Nothing Else Like This

"Plop fall the plums." Plums fall very rarely in television, but last week--with that line from an ancient Chinese poem--a major plum indeed was offered on New York's independent WNEW-TV and Washington, D.C.'s WTTG-TV. British Actor Paul Scofield (A Man for All Seasons) and his wife, Actress Joy Parker, read poetry for an hour, ranging from Shelley's Ozymandias to T. S. Eliot's Family Reunion, and from Lord Byron's Don Juan to D. H. Lawrence's Bats.

Full of skill in her own right, Actress Parker nonetheless seemed a recent graduate of an elocution school beside the quiet amplitude of her husband, his eyes full of disciplined gloom, his interpretations matter of fact, going surely but not hungrily for the passing ironies, proving that there is plain talk in the singing poets and essential lyricism in free verse.

Autonomy. Glowing like a match in the TV midnight, the program was the first of a ten-part series that will present some of the greatest performers ever seen on television. Called Festival of Performing Arts, it is produced by David Susskind and James Fleming, paid for by the Standard Oil Co. (N.J.), and planned for syndication to TV stations all over the country, which will have to find their own sponsors. Each program runs an hour--or sometimes a bit more if the material requires the extra time--and only one commercial interrupts it. This week Concert Pianist Rudolf Serkin appears with the Budapest String Quartet in an hour of Beethoven and Schumann. The cameras come down close on Serkin's surprisingly pudgy fingers and recede into high overhead shots, but for the most part they keep still and leave the music uncorrupted by jazzy TV techniques.

Hands off, in fact, has been the production policy from the outset. Both Jersey Standard and the producers have guaranteed the performers autonomy and artistic freedom; hence they have been able to line up the Metropolitan Opera's George London, Violinist Isaac Stern, Guitarist Andres Segovia and Cellist Pablo Casals for subsequent concerts. Dorothy Stickney will do readings from Edna St. Vincent Millay. Margaret Leighton will read Dorothy Parker: A Telephone Call, Dusk Before Fireworks, The Lovely Leave. Britain's Michael Flanders and Donald Swann will do the same, somewhat intellectual variety show they scored with on Broadway; Cyril Ritchard (Romulus) will appear with Hermione Baddeley in something billed as an "intimate revue of songs and sketches."

Good Business. As sponsor, Jersey Standard is shrewdly buying prestige on the cheap. Production costs are minimal. Although the shows are broadcast in so-called prime time, the price is relatively low, since they are not on a network. The artists, attracted by freedom to do what they like, are willing to work for less than their usual fees. Twice before, the same sponsor has been inundated with complimentary mail while sponsoring cultural programs the trade considered commercial dogs: The Play of the Week and the BBC series of Shakespearean histories titled An Age of Kings. "We believe that there is a strong demand for such entertainment," says Jersey Standard President M. J. Rathbone. "and anything we can do to help provide more of it is good business for us."

Producer Susskind, with his customary flair for show-biz type eloquence, calls Festival of Performing Arts "the beginning of the Qualitative Revolution.'' He hopes to see the program extend itself indefinitely beyond the originally scheduled ten weeks. "We may get more applause than we deserve," says Co-Producer Fleming candidly. Why? "Because there is nothing else like this, that's all."

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