Hadley's Three Laws of Television Writing

The community of writers, to which I belong by virtue of having written four (soon to be five!) books, is a great one for rule-setting. I mentioned in a recent Substack essay that being a writer nowadays means being confronted with a whole series of rules, many of which do their very best to stifle any kind of creativity you might have: don't use flashbacks, don't include prologues, don't make your chapters too long, don't this-or-that-or-the-other. (You'll notice almost all of these rules start with Don't.) 

Well, that got me to thinking, and this being a television site and all, you can probably guess where this is headed. If there's a rulebook for book writing, there ought to be one for television writing as well. And who better to come up with said rules than yours truly? 

I was spurred to this decision by a recent episode of Adventures in Paradise that we watched a couple of weeks ago. I've mentioned before that Adventures in Paradise isn't a great show; sometimes it isn't even a particularly good one. It is, however, often a fun show, and Gardner McKay is a compelling lead, a genuine example of an actor who has true star power even though he's not the world's greatest actor. This particular episode, however—it was, and is, called "The Trial of Adam Troy," from the third (of four) seasons—was so bad, and broke so many obvious rules, that it seemed to me a good time to set the key rules down, and use this episode as an example of what not to do when coming up with a storyline for an episode.

Note that this list is not meant to be all-inclusive. I've overlooked some of the more obvious rules, for instance, the one that characters—especially regulars—should behave in ways that are always and everywhere consistent with the establishment of their true characters, the qualities that they've displayed throughout the series. If someone suddenly acts in a way that's totally contrary to how they've behaved in the previous seventy-five episodes, then you've either got a problem with your writers or your lead has suddenly developed schizophrenia. 

It's my feeling that rules like that one should be, as Jefferson might say, so self-evident that they don't even need to be set down. There are others, however, that might not occur to you at first thought—that might, in fact, not even be on the radar until you actually see a violation in an episode of one of your favorite shows. And it is to this purpose that I've chosen to present to you Hadley's Three Laws of Television Writing™.

The first rule of television storytelling is one I've brought up many times in the past: Do not put the hero in a situation where we already know the outcome. You've experienced my rants about false jeopardy before; basically, it involves a storyline that puts our main character in a situation where he or she is supposed to be at risk, but one in which you and I know is obviously impossible: being accused of murder, for example, or being in a life-or-death situation from a deadly illness or accident. We know the outcome is predetermined because Sergeant Saunders is not going to die as a result of the wounds suffered during an attack in Combat!, Perry Mason is not going to lose to Hamilton Burger, and Joe Mannix is not going to be convicted of the murder for which he's so obviously being framed. Unless the actor playing the character is in a contract dispute, there's no way he's going to be killed off, jailed, or otherwise put out of the way. So you've created a storyline in which one of the major sources of suspense has already been eliminated. Yawn.

Now there's one exception to this, and it's a flimsy one: the resolution to the fake jeopardy has to be so compelling, so exciting, so fraught with suspense, that it overcomes any doubts you might have about the outcome. In Combat!, for instance, we know that Sergeant Saunders and his men are going to get out of that German ambush (we're not so sure about the guest stars, though); what's compelling is in watching just how they do it. The solution usually requires some foresight, some manuever executed due to the experience Saunders has gained from the years spent fighting in the war. In other words, cleverness counts. Likewise, if Mannix is able to escape from police custody long enough to track down the real killer, we may buy it, but only if the outcome is so propulsive, so fraught with suspense and surprise, that we watch just to see how it turns out. I mean, if you know who didn't do it, the payoff has to come from the unwinding of the story to see who did. (It also helps if Mannix beats the hell out of the killer before the police arrest him, but that's another story.)

The long and short of it is that false jeopardy is always a loser unless you can knock the viewer's socks off with the resolution. And, having watched a lot of television over my lifetime, I can tell you that this does not happen very often. When it does, it can save the episode. When it doesn't, that's when I usually start checking my email.

Closely related, but not exactly the same, is my next rule: Do not require something just short of divine intervention to get the hero out of a jam. This one gets violated more often than I'd like to admit, and when it does, it often leaves me feeling disappointed. My feeling is that a truly heroic television character always remains in control of his fate. A sports analogy here may help out. We've often heard an analyst say that Team A has their fate in their own hands, meaning that if Team A wins the remainder of their games, no matter what any other team manages to do, Team A is going to win the championship. On the other hand, many times a team will be in the position of depending on external factors out of their own control. Team A's chances of making the playoffs may depend not only on their winning the remainder of their games, but also on Team B losing at least once. But as we've seen above, if Team B wins all their games, then Team A is out of luck.

Now, obviously, television shows would be pretty dull if there weren't some manner of suspense involved. If your hero is Superman, and all of his opponents are mere mortals, you can be pretty sure that no matter what life has to throw at him, he's going to come out of it on top. He doesn't need any stinking badges, or anything else for that matter, to get him out of trouble. But suppose your hero isn't Superman, just Jim Rockford, and that he and Beth are being held hostage by a killer who's determined to eliminate them both—permanently. There are a number of ways for this to happen, but for it to be effective, it has to pass through what I like to call the "Plausibility Meter." 

In writing, I use the Plausibility Meter to determine whether or not I should pursue a particular storyline. Now, by plausible, I don't mean that this has to be the only outcome, or even the likely one; it just means that it has to be realistic enough that the reader is going to buy into whatever it is you're proposing, without requiring a suspension of disbelief so massive as to be virtually impossible. To go back to our situation with Rockford and Beth, if Dennis knows that Jim was headed out to that deserted factory to find the clue pointing to the identity of the killer, and if he knows the killer is also headed for that factory, then it's entirely plausible that Dennis will head there as well; therefore, when Dennis shows up (invariably) just in the nick of time to save our hero and his girl, we're going to buy it. It might not have been the most likely resolution to the situation, but it's certainly a plausible one. We can buy the cavalry coming to the rescue at the last minute if we know that a cavalry exists, and if the cavalry knows there's trouble afoot. 

On the other hand, when the hero requires a virtual Act of God to get out of a jam, then we're apt to roll our eyes. Which is what I mean when I say that the hero's fate should never be out of his own hands. Rockford works with Dennis, knows Dennis, trusts Dennis (at least most of the time). Therefore, being rescued by Dennis is, in a very real sense, a result of Rockford's own action. But when we see the equivalent of the two scientists standing at the blackboard working on a formula which can only be completed by inserting "and then a miracle occurs," we're in trouble. If the hero's survival depends on a change of heart by a heretofore cold-hearted character, or if the bad guy is knocked out just before pulling the trigger by a falling ceiling beam that just happened to have come down exactly where the bad guy was standing—well, then, Houston, we've got a problem. A very good series is entitled to a mulligan like this every once in a while, but the series has to be very good, and the frequency of this happening has to be very rare.

And now we come to Hadley's Third Law of Television Plotlines: Don't deny the viewer the pleasure of the payoff. The mystery writer Dorothy L. Sayers once said that for a mystery story to have a payoff, justice has to be visible; the balance of right and wrong must be redressed. It is why, in her opinion, any story in which the bad guys won was a violation of the natural law of things. If justice is not dispensed in a story, there can be no equilibrium, no restoration of truth.

You may think that this doesn't come into play in the examples we've been looking at here. If Saunders and his men win their battle with the Germans, if Rockford is rescued, if Mannix finds the real killer, doesn't that mean that justice has triumphed? Well, yes, but remember that storytelling is a visceral experience for the viewer or reader. In other words, the payoff at the end has to make everything they've experienced worth it. We all know by now that writers manipulate our emotions all the time; they make us hate the villain, love the heroine, boil at the sight of injustice. If they really do it well, we're not aware that we're being manipulated, but whether or not it's done well, that's what they're doing. And for this manipulation to have been worth it, we need a payoff.

What do I mean by this? Take the story of a particularly heinous criminal, a murderer, a child rapist, the worst of the worst. The capture of this vermin by the end of the story is a given (unless we're dealing with a true story, or the writer is trying to prove a larger point, which is itself an iffy proposition), but admit it—you don't want to see the detectives just slap the cuffs on them, and take them away, do you? Of course not. In a story like this, that's too good for them. You want to see the hero beat them to within an inch of their lives. You want to be assured that not only will they suffer in the process, but their future suffering is also assured. You want a visceral form of justice to prevail. If you've never felt that way, you're not human.

One of the things that makes Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer books so satisfying is that you're assured of this kind of payoff at least three or four times in every book. You live for that moment when Hammer locks the door, rolls up his sleeves, and turns the radio up high, so that nobody will hear the perp's screams as Hammer puts the fist, the boot, and the butt of the gun to them. Maybe you don't need to see all the gory details, but you need more than a subtle fade-out to the next scene to be satisfied. It's a variation of Chekhov's Gun, the principle that every element introduced in a story must be significant and relevant to the plot. In other words, if something is mentioned, like a gun, it should have a purpose later in the story; otherwise, it shouldn't be included at all. If the bad guy is as vile a character as you've been made to believe, you sure as hell want some kind of satisfaction at the end.

In the case of the Adventures in Paradise episode I mentioned at the outset, this story managed, unbelievably, to violate not one, not two, but all three of these principles before it had ended. To recap the episode, we find Adam Troy (Gardner McKay) facing the loss of his captain's license, and possibly more, due to his negligence in the death of a passenger while on a voyage. Said victim was a young man with a background of wealth and privilege, with a father determined to avenge his son's death by whatever means necessary—in this case, by blaming Adam for his son's accident. 

Right away we're faced with a clear-cut case of false jeopardy: since we're in the middle of the third season, and since the very premise of the series involves McKay's adventures on his schooner, we know damn well that he's not going to be found guilty here, of negligence, or of anything else. So already we've had the violation of Hadley's First Law: the main character is in no real danger, regardless of what the writers want us to believe. We know Adam wasn't negligent, through the extensive use of flashbacks (whoops!) that show us what really happened. The trick is to get the authorities to believe it, when the only possible evidence is the testimony of a girl who can't be found, having been stashed away by the rich kid's father, henceforth known as the Rich Bastard.

Now, let's give them credit that they probably realize we're on to this trick, and therefore, they've tried to inject as much suspense as possible. Will Adam be able to find the girl in time and convince her to testify on his behalf? And here, I have to give them a little credit, because they do try to string us along for a bit. Adam does manage to find her, and she does tell him the truth, but guess what: she lies on the witness stand, because her father works for the Rich Bastard, and if she tells the truth, that the son was responsible for his own death, then daddy will find himself out of a job. But guess what? At the last minute, Dad stands up and says he'll not allow his daughter to perjure herself on his account, and insists she tell the truth.

This obviously breaks Hadley's Second Law, in a couple of ways. First, Adam had to put his trust in his ability to persuade the girl to come to his defense. This isn't necessarily an outright violation, but it does start to put a strain on the Plausibility Meter. But then we get this out-of-nowhere statement from Dad, which basically saves Adam's bacon. Who could have anticipated that? There simply wasn't enough time in a one-hour drama to develop the characters to the point that you can buy a turn of events like this. Therefore, it becomes a textbook example of being bailed out due to an improbability—a miracle, if you will.

So good triumphs over evil, Adam's name and reputation are cleared, and the Rich Bastard winds up losing. At least that's what we're told, for we don't see him actually suffer the consequences. Does he go to prison? Do the shareholders revolt, does the bad publicity cause the business to suffer, does he face public shame for his nefarious actions? Who the hell knows, because none of it gets played out on screen. There is no payoff: no comeuppance, no visible punishment. Adam doesn't even get the chance to belt him in the mouth, which was the least to which he was entitled. And us too, by the way. What is it that Mick says about not getting any satisfaction? It really had the feel of an episode in which they ran out of time and had to sum it all up in a sentence or two. 

Now, lest you think I'm picking on Adventures in Paradise—well, in a way, I am. It was a disappointing episode, without a doubt. But it's far from the only series to fall into these traps, to break Hadley's Three Laws™, and it hasn't stopped us from continuing to watch. 

It is rare, however, to see a single episode that manages to violate all three of these laws in the same story; a trifecta, if you will, or maybe a triple crown. Not one I'd want to win, though, because with an episode like this, there are no winners. TV

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What's on TV: Friday, March 25, 1960

Ahe highlight of today's programming, as we saw on Saturday, is the TV Guide Awards show at 7:30 p.m., but there are other things of interest as well. For example, let's take a look at CBS this afternoon, with For Better or Worse at 1:00 p.m., followed by Art Linkletter's House Party at 1:30, where Art's guest is marriage counselor Dr. James A. Peterson—the host of For Better or Worse. I tell you, if there's an award for self -promotion, that takes the prize. The listings are, as you probably already know, from the Minnesota State Edition.

This week in TV Guide: March 19, 1960

As you'll learn at the end of this week's piece, one of the most popular series on television is the legal drama Perry Mason*, and this week, we're going to take a look at some of the inside keys to the show's success.

* Interestingly, Perry Mason was always categorized in TV Guide as a "Mystery" rather than drama, as is usually the case with legal procedurals. I think that's fair; Mason's really as much a detective as he is an attorney. It's probably best classified as a hybrid detective/legal series.

One of the secrets to the success of Mason, according to this unbylined article, is its strong supporting cast, each of whom brings something special to his or her role. Take Bill Talman, for example, who plays Perry's nemesis Hamilton Burger. According to Talman, Mason creator Erle Stanley Gardner didn't think much of the D.A. "Erle detested Berger," Talman says, "and drew him as the prototype of the loud, blustering sorehead, like the one who used to plague him as a young lawyer." Talman has worked to flesh out the character, to reduce the temptation by viewers to see him as a heavy. "Otherwise, it would be no credit to Perry to set him down every week."

Ray Collins, the honest (if quick to judge) detective lieutenant Arthur Tragg, is an old pro, one who "can sense other actors' needs and throw the scene their way." For instance, if a young actor, perhaps one playing his first big role, is struggling with his lines, Collins will start fumbling his to take the pressure off—if, that is, Talman or Raymond Burr don't beat him to it.* But, as Collins adds, "we are professionals. Therefore, no matter how fond we are of one another, we all try to protect ourselves. If Willie Talman can get better lighting than I can, well, I assure you I'll try to change that." Barbara Hale, Perry's loyal secretary Della Street, says "It's like the competition in a family."

*I wonder about this. Collins was, by all accounts, a generous colleague, but it's been said that as his health began to fail (he died in 1965), he began to have more trouble memorizing and delivering his lines. It could be that Talman and Burr, almost certainly the sources of this anecdote, were in fact using it to cover for Collins. It's the kind of thing mensches would do.

William Hopper, son of the famed columnist Hedda, has learned his share of tricks of the trade, thanks both to his mother and veteran actors. He, too, has become a pro over the years; "If all you know is tricks, you're dead."

It's a tight cast, even if they do compete for better lighting and close-ups. Says Talman, who has shared a dressing room with Hopper for three years, "Can you think of rooming with a guy for three years and never having a quarrel or argument? I can't. But that has happened with Bill and me." Collins adds that "There's something else—call it a great affection, like a legit show on the road. When it closes you may never see each other again. Sometimes we think of that. And so we still speak to each other." "And laugh at each other's jokes," Talman adds.

At the center of it all is Raymond Burr, and Collins accurately sums up the man and his impact on the cast. "Take Raymond, a man doing 39 hour-long shows a year, appearing in almost every scene, knowing his lines letter-perfect, and who still devotes himself to making it better for other people." He and Talman are inveterate practical jokers, both on each other and on other members of the cast; Hale, who's a favorite target for Burr, once found everything in her dressing room—sink, flower pots, everything—filled with green gelatin.

Judging by the lack of jealousy among the cast, that must be the only thing that's green.

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Starting in 1954, Steve Allen helmed his own NBC variety show which, at the beginning, aired opposite that of Ed Sullivan. It didn't run as long as Ed's, of course, but then Allen said his goal was never to conquer Ed, but to coexist with him, which he did for four seasons. Let's see who gets the best of the contest this week.

Sullivan: Ed presents circus stars from all over the world. In London: Popov, famed Soviet clown; the Boxing Russian Bears. In New York: Emmett Kelly, celebrated American clown; the De Donge Chimps; Linon, high-wire clown; and the Three Murkies.

Allen: Steve's guests are actress Ann Blyth, Nick "The Rebel" Adams, comedian Jan Murray and the Nikolais dancers.

No contest here; unless you're a big fan of circuses, the only name you may recognize from Ed's lineup is Emmett Kelly, although I'll admit to having a soft spot for boxing bears. On the other hand, Steve has an actual lineup of stars, and while it may not be the strongest hand, it's the best one this week. The verdict: Allen takes the week.

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"For the Record" reviews one of the bigger television stories in recent history: the return of Jack Paar, after his celebrated walkout, on the March 7 Tonight Show. His sidekick, Hugh Downs, counted down the seconds, and then, "Here's Jack!" and out stepped"the lachrymose comedian with the porcupine-quill wit," to complete what the column calls "the most emotional, if not dramatic, re-entry in TV history." Paar's average nightly audience more than doubled, with a multi-city Arbitron rating of 25.5 tuned in to see him, "obviously laboring under great stress" as he resumed the late-night chores. Eyes of a Generation has an excellent recap of one of television's most controversial episodes, including a clip of his triumphant return.

That's not all the Hugh Downs news for this week; according to the TV Teletype, Downs will be appearing in a straight dramatic role in an upcoming episode of Riverboat, starring Darrin McGavin and Burt Reynolds. (If any further evidence is needed, that's him over there, to the left of McGavin.) And, speaking of Perry Mason as we were in the lede, CBS has confirmed that the show has been renewed for a fourth season. 

There's also a note that Reginald Rose has completed work on what Bob Stahl says may be "the most controversial TV play of the season," "The Sacco-Vanzetti Story," planned as a two-part Sunday Showcase presentation in May on NBC. Rose says that his "intensive research" shows that the anarchists, who were executed after being convicted of robbery and murder in South Braintree, Massachusetts, were framed due to their political beliefs. Martin Balsam and Steven Hill are scheduled to portray Sacco and Vanzetti; Sidney Lumet will direct. In the end, the production, which actually airs in June, wins critical acclaim from most critics (with New York Daily News columnist Ben Gross calling it "a blasting indictment of Massachusetts justice," and criticism from Boston Globe legal editor Joseph Harvey, who accused it of being unfair and unbalanced, albeit "absorbing" drama. It goes on to garner four Emmy nominations.

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To coin a phrase, we've got some really big stars in specials and regular fare alike, and that dominates our look at the week.

On Saturday Jack Benny gets a full hour special (9:00 p.m. CT) in addition to his regular weekly series, and he fills it up with Phil Silvers and Polly Bergen. Among the highlights, Jack interviews a "typical" TV Western viewer, gives his opinion on television commercials, and wonders about the runner taking the Olympic torch from Squaw Valley to Rome for the Summer Games.

Sunday brings us the return of Dr. Frank Baxter, whom we've enjoyed here before, in another Bell Telephone Science Special, "The Alphabet Conspiracy." (5:00 p.m., NBC) Dr. Baxter plays Dr. Linguistics, who's out to "prevent three plotters who are determined to do away with the alphabet and thus destroy all languages." Who knew they'd go on to invent emojis instead? Hans Conried plays The Mad Hatter, who for all I know may or may not be one of the plotters. If you missed this when it was first on 14 months ago, you may opt for this week's roundtable discussion on Small World (5:00, CBS), featuring Pablo Casals, Isaac Stern and Ernest Ansermet discussing the musician's political and social responsibilities. CBS follows that up at 5:30 with The Twentieth Century, as Walter Cronkite profiles "Patton and the Third Army."

Sunday evening brings a pair of specials; first, Our American Heritage (7:00 p.m., NBC) tells the story of "Autocrat and Son," also known as Oliver Wendell Holms Sr. and Jr. Sr. is played by Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Jr. by Christopher Plummer, and the whole thing was written by Ernest Kinoy, who wrote great teleplays into the 1990s, everything from The Defenders to the TV-movies Victory at Entebbe and Skokie. Then, at 8:30 p.m. on CBS, the General Mills Special Tonight series presents "The Valley of Decision" with Lloyd Bridges and Nancy Wickwire.

Compared to Sunday's lineup, Monday is pretty tame, but it does have its benefits, with Arlene Francis as Jack Paar's Tonight guest-host for the week (NBC, 10:30 p.m.), while Jack's in England taping next week's shows. (Speaking of Jack, as we were earlier.) Was Arlene the first woman to host Tonight? I think so, but don't hold me to it; I'm not sure at this point in history who else in might have been.

Tuesday starts off with Playhouse 90's chilling adaptation of Robert Shaw's novel "The Hiding Place" (7:00 p.m., CBS) starring James Mason as a Nazi holding two British flyers (Richard Basehart, Trevor Howard) prisoner in his cellar. They've spent years chained up in there, with Mason as their only contact to the outside world. What he doesn't tell them is that the war has been over for seven years. If that's too dark for you, you can check out a rare television appearance by Rex Harrison in Startime's "Dear Arthur" (7:30 p.m., NBC), co-starring Sarah Marshall and Hermoine Badderly, with Gore Vidal adapting the play by P.G. Wodehouse.

I like the sound of Perry Como's show on Wednesday (8:00 p.m., NBC), with Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gormé, and Don Adams. (Might be the best variety show of the week, for that matter.) You can also check out Richard Boone, taking time out from Have Gun—Will Travel to star in "The Charlie and the Kid" on The U.S. Steel Hour (9:00 p.m., CBS), with Geraldine Brooks.

The big event on Thursday is a local one, the start of the Minnesota State High School Basketball Tournament. (For boys, of course; it is 1960, after all.) I think most people think of hockey when they think sports in Minnesota, but in the years before professional sports came to town, the basketball tournament was very, very big stuff. The tournament ran for three days, with eight teams battling for the title, ending on Saturday night when nearly 20,000 would pack Williams Arena, home of the University of Minnesota Golden Gophers, to watch the final. If they're lucky, it would be a David-vs-Goliath story, with an unsung small school out of nowhere taking on the big city schools.

In 1960 that's exactly what happened, as Minnesota staged its very own version of Hoosiers, starring the team from tiny Edgerton, Minnesota (population 961). Edgerton, led by coach Rich Olson (so young that security guards demanded to see his identification before letting him into Williams Arena), had finished the regular season undefeated, then knocked off several large schools before making it into the tournament, where the standing-room only crowds adopted the tiny school as its own, cheering them on as they upset top-ranked Richfield in the semifinals before defeating Austin in the final. Edgerton was the smallest school ever to win the state championship, and to this day the tournament remains one of the most storied moments in Minnesota sports history.

On Friday, Robert Ryan and Ann Todd star in a live adaptation of Hemingway's story "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" (7:30 p.m., CBS), which must have been quite an accomplishment considering our hero leads a life of adventure all over the world. At least they have the right man at the helm, with John Frankenheimer directing. Pretty good supporting cast as well, with Janice Rule, Jean Hagen, Mary Astor and James Gregory.

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There's often a healthy dose of irony contained in TV Guide headlines from this era, and this week's example is the header on the cover, "How Bob Cummings Stays So Young." The short answer, contained in the story, is "advanced thinking on the subject of diet." The longer, and more interesting, answer is only partially found in the article; the rest of it can be tracked down in various articles about Cummings's problems later in life.

Cummings is a big believer in supplements, mostly in tablets and pills. "They're just vitamin, mineral and amino acid pills, but they're organic in origin, not synthetic," he tells the unidentified interview. It's not unusual for him to "gulp down as many as two dozen of these," and he downs "anywhere from 30 to 300 a day." When asked how to get on a supplemental diet, he says simply, "See your doctor and do what he says"

Well, Cummings's doctor was Max Jacobson, the infamous "Dr. Feelgood," who was doctor to many Hollywood celebrities, and once treated President Kennedy with a mixture of steroids and amphetamines. According to the always-reliable Wikipedia, "While Jacobson insisted that his injections contained only "vitamins, sheep sperm, and monkey gonads", they actually contained a substantial dose of methamphetamine." Cummings eventually became an addict, and after Jacobson was stripped of his medical license, Cummings was forced to find his own connections for the drugs. He wound up broke, living in various homes for indigent actors.

Now, I hasten to add that I don't know whether or not Cummings was seeing Jacobson at the time of this article; his quotes only refer to "pills," and Jacobson apparently trafficked in injections. However, Cummings was thought to have become addicted to meth by the mid-1950s, an addiction that continued to the end of his life. It's a sad footnote to a talented and very likable actor.

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And the winner is: Finally, the TV Guide Awards are presented live and in color on Friday night (7:30 p.m., NBC); before the Emmys attained their current level of credibility, the TV Guide Awards, along with other awards shows from magazines such as Look, were considered industry standard presentations. The categories are, obviously, much broader than one would see from the Emmys, but no less important, given that readers of TV Guide voted for the winners.

Robert Young, Nanette Fabray, and Fred MacMurray not only host, they perform in some pre-recorded skits, while the awards themselves are presented in both New York and Hollywood, depending on where the winner is. The show's producer is Bud Yorkin, and it's directed by Norman Lear.

Anyway, may I have the envelope please?

Favorite Series of One Hour or Longer: Perry Mason

Favorite Half-Hour Series: Father Knows Best

Best Single Musical or Variety Program: Another Evening with Fred Astaire

Most Popular Male Personality: Raymond Burr (Perry Mason)

Most Popular Female Personality: Loretta Young (The Loretta Young Show)

Best News or Information Program: The Huntley-Brinkley Report

Best Single Dramatic Program: "The Turn of the Screw" (Startime)

TV

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Around the dial

A few personal notes lead off this week, beginning with my latest appearance with Dan Schneider to discuss American TV History. This month, we look at two overlooked stars of the past, one who was once known as "one of America's great entertainers," and the other a talented actor and teen idol of the 1970s: Danny Thomas and Lance Kerwin.

Also, from a few weeks ago, Herbie J Pilato did a very nice profile of me on his Substack. I'm very grateful to Herbie for his kindness and generosity, and I'm also going to trademark the description "One-Man Literati Delivers a Media Mosaic"! Thanks again, Herbie.

Finally, just a reminder that my novel, The Book of Revelations, comes out in June. You can get exclusive features on that, plus advance word on coming projects of mine, by subscribing to my monthly newsletter. Please take a moment to do so, won't you?

At RealWeegieMidget, Gill takes a look at the 1979 telemovie The Return of the Saint, with Ian Ogilvy eschewing the role of Simon Templar, aided and abetted by Britt Ekland, Helmut Berger, and other international stars. Ah, but is he Roger Moore?

John is investigating the iconic police procedural Z-Cars at Cult TV Blog. The show ran on British TV from 1962 to 1978, and in the episode "Waste," we get to see the first television role for Lewis Collins, who would later go on to star in The Professionals.

I'm one of those who's always dropping names and lines from classic shows, much to the confusion of my friends (which tells me I need new friends). David takes a look at the classic TV name drop at Comfort TV, and wonders if anyone gets these references anymore. 

At The View from the Junkyard, Roger's weekly look at The A-Team takes us to "Sheriffs of Rivertown," which, as you may have guessed, involves our heroes assuming the roles of police officers in a town plagued by official corruption.

Judy Pace, one of the early black pioneers in television, and best known for her appearances on Peyton Place and The Young Lawyers (remember that show?), died this month at the age of 83, and at A Shroud of Thoughts, Terence remembers her career. 

Paul's back at Mavis Movie Madness!, which is good news for all of us, and he's back with the real good news, as he reviews volume two of the NBC series Greatest Heroes of the Bible, which includes plenty of entertainment, both intentionally and unintentionally. (Oops!)

No specific tie-in, but at Classic Film and TV Corner, Maddie has some wonderful photos from the classic film and television era, both candid and publicity. It works as a great pallet cleanser to round out the week.  TV

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The sociology of soap opera sex

Soap operas have both their fans and their detractors, and we've run across them both over the years in the pages of TV Guide. On Saturday, I mentioned that Edith Efron's essay on sex in the soaps ("anything but 99 44/100 percent pure.") was so long and complex that I decided to give it its own space. It's one of the more critical looks at the genre that you're apt to find, and it presents us with an extremely complicated dissection of contemporary societal mores, with an occasionally convoluted root system of interrelated values that tells us a great deal about values past and present. It is an excellent example of how television can inform us of that past world, and show us the stirrings of our present one.

With no pun intended, the issue of sex in the daytime has become one of the hot issues of the day, as the content of the daily dramas has come under intense criticism. In fact, one critic accuses them of "peddling sex," another declaims the increasing examples of adultery being portrayed in the series, and Variety, the industry newspaper, says there is now a daytime "race to dredge up the most lurid incidents in sex-based human wretchedness."

Now, you might wonder why this was such a big deal at the time. After all, soap operas have had their R-rated reputation for a long time. It wasn't always this way, though; as Efron points out, the daytime drama "is not what it used to be in the old days, when the brave housewife, with husband in wheel chair, struggled helplessly against adversity." As Secret Storm producer Roy Winsor  The soaps have shifted drastically on their axes; the fundamental theme today is, as Roy Winsor, producer of The Secret Storm, puts it, "the male-female relationship." Efron finds that "the theme of nine of the 10 daytime shows on the air when this study was launched is the mating-marital-reproductive cycle set against a domestic background." This is not to say that the outside world of hospitals, offices, and courtrooms is not present, but "the external events tend to be a foil for the more fundamental drama, which is rooted in the biological life cycle. Almost all dramatic tension and moral conflict emerge from three basic sources: mating, marriage and babies." 

This complicated cycle plays out in several ways. Citing storylines from several of the current soaps, Efron identifies three key "values" that exist in the soap-opera universe: "mating, marriage and babies."

The first, and most important of the three—for it serves as the cornerstone upon which the other two are built—is mating, the search for the ideal partner, and it is not only the cornerstone, it is the dominant obsession of daytime characters. "Vacuous teen-age girls have no thought whatever in their heads except hunting for a man. Older women wander about, projecting their intense longing to link themselves to unattached males. Heavily made-up villainous “career women” prowl, relentlessly seeking and nabbing their prey: the married man. Sad, lonely divorcées hunt for new mates." In the complex ecosystem of good and bad that exists in the soap world, this is a definite good. What determines how it's spun within the story is how the search for the perfect mate is conducted. "Good" people's sex is described as "passive, diffident and apologetic," and the key is "coyness, not chastity."

On the other hand, when "bad" people have sex, "One gets the impression that villains, both male and female, have read a lot of Ian Fleming, through several layers of cheesecloth." It's often played over the top, with lines such as "I play hard and seriously—but not necessarily for keeps." Bad characters also leer, ogle, and speak in double entredees, always delivered with husky voices—when they're not already gasping, that is.

The second of these values is marriage. The dominant view is that marriage consists of two ingredients: love and homemaking.* About love, Efron describes it, as portrayed in the soaps, as "a kind of hospitalization insurance, usually provided by females to male emotional cripples." The greatest love, it would seem, is the love of dependence; a typical declaration of said love, on Search for Tomorrow, consists of the reformed alcoholic pleading to his wife, "I need you," with the wife's response, "That's all I want." That's the psychic representation of love; its symbolic representation comes in the form of homemaking. Food is discussed almost as often as sex, and plays a critical role in romance and marriage. 

* As Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen could tell you, love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage; today, however, we live in the horseless carriage world.

The absence of said domesticity is a "serious evil," as seen in a recent storyline in The Secret Storm, in which "a husband’s arrival from work was greeted by a violent outburst by his wife, who handed him a list of jobs he had not done around the house. His neglect of the curtain rods was a sure sign that he was in love with a temptress who works in his office. Conversely, if a wife neglects her house, the marriage is rocky." 

This brings us to the third and final crucial values: reproduction. Having a baby is "the ultimate goal toward which almost all 'good' people strive. And 'The Baby' is the household god." "Good" wives are either fighting to become pregnant, worried that they aren't pregnant, actually becoming pregnant, or trying desperately not to "lose the baby." "Good" men are not only sympathetic, they're also "fascinated by every detail of it," discussing it in intimate detail with their friends. And what of those babies whose conception comes out of wedlock? Well, that's a little more complicated. On the one hand, "The girl is viewed as a helpless victim of male villainy," of loving her man too much. At the same time, however, the same woman "has acquired the baby 'the wrong way' and must—and does—suffer endlessly because of it." However, all ends well, because she goes through with the birth despite all this (abortion being verboten on television), and thus "receives an enormous amount of sympathy, guidance and help from 'good' people." 

Only "bad" people are anti-baby, and the worst of them are "career women," who "actually enjoy some activity other than reproducing the species." With rare exceptions, when it comes to married woman, "even the feeblest flicker of a desire for a career is a symptom of villainy in a woman who has a man to support her." And even when female characters achieve their ideal, it doesn't guarantee happiness. "A man to support them, an empty house to sit in, no mentally demanding work to do and an endless vista of future pregnancies do not seem to satisfy the younger soap-opera ladies. They are chronically bored and hysterical." They also live in constant threat of losing their working husbands to those wicked career women. The males suffer as well; "They, too, have a remarkable amount of trouble reconciling their 'needs as men' with their 'needs as fathers.'" They're either sick with jealousy, tortured by the jealousy of their wieves, or both. They also have to worry about curtain rods. 

The result, Efron finds, is a world epitomized by "a lot of drinking, epidemic infidelity, and countless cases of acute neurosis, criminality, psychotic breakdowns and postmaternal psychosis."

What we have as a result of all this, Efron says, is not the lurid, suggestive headlines we saw at the beginning of this article, but instead 'a soggy, dreary spectacle of human misery'" that begs the question: "where did this depressing view of the male-female relationship come from?" The industry experts have excuses ready and at hand; Secret Storm's Roy Winsor puts a finger on it, identifying television's role as reflector, rather than driver, of societal change: "The moral fiber has been shattered in this Nation, and nothing has replaced it..."Some of the contemporary sickness has rubbed off onto TV." Frank Dodge, producer of Search for Tomorrow, puts it even plainer: "These shows are a recognition of existing emotions and problems. It’s not collusion, but a logical coincidence that adultery, illegitimate children and abortions are appearing on many shows. If you read the papers about what’s going on in the suburbs—well, it’s more startling than what’s shown on the air."

Dr. Harold Greenwald, training analyst of the National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis and supervising psychologist of the Community Guidance Service in New York, agrees with this assessment. "I think they’re more realistic than many of the evening shows. They’re reflecting the changes taking place in our society. There are fewer taboos. The age of sexual activity in the middle classes has dropped and it has increased in frequency. There is more infidelity. These plays reflect these problems." Dr. William Menaker, professor of clinical psychology at NYU, adds, "The theater, the novel, and the film have always reflected people's concern with the sexual life; and in this sense, what’s on the air reflects these realities of life. Increasing frankness in dealing with these problems isn’t a symptom of moral decay but rather reflects the confused values of a transitional period of sociosexual change."

Unfortunately, adds Dr. Menaker, the issue, as portrayed on television, "is mechanical and adolescent, immature. The 'love' seems equally childish; it is interacting dependency, rather than a mutual relating between two autonomous adults.* As for anti-intellectualism of these shows, it is actually antifeminine. It shows the resistance of both writers and audience to the development of the total feminine personality." Feminist writer Betty Friedan (naturally) echoes this outlook: "The women are childish and dependent; the men are degraded because they relate to women who are childish and dependent; and the view of sex that emerges is sick."

*One could say this about the Love Generation of the Sixties in general.

Interestingly enough, one could say that amidst all this debauchery, you can actually see the makings of the core morality that used to be the bedrock of modern society. For it wasn't all that long ago, in the great scheme of things, that having a family was the ultimate goal of marriage, and couples without children were almost always portrayed as having suffered as a result of a miscarriage, infertility, or some other circumstance that was invariably considered unfortunate. Again, a sign of the times—both times, if you want to be specific.

Efron's conclusions are twofold: first, "one can certainly conclude that all this 'sex-based human wretchedness' is on the air because it exists in society. And the producers’ claims that this is dramatic 'realism' appear to have some validity." However, "does the fact that a phenomenon exists justify its incessant exploration by the daytime dramas?" In other words, does the claim that "this is the way it is" really excuse its portrayal on television? The doctors Efron consulted "actively" refrained from making such moral judgements, but Betty Friedan thinks otherwise. "The fact that immature, sick, dependent women exist in our society is no justification for these plays," she says. "The soap operas are playing to this sickness. They are feeding it. They are helping to keep women in this helpless, dependent state." Playing the victim card—or telling it like it is?  TV

If you enjoy the content here and want to support my broader creative work, please consider making a donation at my Ko-fi page. Any amount you contribute helps me continue writing, researching, and sharing these articles and projects. Thank you!