The Week in Review

Television, more and more, was getting into other people's business. NBC's American Inventory gave an upbeat plug to the stock market in a playlet about the joys of being a small investor, while on Youth Wants to Know. Arkansas' Senator William Fulbright (see BUSINESS) deplored the market's excesses. Indiana's Senator Homer Capehart got in the act by appearing on Walter Winchell's ABC telecast for the express purpose of asking Winchell some friendly questions about his broadcast stock tips. Unfortunately, the Senator began by answering questions instead of asking them, and whenever he seemed likely to get in stride, was forced to make way for a commercial for Gem razors.

Another Senator, Maine's Margaret Chase Smith, was back at work for TV, interviewing three heads of state--Franco, U Nu of Burma, Nehru--for CBS's See It Now (to the tune of much grumbling by G.O.P. colleagues at work on Capitol Hill). And Oklahoma's Robert Kerr defended both the oil industry and the Democratic record on Meet the Press.

Manic Depression. Health hints were scattered throughout the week in TV's typical buckshot fashion. Omnibus showed the staccato heartbeat of a pretty girl suddenly confronted by a spider, moments later probably scared more viewers than it enlightened with a closeup film sequence of a delicate heart operation. Medic used Lee J. Cobb to illustrate the dangers of manic depression in the case of a bachelor bank clerk. The Search, explaining that marriage produced so many problems because it was the most complex of all human relationships, blamed most failures on the lack of adequate communication between husband and wife--which left the viewers just about where they were originally.

Ed Murrow's Person to Person reached to California to show how the other half of 1% of the population lives--in a visit to Hotelman Conrad Hilton's 61-room Bel-Air home. Hilton led the cameras through endless hallways, lounges, state dining rooms, silver vaults and patios--all of them bearing a startling resemblance to Statler lobbies. It was almost a relief, in the second part of. the program, to visit the 4 1/2-room Manhattan apartment of Red Buttons, who did a serviceable imitation of Hilton by patting his wall and confiding that it was made of "solid plaster."

Two Left Feet. To viewers who were still warmly remembering the enchantment of Mary Martin and Peter Pan on NBC, CBS bravely offered a lavish musical version of Burlesque, starring Dan Dailey and Marilyn Maxwell. The show had everything--jokes, dances, action--except the ability to make viewers care very much about what happened to the leading characters.

On the drama front, Eileen Heckart achieved a considerable tour de force on Philco TV Playhouse as a servant who chooses her employer's family over her own mother. ABC's U.S. Steel Hour captured much of (the bestselling novel's fun in an adaptation of Mac Hyman's No Time for Sergeants; Andy Griffith was convincing as the Georgia rookie with two left feet and an unconquerable spirit. Probably the week's most convincing drama was found on another pair of ABC shows. Pond's Theater proved again that Britain's late great John Galsworthy is one of TV's most serviceable playwrights: his The Silver Box carried a charge of stinging social criticism (a rich man and a poor man steal the same purse in turn; the rich man repays the money, the poor man goes to jail). Roddy McDowall was excellent as the troubled man of wealth, and J. Pat O'Malley had a field day with his muleheaded part. On Star Tonight, a 30-minute program aimed at giving actors their first starring TV roles, young Charles Aidman managed, without any Brando mannerisms, to play a hillbilly who pins the murder of his wife on the local sheriff (Buster Crabbe).

There were some off-the-air items of note: 1) Patterns, the hit Kraft TV Theater show written by Rod Serling (TIME, Jan. 24), is scheduled to become a movie produced by Broadway's Jed Harris; 2) TV Producer Lou Cowan depressed sensitive viewers by announcing that a new quiz called The $64,000 Question is being readied for June. The gimmick: a lucky contestant, by continuously doubling his stake, can run $1 to a maximum of $64,000. This will take weeks, and when the money gets big enough, the contestant will be imprisoned in a glass-enclosed room to prevent coaching from the studio audience.

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