This week in TV Guide: May 3, 1958

Nostalgia is never far from the surface when it comes to discussing vintage TV Guides, but this week's issue itself is awash in nostalgia, as Shirley Temple returns to television.

The former child star, now all of 30 years old, is the host and occasional star of Shirley Temple's Storybook, airing on NBC.  She'd retired twice from acting, most recently at 21, having made 33 movies and more than $3,000,000. Since then she's been Mrs. Charles Alden Black, married with three children, but she's never really been that far from the public eye.  Dolls, storybooks, and TV repeats of her movies have ensured that Shirley Temple will always be an American icon.  She relates a story of how her mailman, "a darling old man about 70, said to me, 'Mrs. Black, does Shirley Temple live here?'  And I said, 'Why yes, I used to be Shirley Temple.' 'Oh, my!' he cackled. 'You used to be my favoriet movie star - when I was a little boy!'"

Shirley Temple Black has led probably one of the most successful lives of any former child star.  Although Storybook ended after two years, she continued to make television appearances, then became involved in politics (she'd always had an interest in current events), ran unsuccessfully for Congress, served as a representative to the United Nations, and was appointed U.S. ambassador to Ghana and later Czechoslovakia.  She survived breast cancer and was one of the first celebrities to speak openly about it.  And the name Shirley Temple is still - and will continue to be - magic.


Last week we took a look at the matchup between Ed Sullivan and Steve Allen, the two variety show titans of the time. Well, we've got another matchup this week; let's see who comes out on top this time.

Sullivan: Ed's guests include singers Lillian Roth, Teresa Brewer, Denise Darcel and Ed Townsend; the Everly Brothers, vocal group; musical-comedy star Helen Gallagher; dancers Carol Haney and Peter Gennaro.

Allen: Steve's guests are singer Jane Powell, comedian Phil Harris, the comedy team of Igor and H., and jazz pianists Count Basie, Teddy Wilson and Joe Buskin.

Well, that was a Staples moment.  Let me Count the ways Steverino wins!


I may have commented on this in the past, but it's worth mentioning again, how striking it is that there are virtually no sporting events shown on Sunday afternoon.  What there is, is bowling - Bowlerama on Channels 3 and 4; Championship Bowling on Channel 6.  It makes sense, of course; the NHL and NBA are over (and they wouldn't have had dominant TV coverage anyway), baseball games are few and far between (especially since the Twin Cities didn't yet have the Twins), and golf wasn't anywhere near being a weekly presence on the tube.

Tim Tam, the red horse, circled.

Aside from dueling baseball games on Saturday afternoon (Athletics vs. Yankees on CBS, Indians vs. Orioles on NBC), the sports that is shown represents the last vestiges of the Golden Age of Sports: horse racing and boxing. The horse race is a big one: the Kentucky Derby, which merits 45 minutes of coverage on CBS Saturday afternoon. The Derby's still a TV hit today, but the Triple Crown races as a whole are probably the only races many of us watch, whereas in the 50s and early 60s big races, such as the Washington International and the Traverse Stakes, were regular network productions. The Derby was won in 1958 by Tim Tam, as was the Preakness Stakes a couple of weeks later*; I've always had a fondness for Tim Tam, not because I was around to see him in the Derby, but because of a Kentucky Derby game I had when I was a kid. The "horses" in the game were all named after previous Derby winners; Tim Tam was the red horse; red was, then as now, my favorite color. Hence, whenever we played this game I was always Tim Tam. Makes perfect sense, no?

*Tim Tam was favored to win the Belmont and the Triple Crown, but he suffered broken sesamoids in the home stretch and finished second. The vets were able to save him, and he lived until 1982.


Boxing, though not the thrice-weekly television event it once was, still ran regularly on network television, and ABC's Wednesday Night Fights presented a good one: the lightweight title bout between champ Joe Brown of New Orleans and challenger Ralph Dupas, also of New Orleans - fought, naturally, in Houston, Texas.*  Brown would retain his title, knocking Dupas down three times in the eighth round before the referee stops the fight.

*Actually, there's a good reason for that - Brown was black, Dupas white.  Because of the anti-integration laws in Louisiana at the time (which I've alluded to here), the fight had to take place in more enlightened Texas.