Easing In

When he chanced to meet RCA President Frank Folsom at a dinner party two years ago, Playwright Robert (There Shall Be No Night) Sherwood warned Folsom "not to do what the movies have done. They've never yet developed any good writers. Get people writing original stuff, strictly for TV." Replied Folsom: "What about you?"

The result was an NBC contract for more than $100,000 under which the network buys the Sherwood name and brain for a period of five years and a total of nine TV plays, although the playwright retains movie and stage rights. This week televiewers got a look at Sherwood's first offering, The Backbone of America, sponsored by Miller High Life Beer. Sherwood had been promised there would be no censorship ("Unless, of course, I loaded the script with four-letter words"). NBC went even further: Sherwood got free run of the set, and the actors (Thomas Mitchell, Wendell Corey, Yvonne de Carlo, Gene Lockhart) were to listen to and obey all his instructions. Sighed Sherwood: "If it's a flop, it's my own damn fault."

Backbone of America is a comedy containing such familiar Broadway ingredients as the hard-as-nails career girl (actually, she is soft as butter inside), the aspiring author who must write advertising copy instead of novels, and a country bumpkin who proves to have more intelligence and integrity than the city slickers. Along the way. Sherwood pokes some gentle fun at television itself and at the giveaway psychology of U.S. advertising.

Before he became a TV writer, Sherwood had watched nothing but fights and ball games on his own set. With the TV contract in his pocket, he devoted a month to a careful study of TV drama, concluded that 1) TV is more like the theater than the movies; 2) live TV has more reality and immediacy than filmed TV; 3) kid parts should be kept to a minimum; and 4) he would never have an animal on his show.

After two weeks of rehearsal and constant rewriting of his script, Sherwood conceded that "TV is far and away the most difficult medium to write for, because of the terrific precision of the timing." Sherwood's second play, scheduled for February, is still untitled but "is full of slapstick and pratfalls." The third, to appear at Easter, will be a serious drama with a Biblical theme, called The Trial of Pontius Pilate. Says Sherwood: "I thought the first ones should be comedies. I wanted to sort of ease into television."

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