The Busy Air
Three big wheels rolled past milestones last week:
P:Producer-Host Robert Montgomery, TV aide-de-camp to President Eisenhower, rang down the curtain on his hour-long NBC dramatic show after a seven-year run. The last play was Faust '57, a disjointed modern treatment of the classic tale about a pact with the Devil--and an ironic choice, since the program had been going to hell all season. The passing of Robert Montgomery Presents is lamentable not only in light of its past glories but because it reflects the sudden high casualty rate among" TV's live dramatic shows. Others canceled for next season: the Kaiser Aluminum Hour, Alcoa Hour, Goodyear Playhouse, Armstrong Circle Theater and Lux Video Theater. Among the reasons: the best of the TV-bred playwrights are spending more time working for Hollywood; sponsors have been trying to play it safe with "surefire" subjects and scripts. P: Arthur Godfrey, by now widely regarded as something installed in radio and TV sets at the factory, dropped his nine-year-old Wednesday evening TV variety hour, Arthur Godfrey and His Friends. His explanation: "I'm pooped." That still left Godfrey fans with his morning TV and radio stint and his Monday-evening Talent Scouts. In the Wednesday farewell, televised from his Virginia estate, Airman Godfrey, flying into camera in a helicopter, introduced such hearthside pals as Jocko the donkey, Petie the monkey, Goldie the palomino and a poodle named Chippie. He also read a wire from CBS TV President Merle Jones: "Please don't give up any other shows." To a Manhattan interviewer, Godfrey earlier confided some of his trials: "Every Wednesday night I'd go out of the stage door and every week there was this bunch of nuts--that's what they are, nuts--and I'd have to fight my way through to the car. They're just waiting for you to do something. When I'm driving, I have to take it easy, hang back. If I'd cut somebody off, or anything like that, I could hear them yell, 'There's Godfrey, drunk again.' "