Review

Conquest: On the crest of an urgent new interest in science, CBS this week launched a new $1,000,000 series, ten hour-long shows spread over this season and next, sponsored by Monsanto Chemical Co. "to help penetrate the wall that separates the man in the laboratory from the rest of us." The opening show put the viewer's eye to microscopes that revealed viruses and, through time-lapse photography, a human cell mushrooming with cancer. It also presented a primer on oceanography and, in the best segment, an exclusive filmed report of Air Force Major David Simons' 20-mile balloon ascent, capturing some of the suspense and loneliness of his mission. The show made a promising start in a major TV project, though its promise somewhat outstripped its performance. Like Walt Disney's learned japery (see below), Conquest's science reporting avoided condescension and cuteness, but the commentary suffered from a kind of Sunday-supplement inflation that too often made the pictures seem inadequate or anticlimactic. Cured of this fault and with greater success in getting some of its scientists to sound like the human beings they really are, Conquest should be not only good for the viewer but more fun to watch.

Disneyland: Walt Disney's hour-long Mars and Beyond on ABC this week (Wed. 7:30 p.m.. E.S.T.) is doubly instructive. It should teach viewers of all ages plenty about the prospects of life and travel in the solar system, should serve TV producers well as a model of how to combine information with entertainment. A dozen Disney artists and animators under Producer-Director Ward Kimball enjoyed the advantage of a subject that is not only fascinating in itself but, since it soars off into the unpicturable, uniquely suited to their technique. They did not confuse the popular with the vulgar, avoided the error of talking down to the viewer. Mars and Beyond would be worth repeating if it went no farther than its tersely witty cartoon history of man's conception of the universe through the ages. Beyond that, it has fun with self-contained parody of science-fiction, and inspires wonder as it ranges freely over the landscapes of strange planets and depicts in scientifically rooted detail how an atomic-powered space craft may some day make an interplanetary flight with a crew that could find a way to survive on Mars. Solidly researched, the show presents expert testimony from Dr. Wernher Von Braun, chief of the U.S. Army's rocket program, and other scientists. No less expert is the comic ingenuity lavished on illustrating man's fanciful speculation about life on other planets--a menagerie of Mercurian thing-amajigs and Saturnian whatchamacallits that goes as far out of this world as anything dreamed up by C. S. Lewis.

Annie Get Your Gun: After eleven years of paying to see Irving Berlin's mu-sicomedy crowd-pleaser either on Broadway, on the road or in the movies, the U.S. public finally got Annie Oakleys* to see Annie Oakley. In her two-hour single shot on NBC's $1,500,000 stage, Annie breezed into the homes of 60 million, trimmed with bright candies and brisk old tunes, real horses and carriages (by Pontiac), and on top, a shining if slightly too delicate star named Mary Martin. As the unlettered crack shot in Buffalo Bill's Wild West show, Musi-comedienne Martin was a slick hick who could "shoot the fuzz off a peach" with a squirrel rifle, but then came to understand that You Can't Get a Man With a Gun.

At the tender moments. Charmer Martin ruled, as usual, supreme. But Darke County (Ohio) doggerel clashed with the sweet, precise diction of her ditties, and Mary suffered the inevitable comparison with tough, strident Ethel Merman, for whose untender charms the role was originally tailored. To make up in part for the absence of Merman's lusty humor, the TV version had the hearty presence and fine voice of John (Pajama Game) Raitt as Frank Butler, and the production by Producers Richard Halliday and Edwin Lester, Director Vincent J. Donehue and staff was smooth as saddle leather. Annie hit the target only after curving past some imposing obstructions. To make room for eleven color-splashed sets, 333 costumes and a 675-man Annie team, seven of NBC's weekday Matinee Theater shows had to be put on film and at least half a dozen others had to move to distant Hollywood rehearsal halls. Director Donehue used a record ten cameras (usual number: four), lovingly nursed his show through 16 days of rehearsal. The censors scissored some of the zing out of Doin' What Comes Naturally. And only three days before show date, Mary Martin, who had done Annie 478 times on stage, fell over a piece of scenery and suffered a bad leg contusion that almost closed down the show. But in the best tradition of the stage and the one of Annie's songs that performers love to sing, There's No Business Like Show Business, Trouper Martin showed up, got carried piggyback between sets and larked through the show without a grimace of pain. "If I couldn't have been there," she said, "I'd have just died."

* So named back in Annie's real-life heyday, circa 1885, because of her generosity with tickets, later because theater passes were punched with holes.

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