“You see, when you saw the show, you would be into the next joke before you really got the last joke, and they said to me, ‘Slow it down.’ I’d say, ‘No. People will understand it.’ And they’d say, ‘But they’ll miss the jokes.’ Well, so what? There’s another one coming along in just a few moments.” – Laugh-In creator George Schlatter on the network’s reaction to the fast-paced series
Pioneers of Television DVD Review
By A.J. Carson
With the writers’ strike now over and the current TV season (hopefully) back on track, now might be a good time to take a look back at television’s past. PBS’ Pioneers of Television, a four part miniseries now on DVD focuses on the beginnings of four genres that have been popular over the years: late night, sitcoms, game shows, and variety shows.
Late Night
When NBC exec Pat Weaver was looking for a way to expand the network’s post-primetime schedule in 1954, he decided to give Steve Allen a try. Allen started off on radio before breaking into TV, where Weaver first saw him. Allen’s Tonight was filled with physical stunts, like the host becoming a human teabag or made into an ice cream sundae, and sketches with young comedians like Tim Conway (The Carol Burnett Show), Pat Harrington (One Day at a Time), and Don Knotts (The Andy Griffith Show). The series was so successful that NBC moved Allen to primetime opposite powerhouse Ed Sullivan in 1957.
Allen’s forte was comedy, not conversation. His replacement proved to be the opposite. Jack Paar was a sensitive, incisive interviewer, equally at home talking to a young Hollywood starlet as he was with Fidel Castro. He was so sensitive that he actually left the show for six months after NBC censored one of his jokes. He returned, but by 1962, he was tired of talking.
NBC scrambled to find a replacement. They didn’t have far to look. Johnny Carson was hosting a show called Who Do You Trust? on CBS. It took some convincing, but soon Carson was on board. He wasn’t totally comfortable doing the show at first, but it soon became evident that his easygoing manner in monologues, sketches, and interviews would become a template for future late night hosts.
This episode also touches on the mostly unsuccessful competition, including Joey Bishop, Merv Griffin, Dick Cavett, and Arsenio Hall. This episode doesn’t contain information that will surprise diehard TV fans, but it is interesting to see the direct correlation between Allen’s stunts and those done on David Letterman’s early shows. It also makes us wonder why there are no official DVD releases of Allen’s subversive show.
Sitcoms
Rather than relying on a chronological structure, the episode on sitcoms begins on the East Coast before heading West. Jackie Gleason was the highly successful star of his self-named variety show based in New York. Each episode included a number of recurring characters in different sketches, including playboy Reggie Van Gleason III, sadsack The Poor Soul, and Joe the Bartender. The audience favorite, however, had Gleason playing loudmouthed bus driver Ralph Kramden in “The Honeymooners.” In 1955, Gleason decided to ditch the variety format and turn “The Honeymooners” sketches into a full-fledged sitcom. Gleason hated rehearsing and barely memorized his lines, preferring instead to wing it on stage in order to keep the material fresh. He also insisted on a grueling two episode a week shooting schedule. The Honeymooners never really caught on, and production was halted after one season.
The focus then shifts to Hollywood, where most sitcoms were filmed. Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz’s I Love Lucy changed the way sitcoms were filmed and became a huge hit despite the stars’ marital woes. As a performer, Ball was the exact opposite of Gleason. Disciplined and meticulous, she left nothing to chance, rehearsing her physical gags over and over again…and even instructing guests on how to read their lines.
Another Hollywood production was Make Room for Daddy starring Danny Thomas as a nightclub entertainer juggling his work life with his family life. Its success began the trend of family-based sitcoms. It also spawned television’s first spin-off, The Andy Griffith Show. The comedy about small-town life in Mayberry inspired other so-called “rural sitcoms” like The Beverly Hillbillies and Green Acres which varied greatly in tone from The Andy Griffith Show. As Griffith explains, “We want them to laugh with us, not at us.”
Danny Thomas had a hand in another groundbreaking ‘60s sitcom—the urbane, sophisticatedly goofy The Dick Van Dyke Show. Creator Carl Reiner wrote thirteen episodes and filmed a pilot with himself in the lead. The network liked the scripts, but they weren’t wild about Reiner as a leading man. He set about recasting the show, but couldn’t find the right person to play Laura Petrie. Thomas suggested a young actress who had auditioned for the role of his daughter on Make Room for Daddy. He thought her nose was too perky for her to convincingly play his daughter, but thought she’d be perfect for Reiner’s new series. The only problem was that Thomas couldn’t remember her name, only that it was really three names. After a little research, Reiner found Mary Tyler Moore.
This episode of Pioneers is less cohesive than it should be, probably because it doesn’t look at the shows chronologically or have a strong through-line.
Variety Shows
The segment on variety shows begins with Ed Sullivan, the awkward, lumbering CBS host who had a golden touch at finding talent and putting it together in a way that seemed to make sense. Jug bands, ventriloquists, and rock stars rubbed elbows with Shakespeare. Sullivan maintained a distance from his acts, but hambone Milton Berle often joined right in with his guests, strumming a fake guitar and wiggling his hips wildly next to Elvis Presley. At his height, Berle attracted a 95 share, but his audience evaporated almost overnight as they searched for more sophisticated entertainment.
Red Skelton’s likeability and Arthur Godfrey’s casually folksy style made them both popular (until Godfrey fired fan-favorite Julius LaRosa live on the air) and led the way for shows hosted by popular musicians, including Perry Como, Frank Sinatra, Dinah Shore, and Pat Boone.
Running parallel to the traditional variety show was the development of sketch comedy shows like Your Show of Shows, The Carol Burnett Show, and The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, which knocked Bonanza from its number one spot in 1967. Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In introduced a psychedelic look, quick cuts, and hidden (and not-so-hidden) innuendo to variety shows. And the success of Flip Wilson’s show opened the door for other minorities, including Tony Orlando.
This episode is also oddly structured. The Smothers Brothers may not have been a variety show in the style of Sullivan, but it did feature many guest performers from comedians to singers, so to lump it in with “sketch comedies” is a slight stretch.
Game Shows
On radio, game shows were simply seen as cheap programming. When they moved to television, however, the stakes became higher. In a quest for higher ratings, producers ramped up the drama, secretly overheating contestants’ isolation booths so that home audiences could see them sweat and even rigging the games so that the most compelling contestants won. When it came to light that popular shows like Ditto and 21 employed these techniques, the nation was outraged. Quiz shows were now tainted, leading the way for You Bet Your Life, a game show that existed mostly to showcase the humor of host Groucho Marx.
One of the next big game show hits was Password which paired celebrities with ordinary folks. Games of chance like Let’s Make a Deal also gained audiences. Even quiz shows came back into style with Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune, the most profitable games of the genre.
Audiences laughed at the madcap antics of the celebrities appearing on the tic-tac-toe inspired Hollywood Squares. Having a laugh at the expense of regular people, however, was the goal of producer Chuck Barris in The Dating Game and The Newlywed Game. As Newlywed host Bob Eubanks explains, it was “a comedy show that had prizes.”
Near the end of this episode, an argument is presented that Bill Cullen was the greatest of all game show emcees. It’s hard for us to form an opinion on this, though, since his contribution to the genre is practically ignored during the rest of the episode.
The four episodes that make up Pioneers of Television are included on one disc. The episodes are divided into chapters, and there are scene selection menus.
