Director James Sheldon

The noted television director James Sheldon died last week, in New York; he was 95.

Here is an obituary, from The New York Times: 

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/18/arts/television/james-sheldon-director-whose-career-reflected-tvs-evolution-dies-at-95.html

Mr. Sheldon directed a great many television programs over the decades, including episodes of The Fugitive, My Three Sons, Room 222, My World and Welcome to It, Perry Mason, The Virginian, Batman, Ironside, Julia, M*A*S*H, Naked City, Route 66, Mr. Peepers, Armstrong Circle Theatre, Robert Montgomery Presents, and The Waltons.

He directed six episodes of The Twilight Zone, including one of the most chilling of the series--1961's "It's a Good Life," starring Billy Mumy, as a child with deadly abilities.  

Here is a list of Mr. Sheldon's directing credits, from IMDB.com:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0791027/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1

I interviewed Mr. Sheldon a few years ago, while I was host of a weekly on-line radio program, and enjoyed our conversation very much.  We spoke about his 2011 book, Before I Forget--Directing Television: 1948-1988, published by BearManor.

http://www.amazon.com/Before-Forget-Directing-Television-1948-1988-ebook/dp/B004ZCIBJQ/

Early network TV, and the theatre

In early network television, there was a kinship (a notable one) between the new medium, and the theatre.  

For one, any number of Broadway performers--actors, dancers, singers--appeared in early television broadcasts.  Many vaudeville performers, too, became a part of early TV.

Yet the television/theatre kinship went beyond the participation of Broadway and vaudeville entertainers. Early television offered (for the most part) live performances, live telecasts, and did so in a broad fashion:  there were dramas, variety programs, comedy, music-oriented shows, talent shows, quiz and audience participation programs, operas.  Such programs gave, to much of early TV, a generalized theatrical sense.  Yet it was a new theatrical variant:  live performance seen in the home (or, perhaps, the nearby tavern, where television sets were often a staple).

As if to underscore the theatrical linkage, various early TV programs originated from theatres.  In  1949 and 1950, for example, Kay Kyser's TV program on NBC (on which my mother was featured) was telecast from New York's International Theatre, at Columbus Circle.  Beginning in early 1950, Sid Caesar's Your Show of Shows was also telecast from the theatre, as, for a time--starting in the fall of 1950--were Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin's Colgate Comedy Hour broadcasts.

In 1950, too, NBC began broadcasting TV programs from New York's Center Theatre, at Rockefeller Center. 

One of the programs originating from the theatre was 1951's The Freddy Martin Show (the subject of a recent post in this space).  For most of its early seasons on NBC-TV, Your Hit Parade--which came to television in 1950--was also telecast from the Center Theatre. (For part of the 1951-1952 season, the program originated from NBC's Studio-8H, at 30 Rockefeller Center.)  NBC's Four Star Revue, which featured rotating hosts (originally Ed Wynn, Danny Thomas, Jack Carson and Jimmy Durante), was another program telecast from the theatre. 

(Both venues--The International Theatre, and The Center Theatre--were torn down in 1954.)

Seen here is a postcard of the Center Theatre (a photo, one notes, which has the look of having been at least partially colorized).  The front of the postcard refers to the theatre's role as a television facility--"N.B.C. Television Theatre," the postcard reads--yet the image appears to predate the period during which NBC television productions were housed there. To the left of the picture, at the bottom of the marquee, one can make out, faintly, what looks like the words "Hats Off."  "Hats Off to Ice," a live ice show co-produced by the skater Sonja Henie, was seen at the theatre from 1944 to 1946.)

There is also this, about one of the NBC shows which came from the Center Theatre:  The Four Star Revue provided audience members with programs/playbills about the telecasts; the playbills, indeed, offered emphasis to the television/theatre relationship.  

Shown here, too, is part of a four-page program from the October 4, 1950 premiere of the show, hosted by Ed Wynn.  The inside pages list the show's primary staff members, as well as providing details about the telecast's  "Scenes," and the performers appearing in them.  The back page of the program (not shown here) provided a lengthy list of behind-the-scenes personnel.  

Incidentally, a well-known early 1950s radio variety show, NBC's The Big Show, starring Tallulah Bankhead, was also broadcast from The Center Theatre.  The radio program, ninety minutes long, featured, each week, a roster of prominent guest stars.  The show was heard from November of 1950 (at a time when radio, due to the rise of television, had begun its decline), until April of 1952.  

As author and historian Martin Grams, Jr. noted, in a recent blog posting, The Big Show--like the Four Star Revue TV show--also distributed programs/playbills about its broadcasts, to Center Theatre audience members.

http://martingrams.blogspot.com/2016/01/the-big-show-lost-1952-broadcasts.html

The radio program, Wikipedia notes (an observation I cited in a previous post about the show), "is remembered as one of the great final stands, at its best, of classic American old-time radio..." 

I'll write more about The Big Show--more precisely, about a forthcoming book about the show, by Martin Grams, Jr.--in an upcoming post.

Boston television special, summer of 1961

Here are two Boston newspaper stories, from August 31, 1961--one from The Boston Herald, and the other from The Boston Daily Record.  

Both concern a show my mother had hosted the night before on Boston's WBZ-TV (Channel 4)--a special called "Summertime," which, as the Herald story noted, "highlighted the music and dances of the 20's." 

In addition to my mother, the show featured The Frank Petty Trio, banjoist Victor Mondello, The Play-Tonics (a barbershop group), and the New England Civic Ballet Company. The show, telecast on a Wednesday evening, aired from 10:30 to 11:00 p.m. 

Wrote Bill Buchanan, in the Daily Record:  "Miss Bennett is quite a polished television performer and she made a delightful host, in addition to singing a few songs herself."

By 1961, my mother had been seen on Boston television for a number of years.  After my parents left New York for the Boston area, at the start of 1953, she initially sang for a time on a daily Boston radio show, Beantown Varieties, on station WEEI-AM; its host was Carl Moore. (She was, at the time, pregnant with my brother, my parents' first child.) In 1954 and 1955, she had her own weekly musical show on WBZ-TV, The Sue Bennett Show.  In 1956 (the year I was born), she was co-host (with WBZ personality Rex Trailer) of a morning program on the station, Morning Play House, airing after the Today show--and from 1958 until the end of 1960 she had been host of a weekly movie show, Cinema 7, on Boston station WNAC (Channel 7).

For many years, in Boston--as in so many other cities--local programs were a key part of the television schedule.   

On Boston TV, there were a number of extremely popular local children's shows, entertainment and variety programs,  movie shows, interview programs, and others.  

Whatever became of local TV programming? 

 

"The Freddy Martin Show," 1951, NBC-TV

Here is a photograph, from NBC-TV, of bandleader Freddy Martin, with his orchestra; the picture is currently for sale on ebay.

The auction also includes a press release about Martin's 1951 NBC television program, which accompanied the picture; it is also seen below.

Mr. Martin's show, which aired weekly, also starred singer Merv Griffin and pianist Murray Arnold.  My mother was a regular guest vocalist on the program.

This is the ebay link:  http://www.ebay.com/itm/1951-Freddy-Martin-Show-Vintage-NBC-TV-7x9-Photo-Saxophone-Orchestra-/321997156689?

Significant news about the S.S. United States

The legendary ocean liner could be sailing again. Here is a story from The Philadelphia Inquirer:

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20160205_Report__Cruise_ship_company_in_deal_to_buy_SS_United_States.html#4swzDii6Jw5WR1p3.01

"The Ipcress File," and Cape Cod

Memories from childhood can be striking, mysterious. Sometimes the memories are unusually distinct; sometimes vague, elusive. 

This includes, indeed, images and stories from television, and films.

Last week, I watched the excellent spy film The Ipcress File (starring Michael Caine), on TCM.   I think the only time I had seen it, previously, was when it originally came out, in 1965. It's possible I saw the film again a few years after that, on TV, but I don't believe so.  

I asked my brother about the movie, after watching it again.  He told me we originally saw it at a movie theatre on Cape Cod.  He said (I have no memory of this) that our mother took us to see it, along with one of our childhood friends.  (I was nine, in 1965; my brother was twelve.)  

My brother's memory of seeing the film on Cape Cod is, I am sure, accurate. The website IMDB notes that the film was released in August of 1965.  In August, during that part of the 1960s, our family would have been on the Cape, staying in a small cottage we rented each summer.

I recall liking the film, decades ago, but before seeing it again, last week, I remembered only one detail from it--a sole detail, and nothing else.  It was the image, in the film, of a nail. The scene with the nail—an important scene, in the movie--scared me, as a child; in watching the movie again, I can see why it did, can understand why I focused on it, then, to the degree I had.  Last week, the scene, and its memorable image, may not have been as frightening to me as it had been, decades before, but it was still riveting nonetheless.  

If my childhood memory of the film was limited to one arresting detail from a particular scene, my memories of Cape Cod, during the summers of that era, are far less confined.

I remain drawn, for example, to any number of memories of the cottage we rented--which include watching part of the 1968 Democratic Convention, on the black and white TV set in the small living room. (Although the furniture in the house was not our own, I think the TV set might have been ours, brought from home.) The TV was near the living room's picture window, which overlooked a bluff, and the ocean, just beyond.  The cottage--which we rented until perhaps 1970 (when I was fourteen)--was (along with the area surrounding it) one of the places I have loved most in my life. 

A number of years later, on a visit to the Cape–at the end of the 1970s, as I recall--I tried to find the cottage (which, my father had told me, had had a second floor built onto it).  I couldn't locate it, couldn’t find the dirt road which had led to the small neighborhood.  In the end, after taking a different route, I was, simply, unable to tell if I was in the right place. The entire area had been developed, it was unrecognizable, and after a short time (startled by this loss of bearings), I gave up looking.

(Photo above: the cottage referred to, on Cape Cod; the photo is marred by a vertical crease toward the right side of the picture. I don't know the date of the picture; it is probably from the mid-1960s)

Anthony Sammarco, and Boston history

I've listened, recently, to two enjoyable interviews--one, this past week; the other, in November or December--with historian and author Anthony Mitchell Sammarco, on Boston's WBZ Radio (a station I've written about with some regularity, in this space).  The interviews took place on Bradley Jay's overnight program.

Sammarco has written several dozen books about Boston, its neighborhoods, and environs (and points beyond, in Massachusetts).  Though I have not yet read his work, I look forward to doing so; it becomes quickly evident, listening to him, that he knows his history thoroughly.

Many of his books have been brought out by Arcadia Publishing, a press whose books I have enjoyed, over time.

Arcadia has a vast catalogue of titles, about America's cities/towns, locales, communities (and about other local and regionally-themed subjects).  The books are frequently picture-centric, focusing upon archival/vintage images, as opposed to contemporary views--as in the publisher's "Images of America" series (in which the books' covers, indeed, are sepia-toned).  (Current-era views can be seen in such Arcadia series as "Then & Now," and its "Images of Modern America" books.)  In 2014, Arcadia expanded its reach: it acquired The History Press (the American subsidiary of the UK's "The History Press, Ltd.).  Together, Arcadia and The History Press release some 900 titles each year.

www.arcadiapublishing.com

Mr. Sammarco's books include:

Lost Boston, from Pavilion Books (2014)--which was the primary focus of this week's radio interview. The book looks at--as its amazon.com description notes--some of the city's "disappeared buildings and places."

A History of Howard Johnson's:  How a Massachusetts Soda Fountain Became an American Icon (from American Palate, a division of The History Press, 2013).

The Great Boston Fire of 1872 (Arcadia, "Images of America" series, 1997).

Some of Mr. Sammarco's other books about Boston and its neighborhoods are:

Boston: A Historic Walking Tour (Arcadia, "Images of America" series); Boston's Back Bay (Arcadia, "Images of America"); Roxbury (from Arcadia's "Then & Now" series, with photographer Charlie Rosenberg); Charlestown ("Images of America"); Dorchester ("Then & Now"); South Boston ("Then & Now," with photographer Charlie Rosenberg); Jamaica Plain ("Images of America"); and Boston's North End ("Images of America").  He's also written "Images of America" books about New Bedford, Mass. (with Paul Buchanan), Georgetown, Mass., and Cambridge.

More about Mr. Sammarco's books can be found at this amazon link:   http://www.amazon.com/Anthony-Mitchell-Sammarco/e/B001HD1ORC/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1452143724&sr=8-1 

Here, too, is a 2013 interview with Mr. Sammarco in The Boston Globe, about his Howard Johnson's book:  

https://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/style/2013/08/16/interview-anthony-sammarco-author-howard-johnson-book/RauOfVbYP26Oz9CplAbZgJ/story.html