On Television
KITMAN, MARVIN
On Television FORD VS. THE FONZ by marvin kitman On Tuesday, February 17, at 8:00 p.m., millions of Americans were sitting by their televisions waiting for the appearance of Arthur Fonzarelli on...
...I was thinking of all this as President Ford did his imitation of an open person before the inquiring reporters...
...For instance, the protagonist of Police Woman is a woman...
...In earlier years, the Fonz was a side show, an incidental personality...
...But it has grown in stature, until today it is at least as amusing as The Donna Reed Show...
...Hundreds of thousands of intellectuals secretly sit through this series anyway, waiting breathlessly for the appearance of the one and only King of the Greasepits...
...A few days after the media blunder of the year, a clue to Ford's thinking appeared in the New York Times...
...Katowitz explains...
...Les Brown, the paper's television reporter of renown, explained that, according to a White House media adviser, the President scheduled his press conference to avoid interfering with his favorite program, Police Woman (NBC, Tuesday, 9:00 p.m...
...At first glance, one feels he is watching (a) Joe Forrester...
...With the first primary only a week away, I knew I should have been singing "Welcome Back, Mr...
...Prez," I remember saying to my set, "that's not cool...
...This would undoubtedly be big news to a certain part of the American television audience...
...My reliably informed network sources had leaked some of the sage advice: "Two plus two equals five-that's a mistake...
...g) all of the above...
...In addition, we missed an incredible bit of business: Richie Cunningham, in some unexplained way, went off to college (Northwestern...
...b) The Blue Knight...
...This is meant to demonstrate, I think, that the Sergeant is human...
...f) The Rockford Files...
...It may be the law-and-order theme...
...Then we look at ourselves in the mirror, sigh, and settle down to watch our special show...
...Fonzie-played brilliantly by the great American television actor Henry Winkler?-is the closest thing we have to a true cultural hero on television...
...Fortunately, the President had the decency to keep his show relatively short...
...Many people are awed by Angie Dickinson's acting ability...
...For example, Richie Cunningham asked him one week, while attending a sox hop at Jefferson High, "What's your idea of a perfect girl, Fonz...
...Without the aid of her colleague, Crowley (Earl Holliman), the show would have ended the first season with Pepper's funeral...
...And these emotional feelings come across on the screen as if they had been learned at the police academy...
...But breaking into Arnold's at night and emptying out the cash register??that's stealing...
...I think Fonz is wrong about the Harley...
...In my opinion, however, her acting on the NBC series is nothing compared to her brilliant performance as Burt Bachrach's wife in the Martini and Rossi commercials, where her main function is saying 'Yesss...
...I wasn't surprised that his margin of victory in New Hampshire was so slim...
...Often in this role she is called upon to play something other than what she is...
...the other shows all feature men...
...If ever there was a cop who couldn't walk on high heels and chew gun at the same time, it's her...
...After all, a lot of important situation comedies??Fay, Joe and Sons, Big Eddie, When Things Were Rotten??had been cancelled this season because of widespread apathy...
...But he was cutting into a very important episode of Happy Days...
...THE FONZ by marvin kitman On Tuesday, February 17, at 8:00 p.m., millions of Americans were sitting by their televisions waiting for the appearance of Arthur Fonzarelli on ABC's Happy Days...
...But the philosopher himself put it best: "Live fast, die young and you leave a good-looking corpse...
...The President suffered, too...
...And stealing is not cool...
...she never saves him, as good a definition as any of a male chauvinistic pig show...
...In the back of their minds, TV viewers may have assumed his option hadn't been picked up...
...Another major distinguishing element is that every time somebody gets shot on this show, the star runs into Crowley's arms...
...Every week, the crook she is assigned to collar winds up with her gun...
...Political scientists have found it more difficult to explain President Ford's preference, but there are two possible reasons for it...
...This rare NBC series should definitely be seen once...
...Making us watch a press conference is no way to win the New Hampshire primary...
...The President had not held a televised session with newsmen since November...
...As I've said, it's a free country...
...Regular programing resumed at 8:37...
...Some people in our fan club dress up in black leather jackets (with general's stars on the shoulders), bike chains, motorcycle boots, and T-shirts rolled up at the sleeves to hold a mandatory pack of Luckies??not to mention carrying a comb and four tubes of Brylcreem...
...It is particularly recommended for any political scientists trying to understand the institution of the President...
...What I admire most about this celebrated figure is that he is the one TV character who understands what life is all about: fixing cars and getting girls...
...Several times I have noticed her playing an undercover prostitute (pardon the pun...
...He is a man with a message in a medium where the messages are usually confined to the commercials...
...d) Harry O; (e) Cannon...
...The Fonz was scheduled to tell Spike, his punk nephew, the difference between right and wrong...
...N Now, a President can like any show he wants...
...It is to the credit of the executive producers Thomas L. Miller, Edward K. Milkis and Garry Marshall that this unusual TV idol has been making his entrance sooner and sooner every week...
...If only somebody had told me that in high school, 1 would be a much better person today...
...instead it cut those two bimbos, Laverne and Shirley...
...In fact, that noted social scientist, Woody Allen, once explained that Nixon ran for the top office in 1968 because the networks cancelled his show...
...The whole production looked ominously like the premiere of a new series of TV press conferences, a kind of Happy Days Aren't Here Again...
...c) Police Story...
...Faced with a serious dilemma, ABC had the wisdom not to eliminate Happy Days from the schedule...
...Hey, Mr...
...Ford...
...He answered, "45-22-34, with her own Harley...
...You may even have seen a somewhat short essay I wrote on the subject (on a New York subway car): "fonzie lives...
...He has to save her all the time...
...The Fonz not only attracts a more scholarly following than the other characters in Happy Days and its spin-off, Laverne and Shirley, but we write and think a lot about him...
...Every week virtue and a can of hair spray triumph over evil...
...The White House has never publicly explained what it is the President likes about Police Woman...
...To begin with, countless young Americans who don't know right from wrong fell asleep during the Chief Executive's appearance...
...Second, Sergeant Pepper Anderson, whom she plays, is accident prone...
...But soon the differences become clear...
...There are too many problems in the world and Fonzieism is a great way to keep your sanity...
...No situation is so serious it can't be handled with a sense of humor...
...FDR was said to have been a fan of radio's The Great Gilder-sleeve...
...it's a free country...
...Happy Days, for those who don't keep up with the culture of their times, began three years ago as a crummy program...
...One might not go along with where Fonzie draws the line, but at least he is never ambivalent or evasive...
...Fonzieism, as described by one of its leading scholars, Elissa Katowitz, is the ability to look at the world and laugh...
...For all of us, it also was an urgent lesson in basic morality, surely a more valuable thing for the American people to hear than anything a President might say during a campaign...
...One's heart can go out to Pepper because she is an inferior person, a definite liability to Crowley's unit...
...Of course, I don't agree with everything Fonzie says...
...Richard Nixon's top choice reportedly was Gilligan's Island...
...First, there is a tradition of American Presidents admiring the star of Police Woman, Angie Dickinson: I wouldn't be surprised if even Warren G. Harding liked her...
...Nevertheless, he is exhilarating as a moral leader on television??especially compared to the Presidential candidates we have seen so far-because his standards and values are always out front...
...She is not, incidentally, one of those strapping Brunhildes whom we tend to think of as police women...
...Any President, political scientist or TV viewer can admire Angie Dickinson as an artist...
...He had lost the Republican intellectuals like myself, who eagerly await every moment of the Fonz, and the dedicated blue-collar voters who watch Laverne and Shirley...
...This season he moved in with those nerds, the Cunninghams, and became the main attraction...
...He has divided the realm of experience into behavior that is cool and not cool, a post-McLuhan concept...
...Still, in the interest of commercial orderliness seven minutes were excised from the vital episode, and the damage was greater than the actual time involved may suggest...
...Clearly Gerald Ford was not, like myself, a secret member of the Arthur Fonzarelli Admiration Society...
...Optimism always...
...Instead they got Gerald Ford, the President...
...Moreover, while she is as hard on the outside as her hair looks (it never gets mussed in the fights), she is tender on the inside...
Vol. 59 • March 1976 • No. 7
