On Television
KITMAN, MARVIN
ON TELEVISION By Marvin Kitman Sunday Suffering Adistinguished publisher of historical schlock, Chelsea House (which has given us State of the Union messages and complete U.S. peace treaties),...
...This is one of nature's oldest shows...
...Cool cat Brown explained that the number of oppressed people he was leading was irrelevant, and he wasn't going to play The Man's game...
...The pbl documentary, "Birth and Death" (December 1, net) was well thought of by the sponsors, the Ford Foundation, and widely praised by the Gentiles in both wings of the educational tv establishment...
...If a slice of life is the route pbl is going to take in its second season, one wonders what they will do for an encore...
...Noble asked...
...Today the 1897 Sears, Roebuck is primarily of value to historical novelists, for it describes in the detail popular in contemporary fiction what the American people wore, ate, rode around in, and played at that year...
...President McKinley may have been assassinated with Sears, Roebuck's "Our 68?1 Revolver," a 7-shot, .22 calibre, rim-fire weapon with a 2.5-inch barrel, weight 7 ounces...
...Our prices on nails are without any such conditions...
...But we want to sell the nails anyway...
...For some reason, the Perry Como television special (December 1, nbc) based on the book did not quite come off...
...Intuitively, I knew what it was going to be like, and it depressed the hell out of me...
...BEWARE OF THIS SCHEME...
...At 1 pm, "Meet the Press" (nbc) had on the hot seat Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber, publisher of the French weekly L'Express and author of The American Challenge...
...If you want other goods we will be glad to receive your order for them at our regular retail prices...
...The oil companies supplied adulterated oil "which for most purposes was worse than useless...
...For Monsanto and Sears, the Como show's sponsors, to have been involved in a cheap publishing promotion like this, is like General Motors sponsoring a musical comedy based on Ralph Nader's book...
...I left the doomed Mr...
...This gives them the chance to get their profits on nails by adding to the other goods...
...Television would be hard-pressed for fresh premises without the hard work of book promotion specialists...
...Shoemakers made shoes that fell apart if worn...
...In all honesty, I did not watch the entire thrilling sequence of the death of Albro Pearsall, the terminal cancer patient...
...The tremendous cost of this advertising comes out of the pockets of the people who buy...
...Not even the additional material written by Nat Hiken for Carol Burnett (the modern Martha Raye) and Don Adams could compensate for omitting the book's message...
...I suddenly knew why the Italian workers who I asked about Rosselini's Open City and Paisan in 1956 were not as wildly enthusiastic as the New York critics...
...But Professor Fred L. Israel of the City College of New York History Department candidly admits in his scholarly introduction that he recommended publication of the 1897 edition (rather than the 1896 or 1898, both of which I find superior), because it was the only one he could find...
...the formula increased one's appetite for food...
...But I must credit pbl for driving me to observe the slice of Ann-Margret's life presented on her special, "The Ann-Margret Show" (December 1, cbs...
...Regardless of race, creed, color or place of national origin, all writers should admire Chelsea House's chutzpah in even dreaming that an intellectual like Perry Como would lend himself to the idea of doing a special based on a catalog...
...Welcome back, H. Rap Brown," he said, as I huddled under my desk, waiting for the epithets...
...It also makes me nostalgic for the phony confrontations of pbl's first season...
...For me, the pbl documentary?which they called "a unique departure from the conventional genre"?was what we used to call a slice of real life...
...I missed the first 42 Perry Como color specials, dating back to 1963...
...I have attended the same natural childbirth classes given by Mrs...
...The special's writers, Bill Angelos and Buz Kohan, had to digest the 785 pages of 6-point type...
...In passionate editorials punctuated with capitals and the bold-faced print Hearst also affected, they attacked the mighty monopolies, trusts and combinations, and the lowly advertising agencies of the day...
...If he is going to be pushing a book this spring, the only place he will be tempted to burn down is his publishing house...
...The first Sears, Roebuck catalog came out in 1893...
...People everywhere had a consuming interest in the volume's subject matter when it originally appeared...
...Millers sold consumers stale flour, Sears, Roebuck explained in one of their little exposes...
...The lyrics and music were weak...
...Detroit wasn't burned down by the press," he said darkly...
...The market is flooded with cheap brass rings which are called rolled gold plate...
...Naturally, Perry couldn't do the whole book...
...I have already gone through the same family arguments about Brace's unrewarding career as an artist...
...Should be out in May...
...They were enchanted by the insights it gave them into the life of the upward-mobile Brooklyn Jewish couple, Debbie and Bruce North...
...All day long that Sunday I had been watching in awe as people plugged books...
...In his French-Yiddish accented English, Servan-Schreiber managed to turn almost every question to the theme of his book (a call for European businessmen to stem the tide of U.S...
...abc...
...Supposed to be a political book, but it's my autobiography...
...Servan-Schreiber then filled in some further details about his book at 2:30 pm on "A Conversation With...
...peace treaties), hit the public domain jackpot last summer by reprinting a genuine example of one of the few native American contributions to belles lettres, the mailorder catalog...
...I shuddered...
...I won't repeat it for fear of misquoting him, since his argument was unusually complicated for such a simple subject...
...I'm not sure why...
...Rap also went into his analysis of the current world monetary crisis...
...He skillfully turned aside Noble's request for the revolution's timetable and how many followers he now had...
...I have heard of some far-fetched gimmicks, but this was a new high in creative thinking...
...A man's Extra Fine Imported Madras shirt cost 87 cents, but was not guaranteed to bleed...
...I watched what was advertised as "the only Perry Como appearance of the year" this time because I was in search of some quick relief after the debut of the Public Broadcast Laboratory's second season...
...He attacked The Man's press for not giving the revolution the kind of press it deserved...
...They were also concerned about overindulging in sex, drink and tobacco, but Sears could solve their problems with "Our 60^ Nerve and Brain Pills...
...They cleansed their mouths with Japanese toothbrushes and washed with "the modern soap...
...The 1897 Sears, Roebuck was one of the great muckraking books of the period...
...When Noble asked if the movement wasn't created by the press, there was fire in what we could see of Brown's eyes behind tinted octagonal glasses...
...barrels and cures for indigestion and obesity by the gross...
...The prose style of Richard A. Sears, a former railroad station agent, and Alvah Roebuck, a watch repairman, should be studied by modern American writers...
...Bing in her upper West Side apartment (as one of the ladies in the breathing and exercise class explained in producer Arthur Barron's film, she was there because she read about it in the New York Times...
...The host, Gil Noble, explained that his guest had been conspicuously absent from the television scene lately...
...Americans in 1897 worried about overeating...
...Unfortunately, people like the Norths are my friends...
...I don't think the book can be blamed for the failure of the musical comedy show...
...Despite her puzzling Southern accent, Ann-Margret is a national fertility symbol we can all be proud of...
...It costs some manufacturers of certain well-known brands of baking powders thousands and tens of thousands a year for advertising," these public ombundsmen wrote...
...Pearsall just in time to hear the nation's sex goddess introduce an old lullaby: "When ah was a little girl growing up in Vashville, Sweden" (it might have been Nashville), she cooed into a rhinestone-covered hand-mike, "my mother used to sing it to me...
...Sears sold food in convenient 200-lb...
...What have you been doing lately, Rap...
...One wonders if Como, any more than hundreds of television hosts before him, bothered to read the book he was plugging...
...My heart went out to this man now joining the ranks of the truly oppressed people—authors...
...The American Challenge is one book I won't feel guilty about not reading...
...investment on the Continent...
...When Perry Como next walked on the nbc stage carrying the Chelsea House edition of the Sears, Roebuck 1897 catalog, I wasn't surprised...
...the miracle, however, loses its impact after you've seen it once...
...It is common practice with hardware dealers," the authors wrote in a tone reminiscent of Ida Tarbell, "to offer nails at cost or below cost with the condition that other goods be bought with them...
...A "Genuine Stradivarius Model Violin"—the kind with four strings—could be obtained for $5.95...
...the only pure soap—Coal Oil Johnny's Petroleum Soap...
...I have watched the movies of babies being born...
...Just turned it in Monday...
...I have just finished doing a book for Dial Press," the fiery black radical revolutionary spouted...
...At 4 pm, H. Rap Brown was the guest of dishonor on "Like It Is," abc's penetrating weekly study of the black arts...
...By the time Noble thanked his guest—he stopped short at saying "How about a hand for Rap Brown," only commenting "A most interesting young man"—I somehow wasn't afraid of Rap Brown anymore...
...Rap spoke movingly for a half hour about the revolution he was leading against "The Man...
...Consider this beautifully simple sentence on the way a rat poison worked: "They go away from the house and die...
...The Man decreed a boycott on me," he explained...
...The Man has a blackout on Rap Brown...
Vol. 51 • December 1968 • No. 24
