Recruits from Hollywood

It looked as if TV had made a major raid on Hollywood talent. Joan Crawford was on television playing the suffering wife of an unfaithful husband; Marilyn Monroe was cavorting on Jack Benny's show; Ava Gardner, as the mystery guest on a quiz program, was answering embarrassing questions ("Are you married and are you happy about it?"); Loretta Young, Ray Milland and Joan Caulfield were turning up each week on their own programs; Arlene Dahl, Ray Bolger, Agnes Moorehead and young Brandon De Wilde were beginning big TV roles.

Had Hollywood finally given in to TV? Not quite. A few movie figures, notably Robert Montgomery, had long been familiar faces on television; some, like Lucille Ball, Ann Sothern and Robert Cummings, had propped up sagging careers by taking the television plunge. This season's rash of film stars on TV amounts to a sudden upswing in the trend, but the big-studio, big-star antipathy toward television still exists.

Mostly Soap Operas. Most term contracts at the big cinema studios still forbid TV appearances, except for special walk-ons to plug a new picture (as Marilyn Monroe plugged The Robe on Benny's program), and most top-ranking freelance stars are too wary or too busy for television. Explains Cinema Tough Guy

Humphrey Bogart: "I got a helluva good racket of my own ... I don't have the time and I don't trust the medium yet . . . You watch that stuff some time . . . Instead of being five foot eleven, you're four foot three. I'll wait until they get straightened out." Van Heflin feels that a series of weekly TV shows, for a movie actor, "can very easily mean the complete destruction of his career in motion pictures. The audience gets used to getting something for nothing, and then does not want to turn around and pay for it." Teresa Wright, after giving occasional TV performances, sniffs at television's dramatic works: "They're mostly soap operas. It's just like making a cheap film."

Bible with Guts. But television has enthusiastic converts. Says Joan Crawford, who has plans for a series about a lady columnist ("I'll definitely do the commercials, in a dignified way"): "When [television] is not badly photographed and when it is on film which I can own, I find it extremely attractive, because it pays for itself and then becomes an annuity for my children. How else can you save money these days?" John Wayne, one of Hollywood's top box-office draws, "is very much for TV," has plans to produce his own TV films. Kirk Douglas has made a pilot film for a Biblical series--"a sort of Bible-with-guts show."

What does it profit a cinema star to go into television? TV pay has finally reached movie levels, and its multimillion audience is an attraction in a time of waning movie attendance. Best of all, it offers jobs during the dog days of Hollywood employment. The latest TV converts and their new shows:

Meet Mr. McNutley (Thurs. 8 p.m., CBS). Academy Award Winner Ray (The Lost Weekend) Milland as the absent-minded professor at a women's college. The characterizations are trite, and most of the action is warmed-over slapstick. Milland's fine talent for light comedy is pretty well smothered. (Sponsor: General Electric.)

Letter to Loretta (Sun. 10 p.m., NBC). Loretta Young, ostensibly answering her fan mail, acts out the problem of the week and supplies philosophic guidance. The first show had her in the role of a perfume salesgirl botching up her first encounter with her wealthy boy friend's highborn family. Loretta turned to the Book of Proverbs for the solution. (Sponsor : Tide and Lilt.)

My Favorite Husband (Sat. 9:30 p.m., CBS), the best of the new crop, offers Joan Caulfield and Barry Nelson as an up & coming young couple in the upper-middle-income bracket. (Sponsors: Simmons Co. and International Silver Co.)

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