Glittering Exception

Above club fights, cooking hints, quiz shows, double-dome discussions, and the other knickknacks of television, TV fans love vaudeville. TV has brought it all back--from trained dogs to baggy-pants comics. Some of it is as drearily old-hat as the Keith circuit in 1912. But there are glittering exceptions. The hour-long Admiral Broadway Revue (Fri. 8 p.m., NBC-TV & Du Mont) is an example of good vaudeville.

Patter & Pace. In the brief six weeks of its polished existence, the Revue has climbed to a 50.6 Hooperating (bettered only by TV's two top attractions, Milton Berle and Arthur Godfrey). Last week, it earned the most solid accolade of all: its sponsor, the Admiral Corp. (radios, television sets, refrigerators), picked up the option for another six months. It was no small tab. The Revue is one of the costliest things of its kind ($25,000 a week) on TV.

The Admiral show is new to television audiences, but Broadway oldtimers have seen it growing in bits & pieces for years-- in Greenwich Village nightclubs, fashionable saloons on Manhattan's East Side, and the Pocono Mountains sector of the straw-hat circuit. Its jokes and patter are brittle, rowdy, funny and full of satirical special reference. A number of its people (most of them members of a permanent cast) grew up in show business with such bright youngsters as Danny Kaye and Betty Garrett. By & large, the costumes, decor and choreography are better than may be found in any nightclub and many theaters. Its smooth pace is interrupted only by a tedious five-minute commercial which not even the "muddle-talk" of old Radio Comedian Roy Atwell can speed up.

Bullets & Strain. Most of the best gags are delivered by Sid Caesar (Make Mine Manhattan), Comedienne Imogene Coca (who still looks too young to have played in Hey wood Broun's 1931 Shoot the Works), and Singer Mary McCarty (Small Wonder). With his insane leer and try-anything manner, Caesar can act out an entire horse opera singlehanded--from horses to Indian smoke signals to bullets ricocheting off a rock. Rubber-faced Imogene Coca is just as funny modeling a moulting fur coat as she is imitating what Broadway columnists sometimes call a "chantootsie." Bouncy Mary McCarty can tear apart a popular song with fine abandon or imitate a female wine-taster getting drunk on the job. As an extra dividend, man & wife dance team Marge & Gower Champion foot their way featly through the hour.

The man who pulls all of these acts together is high-strung Max Liebman, 43, producer, director and owner of the precious package. For 16 years, Liebman has been in & out of the Poconos, Broadway and Hollywood (he helped tailor a number of the routines that made Danny Kaye famous). He thinks that turning out a highly professional show every week for TV is a "greater strain" than doing it for the stage. He was showing no particular strain last week over the news that he had a contented sponsor.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.