Collector's Item

Jean Kerr is a tall (5 ft. 11 1/2 in.),, witty free-lance writer (Harper's Bazaar, New York Times) and playwright (Touch and Go, King of Hearts) who writes mostly in her green Chevy--a sort of mobile workshop that she parks on side roads near her Larchmont home "to escape housework, interruptions from the kids and television." But last week Writer Kerr had to do her writing at home--before the TV--because she had been asked to take vacationing Critic John Crosby's caustic TV corner in the New York Herald Tribune (for which her husband, Walter Kerr, is drama critic). She made it clear at the offset that she was not qualified to talk about TV at all, "but like so many unqualified people," she had opinions. One of them was about commercials: "What disturbs me is when, instead of the announcer, we are given a pair of young people necking in a canoe. Eventually the boy stops nibbling at the girl's earlobes long enough to murmur huskily: 'Darling, have a Wonderborough, they're milder because they are made only from the tender center leaf.' 'Yes, dear.' she purrs back, 'and did you know that more people are switching to Wonderboroughs than to any other leading brand?' Now I ask you--what are we supposed to think? I know what I think: those two kids are sick." Jean Kerr is also annoyed by TV's common practice of raising the volume on the commercial. "I don't know what it's like in other families, but we finally had to put a rug in the TV room because there were so many falls in that mad dash to lower the set as soon as the commercial came on. Maybe somewhere in the country there is a viewer who reacts to that sudden rush of sound by saying, 'Darling, do watch this, isn't it fantastic what that razor will do to the hidden beard?' Maybe . . . but if they have to get up and lower the volume, someone in the room is going to say, 'Listen, while you're on your feet, see what Steve Allen is doing, or better still, turn it off.' "

Critic Kerr is tortured by the feeling that she is "out of touch culturally" and never sees the same TV that other people see. "For one thing, we have one of the first sets ever built, which means that if you squat so close to it that your knees rub against the dial buttons, you can almost see Ed Sullivan. We cling to it, all ten inches of it, because we imagine that any minute now it will be valuable as a collector's item. Pull out those tubes, plant it with philodendron, and there's your conversation piece." But then--every time the Kerrs save up $299 for a bigger set, they use the money to take a trip some place where there is no TV.

At cocktail parties the Kerrs, parents of four small boys, get only blank stares when they chatter on about Lassie or Robin Hood or Disneyland. "You won't believe it, but some of these people have never even heard of Oswald Rabbit. I mean, what do you suppose they look at?"

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