The First Ten Years

For the first time in broadcasting history, all three networks pooled their talent on NBC's Wide Wide World last week to help TV celebrate its first decade. The result was a kind of family photograph album--a little faded, and brown with nostalgia. There was more fun than focus as The Fabulous Infant paraded 90 minutes of TV's past. The laconic Frank Costello grumbled again to the Kefauver committee: "Under no condition will I testify until I'm well enough," and Ed Wynn goggled on-screen to explain why his girl is so fastidious: "Her father's fast, her mother hideous." The U.N. debated aggression in Korea. An A-bomb exploded at Yucca Flat. There were Dinah, Perry, Howdy Doody and Bishop Sheen, and Lawyer Joseph Welch quietly flaying the late Senator McCarthy: "Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness." Milton Berle, the granddaddy of TV comics, came out of retirement to give the Infant its best moments. Shorn of his gag-machine brassiness, Berle strolled through his old studio, recalling warmly, yet a little wearily, how "back there at the beginning, TV was a great opportunity for anybody who was hammy enough to say 'Here's how to do it.' "

The backward glance at ten years could not hide the fact that TV is often still pretty Infantile. It made even plainer, though, that the infant is indeed fabulous.

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