Home Screen Jabberwocky

WHILE TV’s community of talkers has succeeded (to a point where one New York channel is solid jabberwocky), the semi-snobbism that caused quick success may lead to quicker demise. Rugged individualists are a rare sight on flip talking shows which have cashed in on the public’s current hunger for haute culture, an appetite that settles for anything—non-stop flattery, inside comments, half-baked opinions—suggesting a trash collector in the lively arts. Occasionally, Bob Hope, a refreshingly private talker (free of caste) who shuns artiness like the plague, appears on talk marathons taking a back seat, talking perceptively of the Los Angeles Rams, casting a vaguely critical eye at the presumptuous artiness of TV’s ad-lib stars.

Unless television opens its corral to other types and brows beside the semi-intellectual hotshot who wings through pretentious inside topics on a prayer and a flypaper memory of a hundred cocktail parties, the smoking mouth of midnight may end in TV’s Boot Hill, buried beside Jerry Lester and under tombstone punchlines created by Jack Paar: “Here lies a real chomp, a delightful warm sound, one of the most fascinating, attractive, unusual voices in entertainment history.”

“Are you the devastatingly beautiful Lena Horne?” is an average bouquet from TV’s electric talkers (Arlene Francis on “What’s My Line”), who operate an interpersonal machine of flattery, the big compliment that is supposed to stop all debate and bounce back in the first return sentence. Jackie Gleason’s straining delight in Gleason (Arthur Godfrey’s show) is easy to understand and dislike, but most of TV’s conversation deals in Kiwanis palsmanship and cheery-cheery-being that should, but never does, drive the audience to the Late Show or to bed.

The following programs, notorious entries in TV’s talkalong, are built to a surprising extent around an immodestly modest device, in which a big wheel, being gracious, spreads compliments over a neighbor, whose humorless acceptance of same is now a trademark of “Open End,” several hundred Paar shows and countless Mike Wallace interviews in deep smoke.

“Open End” is a successful New York tedium with interesting moments and angles, involving at times actors, authors, statesmen, directors, in a two-hour group discussion that adds up to propaganda for the Liberal blab ticket. Run by an interesting elegant, David Susskind, a Renaissance charmer with an unctuous tightness, Susskind’s casts discuss such rum topics as “live vs. kine,” “to Beat or not to Beat,” or “the female, should she baby-sit or walk alone.” Familiar answers come encased in tons of complacency and the deeply serious sincerity that points a thoughtful, crucial finger and then repeats a familiarism that has been bouncing around since the first commercial.

The Henry Morgan Show, attempting to combat the agreeableness of Paarlor talk, putters nowhere, thanks to Morgan’s hilariously unfunny mixture of hovering waiter and the buffoon sage out of stale avant-gardism. With no curiosity and a grandiloquent assumption of wit that always seems tongue-tied, Morgan’s interviewing (now fearfully taped) leads to ping-pong, in which the guest—Dali (incoherent), Shelley Berman (victimized), Martin Gabel (scornful)—barely dents tensely brittle chatter with his name, occupation, serial number. While Morgan is capable of a funny malevolence when taken by surprise, radio’s brash rubber-voice is still trying to equal his first stunning victories, through preciosity, high boorishness, anti-ing the highbrow by exaggerating the lowbrow, and a masterful grasp of old PM editorials.

As it did on radio’s disc-course jockey shows, spontaneous jabber scored in early Mike Wallace interviewing by offering an item that drugs the current population: middlebrow art talking about itself—showboat, opinions and, particularly, chat-chat-chat about the artist’s newly-won hedonistic life. Occasionally, the conversation ventured into less predictable areas: William Carlos Williams waging a battle for his anti-Semitic theories. But, generally, the talking was remarkable for its belief that the TV audience was fascinated in following the intramural activities of art-showbiz people as they moved from sports cars to the cover of Life to expenses-paid vacations on some distant Hilton shore. Goaded by Wallace’s fluid questioning middle people appeared to be flying, showing up in all their motley glory. Whether a creased brow or an itinerant actor unseating himself with Brando’s mannerisms, TV’s hot talker was a joy to behold, always in the market place, but, somehow, acting the pure artist in all of his impersonations as oddball bohemian, conversation-wrecker (Jack Kerouac) or repugnant Mahatma (Norman Mailer).

Reincarnated on a local New York channel, Wallace’s show has lost its smoky backroom spell, though its winning numbers are still in evidence: life-in-raw pore-studying photography, garrulity, breezy fare, cigarette smoke patterns. Supplied with bountiful but vulgar researching, and addicted to spraygun editing that blends half-digested psychiatry, “blue” mongering and a likable thirst for “color,” Wallace is still a chameleon with a remarkable fluidity, but no longer absorbing.

TV has uncovered talkers by the carload (and one uncut gem, May Craig), but a good listener who can encourage conversation is pretty hard to find. Except for Paar and Susskind, the listening is phony (Godfrey), half-involved (Wallace), or nervously inattentive (Morgan). An inability to listen killed Ben Hecht’s nightly spiel, despite the fact that his jaded interviewing was garnished with the most suspensefully unbalanced sentences on TV. Until recently, the most expensive chit-chat has been engineered by a tin ear interviewing the at-home celebrity: Answers fell through Ed Murrow’s disinterest like coins in a gum machine.

Though the Jack Paar Show is finally treadmilling itself to death, Paar has made ad-lib conversation a hot TV commodity by bringing pretentious spontaneity into channeled conversation, preserving a plain get-together surface with a firm Madison Avenue grip. Despite a charming personality (far-right in politics, suburban square in art, a poor sport in human relations), the Paarlerist “built” an interesting sound: happy applause and buoyantly agreeable talk, that suggested a party in wild flight.

Except for an original such as Dino Panzini (syncopated country-club charm, post-war Italian style), Paar’s regulars are deadly familiar semi-intellectuals who bloom under Paar’s clever, if low, curiosity. With its anonymous manner and shrewd spurring, Paar’s listening adds interest to acts that would otherwise fall flat from hack vaudeville (Charley Weaver), too much ego (Peggy Cass) or too little talent (Genevieve). Paar runs the only entertaining talkfest: his Club doesn’t ask much or give much, but a bit of entertainment is not to be disdained, considering.

March 23, 1959