The Week in Review

With a few scattered exceptions, nothing went very well last week on TV. The Thanksgiving Day parades, telecast from Manhattan, Newark and Detroit, found Santa Claus arriving a month early to suit the convenience of such department stores as Macy's, Bamberger's and J. L. Hudson's. The famed Macy parade in Manhattan was taken over for TV by NBC's Home program, and the usually competent Arlene Francis seemed to lose all her accustomed aplomb out in the autumn air. Arlene spent most of her time clucking maternally at some refugee children, miscalling the floats (she shocked uncounted millions of children by repeatedly identifying Mighty Mouse as Mickey Mouse) and caroling desperately to Commentator Hugh Downs: "Hugh! What have you got up there for us, Hugh? Oh, Hugh!"

When Hugh did come in, what he had for us was a succession of inane interviews. Sample: "Here's Jackie Cooper--how are you liking this, Jackie?" Jackie (plugging his play, King of Hearts) said it was wonderful, just wonderful. So did Virginia Mayo (plugging Warner's The Silver Chalice), Judy Holliday (plugging Phffft), Carol Haney (plugging The Pajama Game), and Pinky Lee (plugging himself). Whenever Commentators Francis and Downs ran out of comments--which was frequently--the TV camera returned to the studio for commercials by Tootsie Roll, Crosley, Heinz, Alcoa, and U.S..toy manufacturers. There was not much time left for the parade.

Flutterings & Squeals. Even the actors had a bad time of it last week. Milton Berle, Red Buttons and Joan Blondell were all rushed to bed suffering variously from overwork, strep throats and virus infections. CBS Newsman Ed Murrow, scheduled to appear as host on NBC's Producers' Showcase in honor of the Overseas Press Club, announced that he couldn't make it because of "contractual conflict," a phrase that the industry read to mean CBS displeasure.

On the drama front, things were nearly as sticky. Betty Furness left her refrigerators long enough to fly to Hollywood to replace ailing Joan Blondell in Let's Face It, with Bert Lahr and Vivian Elaine. She might more sensibly have remained in Manhattan. On NBC. Kraft TV Theater's adaptation of Jane Austen's Emma was so filled with feminine squeals, flutterings on tiptoe and elfin men that it seemed to be played by an entire company of Mary Kays and Johnnies; on ABC, Kraft had better luck with Run for the Money, featuring Jamie Smith and Phyllis Love, a drama that didn't begin to go to pieces until the final quarter hour.

Goodyear Playhouse presented an uneven play called Thunder of Silence, but gave star billing to an exciting new actress, Inger Stevens. Blonde, fragile and hauntingly attractive. Swedish-born Actress Stevens, 20, dominated the play in her role of a Czech refugee set down bewilderingly on a Midwest farm: her big-eyed silences were more eloquent than all the speeches of her fellow actors. Newcomer Stevens was recently seen as a teenager on the defunct Jamie series, with Child Star Brandon De Wilde.

The top dramatic show of the week was the Omnibus version of Sophocles' Antigone, superbly directed by Sidney Lumet and beautifully played by Beatrice Straight, Philip Bourneuf and Shepperd Strudwick. The holocaust in ancient Thebes had more suspense, tension and clash of strong personalities, as well as more biting language, than TV screens have witnessed all year.

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