TV Time Capsule

For ‘Maude,’ a Nostalgic (and Loud) New Year’s Eve

“New Years Week” continues.

On December 30, 1974, CBS aired “Nostalgia Party,” the “Maude” episode in which the loud-mouthed liberal (Bea Arthur) throws a holiday shindig.

Unfortunately, Maude’s husband Walter (Bill Macy), daughter Carol (Adrienne Barbeau) and neighbors Arthur and Vivian (Conrad Bain, Rue McClanahan) don’t feel like celebrating:

WALTER: Because of inflation, I’m going broke! ’74 was the worst year of my life!

ARTHUR: I agree with Walter! It was a terrible year!

CAROL: Watergate! The energy crisis!

VIVIAN: And those disgusting movies – “The Green Door!” and “The Devil in Mrs. Jones!”

ARTHUR: Disgusting is right! I’d never go to see those again.

MAUDE: Listen, I’ll grant everybody that ’74 wasn’t such a hot year, but we can celebrate the coming year – 1975!

WALTER: ’75 is going to be even worse!

MAUDE: Who says so?

WALTER: President Ford says so! And he never says anything!

Everyone agrees to attend, dressing in a costume that represents their favorite year – then argue at the party over which year truly was the best.

Elderly Aunt Polly (guest star Judith Lowry) hushes them all: “Last year isn’t important. Next year isn’t important. But what is important is what’s happening now!”

See for yourself: “Nostalgia Party” isn’t (legally) available online or on video.

 

On TV

Here’s the prime-time lineup for Monday, December 30, 1974:

8: “The Rookies” (ABC), “Gunsmoke”* (CBS), “Born Free” (NBC)

9: “Gator Bowl” (ABC), “Maude” (CBS), “Frankenstein: The True Story, Part 1”* (ABC)

9:30: “Rhoda”* (CBS)

10: “Medical Center” (CBS) 

 

The Record

For the week of December 29, 1974:

Top novel: “Centennial” by James Michener

Top song: “Angie Baby” by Helen Reddy

Top movie: “The Man with the Golden Gun”

Top TV show: “All in the Family” (CBS)

In the news: President Ford abandoned plans for an income tax surcharge

 

 

 

Captions: “Maude” stars Bea Arthur and Rue McClanahan and guest star Judith Lowry in scenes from “Nostalgia Party.”

‘Of Thee I Sing:’ Not the Same Old Song and Dance

On October 24, 1972, CBS aired “Of Thee I Sing,” an adaptation of George and Ira Gershwin’s musical parody of presidential politics.

“Of Thee I Sing” hit Broadway in 1931, becoming the first musical to win the Pulitzer Prize for drama.

The 90-minute TV production starred Carroll O’Connor as John Wintergreen, who is elected president on a “love” platform. On Inauguration Day, he marries Mary Turner (Cloris Leachman) – much to the chagrin of beauty queen Diana Devereaux (Michele Lee), who claims Wintergreen promised to marry her.

The cast also included Jack Gilford as hapless vice president Alexander Throttlebottom and Jim Backus as oafish Senator Robert Lyons.

The Washington Post’s Tom Shales called the show “amazingly entertaining,” praising O’Connor’s musical abilities:

Archie Bunker can sing. Really. Not with the actor’s croak he uses to do “Those Were the Days” each week but with the kind of rich, warm, croony voice you hardly hear anywhere any more.

Shales was also surprised to see “little tape editing has been done, and a few line fluffs even find their ways to the air” but concluded this added a sense of “spontaneity and an almost-live ambience.”

“Of Thee I Sing” ranked 22nd in the weekly ratings.

 

On TV

Here’s the prime-time lineup for Tuesday, October 24, 1972:

8: “Temperatures Rising” (ABC), “Maude” (CBS), “Bonanza” (NBC)

8:30: “Short Walk to Daylight” (ABC), “Hawaii Five-O” (CBS)

9: “The Bold Ones: The New Doctors” (NBC)

9:30: “Of Thee I Sing” (CBS)

10: “Marcus Welby, M.D.” (ABC), “NBC News Special: Growing Up in Prison”

 

The Record

For the week of October 22, 1972:

Top novel: “Jonathan Livingston Seagull” by Richard Bach

Top song: “My Ding-a-Ling” by Chuck Berry

At the movies: “Lady Sings the Blues”

Top TV show: “All in the Family” (CBS)

In the news: Negotiations to end the Vietnam War continue

 

Caption: “Of Thee I Sing” stars Carroll O’Connor and Cloris Leachman on the cover of TV Guide’s October 21, 1972, issue.

‘Shaft’ on TV: No ‘Bad Mothers’ Allowed

On October 9, 1973, “blaxploitation” – or a highly sanitized version of it – came to prime time when CBS introduced “Shaft,” a series based on the novels and movies about cool black private eye John Shaft.

The character first appeared in “Shaft,” a 1970 novel by Hollywood screenwriter Ernest Tidyman; he won an NAACP Image Award for the book, becoming one of the few white people to receive the honor.

Tidyman co-wrote the script for the first “Shaft” movie, which debuted in 1971 and spawned two sequels – “Shaft’s Big Score!” and “Shaft in Africa.”

Richard Roundtree played Shaft in the films, which pioneered the blaxploitation genre of movies for urban black audiences.

Roundtree also starred in CBS’s “Shaft,” but the network toned down the character considerably, exchanging his leather suits for sport coats and sweater vests and moving him out of the ghetto and into a world where his friends were judges and lawyers.

CBS also muted Isaac Hayes’ Oscar-winning theme song – dropping the references to “bad mothers” – and even gave Shaft a white sidekick: police lieutenant Al Rossi (Ed Barth).

Most of “Shaft’s” guest stars were also white: Robert Culp appeared in the premiere, followed in subsequent episodes by Tony Curtis and Cathy Lee Crosby, although black actresses Ja’net DuBois and Jayne Kennedy also showed up.

The New York Times’ John J. O’Connor complained CBS’s changes made Shaft “interchangeable with any white detective floating around the dials. His color is incidental, almost nonexistent.”

One reviewer – the Washington Post’s Adrienne Mann – thought “Shaft” the show was superior to the “Shaft” movies:

The new story line has much more imagination and there are even elements of suspense – a factor that was conspicuously absent in the first film version. The hero never was the bruising, battling kind and he is even less so now. He uses his mind. He outsmarts and he outfigures.

“Shaft” was one of the few shows during the 1973-74 season to feature an African American lead; another was NBC’s “Tenafly,” a series about another black detective that was cancelled after four episodes.

“Shaft” wasn’t much more successful.

CBS aired the show on Tuesday nights, alternating it with movies and “Hawkins,” a “Matlock” precursor starring Jimmy Stewart as a homespun lawyer.

Seven 90-minute “Shaft” episodes aired. Roundtree reprised the role in 2000’s “Shaft,” which starred Samuel L. Jackson as John Shaft’s nephew, who shared his uncle’s profession and penchant for leather.

 

Also on TV

On October 9, 1973, CBS also aired “Maude” and “Hawaii Five-O;” ABC broadcast the Paul Lynde sitcom “Temperatures Rising,” the TV-movie “Shirts/Skins,” a basketball comedy starring Bill Bixby, and “Marcus Welby, M.D.;” and NBC offered the police drama “Chase,” “The Magician” (Bixby again!) and the first “Police Story” installment featuring Tony Lo Bianco and Don Meredith.

 

The Record

During the week of October 7, 1973, the number ones included Mary Stewart’s “The Hollow Hills” (novel) and Cher’s “Half-Breed” (song). Martin Scorsese’s “Mean Streets” was new at the movies and a Democratic congressman complained about unfair pricing in the Pentagon’s cafeteria.

 

  

Captions: “Shaft” star Richard Roundtree in a photograph from TV Guide’s September 8, 1973, fall preview issue (top; photo by Simon Wesiburd); CBS’s advertisement for the series premiere, from the October 6 1973, edition (bottom). 

Undercover Woman, Exposed: ‘The Betty White Show’

TV Time Capsule begins “Betty, White Hot!,” a series of periodic flashbacks to key moments in Betty White’s amazing television career.

On September 12, 1977, CBS introduced “The Betty White Show,” the fourth – and so far, final – series to carry that title.

The first “Betty White Show” was a local Sunday afternoon series that aired in 1951 on Los Angeles TV station KLAC (now KCOP). The show’s eclectic format was befitting of a medium still inventing itself: the actress sang, read the station’s viewer mail and offered romantic advice to the lovelorn.

Three years later, NBC hired White to host a weekday afternoon talk show – also called “The Betty White Show” – in which she interviewed guests and interacted with bandleader Frank DeVol, the famed composer who went on to write the theme music for “The Brady Bunch” and many other sitcoms.

The third “Betty White Show,” a syndicated sketch comedy, aired in 1957 and featured a small company of regular players, including DeVol and Irene Ryan, who later played Granny on “The Beverly Hillbillies.”

CBS’s 1977 “Betty White Show” was different still – a sitcom that cast White as Joyce Whitman, a middle-aged actress who stages a comeback when she lands the lead role in a TV police drama.

The title of Joyce’s show: “Undercover Woman” – a spoof of “Police Woman,” NBC’s popular Angie Dickinson drama. (White, a “Star Trek” fan, had suggested making Joyce the star of a science fiction series; producers rejected the idea.)

White’s supporting cast was led by John Hillerman as John Elliot, Joyce’s ex-husband and sparring partner, whom the network hires to direct “Undercover Woman;” and Georgia Engel as her spacey friend and roommate, Mitzi Maloney.

“The Betty White Show” was initially conceived as a vehicle for Sue Ann Nivens, the sex-obsessed, insincere “Happy Homemaker” hostess White played on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.”

But as White recalled in her 2005 memoir, “Here We Go Again: My Life in Television,” two other “MTM” spinoffs – “Rhoda” and “Phyllis” – were fading in the ratings by 1977.

The producers also “felt it might be pressing their luck to send Sue Ann out alone. They thought she might be a little much to take every week, and if they knocked some of the edge off of her, they would destroy the character,” White wrote.

(Another distinction: “The Betty White Show” was the first MTM Enterprises’ production to be videotaped; “MTM,” “Rhoda” and “Phyllis” were filmed, giving them a higher-quality look.)

Joyce may not have been as much fun to watch as bitchy Sue Ann, but critics still loved White and her new sitcom; several declared it one of the season’s best new shows.

The Washington Post’s Tom Shales described “The Betty White Show” as “a tart, bright, cheering comedy with characters and performances firmly in the ‘Mary Tyler Moore’ tradition,” adding that the new series “deserves to be a hit and will be.”

“It would be understandable if quite a lot of people wound up loving ‘The Betty White Show,’” wrote the New York Times’ John J. O’Connor.

CBS aired the series on Monday nights at 9, pairing it with Bea Arthur’s “Maude,” which was entering its final season.

“The Betty White Show’s” premiere was the week’s seventh most-watched show; ratings remained solid throughout the fall, but CBS dropped the sitcom in a midseason schedule shakeup.

White took the cancellation in stride.

In “Here We Go Again,” she wrote that the sitcom “was not outstanding. I can’t even say it was one of my all-time favorites, but we had given it our best shot.”

The next “Betty, White Hot!” installment will be posted Tuesday.

 

Also on TV

On September 12, 1977, CBS also aired the debut of the adventure series “Young Dan’l Boone,” the season premiere of “Maude” and the second episode of “Rafferty,” a Patrick McGoohan medical drama; ABC broadcast the debut of “Lucan,” a drama about a boy raised by wolves, and a college football game in which the University of Houston Cougars defeated the University of California, Los Angeles’ Bruins, 17 to 13; and NBC showed the season premiere of “Little House on the Prairie” and “Billy: Portrait of a Street Kid,” a TV-movie starring LeVar Burton.

 

The Record

During the week of September 11, 1977, the number ones included Colleen McCullough’s “The Thorn Birds” (novel) and the Emotions’ “Best of My Love” (song). “Star Wars” was still popular at the movies and in Washington, President Carter’s budget chief was urged to resign amid corruption charges; he did and was acquitted.

 

  

Captions: Betty White in a photograph from TV Guide’s September 10, 1977, fall preview issue (top, photo by Douglas Kirkland); White and John Hillerman on the magazine’s September 24, 1977, cover (middle, photo by Peter Kredenser); and CBS’s advertisement for “The Betty White Show’s” premiere, also from the September 10 edition (bottom).

Thursday, February 2, 1984

Quick, name the sitcom that once did an episode about abortion.

“Maude,” right?

Well, yes.

But “Buffalo Bill” also fits that, er, bill.

Dabney Coleman’s short-lived sitcom – the first of several failed comedies built around the actor’s patented arrogant-jerk persona – tackled the taboo topic in a two-part episode that concluded 26 years ago tonight.

“Buffalo Bill’s” abortion storyline isn’t as famous as “Maude’s” – but maybe it should be.

In the episode, Coleman’s character, Bill Bittinger, a local TV talk show host in Buffalo, New York, is stunned when his director and on-again/off-again lover, Jo Jo White (Joana Cassidy), confides she’s pregnant and planning to have an abortion.

Although Bill is the father of Jo Jo’s unborn child, she lies and tells him her ex-husband impregnated her; Bill retaliates by concluding one of his shows with an editorial about “the amount of sexual promiscuity here in the Buffalo area,” urging the “gals” in his audience “to start taking responsibility for your actions.”

A humiliated Jo Jo is forced to sit, helplessly, in the control booth during Bill’s on-air tirade. After the show, she delivers a tearful monologue to two colleagues:

You know, I come from a family that used to sit by the fireside on a Sunday evening and sing songs like, “Bicycle Built for Two” and “Harvest Moon.” Good old songs like that. A nice, warm family – clean, sturdy, decent people. And they taught me how to be fair, considerate, respectable and virtuous. And I’ve pretty much lived my life that way. Oh, I guess I’ve been a little rebellious now and again – we all have – but I can honestly look back and say, “Jo Jo, you turned out OK.” And now, here I am in the 1980s, involved with a man who gives new meaning to the word “pig.” A man whose egomania has reached heights heretofore unimaginable. A man who publicly humiliates me in full view of the city where I grew up, where I still have family and friends. And yet, even as he embarrasses me – denigrates my character, belittles my morals, I still find myself drawn to him. Why? Because he never lets me down. I can count on Bill Bittinger to be absolutely awful. I can count on his despicability.

The monologue reads a little trite, but Cassidy – one of television’s most underappreciated performers – is a pro, infusing it with heartbreaking sincerity.

The “Buffalo Bill” episodes contrast sharply with the “Maude” two-parter, which aired in November 1972, two months before the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade ruling.

On “Maude,” 47-year-old feminist Maude Findlay (Bea Arthur) learns she’s pregnant and considers having an abortion, which was legal only in New York and a handful of other states. She decides against terminating the pregnancy because she believes her husband Walter (Bill Macy) wants the child; when he decides he’s too old to become a father, Maude chooses to have the abortion.

Throughout the segments, her friends and family debate her dilemma using the talking points of the era. “We’re free. We finally have the right to decide what we can do with our own bodies,” counsels Maude’s fist-pumping daughter Carol (Adrienne Barbeau).

Granted, Jo Jo and Maude’s situations are different: Jo Jo is single, focused on her career and in a relationship that can only be described as emotionally abusive; Maude has the benefit of having a mostly understanding partner.

But “Buffalo Bill” does a far better job conveying the sense of confusion, uncertainty and isolation that must play into any woman’s decision to terminate a pregnancy. Jo Jo’s problem is framed as an honest human drama; Maude’s dilemma feels more like a political statement masquerading as a sitcom episode.

Whatever the shows’ strengths and weaknesses, each does a masterful job refuting the case for reversing Roe v. Wade: Maude and Walter are too old to become parents; Jo Jo and Bill’s relationship is too toxic.

Cases closed.

For years after its cancellation, “Buffalo Bill” was regarded as a cult classic by fans who admired the show’s courage in presenting a lead character who was so thoroughly unlikable.

I’m not sure the cult endures, or if it should.

Today, with anti-heroes like Tony Soprano and Don Draper dominant in prime time, “Buffalo Bill” doesn’t seem nearly as inventive as it must have appeared 25 years ago. Worst of all, the show isn’t all that funny – a fatal flaw for any sitcom.

Perhaps that’s why “Buffalo Bill’s” abortion episodes stand the test of time: With these segments, it seems the show was aiming to explore a serious social issue not through humor, but through character study.

If, indeed, that was the intent, then mission accomplished.

 

Elsewhere on Television

TV Guide listings for February 2, 1984:

8:30 NBC FAMILY TIES

Alex (Michael J. Fox) gets more involved in feminist causes than he anticipated when he feigns support of the ERA just to impress a girl. Deena: Tracy Nelson. Ms. Canell: Gail Strickland. Winkler: Philip Sterling. Mrs. Fletcher: Edith Fields.

 

… And in the News

New York Times excerpts from February 2, 1984:

DEMOCRATS DERIDE REAGAN ON DEFICIT

WASHINGTON, Feb. 1 – Democratic leaders in Congress today derided President Reagan’s efforts to reduce the budget deficit as “tokenism” and said they would propose their own package of spending cuts and new revenue worth at least $200 billion over three years.

Sunday, Nov. 7, 1976

Thirty-three years ago tonight, “Gone with the Wind” aired on television for the first time, becoming the most-watched movie in TV history – a record that still stands.

NBC broadcast the film in two parts: the first installment aired Nov. 7 from 8 to 11; the conclusion was shown Nov. 8 from 8 to 10.

Part one was seen in 33.7 million homes, making it No. 1 among the 59 shows that aired during the week ending Nov. 7. Rounding out the top 10: “The Waltons” was second, followed by “Charlie’s Angels,” “Maude,” “The Bionic Woman,” the Norman Lear sitcom “All’s Fair,” “Baretta,” “Nightmare in Badham County” (an “ABC Friday Night Movie”), “Little House on the Prairie” and “Phyllis.”

Of the programs that aired opposite part one of “Wind,” “The Six Million Dollar Man” fared best, ranking 11th. The other competitors finished in the 40s and 50s.

Altogether, the two “Wind” broadcasts drew 110 million viewers, with a single minute of airtime costing as much as $260,000, Newsweek reported.

One of those advertisers: Shakey’s, which introduced commercials for its new “deli pizza” during the movie.

NBC’s decision to air “Wind” in two parts angered costar Olivia de Havilland, who rejected the network’s invitation to introduce the film.

The broadcasts also generated a debate over copyright protection in the nascent home-video industry.

Business Week reported owners of Betamax videocassette recorders cleaned blank tapes off dealers’ shelves in the week before “Wind” aired, presumably so they could record the movie.

Each one-hour blank tape sold for $16.

 

From the Pages of TV Guide

Also airing Nov. 7, 1976:

7:00 ABC SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN

Steve (Lee Majors) persuades a crippled teen-ager to be the subject of an experiment with an electronic implant designed to cure paralysis. Rudy: Martin E. Brooks. Oscar: Richard Anderson. (2 hrs.)

Guest Cast

Andy Sheffield … Vincent Van Patten

Valerie Sheffield … Joan Van Ark

Frank Gifford … Himself

Judy … Carol Jones

Caroline … Kerry Sherman

Joe Hamilton … Greg Evigan

Vernon … Dick Erdman

Palmer … Dick Van Patten

Charlie … Nick David

Dr. Penny … George Martin

Dr. Melville … Jack Bannon

[Expands to two hours, pre-empting regular programming.]

8:00 CBS SONNY & CHER

Betty White, Ed McMahon and the Sylvers are guests. Sonny plays detective Sam Spade on a million-dollar assignment; Ed, as the manager of a video dating-service, tries to aid a persistent mother (Betty) and her dateless daughter (Cher); and the finale salutes great lovers. (60 min.)

Musical Highlights

“Love Hurts” … Cher

“Boogie Fever,” “Hotline” … Sylvers

“Right Back Where We Started From” … Sonny, Cher

9:00 CBS KOJAK – Crime Drama

Lynn Redgrave portrays the drug-addicted girl friend of a cop (Walter McGinn) who is under departmental scrutiny because he accidentally killed his partner during a drug bust. Kojak: Telly Savalas. McNeill: Dan Frazer. Crocker: Kevin Dobson. (60 min.)

Supporting Cast

Don Luiz Cabrillo ... Hurd Hatfield

Allison … Morgan Fairchild

George Mallick … Dominic Chianese

Dave, Barbara and me

I can’t think about David Letterman – whose “Late Show” debuted on CBS 16 years ago today – without also thinking about my Aunt Barbara.

She despised the man.

I’m exaggerating – but only slightly. Barbara did find Letterman exasperating.

Yet she watched his show every night.

I know this because when I was growing up, it seemed like every time I saw Barbara, she was carping about David Letterman.

Barbara was my mom’s older sister, and though they had many things in common – both shared a love for decorating and prized a clean home – they were opposites temperamentally.

Where Mom was meek, Barbara was bold.

Where Mom was quiet and nonjudgmental, Barbara was loud and opinionated.

If Mom was Edith Bunker, Barbara was Maude Findlay.

When Mom and I visited my grandmother on Sunday afternoons, we often arrived to find Barbara already there. The four of us would sit around chatting, and inevitably the conversation would turn to television.

Barbara watched a lot of it – one reason why I liked her so much.

Though she disdained a lot of people on TV – a frequent target was J.C. Hayward, a local newscaster whom Barbara felt wore too much eye makeup – she reserved most of her contempt for Letterman.

This was during Letterman’s heyday in the 1980s, before he moved from NBC to CBS, when his humor was at its edgiest and most inventive.

I can still picture Barbara on my grandmother’s faded green love seat – glasses perched atop her head, a cigarette burning between her fingers – holding court as she railed about the silly stunts Letterman had pulled on his show during the previous week.

The Velcro suit, the Monkey-Cam, the watermelon toss from the roof – Barbara saw – and griped – about them all.

Her descriptions of Letterman’s antics were utterly comical.

Her brow would furrow, her face would redden and her voice would rise. “I just don’t understand why people watch him,” she’d wail – the irony of that statement lost on her.

Eventually, I decided I wanted to see what all the fuss was about, so during the summer of ’85, when I was 11, I began staying up to watch Letterman.

I fell in love with his sense of the absurd, and remain a fan to this day.

As for Barbara, I never got to ask her why she continued to tune in – night after night – when she found his show so bewildering.

She passed away a few years ago, so I guess I’ll never know.

Sometimes I wonder if she didn’t watch just so she could amuse Mom and me during those Sunday afternoon visits to my grandmother.

This much I do know: Letterman would have loved Aunt Barbara.

He would have gotten a kick out of her reaction to him and his show, and I know he would have enjoyed sparring with her.

Barbara would be loathe to admit it, but I bet she would have loved it, too.

 

From the Pages of TV Guide

Also airing Aug. 30, 1993:

8 PM FOX MOVIE (CC) – Drama 2:00

Romance and violence punctuate “Bonnie & Clyde: The True Story,” a 1992 TV-movie spun around the liaison of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow (Tracey Needham, Dana Ashbrook), on a crime spree in the ’30s. (Repeat)

Supporting Cast

Ted Hinton … Doug Savant

Mrs. Parker … Betty Buckley

W.D. Jones … Billy Morrissette

Buck Barrow … Michael Bowen

Blanche Barrow … Michelle Joyner

9 PM ABC MISSING PERSONS (CC) – Drama 2:00

Debut: Daniel J. Travanti plays Lt. Ray McAuliffe, the head of a diverse team of Chicago police officers specializing in missing persons. In the opener, Off. Bobby Davidson (Erik King) searches for a missing law student.

Guest Cast

Vera Waleski … Denise Baske

Dana Goldman … Greta Lind

Mr. Rudolph … Byrne Piven

Natalie Rudolph … Marge Kotlisky

10 PM CBS NORTHERN EXPOSURE (CC) 1:00

The arrival of a prize truffle-hunting pig and the onslaught of mosquitoes signal springtime in Cicely. The warming season also finds Holling (John Cullum) obsessed with the urge to plant something and Maggie (Janine Turner) testing her new-found healing powers. Shelly: Cynthia Geary. Ivory: Ralph P. Martin. Joel: Rob Morrow. Chris: John Corbett. (Repeat)

11:35 NBC TONIGHT (CC) 1:00

Scheduled: Garth Brooks, Luke Perry. Jay Leno, bandleader Branford Marsalis.

12:35 NBC DAVID LETTERMAN 1:00

The first ten episodes of the talk show are repeated over the next two weeks. First up: the 1982 opener with Bill Murray.

SYNDICATED ARSENIO HALL (CC) 1:00

Scheduled: Don Johnson, k.d. lang. (Repeat)