of, 80 Virgil, 42 Virginian, The(Wister), 45 Von Erich, Baron Fritz, 9 Wade, Ernestine (Sapphire), 27 Wambaugh, Joseph, 95 Warhol, Andy, 37 Warner Brothers Television, 76, 82-85,88, 103-4 Warren, Michael, 96 Warshow, Robert, XXi,8, 67 Waste Land, The(Eliot), 3 Waters, Ethel, 27 Weaver, Charlie. See Arquette, Cliff Weaver, Sylvester "Pat," 131-32, 141, 169, 199nn.13, 15. Webb, Jack, 73- 79, 85, 86-89,92, 94,95,165-66,169, 199nn.13, 15. See also Adam 12; Dragnet; Emergencyl, General Electric True; 77 Sunset Strip Weiler, A. H., 120 Weld, Tuesday (Thalia Moninger), 20 western, the, 66-67, 70-71 Westinghouse Corporation, 174, 201n.2 WGN, xiv

Main Index

Whitman, Slim, 162 Whitman, Walt, xxi, xxviii, 1,20,30, 31,37-38,129-33,137,166,188, 198n.12 Whitney Museum of American Art, 34 WHT (subscription TV service), 165 Wicking, Christopher, and Tise Vahimagi, 91 Wilk, Stan, xii Williams, Raymond, xii Williams, Robin, 100 Williams, Spencer (Andy), 27 Williams, Wendy 0., and the Plasma tics, 164 Williams, William B., 163 Williams, William Carlos, xi Wilson, Woodrow, 173-74 Winchell, Walter, 80 window on the world concept, 132-33 Winkler, Henry, 100 Winters, Jonathan, 147 Wister, Owen, 45

WMT-TV,133 Wolcott, James, xiii, 162-65 Wolfman, Jack, 149 women on TV, 86-90, 96 WOR, xiv World War I, 172 World War II, xvii, 14, 101, 133, 135 wrestling, professional, 9-10,21,22, 25, 26,71, 129, 160 WTBS, xiv Wynn, Ed, 24

231 "Yankee Doodle Dandy," 61 Yorkin, Bud, 53 Young, Owen D., 175 Young, Robert, 154. See also Father Knows Best

Yule Log, The, 136 Zappa, Frank, 154 Zenith, xxvi Zimbalist, Efrem Ir., 82, 85 Zola, Emile, 33, 97

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Index of Television Series

The networks and dates given refer to the production runs of series. The notation "syn." indicates that original episodes of a series were shown in syndication.) (NOTE:

Abbott and Costello Show, The (syn., 1952-53),100 ABC World News Tonight (ABC, 1978-),148 Adam-12(NBC, 1968-75),79,89 Aldrich Family, The (NBC, 194953),76 Alias Smith andjones(ABC, 197173),85 All in the Family (CBS, 1971-79), 13-14,16,18 All-StarReview(NBC, 1950-53), III Amos 'nAndy(NBC, 1950-53),11, 18, 27 Andy Griffith Show, The (CBS, 196068), 13, 19, 51 Armstrong Circle Theater(NBC, 1950-57; CBS, 1957-63),26 A-Team, The(NBC, 1983-),68,92 Baa, Baa, Black Sheep. See Black Sheep Squadron Bachelor Father (CBS, 1957-59; NBC, 1959-61; ABC, 1961-62), 16

Baretta (ABC, 1975-78),33,92 Barnaby jones (CBS, 1973-80),69, 79,81-82 Barney Miller (ABC, 1975-82),93 Battlestars (NBC, 1981-82), 23 Berle Buick Show (NBC, 1953-54), 156 Beulah (ABC, 1950-53), 18, 27 Beuerly Hillbillies, The (CBS, 196271), xvi, 39-40, 43-63 BeuJitched(ABC, 1964-72), 17 Big Eddie (CBS, 1975),94 Bionic Woman, The (ABC, 197678),93 Black Sheep Squadron (NBC, 197678),92-93 Bob Cummings Show, The (NBC, 1955; CBS, 1955-57; NBC, 195759),43,53 Bob Newhart ShoUJ,The (CBS, 197278), 115 Bonanza (NBC, 1959-73), xxviii, 40 Bourbon Street Beat (ABC, 195960),84 Brady Bunch, The (ABC, 1969-74), 137 Broadway Open House (NBC, 1950=51),23, 106, 140-41 Burns and Allen Show, The (CBS, 1950-58),11,36,41,100,160

233

*

Index of TelevisionSeries

234

Cannon (CBS, 1971-76),79,81, 93 Car 54, Where Are You?(NBC, 1961-63),94 Carol Burnett Show, The (CBS, 1967 -79),22, 27 Cavalcade of Stars (DUM, 1950-52), 106-8,110 CBS Evening News, 147-48 Charlie's Angels (ABC, 1976-81), xxviii, 89 Chase (NBC, 1973-74),92 Cheyenne (ABC, 1955-63),82 CHiPs (NBC, 1977-83),70 City of Angels (NBC, 1976),92 Columbo (NBC, 1971-77),68,92 CPO Sharkey (NBC, 1976-78), 18 Dallas(CBS, 1978-),95 Danny Thomas Show, The (ABC, 1953-57; CBS, 1957-65; ABC 1970-71),12,27,51,53,154 D.A'sMan, The (NBC, 1959), 77 David Susskind Show, The (syn., 1958-), 153 Dean Marlin Sboui, The (NBC, 1965-74),157 Defenders, The (CBS, 1961-65),78 Dennis the Menace (CBS, 1959-63), 15 Detective School (ABC, 1979), 94 Different Strokes (NBC, 1978-), 164 Disney, The Wonderful World of (NBC, 1961-81),30 Disneyland (ABC, 1954-61),44, 173n.13 Dobie Gillis, The Many Loves of (CBS, 1959-63),14,20 Don Kirshner's Rock Concert Csvtv., 1973-81),149 Donna Reed Show, The(ABC, 195866), 15, 53 Donnie and Marie Show, The (ABC, 1976-79),150 Doris Day Show, The (CBS, 196873), 14, 18 Dragnet, Dragnet '67, etc. (NBC, 1952-59,1967-70),8,73-79,82, 88,91

Dukes of Hazzard, The (CBS, 1979-),63 Dynasty (ABC, 1981-),95 East Side, West Side (CBS, 1963-64), 78 Ed Sullivan Show, The (CBS, 194871), 142, 170, 188, 196n.17 Emergency/(NBC, 1972-77),79,94 Ernie in Kovacsland(NBC, 1951),36 Ernie Kovacs Shou'(CBS, 1952-53; NBC, 1956),36 Family AJ!air(CBS, 1966-71), 14,94 Family Feud (ABC, 1977-),154-55 Fantasy!sland(ABC, 1978-),90, 162 Father Knows Best (CBS, 1954-55; NBC, 1955-58; CBS, 1958-62), 15, 16,51,54,154 F.B.I., The (ABC, 1965-74),79,81 Fish (ABC, 1977-78), 93 Fitz and Bones (NBC, 1981),27 Flip Wilson Show, The (NBC, 197074),27, 150 Ford Festival (NBC, 1947-52),73 Fridays (ABC, 1980-82), 158 Front Page Detective (DUM, 195153),73 F Troop (ABC, 1965-67), 18 Fugitive, The (ABC, 1963-67),8081,85 Fury(NBC, 1955-60), xviii Gangbusters(NBC, 1952),73 Garroway at Large (NBC, 1949-54), 132 General Electric Theater(CBS, 195362),78 General Electric True (CBS, 196263),78 Gillette Cavalcade of Sports (NBC, 1946-60), 109 Gilligan's Island (CBS. 1964-67), xvii, 52 Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour, The (CBS, 1969.,-72),157 Godfrey and His Friends (CBS, 1949-59),74

Index of Television Series

Goldbergs. The(CBS, 1949-')1; NBC. 19')2-')3;

Gomer

DUM, 19')4), 11, 76

l~vle. U~MC(CBS. 1964-70).

IH Good Tinles(CBS, 1974-79), 1H Green Acres (CBS. 196')-71), xx, ')9-

jackie Glcasun Shull', The (CBS. 19')2-')'). 19()()-70), 109-12. 123-24 jack Paar Progranr. 1962-6')).143-4') jackpot

The (NBC.

Boulin); (NBC. 19')H-() 1). 2'4.

I1H.l,)7

63, 1H4 C;Ul1sJrloke(CBS, 19')')-7')).67,70

feffersous.

tbe (CBS, 197')-),

1H

johnnv RiJl,f{u(CBS, 19')9-()O). HH joker is

(ABC, 1974-76).93

f!any-() fiai'e

GUl1,

Will Tral'el(CBS,

19')7-

(3),70-71

Hau-aitan f.)'e(ABC,

19')9-63),

(CBS, 1972-7');

IH3

235

ju!ia(CBS. 196H-71), IH Justice(NBC, 19')4-')()), 77

H3K(~iak(CBS. 1973-7H).

H4,92 Hall'aii Fil'e-() (CBS, 196H-HO), 92 Hee-Hall'(CBS, (1969-71; 1971-),1')7,IH4

v/u«tbe

syn .. 197')-).

Hart to Hart (ABC, 1979-), H9-90

6H, 92. 93.

1')2

syn ..

fierc<"; LZlLy(CBS, 196H-74), 13, 14,

Laugb-In. Rouan and Martin :.... (NBC. 19()H-73), 27, 1')7

Larcrne and Shirley (ABC, 197()-

19

Highua» Patrol (xyn .. 19')')-).70,

77

H3).140

Ifill Street Blues (NBC, 19H1-), H,

Lair and Order ( NBC, 1990-).

94-9H,1H4 Hogan': ... ·lieroe:dCBS.

IH9 Lau-rence Welk Sbou: tbe (ABC.

196')-71).

IH,

93

Holtvirood Square, ... · (NBC, 196()-HO), 23

Holmes and }"()}()(ABC, 197()), 93 }{OJ1(IYJJlOOl1e1:'l. 7:he(CBS, 19')')-')()), xv-xvi,

17, 19,36.10'),110,112-

17.122, 124, IH4

19')')-71; syn., 1971-). IH4 Lcare It to Bearer: CBS, 19S7-SH; ABC. 19')H-()5). 12. 1'), 36, 1').~. 1')9 Lt/e (!/Ril~l'. The (NBC. 1949-')0, 19')3-')H). 17. 104-').107 1.1ncut): 7be(CBS, ]9')4-60),77 Boat. tbe (ABC. 1977-),90 Lot«: Tbat Bob. Scc Boh CUJJlJJliJl,f{s

!.()['('

l Dream offcannic

: NBC. 19()')-70).

13,17,IH II_oi'e Lucv (CBS, 19') 1-61 ), xxviii, 12, 1()-17,3(), 74,111, 1')1-')2, 1')4, 169n.2S I Marriedloan (NBC, 19')2-S')), 17 lncrcdible I tulle. 7be (CBS. 197HHl).93 I Remember Mantas CBS. 1949-')()), 11 IroJlside(NBC. 19()7-7S). H, H7, 1()O

Sbou LucvSbou: Lux

7be(CBS.

19()2-()H). 19 ] 9')0-')4;

vta«.Theatre (CBS,

NBC, 19S4-S7), 14H McCluud(NBC,

1970-77),95

Mcl{ale: ... ·NaiT(ABC,

]962-6()),

IH

Macmillan and W(!(} (NBC, 197177),92,94 Make RUUJJI.!()}'!Jad(h'. Scc Danny

Thomas Sbou: jack Bcunv Program, The (CBS, 19')O-()/L NBC. ()4-(),)). 20, 3(), HO, 100,

170n.:~7

Jackie Glcascnts American Scene Mauazin« (CBS, 19()2-()()), 123

Man Against Crime (CBS, 1949-')3; DUM, 19')3-')4; NBC, 19,).~-,)()), 7] -72,7') Martin KaJle, Pruatc h~ve (NBC, 19/19-')4), 71-72, 7')

Index of TelevisionSeries

236

Marv Hartman. Mary Hartman (syn., 1976-7H). See "syndication" in Glossary Marv Kay and.!ohnny(DUM, 19474H; NBC, 194H-49; CBS, 1949; NBC, 1949-'50),11 l'v1al)'Tyler Moore Sbou: The (CBS, 1970-77), '5, 19,63, 11'5, 169n.26 M*A*S*H(CBS, 1972-H3), xvii, 1H,93 Masterpiece Theatre (PBS, 1971-), H Mtll'erick(ABC, 19'57-(2), H'5 Mavberrv, R.F.D. (CBS, 196H-71), 14 Medic (NBC, 19'54-'56),77 Men: See Griffin, Merv Midnight Special, The (NBC, 1973H1), 149, ] 60 Mike Douglas Sholl'<syn., 1963-H2), 23 Mr. Ed(CBS, 1961-6'5),17 Mister Roger~, Neip,hhorhood(PBS, 1967-),162-63 Mod Squad (ABC, 196H- 73), H, H()HH,91 MSquad(NBC, 19'57-(0),77 ~V Fatorite Martian (CBS, 1963(6),17 ~V Little Margie (CBS, 19'52-'53; NBC, 19'53-'5'5),16 ~~' Mother. the Car(NBC, 196'5-(6), 20

Perry Como Shott; The(NBC, 195'563),117 Perry Mason (CBS, 1957-74),133 Pete and Gladys (CBS, 1960-62), 17 Pete Kelzv~, Blues (NBC, 19'59),77 PetticcatIunction (CBS, 1963-70), 13, 5H-59, 61 Phil Silvers Sbou: The. See Sgt. Bilko Plainclothesman, The (DUM, 194954),71-72 Playhouse 90(CBS, 1956-61),26, 120, 149, 1H4 Police Squad (ABC, 19H2), 94 Police Story (NBC, 1973- 77), 95 Police \fTom a n (NBC, 1974-7H), 69 Private Benjamin (ABC, 19H1-), 1H Private Secretary (CBS, 1953-'57), IH Quincy, M. E. (NBC, 1976-H3), 147, 162

197'5-), 16 Our Miss Brooks (CBS, 19'52-'56), 1H Orzie and Harriet, Adrentures (!l (ABC, 19'52-66), 1'), 1')3

Racket Squad (CBS, 1951-53),73 Real McC(~vs. The (ABC, 19'57-62; CBS, 1962-(3), '51, '56-'57,93 Real People (NBC, 1979-),10, 133, 1'57 Richard Diamond, Prirate Detective (CBS, 19'57-'59; NBC, 19'59-60), HO Richard Prvor Sbou: The(NBC, 1977),27 Richie Brockelman, Prirate Eve (NBC, 197H), 92 Rockford Files, The(NBC, 1974-HO), 6H-69, H'5-H6, 90-91, 9'5 Rocky and Bulluinlele. aka Rocky and His Friends, aka The Bull1959-61; NBC, ll'inkleSholl'(ABC, 1961-(2), xviii Rookies, The(ABC, 1972-76), HH Route 66(CBS, 1960-(4),79 Rouan and Martin s Laugh-ln. See Laugh-ln. Rou-a» and Martin's

Partridge Family. The(ABC, 197074),137 Pato' [)uke Shou: The (ABC, 1963(6),1')

Sanford and Son (NBC, 1972-77), IH Saturday Night at the lHol'ies(NBC, 1961-7H),122

Naked Ci~v(ABC, 19'5H-(3), 7H Nat KiJzg Cole Sbou. The(NBC, 19'56-'57),27 NBC Magazine (NBC, 19HO-Hl), 97 Noah~, Ark(NBC, 19'56-'5H), 77 NOI'a (PBS, 1974-),129 N}l JDBlue(ABC, 1992-), IH9 Cine Day at a Time(CBS,

Index of Television Series

Sat u rdav Night Lil'e (NBC, 197,)-HO, 19HO-), xvi-xvii, 24, 36, 97,149,)H, 160, 1H4

Saturday Night Retiue ; 19')0-')1, 19')3-')4),106-7

SC1V(syn., 1977-H1; NBC, 19HI-H3; Cinernax, 19H3-), xvi-xvii, 24, 3')-36,97, 1,)H-6') See It NOllJ(CBS, 19')2-')'), 131 Sgt. Bilko(CBS, 19')')-')9), IH, 20 Sesame Street (PBS, 1969-), xxx, 1')7 77 Sunset Strip (ABC, 19')H-64), H2H6, HH,90-91 Simpsons, The (Fox, 19H9-), IH9 Sing Along with Mitch (NBC, 1961(6), HO Six Million Dollar Man, The (ABC, 1974-7H),92-94 $64,000 Question (CBS, 19')')-')H), 121

60 Minutes (CBS, 196H-), 10 Smother .." Brothers Comedy Hou r (CBS, 1967-69),26

Sonp,sjcJrSale(CBS, 19')0-'52), 141 Sportsuiorid (NBC, 197H-), 10 Starsky and Hutch (ABC, 197')-79), H,H9

Steve Allen Show, The (NBC, 19'56'59), 142. See Allen, Steve Streets ofSan Francisco, The (ABC, 1972-77), HI

Stu Eruiin Show (ABC, 19'50-'5'5),1 '5 Sunday Morning (CBS, 19H1-), 132 Super Bowl, The (various, 1967-),40 Superman (syn., 19')1, 19')7). See "syndication" in Glossary Surfside Six (ABC, 1960-62), H4 S. WA. T(ABC, 197'5-76), HH-H9 Talent Patrol (ABC, 19'53-')'5), 141 Talent Scouts, Arthur Godfrey ~,. (CBS,

That Girl (ABC, 1966- 71), IH-19 That 'sIncredible! (ABC, 19HO-), 10, 133

Tbree s Compa ny (ABC, 1977-),33 TJ. Hooker(ABC, 19H2-), 1'52 Tudav Sbou: The(NBC, 19,)2-), 132, 143

7(Jlna (ABC, 1973-74),92 Tonight! America A/fer Dark (NBC, 19'57),142

Tonight Sbou; The (NBC, 19'54-), 23, 2H, 100, 12'), 132, 140-47, 1')0

Trouble with Father. See Stu Eruin Sbou Tuentictb Centu ry, Prudential's The (CBS, 19'57-70), xviii Twen~v-()ne(NBC, 19')6-'5H), 121

20/20 (ABC, 197H-), 97 Twilight Zone, The (CBS, 19'59-6'5), 1'53-4

United States Steel Hour, The (ABC, 19')3-'5'5; CBS, 19'5'5-63),26

lin tou cbahles, The (ABC, 19'59-(3), 67, 79-HO,H2,91,

1'51-')2

Waltons, The (CBS, 1972-H1), 33 Welconle Back, Kotler(ABC, 197')79),93

WhiteShadoll', The(CBS, 197H-Hl), 92

Who Do You Trust? (ABC, 19'57-(3), 14'5

Wide Wide Ul(Jrld(NBC, 19'5'5-')H), 132

Wide World

(~/Sports(ABC,

1961-),

10, 129 WKRP in Cincinnati (CBS, 197HHI), 11'5 Wonder Woman (ABC, 1976-77; CBS, 1977-79), 93

194H-'5H),74

Tell It to Groucho(CBS, 1962), 123 Tennessee Ernie Ford Show, The (NBC, 19'56-61), HO

Texaco Star Theater aka Milton Berle Show(NBC, 194H-'56), 24,2'5, 106-7. See also Berle Buick Sbou.

You Are There (CBS, 19'53-'57) IH2 You Asleedfor It (DlJM, 19'50-'51; ABC, 19'51-'59, syn., 19HI-H3), IH2

You Bet Your Lt/e(NBC, 19'50-61), HO,121

237

Index of TelevisionSeries

You'll Never Get Rich. See SRt. Bilko You're in the Picture (CBS, 1961), 121-22

Your Show of Sbous (NBC, 195054),150

238

Index of Films Made 'or Theatrical Release

Animal Crackers; dir. Victor Herman (1930), 121

Jazz Singer, The, dir. Alan Crosland (1927),164

Annie Hall, dir. Woody Allen (1977), Kill the Umpire, dir. Lloyd Bacon

157

(1950),105

Blues Brothers, The, dir. John Landis (1980),156

Bonnie and Clyde, dir. Arthur Penn (1967),67

Larceny, Inc., dir. Lloyd Bacon (1942),104

Little Caesar, dir. Mervyn LeRoy

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, dir. George Roy Hill (1969), 85

CaptainIanuary, dir. David Butler, (1936),46

(1930),67

Ma and Pa Kettle, dir. Charles Lamont, 11 Manhattan, dir. Woody Allen (1979), 157

Metropolis, dir. Fritz Lang (1926),32 GiRot, dir. Gene Kelly (1962),119 Godfather, The, dir. Francis Ford Coppola (1972),66-67,160 Guadalcanal Diary, dir. Lewis Seiler (1943),105

Hangman

~'.;

Knot, dir. Roy Huggins

Nauv Blues, dir. Lloyd Bacon (1941), 104 Neighbors; dir. John G. Avildsen (1981), 156 1941, dir. Stephen Spielherg (1979), 156

(1952),82

Humoresque. dir. Jean Negulesco (1946),164

Hllstler, The, dir. Robert Rossen ( 1961), 118, 125

On the Wate,:/ront, dir. Elia Kazan (1954),163

Orchestra Wives, dir. Archie Mayo (1942),104

239

*

Index of Films Made for Theatrical Release

Papa s Delicate Condition, dir. George Marshall (1963), 120 Public Enemy, dir. William Wellman (1931),67 Red Nightmare, dir. Jack Webb (1956),78 Requiem/ora Heavyweight, dir. Ralph Nelson (1962), 120, 125

240

Smokey and the Bandit I (1977), II (1980), dir. Hal Needham, 127 Soldier in the Rain, dir. Ralph Nelson (1963), 120 Springtime in the Rockies, dir. Irving Cummings (1942), 104