This week in TV Guide: June 6, 1959

Ah yes, the story of the show that laid an egg. It was a live series called Music Theater, hosted by Bill Hayes and Florence Henderson, and when it was on the air, it aired on NBC. The producer of Music Theater was David Susskind, coming off a banner television year with DuPont Show of the Month. Music Theater, alas, would not continue Susskind's winning streak.

The show utilized a unique format, an attempt to bring Oklahoma-style musical theater to television. "Everything you see today on TV is a Western or a private-eye series," Susskind says. "But our sponsor [Oldsmobile] wanted something new, and I convinced them that this idea was fresh."

According to Susskind, it didn't take long for doubts to creep in. "[A]fter our first show we were angry with ourselves," and the production crew shouted at each other for two hours afterward. He concedes that the critics "had a right to kill us," but bristles at the idea the show was "old hat.""They completely refused to recognize the simple fact that we were attempting a worthwhile crack at something different." If there's something that bothers Susskind, it's that this could signal a tough time ahead for "shows with imagination."

I have to admit that I'd never heard of Music Theater, or more properly (according to the internet) Oldsmobile Music Theater, until I read about it here. Florence Henderson and Bill Hayes were naturals for the show, having worked as a team on Oldsmobile commercials in the past, and it's not as if either of them suffered from the cancellation of Music Theater. Bill Hayes and his wife, Susan Seaforth Hayes, had a pretty fair amount of success on Days of Our Lives, while Florence Henderson even though she had a lengthy musical career, became one of America's most-loved television moms on The Brady Bunch. As for Music Theater's replacement, it is a sitcom called Too Young to Go Steady, starring Donald Cook and Joan Bennett. It, too, was produced by David Susskind. It ran for a grand total of seven episodes.

◊ ◊ ◊
We may not have Cleveland Amory yet, but that doesn't keep our intrepid reviewer F.DeB. (and for the life of me, I can't remember who that's an abbreviation for. I'm sure one of our readers will, though!) from looking at the state of Daytime TV. Hint: "The Torture Starts Early."

He leads off with a joke from Sam Levenson, host of one of CBS's morning efforts. "I got a letter here," says Levenson, "from a fellow in jail. 'I been watching TV all day now for a week,' he writes. 'And until someone put me wise I thought it was part of my sentence." And that's the good news, as our critic works his way through a surfeit of quiz shows, a handful of treacly soap operas, and unctuous hosts. Bill Wendell, who you may remember as David Letterman's announcer during his NBC days (and, many years before that, Ernie Kovacs), is having a great time as quizmaster of Tic Tac Dough (left). The question: "Name the city in Ohio known as the rubber capital of the United States?" The contestant's hopeful answer: "Baton Rouge?" [For the record, the answer is Akron.]

After lunch (three Tums with a bolt of Serutan), Art Linkletter is back with his "Kids Say the Darnedest Things" segment, and asks a small child what he would do if Art had a broken neck? (I'm not quite sure how that subject came up.) Replies the child, "I'd put it back on and make sure your eyes and nose and mouth were on up front." Later, it's the "lachrymose river" soap From These Roots, which causes our review to go and open a window. When he returned it was time for Mr. America himself, Bert Parks, hosting County Fair and explaining to a man how he was going to be sticking his head through a hole so that a woman can throw pies at him. In two dozen efforts, she never hit him once - which, from the sounds of it, must be the ratio of hits to shows on daytime TV.

◊ ◊ ◊
The summer issues of TV Guide can be kind of a challenge, to be honest; as we get into July and August we'll see more and more reruns along with failed summer replacements, and in the late 50s, it can be even more difficult to find something captivating. This week, I thought I'd share some of the ads from back in the day; it gives you a real flavor of what things are like.



◊ ◊ ◊
Daylight Savings Time can be a pain in the best of times (no pun intended) - it sets up an interesting situation in the Saturday listings, where Mason City's KGLO (more on them in a minute) airs the Yankees-Indians Game of the Week at 11:45 a.m., while WCCO, Duluth's KDAL, and WKBT in La Crosse all have the same game on at 12:45 p.m. - and all of them are showing it live! The same doesn't hold for prime-time programming, where things seem to be a little more orderly.

And speaking of KGLO, they've got an interesting program on at 10:30 on Monday night. It's called Channel 3 Extra, and it features Bill and Cora Baird and their puppets. When I first saw this, I wondered if this might be a syndicated program of some kind, even though it looks like it's local - but, sure enough, according to the always-reliable Wikipedia, Bill Baird grew up in Mason City - who knew? They were already famous by 1959, but here they were, doing a show back in Mason City. That's kind of cool. (There he is on the right, with one of his most famous puppets, Charlemagne the Lion.)

Wait, I forgot - there is one more very important program on KGLO this week. It's an interview with the new Miss North Iowa of 1959! Maybe that's why the Bairds were in Mason City. TV