Cr

Seldom has a TV show been so discussed and applauded as NBC's tour of the Kremlin, presented last week and due for repeat broadcast June 4. In an hour-long panoply of color, the forbidding mystery of the place was vaporized.

The network's cameras had a look at almost everything in the 65-acre Kremlin compound, from the old Cathedral of the Archangel to the new glass-fagaded Soviet Palace of Congresses. There were glances at the Spartan rooms of Lenin, the spare embellishments of Stalin's new grave, and the fantastic Great Hall of St. George, with its huge chandeliers of what look like bunches of gold bananas.

Richness & Tricks. The program started with NBC's Correspondent Frank Bourgholtzer following a Russian general up the Grand Kremlin Palace's Staircase of Honor, and the staircase alone--16 ft. wide, with gold-and-red carpeting, 58 steps and four landings--was a surprise of splendor. But with jewels and thrones, high vaulting domes and sprays of filigreed gold, such a glut of richness followed that when Bourgholtzer and the general returned at the end of the hour to the Staircase of Honor, it seemed little more than a nicely gilded stepladder.

Along the way, NBC had successfully roamed over 800 years of Russian history, told through the relics left behind by such men as Ivan the Terrible, Boris Godunov and Peter the Great. Unfortunately, Producer George Vicas could not contain his own technical enthusiasms, and the historical sequences were full of nervous irritations and distracting trickery. Zoomar lenses dived into paintings to catch "significant detail." Great doors closed by themselves. Behind the double throne of the boy czars, Ivan and Peter, was a hole in the curtain through which their sister Sophia used to advise them. Sophia's picture suddenly popped into the hole.

Smoke Pots & Shovels. The project was initiated 14 months ago, and NBC's Russian-speaking Associate Producer Lucy Jarvis went to Moscow to negotiate. The Russians were agreeable, even though their own TV network has never been permitted to make a similar documentary. Khrushchev approved, but others balked at details. Lucy Jarvis had a box of homemade brownies with her. She passed them around. After that the Soviets drooled whenever the brownies were mentioned and conceded points in order to get at the box again.

Soon NBC was bringing off stunts that the Kremlin would not quickly forget. They fired a cannon to re-create the moment when the charred remains of the Pretender Dmitry were muzzle-loaded and blasted back toward Poland. With smoke pots and magnesium flares, they simulated the burning of the Kremlin by Napoleon. Though Moscow's fire department had been warned, ten or twelve noisy fire trucks came rushing to the scene anyway.

The filming was done last fall. The Russians were unbelievably cooperative and cordial, for amazingly enough, the Cuban crisis was going on at the time. Later, they cooled. When NBC sent an advance print to Moscow, the Soviets sent back quibble-headed rockets. How dare NBC say that Western influences had helped shape the new Palace of Congresses? It's a fact, said NBC; and indeed, the palace looks as if it might have been designed by someone called Mies van der Red. And the lyrics of the choral singing, griped the Russians, could be translated to mean "Long live the Czars!" NBC shrugged. The Soviets had supplied the choir.

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