'The Jack Benny Show' May Be Only A MemoryAs we know, Jack didn’t bow and walk off the television stage for good after the special. He continued to appear on TV and had a special scripted and ready to go when he died in 1974. But, for the record, Variety reported on February 6, 1967 that NBC was “impressed by the high ratings” of the two specials, so long-time network executive Mort Werner signed him for a third. However, it didn’t air until 1968 (it was called Jack Benny’s Bag). Benny was busy with casino appearances in Vegas, hosted The Hollywood Palace, was honoured by the Variety Club for his charity work and maintained a busy schedule performing violin concerts across the U.S. It’s a wonder he had time, at age 72, for specials at all.
By RICHARD K. SHULL
Although not a word was said about it, the audience saw what was probably the last of its kind last night -- "The Jack Benny Show."
For the first time in 35 years, the 73-year-old comedian is no longer under any contract for future shows of his own with any network.
But if you're getting the wrong idea, stop. Don't plan on sending flowers just yet.
Although Benny has made his exit from broadcasting, he still has his full schedule of club dates, and a commitment to take his theater revue to England next spring.
And he's still whittling away on his perennial project: donating a benefit concert to every symphony orchestra in the country. So far he has been at that particular pastime 10 years and he has raised $4 million for orchestras, including the Indianapolis Symphony.
And he'll still be seen on television occasionally in guest appearances, such as on "Hollywood Palace" Feb. 4.
There's also the possibility he may become bored in a couple of years and decide to come back to TV for a special or two of his own. But at the moment, there are no more Jack Benny shows in sight.
Entertaining
To say that Benny went out in a blaze of glory last night would be an overstatement, but his show was substantially entertaining, thanks primarily to the Smothers Brothers and the singing of Trini Lopez.
Benny also had Phyllis Diller and 10 pretty girls -- a rather grotesque parlay.
His mark in entertainment has never been to say funny things, but to say things funny. His swishy gestures and walk, his insufferable vanity, his ability to milk an extra 30 seconds of laughter from an audience by freezing in position, have been his great assets.
It's a pity there's such a spread in ages between Benny and Tom Smothers, because never has Benny had such a perfect working companion.
Tom's dullhead mutterings and comments are perfect for Benny's reactions. The segment last night played between Benny and the Smothers was the high spot of the show.
The closeout portion of the hour had Benny in a luxuriant black wig (he has a thing about wigs) mimicking Bert Parks' as host of a phony beauty-contest.
The girls were eyefilling and the gimmicks abounded, even though Phyllis Diller did assault the nation's ocular faculties by appearing in a swimsuit alongside the beauties.
The Smothers played the judges which gave occasion for Tom to tell Benny, "I just gave you eight points for your walk."
And Just for old-times sake, Benny had Mel Blanc on the show for a repeat of one of their comic dialogues which they've been doing together for more than a quarter century.
Nearly five years ago, I sat with Benny in his Hollywood office, lazing in overstuffed chairs while he reflected on his long career in show business.
His heart bled for his old pal, the late Eddie Cantor, whose health at the time prohibited him from working even though his spirit was willing.
To Benny, the greatest tragedy which could befall a comedian would be to have the desire to entertain, yet for reasons of health or public indifference not have the opportunity.
Fortunately, Jack Benny still has the desire to entertain, the health to permit it, an audience that wants him, and the financial independence to pick and choose what he'll do. That's awfully nice for the aging comedian, even though he still practices on his violin daily in hope that someday someone may say, "Jack Benny, the violinist."
Screen Gems has acquired world-wide distribution rights to the new color cartoon series “Batfink” from WHAM-O Manufacturing, San Gabriel-based toy manufacturer, it was announced by Dan Goodman, Screen Gems V.P. in Charge of Syndication Sales. The deal, which also gives Screen Gems merchandising rights on the show, is exclusive of the 40 key market stations previously sold by J.W. Packer, Pres. of Mission Prods, the tv subsidiary of WHAM-O.Ah, but there was a time bomb in that sale and as Batfink’s mentor would say “Some days, you just can’t get rid of a bomb.” Batfink’s potential rise coincided with social activist groups carping and griping about “violence” in children’s programming, waving studies as “proof” that kiddie’s little brains were being warped. One of the stations carrying Batfink decreed the batty caped crusader was responsible—along with The Flying Nun!
The pre-sold markets for “Batfink” include: Metromedia stations WNEW-TV N.Y., KTTV L.A., WTTG, Wash., and KMBC-TV Kansas City; also WGN Chicago; KWGN Denver, KTVT Dallas, WEWS Cleveland, WXYZ-TV Detroit, WTCN Minneapolis and KPLR St. Louis; and the Triangle Broadcasting group.
Area TV Stations Blame Networks for Violent ShowsWhether other stations copied WTCN-TV’s example, I don’t know, but Batfink aired here and there into the early ‘70s (it was sold in Australia as well), and the U.S. networks reacted just as the story said: Space Ghost was out, Wacky Races, The Archie Show and The Banana Splits Adventure Hour were in.
By RICK EDMONDS
Minneapolis Tribune Staff Writer
"Batfink" cartoons are no longer going to be shown on WTCN-TV kiddie shows, but that's the only change any local station has made in response to the growing outcry over "television violence."
The networks have cancelled at least a score of scheduled programs in the weeks since Sen. Robert Kennedy's assassination, and are busily editing film and rewriting scripts for next fall.
Episodes of "I Spy," "Tarzan," "Bonanza," "Wild Wild West," and "Gunsmoke" have been pulled and even installments of such generally innocuous situation comedies as "The Mothers-in-Law" and "The Flying Nun" have been canceled.
Fifty House members Tuesday introduced a measure that would direct the Federal Communications Commission to study the effects on viewers of violence, in television programs.
EXECUTIVES of the three networks have written memos to their writers and editors asking that violence be de-emphasized. The "Batfink" program is a series of about 100 five-and six-minute episodes that had run during WTCN-TV's Casey and Roundhouse shows, the most popular children's TV offering in the Twin Cities. A spokesman for the station said the program was canceled because it contained much "that was almost violence for violence's sake."
But the four Twin Cities commercial stations generally are standing firm with program policies that they say they have been using for years.
AS A RESULT, fans of explicit conflict could tune in this week for "Cry of Battle," "Earth vs. the Flying Saucers," "Battle of Apache Pass" of "Escape From San Quentin,"—all local late show offerings.
Spokesmen for the four stations defend their policies in similar terms.
They all point out that the local stations originate very few shows—only a few news broadcasts, a children's program or two, and maybe a travelogue—and so they claim that primary responsibility for policing violence rests with the networks.
Movies which might be objectionable are always shown late at night, the local stations say, and they do edit out offensive segments ("though mostly for sex reasons not violence," one spokesman said).
WCCO-TV substituted the soapy "Magnificent Obsession" for "The Fly," a science-fiction horror film, the night after Sen. Robert Kennedy was assassinated, but since then none of the local stations has juggled its movie lineup.
The stations buy their movies in packages. They don't have to show every one they buy, but usually they do.
"We haven't bought any pictures that can't be shown on TV," WTCN-TV Program Director Howard Reiser said.
Most of the spokesmen think the criticism being aimed at the TV industry is unjustified.
SHERM HEDLEY, WCCO-TV program director, said, "A few years ago ABC introduced some violent programs to get a competitive edge. CBS never has gone in for it much, but now the whole industry's being talked about as violent."
Don Swartz of the local ABC outlet, KMSP-TV, complained of "undue criticism of television as an industry. We have always had a policy of not running violent shows in an early time period."
Spokesman Bill Davy of KSTP-TV said, "I thing [sic] a lot of this talk about violence is phony concern I don't think there's any great problem there." Kiddie shows have taken much of the heat from critics of TV violence, but spokesmen for the local stations defended the Three Stooges and slam-bang cartoons as being so fanciful that they are innocuous.
EVEN IF the local stations continue to stand pat, Minneapolis viewers should be able to notice a change in their TV diet this summer and fall. NBS [sic] has canceled several Saturday morning shows and one spokesman said viewers should expect "a big change—from the bird-man-superman kind of thing to sweetness and light—in children's shows."
Though the networks' fall schedules are heavy with police shows, an unheard of number of captures probably will be accomplished by scuffles in which no one pulls a gun.
NBC has announced that it will eliminate all violence in its trailers and teasers, and a spokesman said his station was following the same policy in one-minute plugs for local movies "because it's good business."
"For the time being," he said, "that kind of thing discourages people from tuning in."
'Children's Hour' TV Found Violence-Rich
BUFFALO, N.Y.—Violence is common in early-evening television programming, according to a recent survey conducted by a western university research team and cited in the current issue of The Humanist magazine, a publication of the American Humanist Association.
The researchers found that in a single five-day period (Monday through Friday), early-evening television featured over 100 separate acts of violence, including:
One stabbing in the back, three suicides, four people falling over cliffs, two attempts to run cars over persons on sidewalk, 12 murders, 16 major gun fights, 37 hand-to-hand fights, two stranglings and 42 incidents with guns.
According to a 1963 Federal Communications Commission study, also cited by The Humanist, a youngster growing up before the set would witness, between ages 5 and 14, representations of 13,000 violent human deaths.
Batfink flown but not forgottenBatfink did get a resurrection. His cartoons were released on video—in the U.K.—in 2004, a year before creator Hal Seeger died. And a couple of fansites and two Facebook pages. The pages are still there and the fansites are preserved on that magnificent site, archive.org. A UK site is here (you need Flash to see it), while a Hal Seeger tribute site is here.
Satirical '60s super-rodent deserves TV resurrection
By Sandra Sperounes
"Your bullets can't harm me. My wings are a shield of steel!"
As a kid, I ran around yelling these magical phrases. They were the words of Batfink, a cartoon superhero with a kung-fu fighting sidekick, Karate, and an evil, bald nemesis, Hugo A-Go-Go.
Nowadays, none of my friends have any idea who Batfink is. Most think he's a product of my own imagination. For a time, I thought so too, until I spotted a rerun in Cambridge, England, of all places. Dubbed into German.
Eric Strong feels my pain.
"In my 31 years here on Mother Earth, I've met exactly one other person who remembers Batfink. As an aside, that person's name is Matt, so I've taken to calling him Mattfink," says Strong.
Batfink first appeared on TV in 1966 as a satirical antidote to the Batman TV series. Created by Hal Seeger, the cartoon crusader didn't have a long life -- he was cancelled in '67 after 100 episodes.
But in the '70s, Batfink reappeared on CFRN's Popcorn Playhouse, which is where Strong fell in love with the pointy-eared superhero, who looks more like a grey cat than a flying mammal.
Strong is a rabid fan of Batfink. He would even be willing to take time off work to attend a Batfink Film Festival, if there ever was one. He hasn't seen the show in 10 years, but he remembers the tiniest details, from Batfink's red boots to the "BEEP" of his supersonic sonar-radar tracking abilities. "The cartoon was like a James Bond movie made for five-year-olds," says Strong.
Glenn Arnold is also haunted by memories of Batfink and his car, the Batillac.
"A Volkswagen with bat-wings is not the product of a sane mind," says Arnold.
"To this day, I have an obsession with Volkswagen Beetles which I believe was precipitated by my sponge-like brain spending hours in front of the television absorbing stray supersonic-sonar-radar waves. There is no cure for my condition and I believe that I am doomed for the rest of my life."
So are the rest of us Batfink fans. In the mid-'90s, he aired on Nickelodeon in the U.S., but he's been missing from Canada's airwaves since the '80s.
The reason? Some speculate Batfink's sidekick, Karate, may now be considered an offensive Asian stereotype. But I disagree -- otherwise Jackie Chan wouldn't be allowed to make movies.
No, I think Batfink is overlooked because he's simply faded from the minds of most TV viewers and executives. They might have a vague recollection but, like erectile dysfunction, they're too embarrassed to talk about an animated bat with their friends.
So, hopefully, this will jog some memories and inspire a nationwide campaign to resurrect Batfink! Or maybe not.
This seemed almost like a piece of “Fantasia.” The adults liked it but the children did not appreciate it. (W.V. Nevins III, Alfred Co-Op Theatre, Alfred, N.Y.)Humanised plants? Coyness? Balletic dancing? Classical-like music? Yeah, Fantasia came to my mind, too.
A very good cartoon and enjoyed by all. Was quite different. Could have been a bit of “Fantasia.” (Alex Slendak, St. Clair Theatre, St. Clair, Mich.)
Douglas Edwards is credited with being the first anchorman of the CBS-TV evening newscast in 1948. That’s a simplification. Edwards anchored television newscasts before this, and there were other anchors before Edwards, such as Richard Hubbell starting in 1941. However, May 3, 1948 is when the newscasts were expanded to five nights a week and the man picked to work solo behind the desk was Doug Edwards.
Edwards Prepares 10 Hours for 15-Minute TV BroadcastEdwards had some further comments to Jack Perlis of the New York Times on January 2, 1949.
Reporting News While Electronic Cameras Stare Is Not World’s Easiest Job
Douglas Edwards, native of Oklahoma who spent his boyhood in Alabama and his college days in Georgia, hasn’t seen any of those places in quite a while. But they will be seeing him one of these days—on television receivers.
Better known as a Columbia Broadcasting System correspondent and news analyst, Edwards is piling up an impressive record of pioneering experience in the new medium in addition to his regular broadcasting assignments.
The latter comprise six mornings a week as New York anchor mean for the “CBS World News Roundup” which calls in overseas reporters by shortwave and his five-day-a-week noontime stint as a reporter of the day’s events on “Wendy Warren and the News.”
His broadcast time on CBS-TV is a mere 15 minutes a week, but after a year before the cameras, mostly under Gulf Oil sponsorship, he still needs 10 solid hours of preparation per broadcast.
Reporting the news with a couple of big electronic cameras staring at you in the eye needs that kind of preparation if you’re going to be caught off base, Edwards explains.
“A television news broadcast,” the sandy-haired 31-year-old newsman explains, “is a combination of reporting-up-to-the-minute happenings, analysing the day’s big events, and acting as interlocutor for films, photos and other illustrative material that the audience is busy looking at while listening to you. That means you have to know when to shut up too.”
While he can depend on his typewritten script in his other broadcasts Edwards has to work mostly from memory for the television shows even though he holds a script in his hand from time to time for reference to figures or other tricky bits of information.
He got his first taste of broadcasting while in high school. Some of his friends rigged a 100-watt station and Doug, who had been practicing newscasting into a telephone since he was 12 years old, was naturally appointed news broadcaster.
His first regular radio reporting job came in 1935 at WAGF, Dothan, Ala. He stayed there for three months, then joined the Atlanta Journal and radio station WSB, doubling as radio and newspaper reporter.
In 1938 Edwards transferred to a new job with WXYZ, Detroit, stayed on for a couple of years and in 1940 returned to WSB, Atlanta, to become assistant news director for the station.
In December, 1942, he joined Columbia network’s news staff, worked on such shows as “Report to the Nation,” “The World Today,” Behind the Scenes at CBS.” In March, 1945, he went overseas, was heard from London, Paris and Germany and went on an 8000-mile roving assignment to inspect Army Air Corps Communications installations in Marseille, Rome, Athens, Cairo, Ankara and other cities. He returned to the United States in June, 1946.
Edwards, 5 feet 9, 160 pounds, is married to the former Sara Byrd of North Carolina and has two children, a 7-year-old daughter, Lynn Alice, and a son, Robert Anthony, 2½.
[Edwards] feels that the ever growing video audience “is entitled to as full a news covering on this newer medium as it gets on radio. The news and its interpretation are the important things—news has its own dignity—and it is our job at CBS to present it in an informative and visually effective manner.” He goes on to add that “while our news format is fairly well established, we are constantly on the look-out for innovations that will heighten the visual impact of our news presentation.”Just before Edwards began broadcasting Monday through Friday, Bob Trout left CBS for NBC. In the early 1930s, Trout had emerged as CBS radio’s number one news/public affairs reporter. But the war came along and Trout dropped further and further down the CBS news pecking order to Edward R. Murrow and his team of war correspondents. The same thing eventually happened to Doug Edwards. The CBS Television News was renamed Douglas Edwards With the News in 1950. For whatever reason, the network decided not to have Edwards anchor the biggest showcase in the TV news business back then—the political conventions. That job was bestowed on Walter Cronkite in 1952, 1956 and again in 1960. In 1962 Cronkite, who had been anchoring a 15-minute network cast on late Sunday nights, hosting CBS Reports, Eyewitness and The Twentieth Century, space flight coverage, and conversing with former president Eisenhower in a short series of specials, was handed the prime-time news job on April 16th.7
As regards that operation bugaboo—reading from scripts while “on camera”—Douglas is equally explicit. He feels that a script is absolutely essential on news broadcasts, not only for content but for the technical demands of timing and cue-ing. The trick is to consult the script rather than read from it. This is done by becoming familiar with the news, so that only occasional glances at the caption heads and cues are necessary to assure continuity.
Regular appearances before the video cameras by Edwards have resulted in some interesting reactions from some members of his audience whom he meets while they are in pursuit of their livelihoods. Often elevator operators, newsboys, clerks in department stores (especially in the video department) glance at him curiously as though they had seen him somewhere before, and audibly check their hunches. One cab drive, on being told his fare was indeed on CBS-TV, remarked: “You know, mister, you look a whole lot better on screen than on the street!”
Members of his own household are not much more encouraging. Two of his three youngsters—Donna (1 year) and Bobby (3 years) maintain an impartial objectivity—their tastes running to electric trains and “Lucky Pup.” However, his 7-year-old charmer, Lynn, is outspoken. She feels that her daddy should smile more often when “on camera” but conceded he has a good point when he replies that a good deal of the news he talks about is far from a smiling matter.
One final matter: Doug Edwards insists that he had proof positive that the CBS telecamera was actually rendered hors de combat during the fateful performance of Gypsy Rose Lee at the Air Force Show held in Madison Square Garden several months ago. It will be recalled that a good portion of the citizenry waxed skeptical at the coincidence of a fuse blowing just at the critical moment. Well, Doug had the guilty fuse in his possession—it had actually blown out—but he sent it along to Miss Lee to be autographed. It was never returned.
Anyone that tells you that CBS News was floating in some lofty journalist heights where no one paid attention to ratings is full of it. The idea sounds grand but it wasn’t a fact, though “a CBS spokesman” denied it to the New York Herald Tribune at the time. Edwards was more than capable, but increasing numbers of TV viewers were getting their network news from Chet Huntley and David Brinkley at NBC. Cronkite was brought in by news president Dick Salant to get the numbers up. It took time (and a strike at NBC News combined with incisive coverage of Vietnam) for Cronkite to make CBS number one.
1 Broadcasting magazine, April 12, 1948, pg. 26↩
2 Newsday, Mar 20, 1947, pg. 31↩
3 Variety, June 26, 1946, pg. 35↩
4 Broadcasting magazine, July 23, 1945, pg. 52.↩
5 The Billboard, May 10, 1947, pgs. 15, 17↩
6 New York Herald Tribune, April 24, 1948, pg. 19↩
7 New York Times, March 15, 1962, pg. 71.↩
