Giant Killer

Hidden behind locked doors in the CBS program department, so the Madison Avenue legend runs, there is a large bulletin board plastered with the names of next season's shows. Only the network brass--the high-priced officers known as "Dr. Stanton's Book of the Month Club"--are privy to the board's high secrets. Every night the names are scrambled and a canvas curtain is drawn to make doubly sure that spying charwomen will learn nothing they can leak to NBC. Still the dope gets around. Last fall, for instance, the grapevine had it that Garry Moore was coming down. How could his relaxed variety show compete in the same time slot with NBC's highly touted Ford Startime?

Last week it was no secret that the word was changed. Moore was pasted firmly in place on next season's schedule. His Garry Moore Show has clobbered Star-time in the ratings. "I've been given credit for being a giant killer," says Moore, "but I didn't push Ford. It just fell. There just aren't enough stars around to be able to produce one great, brand-new show after another for 39 weeks."

Match for Muscle. Even if he had wanted to, says Moore, he could never have matched Startime's muscle: "A show that's too pretentious just isn't my style." With his relatively low budget ($107,500 a show) and his low-pressure approach, Moore reasoned that he could not depend on big names. Now his crew of regulars includes Announcer Durward Kirby, fluttery Marion Lome, Allen Funt, with his candid camera, and Singer Carol (Once Upon a Mattress) Burnett, whom Moore considers "the one major comedy talent among girls to come along in the last ten years." There is also a list of about 35 "semi-regular" guests. This week the visitors were Jack Benny and Diahann Carroll, but it was crew-cut Garry Moore, as usual, who clinched the show. Whether he was acting "a nice Arthur Godfrey," a wide-awake Perry Como, or the aging kid next door, Moore's casual, easy humor made everything come off--from a far-out science-fiction skit to a split-second gag.

Nothing to Lose. Moore's low-pressure approach may be the product of grinding backstage work with Producer Bob Banner and Chief Writer Vincent Bogart, but the end result is still the man himself. He is always the skimpy (5 ft. 6 1/2 in.), easy-going guy who has been working at the trade of entertaining ever since high school, when his name was Thomas Garrison Morfit and he was writing a musical comedy back in Baltimore, almost 30 years ago. Even then Garry was such an accomplished gagman that a fan named F. Scott Fitzgerald came backstage and solicited his collaboration on a revue. "I was flunking high school anyway," says Moore, "so I had nothing to lose. I saw a chance to jump 16 steps in one leap."

Unhappily, the team fell apart before Tom Morfit had a chance to jump. "I didn't know Scott was a great writer," Moore remembers now. "To me he was just a drunk. I'd show up at 7 o'clock, and he'd already be three-quarters in the bag." One night when Fitzgerald's well-oiled enthusiasm moved him to chase Moore's sister around the room, the collaboration ended for good.

Writing for radio kept Moore going a while; then there was a five-year stint as a straight man with Jimmy Durante. Always Garry considered himself a stand-up comic. But by 1949, when he started the Garry Moore Show on CBS Radio, he had learned that he got a bigger response simply by playing himself. In 1950 he moved to daytime TV, now not only has his prime-time evening spot, but is also majority owner of his other show, I've Got a Secret. 'He has the time and the cash to live as he likes--as a middle-aged (45) suburbanite with eight sponsors, a 38 1/2 ft. sloop, a slowly thickening belt line, and a weekend habit of lounging in bed until his wife cracks: "Why don't you get up and exercise your toes at least?"

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