The Busy Air

P:Westerns are rustling more TViewers than ever, reported the Nielsen rating service. Latest western reading: four of the top five nighttime shows, eleven of the top 20. The roundup: Gunsmoke (37-7), Wagon Train (32.4), Danny Thomas (32.1), Have Gun, Will Travel (30.8), Wells Fargo (30.2), Desilu Playhouse (30.1), I've Got a Secret (29.5), Wyatt Earp (29.2), Ann Sothern Show (28.7), Cheyenne (28.2), Peter Gunn (27.8), Real McCoys (27.5), Rifleman (27.5), The Price Is Right (27.4), Want-ed-Dead or Alive (27.3), Alfred Hitchcock Presents (27.1), Father Knows Best (27.0), General Electric Theatre (26.6), Texan (26.4), Maverick (26.3). Of the top 20, CBS has 11, ABC five, NBC four. P: Commanding a tempest to rage in a tank at Hollywood's Television City, Director John Frankenheimer filmed a ferocious facsimile of the flooding Mississippi River for this week's TV version (Playhouse 90) of William Faulkner's novelette Old Man. The story hurls a convict (Sterling Hayden) into the 1927 flood and tells of his heroic struggle to save a pregnant woman (Geraldine Page) before society thrusts him back in the pen with no thanks and ten years extra. Director Frankenheimer prodded Convict Hayden through three days' filming without sleep, drove him past machine-gun fire, dumped him in the 168,000-gallon tank to contend with tidal waves, fog, wind, rain, flood-swept houses, trees, telephone poles, cows, chickens, and a mob trying to beat him to death. His head bloodied, utterly bushed, Strong Man Hayden finally dropped Actress Page while lugging her through the flood, dislocating her back. P: Broadcasting from Hollywood--for the first time since he left movieland, unwanted and disgusted, five years ago--Tonight's Jack Paar was conquering the West Coast with some of the most wildly funny shows of his career. Paar and guests (among them: Bob Hope, Groucho Marx, Hans Conreid) splashed inspired nonsense all over the screen. Biggest splasher: muffin-faced Pianist and Professional Psychopath Oscar Levant ("On my own show I wear black tie and strait jacket"). Oscar warmly congratulated Paar--"You have the most responsive audience since Adolf Hitler in the good old days"--offered capsule analyses of a few colleagues. Eddie and Liz: "How high can you stoop?" Elsa Maxwell: "The oldest woman still subsisting on a scholarship." Zsa Zsa Gabor: "Does social work among the rich." As for himself, lamented Levant: "They asked me to be on This Is Your Life, but they couldn't find one friend."

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