Mister Dugan Is Voted Out

A show about blacks is yanked before it appears

"He's got a redheaded knockout for an aide. A good ole Southern boy for an adviser. He's one funny, wild and crazy guy." So read CBS's ad for Mister Dugan in TV Guide, and lots of viewers were probably looking forward to seeing any, wild and crazy guy last Sunday night, not to mention the redheaded knockout. But a not very funny thing happened on the way to the tube: just three days before the show was supposed to go on the air, Norman Lear's T.A.T. Communications Co. suddenly yanked it away, leaving CBS, which was still promoting it Thursday morning, with a yawning hole in the Sunday schedule.

The trouble was that Mister Dugan who was played by Cleavon Little, was no only black but also a Congressman. After consulting with blacks in Los Angeles and Washington, Lear decided that Mister Dugan was not the sort of man he would want to vote for. "We felt we were ineffectively presenting a black Congressman as a role model," he says. "We want our black legislator to do as good a job showing how compassionate a politician can be as Marcus Welby did in showing how good a doctor could be. It's painful for me not to air it."

It was even more painful for CBS which is trying to gain ground in the ratings on ABC. Sunday is the network's best night, starting with 60 Minutes and All in the Family, both of which are in Nielsen's top ten, and ending with the still untested Just Friends and The Mary Tyler Moore Hour. Mister Dugan was given the favored 8:30 spot after All in the Family and was expected to provide a strong bridge to Alice. Lear's cancellation, probably unprecedented at such a late date, confounded CBS'S programmers. They apparently had nothing else new to replace it and filled the gap with another episode of Alice, putting one right behind the other. Network executives, understandably miffed at Lear, sent out a terse announcement: "The CBS television net work was fully prepared to broadcast the new series as scheduled."

Other series have been canceled before they appeared on the air, both by the producing companies and by the networks, but no one could remember another show's having been killed so close to its premiere. Part of the problem, apparently, was that Little was a last-minute choice, replacing John Amos (Good Times), who had demanded unacceptable creative control. Part of the problem also was CBS's rush for a new series, which left T-A-T-with little time for second thoughts.

Despite Lear's statement about killing the show because it failed to present a good role model, his exact motives are in dispute. He claims that he first knew the show was in trouble March 2 nine days before air time, when T.A.T President Alan Horn told him that he did not like it. Lear screened the first episode and agreed, then invited ten young blacks to watch it and talk about it at his house They hated it. Lear next took it to Washington, where he showed it to members of the Black Congressional Caucus, real-life black Representatives. When they were also outraged by it, Lear says, he decided to drop the show, three episodes of which had already been shot at a cost of something like $700,000. Members of the Black Caucus, however, say that they tried to approach Lear when they read about the show in January. He refused to return phone calls, they say, until they put pressure on him through California friends. What T.A.T. and the Congressmen do agree on is that they hated Mister Dugan. "It was a reversion to the Stepin Fetchit syndrome," says Representative Mickey Leland, one of the Black Caucus members who saw the show. "The man was totally controlled by his white staffers. The central character rolls his eyes and reminds me of Algonquin J. Calhoune, the lawyer on the old Amos and Andy series. From beginning to end, I'd say the caucus was terribly disappointed. Disgusted would be a better word."

Lear denies that he succumbed to pressure and says that he usually solicits comments about series before they are broadcast. "I have called in the Jewish Anti-Defamation League, Catholic groups, the National Institute of Mental Health and others," he says. "We have a high social, conscience, and we want to get the story right. We do not favor the short-term gain over the long-term public interest. Dropping the show was an exercise in that commitment."

Maybe, but some of his associates think that Lear, who has withdrawn from day-to-day TV production to concentrate on movies, is also committed to a possible political career for Norman Lear. He has been active in the "dump Carter" movement in California, and went so far as to circulate an open letter among selected employees. "It was a shocking thing to do," says one writer. "He had an ad for us to sign, even though, presumably, not all of us are anti-Carter or even Democrats." With all the confusion and counterclaims, Lear might supply CBS with a whole new series a mystery entitled The Killing of Mister Dugan.

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