Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Classic Television as Historical Document

 I was sad to read about the passing of baseball great Stan Musial. Most will first remember Musial as a Hall of Famer and one of the game’s great gentlemen. Some in my family recalled how his St. Louis Cardinals owned my Chicago Cubs during his heyday, a tradition that sadly continues to this day.

But as a Comfort TV fan, my first recollection was his appearance on an episode of That Girl.



Such moments are an often-underappreciated aspect of classic TV. Television shows from the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s document a historic era, and not only provide a record of how people once dressed and talked and worked, they sometimes let us see and hear from famous and notable people that future generations would otherwise only know in history books.

Of course it’s not just baseball greats, though that sport is certainly well-represented with appearances by Musial with Ann Marie, Willie Mays on Bewitched, Sandy Koufax on Mr. Ed and Don Drysdale on The Brady Bunch, to name just a few.

Before Game Show Network devolved into its current sorry state, it used to air classic game shows like What’s My Line, The Name’s the Same and I’ve Got a Secret. One night many years ago I was watching I’ve Got a Secret and was amazed at the secret of one of the guests – he was a witness to the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

Think of that – there was once a man whose lifespan linked the era of Lincoln’s presidency with that of television game shows. His name was Samuel J. Seymour, and he was just five years old when his family took him to Ford’s Theatre on that fateful night. He was 96 when he appeared on a 1956 episode of I’ve Got a Secret, and died less than two months after his appearance. 



Other notable guests from the show’s run include artist Salvador Dali, Ray Harroun, the winner of the first Indianapolis 500 (in 1911!), Philo Farnsworth, one of the men credited with inventing television, and the parents of Neil Armstrong, who appeared several years before the historic moon landing and proudly discussed their son’s promotion to astronaut.

What’s My Line was another popular quiz show from the same era that had its share of notable participants, from poet Carl Sandburg to architect Frank Lloyd Wright and Eleanor Roosevelt. But when I watch episodes today I am most captivated by the sophisticated demeanor of the celebrity panel, who always dressed formal to appear on a game show, and the impeccable diction and manners of host John Daly, a respected newsman.

Daly addressed the panel as “Mr.” and “Miss,” and there was a genteel quality to the proceedings that would disappear not only from game shows but also from much of our social interaction within ten years. I’m afraid my manners are as sloppy as everyone else’s these days, but when I look into these windows on the past, I sometimes wish we had held on to their ideals awhile longer. 


Friday, January 18, 2013

The Comfort TV Library

 
Reading is a more highly regarded pastime than watching an old TV show. But what if that show was based on a book? Does that make it more respectable?

A surprising number of classic TV shows carry a “based on the book by…” credit. If you want to start building a Comfort TV library, here are a few suggested titles to get you started. Then, next time you’re in a conversation with friends who are debating whether Charles Dickens or Jane Austen better explored the themes of social class in 19th century England, you can offer your own literary perspective: “Well, I’m not sure about that, but I do know that The Love Boat would have been far better served by adhering more closely to Jeraldine Saunders’ original text.”

The Love Boats
Despite its racy title, Jeraldine Saunders’s memoir offers few of the delights of the ‘70s series that provided steady work to Gary Collins and Mary Ann Mobley. Saunders spent ten years as one of the luxury cruise industry’s first female cruise directors, and she certainly saw her share of Commandment-breaking during that time. But this reads more like an expose’ of the industry than an account of someone setting course for adventure with her mind on a new romance. 



Life Without George
This is one of the more suspect “based on” credits, as this forgotten book by Irene Kampen supposedly inspired The Lucy Show. But viewers were far more likely to conclude that the misadventures of Lucy Carmichael and Vivian Bagley were simply a continuation of the same inspired comedy moments performed by Lucille Ball and Vivian Vance on I Love Lucy. And they were. The book credit was an attempt to dodge paying I Love Lucy creator Jess Oppenheimer for the use of what were essentially the same characters. Oppenheimer sued, and won.

Cyborg
Martin Caidin’s futuristic 1972 novel was the basis for both The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman. Caidin created the characters of astronaut Steve Austin, government honcho Oscar Goldman and scientist Rudy Wells. While this is acknowledged in the credits of both series, rights disputes with the Caidin estate played a significant role in the delay that kept both shows from being released on DVD for several years. 



The Homecoming
Earl Hamner’s novel The Homecoming was the inspiration for The Waltons, an unexpectedly popular 1970s series about a large family in rural Virginia trying to survive the Great Depression. Hamner’s narration opened every episode, and there’s a fascinating special feature on one of the DVD sets in which Waltons cast members meet the members of Hamner’s family that inspired their characters. 
 
 Perry Mason
Before he became television’s most honorable and successful attorney, Perry Mason was featured in more than 70 courtroom thrillers written by Erle Stanley Gardner, the first of which appeared in 1934. There were radio and film adaptations as well. But while there were once tens of millions of Mason novels in print, the character has now been defined forever by the performance of Raymond Burr, who personifies the crusading attorney just as Robert Young’s Marcus Welby once personified the doctor we’d all love to have taking care of our family. 


 
Hotel
Arthur Hailey’s book was perfect for adaptation by ABC into a landlocked Love Boat, thus providing even more work for Gary Collins and Mary Ann Mobley. The series shifted the setting from New Orleans to San Francisco, and kept the character of Peter McDermott (played by James Brolin), while creating new executive and front desk staff to mingle with the celebrity guests each week. 

Eight is Enough
Like Tom Bradford, the character played by Dick Van Patten in the Eight is Enough series, author Thomas Braden was a columnist with eight kids. Unlike his fictional counterpart, Braden was also an ex-CIA operative who made Nixon’s enemies list, and was married to a woman who had affairs with Nelson Rockefeller and Robert Kennedy. And you thought the Bradfords had issues.

Little House on the Prairie
The pioneer stories of Laura Ingalls Wilder were already established classics before they were adapted into a long-running NBC series starring Michael Landon and Melissa Gilbert. To fill out 200+ episodes, not counting spinoffs and movies, the show added an abundance of new characters, but Nellie Oleson was not one of them. Ingalls based her on several spoiled kids she met in her early years. Here’s a case where the TV show improved on the original texts, thanks to the inspired villainy of Alison Arngrim.



The Flying Nun
What seemed one of TV’s most bizarre creations was actually inspired by a book called The Fifteenth Pelican, written by Puerto Rican author Marie Teresa (“Tere”) RĂ­os Versace. They kept the characters of Sister Bertrille and Sister Sixto, as well as the Convent San Tanco setting, but unfortunately the friendly pelicans didn’t make the cut. While the effervescent performance of Sally Field has made the show a Comfort TV classic, the book is just as charming and worth seeking out for anyone who enjoyed the series.  


Monday, January 7, 2013

Friends: TV's Last Classic Sitcom

 There was a time when everyone watched Friends. Then a backlash began during the latter seasons, which often happens with any television series, or movie, or song that achieves a particularly substantial level of popularity. The remnants of that backlash have yet to subside. 



Today, when lists are made of the greatest sitcoms of all time, they include the usual titles from the 1950s through the 1980s, but among shows from the past 10-15 years it’s usually Seinfeld that is singled out, along with cult series like Arrested Development. Friends, it seems, has become a victim of its own mass-market appeal. Once the cool kids realized that everybody liked the show, they quickly moved on to something less mainstream.

But for me, Friends was the last true classic television situation comedy. That doesn't mean it was the last television comedy to achieve greatness, but it was the last to do so with the ubiquitous level of viewer enthusiasm that TV once took for granted. 


What’s more impressive is how Friends (1994-2004) reached this mass appeal in the cable era, when many homes suddenly had hundreds of channels to choose from. This was also when network television found itself in competition with shows like HBO’s Sex and the City, which enjoyed much broader latitude in content.

Seinfeld achieved this as well. But that series was too subversive to be considered an heir to situation comedies from generations past. Its objective was not to function within that format, but to undermine it with a cynical self-awareness. That it did so brilliantly cannot be denied. But as Seinfeld was more of an anti-sitcom, it belongs in a separate category. If you wished to create an unbroken chain of traditional television sitcoms that spans the history of the medium, the first link in that chain would be I Love Lucy, and the last link belongs to Friends.

Jennifer Aniston has made so many forgettable movies over the past decade, it’s easy to forget that she once earned an Emmy Award and comparisons to Lucille Ball for her portrayal of Rachel Green. Sure, her hairstyle was more famous than she was for awhile, but as the Ross-Rachel romance evolved she and David Schwimmer created characters viewers genuinely cared about. Similarly, Matthew Perry’s repeated and failed attempts at headlining another series have obscured the realization that he was once the funniest actor on television. 




But it was more than individual performances, or the fact that you could mix and match any combination of the series’ six leads and get something memorable. Friends is the last classic sitcom because it’s the last series to create moments that were widely discussed around office water coolers and in high school classrooms the next morning. You didn’t have to ask someone if they watched Friends last night – you knew they had, so you could go right to reviewing the particulars of the latest episode.

During ten years and more than 250 episodes, they gave us plenty to discuss – the trip to London, where Ross said Rachel’s name as he was marrying someone else; Phoebe’s songs at Central Perk; Monica and Ross dancing on Dick Clark’s New Years Rockin’ Eve; the boys vs. the girls trivia challenge with apartments on the line; the Thanksgiving episodes; the incredibly poignant moment when Rachel discovers how long Ross has loved her, when they watch their high school prom video. 



These scenes now have a permanent residence in the sitcom pantheon, with Bob Hartley ordering Chinese food, Lucy and Viv installing a shower, and Mary Richards at the funeral of Chuckles the Clown.

Television no longer occupies the same central place in the leisure time of those 30 and younger that it did in generations past, so the chance of any series achieving Friends-level status is infinitesimal. Two and a Half Men, The Big Bang Theory and How I Met Your Mother are all long-running, critically acclaimed shows. Do an informal survey and ask the next ten people you meet if they watch them. You’ll be lucky to get 3 “yes” responses. That’s the difference.