Moore for Housewives

"I reject the theory that housewives are stupid because they listen to daytime shows," says Garry Moore. He is defending not only housewives but himself, for his Garry Moore Show (weekdays, 1:30 p.m., CBS-TV) comes smack in the middle of the day. It is also, he insists, "non-typical." Unlike such weepy radio competitors as Young Dr. Malone and The Guiding Light, Moore tries to run his program on the lines of a comic strip: "No one show of mine fractures you all by itself. But, in continuity, they go over&151;just like Li'l Abner or Pogo." Moore's formula is convincing sponsors as well as viewers: this week Masland rugs joined his six other advertisers (Kellogg, Deepfreeze, Duff's Baking Mix, Ballard & Ballard, Best Foods and Stokely-Van Camp) to give him nearly a commercially full house for his 30-minute show.

Timed Jokes. Moore's trademark is a crew haircut, a bow tie and a tireless grin. He opens most shows with a two-minute monologue he writes himself, follows it with a seven-minute skit featuring such regulars as Announcer Durward Kirby, Dancer Ray Malone and Singers Denise Lor and Ken Carson. Once every week, Moore brings on Naturalist Ivan Sanderson and his menagerie of chunga birds and false palm-civets. For his closing spot, he keeps on hand a stock of carefully timed jokes and comment (ranging from 20 seconds to 2 1/2 minutes).

Listeners are asked regularly to tell Moore what they don't like about the show (mostly, they don't like guest stars getting in Moore's way). Moore is proud of his fans' loyalty: on the offer of a $1 Riviera-brand blouse, his show got a total of 50,000 orders, while another show with twice his rating was able to sell only 15,000. Early last year, before Moore had caught on with advertisers, CBS wanted him to turn his program into a less expensive contest show. Garry fought the network and won, with the backing of his only sponsor at the time, Stokely-Van Camp (canned goods). On the air, he told his TV audience all about it and asked them to write thank-you notes to the sponsor; 14,000 did.

$100 Name. Born in Baltimore 37 years ago, Garry Moore got his show-business start at 18 as writer-announcer on a Baltimore radio station. He worked until 1940 under his real name, Thomas Garrison Morfit. When he took over as writer-M.C. of Chicago's radio Club Matinee, he held a contest to pick out a new name: a Pittsburgh woman won $100 for suggesting Garry Moore.

Moore is also moderator of a CBS-TV nighttime panel show, I've Got a Secret, but his heart belongs to his housewives. His daytime accent is always cheerful ("Even when we gave blood donations on the air, we did it with jokes"), and he boasts that "we have the guts not to go for cheap laughs--things like pratfalls." The mission of daytime TV, as he sees it, is to ease the loneliness of women while their husbands and children are away during the day. Says he: "I'm convinced they want to hear the sounds of merriment while they work."

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