As you know, we're always on the lookout around here for significant moments in television history, and this week we've got evidence of its growing influence on pop culture. Our story takes place on November 15, 1954, although it actually begins much earlier than that. But on that Monday evening, CBS's
Studio One presented a mystery about payola in the music industry called "Let Me Go, Lover." Before the evening was out—in fact, before the show had even ended—the switchboard at CBS was flooded with calls about a song that was being performed throughout the episode. What is the name of that song, people wanted to know, and who's the girl singing it?
And now, as Paul Harvey would say, the rest of the story.
The song, which had originally been titled "Let Me Go, Devil," had been written three years earlier by Jennie Lou Carson. It had made little impact in the industry and was soon forgotten. And then, producer Felix Jackson came over to see the head of recording for the network's subsidiary, Columbia Records—none other than Mitch Miller—requesting a song he might use in an upcoming drama. Miller gave Jackson the song, which was retitled "Let Me Go, Lover," complete with new lyrics. When Studio One's press agent, Murray Martin, suggested that an unknown, rather than a name singer, be used to vocalize the song, Miller came up with 19-year-old Joan Miller, the wife of an electrician in Paulsboro, New Jersey. Cannily, Miller then saw to it that record stores across the nation were well-stocked with copies of her recording a week before the broadcast, and sent copies of the record to 2,000 radio DJs.
Within five days of the broadcast, the song had sold 500,000 copies. (Yes, five hundred
thousand. Talk about a viral hit!) Stores were besieged with customers asking for copies of "that song that was on TV last night." Such was the demand that distributors were sending their own trucks to Columbia’s Bridgeport factory to pick up additional copies. It made the
Billboard charts on December 4, and by January, 1955, it would reach #1 on all three
Billboard charts; it eventually sold a million copies and was awarded a gold record. Patti Page and Peggy Lee, among others, were preparing to record their own covers of the song. Miller, basking in the acclaim and well pleased with his foresight, predicted the record would sell three million copies.
Miller would go on to become a household name as host of Sing Along With Mitch, and Studio One would continue as one of television's premier dramatic anthologies until 1958. Joan Weber, whose face was never shown during the program to heighten the mystery, would never again approach the success she achieved with "Let Me Go, Lover," and died of heart failure in 1981 at the age of 45.
But in the wake of "Let Me Go, Lover," never again would anyone question the ability of television in promoting a song. And if you're interested,
here's a link to her recording of the song.
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Speaking of television, which is our job around here, this week's As We See It editorial takes on the case of singer Gordon MacRae, whose songs were recently banned from radio station WPEN in Philadelphia. What was Gordon's (husband of Sheila MacRae, father of Petticoat Junction's Meredith MacRae) sin? Were the lyrics too explicit for the day? Did he commit some kind of crime?
As it turns out, MacRae's grave offense happened on an appearance on NBC's Comedy Hour. Singer Dorothy Kirsten asked Gordon to sing a duet with him, "as they did in the old days of radio," to which MacRae quipped, "You remember radio, don't you?" The assistant manager of WPEN was outraged by MacRae's remark. "If these artists think so little of radio, I see no reason why we should lend our facilities to promote and publicize them via their recordings." Whereupon he ordered the station's DJs to stop playing MacRae's records.
And this brings up a very interesting point, as the editor says. "Well, now, if the radio station is paying the assistant manager to eat and clothe himself and provide for his family, and he is therefore grateful to radio to the extent of being touchy about jokes at radio’s expense —why was the assistant manager watching television? Why wasn’t he sitting with his ear glued to his radio set, demonstrating, at least for his family’s edification, that he loves radio above all other media of entertainment, even that upstart television?" Good question. Furthermore, why was it the assistant manager, and not the general manager, who took such offense? "Was the manager, perchance, tuned to Toast of the Town and therefore in no position to hear and take umbrage at the crack?" Good point again.
Of course people remember radio, the editorial conludes. "It’s the medium that popularized comics' like Bob Hope and Red Skelton who made cracks about the movies. Can’t recall that they were ever banned from films because of their wisecracks, though."
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The NFL regular season ends this weekend (with the exception of a single game played next weekend), and
Saturday's game features the Baltimore Colts and San Francisco 49ers, from Kezar Stadium in San Francisco (4:00 p.m. CT, DuMont). Elsewhere, the Honeymooneres are in trouble when Ralph decides he can make an easy fortune as a songwriter on
The Jackie Gleason Show (7:00 p.m., CBS), and
Your Hit Parade gives us the number one song of the week! (9:30 p.m., NBC)
Can you imagine a
Sunday with no sports whatsoever, except for
Roller Derby (4:00 p.m., WGN)? Welcome to this Sunday, where movies, educational programs, and cultural broadcasts dominate. On
Omnibus (4:00 p.m., CBS), it's Gore Vidal's adaptation of Royall Tyler's 1787 comedy "The Contrast," the first American comedy produced professionally. That goes up against
Hallmark Hall of Fame's presentation of "Royal Physician" (4:00 p.m., NBC), the story of Dr. William Harvey, who introduced the theory that blood circulates from the heart to the brain and the rest of the body as the doctor to King Charles I. Prime time offers the
Colgate Comedy Hour (7:00 p.m., NBC), this week hosted by Gordon MacRae, whose special guests include Jeff Chandler, Tony Curtis, and Rock Hudson. He bests Ed Sullivan on
Toast of the Town (7:00 p.m., CBS), who can only counter with Sophie Tucker, opera tenor David Whitfield, dance impressionist Angna Enters; actress Virginia Mayo, who introduces a film scene from
The Silver Chalice, and The Rudells, acrobats.
Producers' Showcase, where we've become accustomed to seeing such spectaculars as
Peter Pan and
Darkness at Noon, presents a change of pace on
Monday night (7:00 p.m., NBC): the dedication of the Overseas Press Club Memorial Building in Manhattan. John Daly hosts the 90-minute tribute , with entertainment by Bob Hope, Sid Caesar and Carl Reiner, Marian Anderson, Perry Como, Martha Raye, and Eddie Fisher, as well as appearances by Carl Sandburg and Robert Sherwood, and Music conducted by Richard Rodgers. That's followed by
Robert Montgomery Presents (8:30 p.m., NBC), starring Leslie Nielsen as a World War II deserter who decides to give himself up after a decade. THe only catch: he also has to give up the wife he married during his years as a deserter.
Milton Berle dresses up as Santa on
Tuesday's
Buick-Berle Show (7:00 p.m., NBC), with Uncle Miltie, dressed as Santa himself, heading to a local department store to greet the kids. Meanwhile, on
Fireside Theater (8:00 p.m., NBC), a priest in France to help rebuild a church faces an ethical dilemma when he recognizes that the church's murals are the work of an artist who is a fugitive in the United States. Oh, dear!
On
Wednesday,
Disneyland presents the debut of "Davy Crockett, Indian Fighter" (6:30 p.m., ABC), a three-part "Frontierland" series starring Fess Parker as the legendary frontiersman, with Buddy Ebsen as his sidekick, George Russell. It's difficult to overestimate the impact of this program; historians Randy Roberts and James Olson would later write that "by the end of the three shows, Fess Parker was very well known, the power of television was fully recognized, and Davy Crockett was the most famous frontiersman in American history." By the end of 1955, Americans had purchased over $300 million worth of Davy Crockett merchandise, including the famous coonskin hat that would be a major seller by Christmas of next year. Parker would later portray Daniel Boone for six seasons in the 1960s; any resemblance between Crockett and Boone is purely intentional.
Ronald Reagan, host of
G.E. Theater, writes elsewhere in this week's issue about the growing presence of movie stars on television (money brings them in, working on film rather than live clinches the deal), and we see evidence of this on
Thursday night as Claudette Colbert stars on
Climax! (7:30 p.m., CBS) in the story "The White Carnations." Colbert turned down a million-dollar offer from NBC earlier in 1954, but signed with CBS to do multiple guest appearances, such as this one. Later on, we get to see a pre-
Donna Reed Show Donna Reed in "Portrait of Lydia" on
Ford Theatre (8:30 p.m., NBC); Reed won an Oscar earlier in 1954 for her performance in
From Here to Eternity.
The week wraps up with Friday's Person to Person (9:30 p.m., CBS), and this week Edward R. Murrow visits with the Metropolitan Opera's Rise Stevens, one of the best-known and most popular American opera stars of the 1940s and 1950s (you might remember her as the opera star friend of Fr. O'Malley in Going My Way), and religious leader Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, who is probably positive you'll enjoy this week's show.
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With Christmas only two weeks away, the networks continue to roll out holiday entertainment, and this week's centerpiece is
Arthur Godfrey and His Friends (Wednesday, 7:00 p.m. CBS), as the Old Redhead takes viewers on a tour of "Christmas in New York." The tour leads viewers past shop windows on treelined Park Avenue, decorated Fifth Avenue stores, and the angels leading up to the Rockefeller Plaza tree. Meanwhile, on Friday, President Eisenhower delivers his Christmas message to the nation and lights the national Christmas Tree (4:00 p.m., CBS, NBC, and ABC).
On the NBC religious series
Frontiers of Faith (Sunday, 12:30 p.m.), singer John Raitt and the Columbus Boychoir present a program of Christmas carols from the Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City; the soon-to-be infamous
Bishop James Pike delivers a Christmas message. Later that day, Jack Benny's annual Christmas episode (6:30 p.m., CBS) sees Jack deciding that Rochester lacks the proper knack for shopping for Christmas delicacies, and decides to do the shopping himself. Thursday night's
Dinah Shore Show (6:30 p.m., NBC) features Dinah and guest Eddie Fisher singing "Silver Bells" and "The Christmas Song."
Something else you notice in this particular issue is the number of local programs offering tips on holiday entertainment. As an example, Weekend Workshop (Saturday, 11:00 a.m., WMAQ) presents ideas and construction details for exterior Christmas decorations, The Beulah Donohoe Show (1:30 p.m., WTMJ) discusses care of your poinsettias, Creative Cookery (Tuesday, 10:00 a.m., WBKB) features recipes for Christmas cookies (one of many cooking shows with similar themes this week), and the Dorsey Connors Show (Tuesday, 10:10 p.m., WNBQ) offers "color schemes for a Christmas decor." Nice touch, don't you think?
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The first doll to feature a tie-in to a television show, we are told, was based on the CBS children's puppet show Foodini the Great, which appeared in stores for Christmas, 1949. Foodini was followed shortly by Howdy Doody, and today the sky's the limit. Here we have a picture of the various dolls on the market for Christmas, 1954, along with a helpful key to show who's who, given that many of these dolls are based on actual TV stars of the time who have since faded into the memory banks of history. From Rickey Jr. to Donald Duck, it just goes to show that television and advertising were made for each other.
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We'd also be remiss if we didn't share this feature on how local television stations used to celebrate various occasions with unique station identification slides. (To show you how little current television I watch nowadays, I don't even know if stations do these anymore. If not, it's just one more thing that we've lost over the years.) Here are a couple featured in this week's issue:
And to show how these weren't limited to holidays such as Christmas and New Year's, here are a pair of additional slides from other times during the year. WBAL in Baltimore even did one welcoming Daylight Saving Time! One can only wonder how colorful these would have been if they'd been seen in color.
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MST3K alert: The Mad Monster (1942) A scientist, ousted from his university, develops a method for transplanting wolf's blood into a man. Johnny Downs, George Zucco, Anne Neagle, and Glenn Strange. (Friday, 3:00 p.m., WGN) OK, this is a
really bad movie; it makes it to
MST3K on merit. We do have the consolation of another episode of
Radar Men from the Moon, however. And don't feel too sorry for Glenn Strange as Petro, the monster: he'll go on to play Sam, the bartender of the Long Branch Saloon, in 222 episodes of
Gunsmoke from 1961 to 1973. Now that calls for a drink!
TV
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