Home Away from Home

Arlene Francis took Home away from home last week. Tripping gaily through Washington's Pentagon, she confided to her morning viewers in 92 cities: "Meeting so many generals, admirals and secretaries is a little overpowering for a girl." But her burble with the Brass was only one of the quick trips through which Arlene whirled her Home audience (weekdays, 11 a.m., NBC) in a five-day visit to Washington. There were breathless stops at all the tourist musts--the Lincoln Memorial, Supreme Court, Smithsonian Institution, National Gallery of Art and the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. Every few minutes, up to eight times an hour, reverence for the nation's shrines had somehow to be combined with the bread-and-butter necessity of working in commercials. Home solved the problem by moving Arlene in front of a plain backdrop whenever it was time to deliver the hard sell, and she switched effortlessly from the wonders of Washington to the durability of Latex paint or the tastiness of Star-Kist tuna.

Traveling Refreshment. The visit to Washington was not Home's first desertion of the $250,000 Manhattan studio built especially for the middle one of NBC's three big weekday "magazine" shows (the others: Today and Tonight). The idea for the exodus came from NBC President Pat Weaver, who decided that Home needed an occasional trip from New York to find "refreshment in ... the new ideas and new contacts that result from any physical change." Even more pertinent: an experimental trip to San Francisco last January boosted Home's A.R.B. audience rating in that city from an anemic 1.1% to a lusty 10.8%.

Putting the show on the road means a succession of twelve-hour days for the staff of 39 under Senior Editor Al Morgan. Last month Morgan and a small crew dug in at Washington's Sheraton-Park Hotel to prepare the way for the flood of actors, floor men, engineers and assistant directors. Extra microphones, zoomar lenses, commercial props and TV slides were shipped down from Manhattan. One camera was even spotted atop the Washington monument for a bird's-eye view of the capital. Hostess Francis had to hop to rehearsal in Washington, back to New York for a Sunday performance on CBS's What's My Line?, back to Washington until Thursday, then to New York again for her ABC show, Soldier Parade.

Seven-Story Cup. During the week, happy Home twice was almost visited by disaster. One morning, when Arlene and the cameras were set to show the old Supreme Court chamber at 11:47, the Homemakers discovered at 10 o'clock that an unscheduled hearing was in session, TV excluded. Not until 11:35 did the hearing begin to break up. At 11:42 Editor Morgan made the decision to go ahead. The spot went on the air on time.

A TV visit to the 155-year-old Georgetown home of Mrs. McCook Knox set up even more barriers. Ramps had to be built to pull a camera off the street after the show got under way. A seven-story crane was moved into place to hoist a "cup" for relaying the TV signal out of the valley-like terrain of Georgetown. Just 45 minutes before show time, the Fire Department refused to let Morgan pull the switches on the TV equipment because it might overload the electrical circuits. Somebody talked the fire inspectors into going away while the technicians figured out an answer; when the inspectors came back, the show was over.

This week, with the exhausted cast and crew back in Manhattan, Home was busy planning future one-week stands. It will visit Portland, Ore. and Seattle in June, later may go to Los Angeles, New Orleans and Mexico City. One day, says Morgan, "We want to take the show to a really small town and examine it in detail from one end of Main Street to the other."

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