On Television

...He married Eva Braun, played by Susan Blakely in her first role smce she organized an all-gal football team in The Oklahoma City Dolls on ABC fourdaysear-lier Touching Deep down Hitler may have been just a sentimental old fool like the rest of us, whatever his flaws He twitched from time to time and burst into screams He calmed down quickly enough, though, considering the pressure he was under He thought everybody was out to get him, but even paranoids have real enemies, you know With his woes and responsibilities you would mope around the bunker too All in all, a sensitive portrait of a troubled human being As I recall, however, the real Hitler was a Hitler, a monster whose name lives in the annals of infamy, a symbol of all that is horrible, an obscenity, unforgettable—except for those TV viewers who at first thought TheBunkerwas a show about Archie Bunker Maybe 14-15 per cent of the TV audience were in that category, not counting the kids who know only that a Hitler isn't a car or a stereo because then they would have heard of it Television took the world's most evil man and turned him into a figure slightly less righteous than Walter Cronkite, or at least not completely hateable (This was especially true for viewers who understandably watched the show off and on Three solid hours with the Fuhrer was a bit much, and many took time out to make phone calls, do their nails, play the guitar) Susskind and his allies had "managed to grant Hitler partial absolution," as Joseph Hurley aptly put it in the Soho Weekly News How was this possible9 To begin with there was Anthony Hopkins, one of the most likeable actors in the business today Physically attractive, Hopkins radiates real human warmth and affability, even from behind a toothbrush moustache He looked like Hitler, but he was simply not insane enough (I'm not sure anybody could be) Well, I suppose CBS and Susskind could have done worse by giving the role to Alan Alda or Richard Chamberlain And Hitler does die at the end (Whether that's what happened is another matter I grew up with the Police Gazette and the old New York Enquirer constantly reporting that he was alive in Argentina ) Hitler was not alone in receiving the kind of send-off he would no doubt like posterity to remember him by You should see the treatment given to Joseph Goebbels, the worm A dream actor?Cliff Gorman (Lenny)—played him, with a Brooklyn accent yet And Piper Laurie was his wife What a fun couple During the course of the evening we also were afforded examples of Goebbels' rhetoric about Jews For instance, he identified "Franklin Roosevelt" as a "Jew-lover," something I haven't heard since the country club Goebbels' death came after Hitler's Scriptwriter John Gay made it the height of the drama, and you can understand why Following in the footsteps of Mr and Mrs Hitler, Goebbels and his wife committed suicide together, but not before they fed their six cute blond kids poisoned chocolate You couldn't help feeling a bit sorry for the Goebbels famlly Why did those little kids have to die9 One got the impression the Jews may have been responsible, because Goebbels' statements were not rebutted m the script and Cliff Gorman's performance was magnificent For a while there was some suspense as to whether Speer would poison Hitler That got dropped Then a conflict developed when Speer refused to carry out Hitler's insane last ditch plan to destroy everything in Germany Ultimately, The Bunker revolved around a simple question Would Hitler succeed in committing suicide instead of being captured and put in a cage m the Moscow Zoo, and would his inner circle manage to escape the raping Russians9 You wound up rooting for them Hitler got his wish, doing it, as Frank Sinatra says, his way But you felt frustrated Hitler won It was a happy ending And I cannot forget the emotional coda, the Fuhrer making a speech He was at his best in public speaking, whipping everyone into a frenzy, which is what caused all the trouble in the first place What a way to close Television is funny in its presentation of evil characters Manson, Speck, Whitman, Oswald, Hitler, it doesn't matter for TV executives, the new social workers, there is no such thing as a bad person Dramaturgically they always want to show the good, or at least the better side of the bad I suppose they figure that no one would want to spend an evening with out and out rotten eggs From watching The Bunker you would never know that Hitler was truly loathsome, that the war against him was a war against evil World War II was different from Korea, or Vietnam, or any other conflict I can think of I don't care what Hannah Arendt said about the banality of evil Some wicked men like Eichmann may seem triteness personified, but evil on the order of Adolt Hitler—evil itself—is not banal Thei c arc no two sides about Hitlei CBS and Susskind managed to invent another side anyway, almost as if they feared somebody would ask tor equal time under the fairness doctrine to show that Hitler was not all bad Look, hewashuman, hehadtwoaims...

...two legs, two eyes He made mistakes, sure Nobody is perfect Perhaps they were trying to head off such an appeal by the Neo-Nazis' Morality in Media Committee in Skokie, Illinois In any case, TheBunkerv/as not about goodvs evil, right vs wrong Nor was it about whether Hitler would win the War with his last-minute maneuvermgs of troops from his underground hideout That would have been a fascinating twist But the War ended as you might imagine T Jk...

...he producers brought to their subject all the outrage one might feel over the Philadelphia Eagles losing the Super Bowl CBS could do a three-hour movie on Hitler and leave us so cool because the men who run its drama department are moral eunuchs They saw nothing wrong with casting Vanessa Redgrave as Fama Fenelon in Playing for Time either When God handed out souls he must have skipped TV executives on the grounds that they already have two on their feet One of the arguments used to justify a callous approach to sensitive material affecting Jews is that those involved are Jewish As if all the bad things for Jews on TV this season haven't been done by Jews' Besides Susskind, Arthur Miller pushed for Vanessa Redgrave, and Jonathan Miller encouraged Warren Mitchell to play Shylock with a heavy Yiddish accent in The Merchant of Venice (PBS, February 23), which did nothing to further religious understanding With friends like Susskind, Miller, and Mitchell, who needs enemies9 Maybe Susskind really doesn't care about what Hitler meant, or the need to tell people about it The Bunker was particularly upset-ing because of its ratings It ranked 13th in the Nielsens for the week Hitlerwas a hit on the tube Could this be an index of the strength ot Neo-Na/i sentiment mlheU S'Would combining the latent and the overt anti-Semites give you a true cross section ot the T\ audience' No statistic on the success ot a show is lost on piogranimers Were one network to boil down Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis into a TV movie and come up with good rating numbers, the other networks would rush out shows about men who turned mto centipedes or worms They would do a dramatization of those bug commercials starring Muhammad All So it is not surpnsmg that Nazis are big with the TV industry today, where everyone also knows how well they have been doing in books In fact, we came depressingly close to seeing NBC's version of The Bunker this season Freddie Silverman commissioned producer Paul Klein to do a rival version, The Day Hitler Died Harvey Keitel was signed to play Hitler, a Berlin studio was rented, Hugh Trevor-Roper was signed to consult, and two scripts were written—one by a hot American writer, Ed Pomerantz, the other by Jack Rosenthal, whose many great BBC efforts include The Knowledge Silverman wanted to beat Susskind The Hitler project was the closest thing he had to a solution for his ratings woes m 1981 Then he cut away the whole undertaking Nobody would watch Hitler, he said Poor Freddie He has an erring touch When you're cold, you're cold He ought to have known better Nazis as a programing trend have been simmering on the back burner ever since Holocaust It just takes time to make the biggies In the pipeline now, among others, is David Wolper's eight-hour movie, based on John Toland's A dolf Hitler and A dolf Hitler The Pic-tonal Documentary of His Life Wol-per, you may remember, produced the 1977 three-part television documentary, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, based on William Shirer stome It was ahead of its time bv 10 minutes The Nazis could replace diseases as a staple ot made-tor-TV movies h\ the end ot the year Springtime for Hitler could be next Don't laugh You'll be sitting in tront ol sour TV set, and suddenly your arm will shoot up \ou'U gooscstep to the alngerator during a commercial, and then you'll know that 1 \ bent ov er too tar backw ard in being lau to Adoll Television will be the 1 uhrei s greatest victory...

...On television HITLER'S GREATEST VICTORY BY MARVIN KITMAN A. kn amazing thing happened in The Bunker, the blockbuster Anglo-American/David Susskind/Time-Life/ SFP France made-for-TV movie that CBS aired on January 27, 8-11 p m EST By the end of this story of Adolf Hitler's last three hours (actually his final 105 days, spent in an underground shelter), he wound up looking like not such a bad guy He didn't quite come across as David Hartman Yet despite a bit of temper and some unnerving personal habits, in the brilliant performance by Anthony Hopkins he was a terrific babysitter for the Goebbels' kids The Fuhrer himself couldn't have asked for a more compassionate rendering Susskind's widely anticipated masterpiece left you with the feeling that, hey, Hitler might not have been Nobel Peace Prize material but on the whole he was a sympathetic character If he seemed a little crazy, the same can be said of many old men whose plans have not panned out Nor was his being morose at having had to go into the basement surprising, it was very damp down there, as the script points out Poor fellow He could have caught cold, or aggravated his arthritis His health obviously was not good He had to have injections of crushed bulls' testes Otherwise, he was kind to ammals He treated master architect Albert Speer like a son And at the 11 th hour (or so it seemed) of this very long movie, he made an honestFraM out of his httieFraulein...