Television: Sep. 17, 1965 | TIME

May 2024 · 9 minute read

The 1965-66 season is at hand, with all the new series (TIME, July 23) kicking off in a single week. The premieres—plus a few worthy public-affairs programs:

Wednesday, September 15

LOT IN SPACE (CBS, 7:30-8:30 p.m.).* Guy Williams and June Lockhart head a family marooned on an unknown planet.

GIDGET (ABC, 8:30-9 p.m.). Sally Field in a teen-age situation comedy.

GREEN ACRES (CBS, 9-9:30 p.m.). City Lawyer Eddie Albert and Wife Eva Gabor move to the sticks.

THE BIG VALLEY (ABC, 9-10 p.m.). Barbara Stanwyck as an Old West matriarch.

I SPY (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). Comic adventure with a pair of U.S. agents.

AMOS BURKE, SECRET AGENT (ABC, 10-11 p.m.). Former Millionaire Cop Gene Barry becomes a millionaire spy.

Thursday, September 16

O.K. CRACKERBY (ABC, 8:30-9 p.m.). Burl Ives as a cracker-barrel billionaire.

LAREDO (NBC, 8:30-9:30 p.m.). Adventure with the Texas Rangers.

THE CBS THURSDAY NIGHT MOVIE (CBS, 9-11:15 p.m.). CBS’s first plunge into prime-time feature films, beginning with The Manchurian Candidate (1962), starring Frank Sinatra (see below).

MONA McCLUSKEY (NBC, 9:30-10 p.m.). Juliet Prowse in a situation comedy about a movie star with an Air Force husband.

THE LONG HOT SUMMER (ABC, 10-11 p.m.). A dramatic series based on Faulkner’s stories, with Edmond O’Brien.

THE DEAN MARTIN SHOW (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). Variety. Opening-night guests include Diahann Carroll, Bob Newhart and Frank Sinatra (who will thus be competing with the Manchurian Candidate version of himself).

Friday, September 17

CAMP RUNAMUCK (NBC, 7:30-8 p.m.). Situation comedy at a summer camp.

THE WILD, WILD WEST (CBS, 7:30-8:30 p.m.). Robert Conrad as a Civil War hero turned Government agent.

HANK (NBC, 8-8:30 p.m.). A comedy about an unregistered college student.

TAMMY (ABC, 8-8:30 p.m.). A backwoods girl becomes a secretary.

CONVOY (NBC, 8:30-9:30 p.m.). A World War II drama series.

HOGAN’S HEROES (CBS, 8:30-9 p.m.). Adventure comedy in a Wold War II P.O.W. camp.

HONEY WEST (ABC, 9-9:30 p.m.). Anne Francis as a private eyelash.

THE SMOTHERS BROTHERS SHOW (CBS, 9:30-10 p.m.). Folk songs and comedy.

MR. ROBERTS (NBC, 9:30-10 p.m.). A situation comedy based on the hit play and movie.

Saturday, September 18

I DREAM OF JEANNIE (NBC, 8-8:30 p.m.). An astronaut and a girl genie.

GET SMART! (NBC, 8:30-9 p.m.). Don Adams as a spoof-spy.

THE TRIALS OF O’BRIEN (CBS, 8:30-9:30 p.m.). A new lawyer series with Peter Falk.

THE LONER (CBS, 9:30-10 p.m.). Lloyd Bridges in a post-bellum Western dramatic series.

Sunday, September 19

MEET THE PRESS (NBC, 1-1:30 p.m.). An interview with British Prime Minister Harold Wilson via Early Bird satellite.

THE FBI (ABC, 8-9 p.m.). Efrem Zimbalist Jr. as a G-Man.

THE WACKIEST SHIP IN THE ARMY (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). Comedy-adventure on a two-masted schooner during World War II.

CBS REPORTS (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). “K.K.K. —The Invisible Empire,” a filmed-from-the-inside report on the Ku Klux Klan.

RECORDS

Rock ‘n’ Roll

The latest wave to hit the beach is folk rock. It combines the big beat with folk themes of unsentimental love and social protest. Its king: Bob Dylan, who leaves behind the straight-haired purists of folk as he takes up electric guitar. He and his imitators are bringing the message right into the front seat of the convertible, although it is still not strong enough to drown out the we’re-not-too-young-to-get-married gang.

LIKE A ROLLING STONE (Columbia). Dylan lights out after Temple Drake’s daughters, spoiled man-eaters whom he can only taunt and threaten. He shouts out the chronicle of a girl’s decline from boarding-school brat to streetwalker. The lyrics, written by Dylan, are powerful and literate and the song is twice as long as most pop hits. But it is climbing the charts and probably dusting off a lot of dictionaries.

EVE OF DESTRUCTION (Dunhill). With a belligerence that makes Dylan seem mild-mannered, Barry McGuire declares the nuclear apocalypse at hand. Enumerating signs of deterioration, from Congress to Selma and Red China, he castigates the entire world. Efforts to ban the song from radio have failed, and kids are buying it at the phenomenal rate of 10,000 a day.

I GOT YOU BABE (Atco). Riding the folk-pop wave are Sonny and Chér, a husband and wife with Siamese-twin voices that make it hard to tell who’s the boy and who’s the girl, and even whether one or both are singing. They muse at the quaint notions of elders, who think that people who spend their allowances before they get them won’t be able to make a go of marriage.

ALL I REALLY WANT TO DO (Imperial). Chér solos the Dylan song that lays down Martin Buber’s I-Thou philosophy for teenagers: “I don’t want to select you, dissect you, inspect you or reject you./ All I really want to do is be friends with you.” Chér turns out to have a coarse, grainy alto voice with a wide-open quality that projects a lot of feeling without too much sentimentality.

IT AIN’T ME, BABE (White Whale). In another song written by Dylan and sung by the Turtles, he lectures clinging vines who only want a strong shoulder to lean on. “Go ‘way from my window at your own chosen speed,” he declares.

SATISFACTION (London). The Rolling Stones are getting the TV message, but they don’t like it: “When I’m watching my TV, and that man comes on to tell me how white my shirts can be, well he can’t be a man ’cause he doesn’t smoke the same cigarettes as me.” The Stones manage to sing with nervous intensity and snigger at the same time.

CALIFORNIA GIRLS (Capitol). The Beach Boys make a point that is hard to dispute: a tan enhances the charm of a bikini.

I’M DOWN (Capitol). “I’m down, down on the ground,” twang Paul and John and George over and over again. Ringo explains why: his girl not only flirted with other boys, but threw away his grandmother’s valuable ring.

CINEMA

HELP! The Beatles romp through sight and sound gags pursued by a band of sinister Orientals out to make a human sacrifice of Ringo. Addicts will welcome the shots of the Beatles’ communal pad, which — among other things — has wall-to-wall grass.

THE KNACK. Director Richard Lester, who Helped! the Beatles, makes Rita Tushingham the goal of three zany British bachelors who share a town house. At the final guffaw, it’s three down and goal to go.

RAPTURE. A gloomy farmhousehold on the coast of Brittany harbors an escaped criminal (Dean Stockwell) who fulfills the various needs of an embittered ex-judge (Melvyn Douglas), his otherworldly daughter (Patricia Gozzi), and a bed-minded serving wench (Gunnel Lindblom). The tragic result is a triumph for English Director John Guillermin.

DARLING. Julie Christie irresistibly shows how to succeed in bed without hardly trying. This tale has its own kind of moral: when you finally get there, it’s time to go somewhere else.

THE IPCRESS FILE. Harry Palmer (Michael Caine) is an un-Bonded type of counterspy, who can hardly see without his glasses and does his job only to keep from being sent to jail. But he does it well and interestingly enough to make a thriller that is fun all the way.

SHIP OF FOOLS. Grand Hotel afloat, with such passengers as Vivien Leigh, Lee Marvin, Simone Signoret and Oskar Werner expertly rocking Katherine Anne Porter’s boat.

THE COLLECTOR. Terence Stamp plays a butterfly collector who tries to get a girl (Samantha Eggar) into his killing bottle.

THOSE MAGNIFICENT MEN IN THEIR FLYING MACHINES. It is hard to say which are the top stars of this frantic spectacular — the vintage airplanes in a 1910 race from London to Paris or their intrepid pilots, who include Terry-Thomas as No. 1 Bad Guy.

BOOKS

Best Reading

MRS. JACK, by Louise Hall Tharp. An immensely readable biography of Isabella Stewart Gardner, one of Boston’s most colorful Victorian lady eccentrics. Armed with money, an unfettered imagination and a whim of iron, she kept Boston’s newspapers in copy with her antics for half a century — and along the way assembled a collection of great art now housed in the Gardner Museum.

THE GARDENERS OF SALONIKA, by Alan Palmer. During World War I, the Allies used Macedonia as a dumping ground for out-of -favor generals. But in 1918, French General Franchet d’Esperey refused to stay dumped; instead he struck boldly at the heart of Germany through Belgrade and Vienna. Palmer tells the story of D’Esperey’s swift and decisive drive in highly readable style, and wonders aloud why this strategy was not followed three years earlier.

SQUARE’S PROGRESS, by Wilfred Sheed. When his wife calls him a bore and leaves him, a nice, adjusted insurance salesman sets out to discover the Cool World. He learns that hips are duller than squares.

ESAU & JACOB, by Machado de Assis. Rio de Janeiro in the last decade of the 19th century is presented to the reader with a dated but delectable use of hyperbole, metaphor and epigram.

THE LUMINOUS DARKNESS, by Howard Thurman. The essays of Dr. Thurman, a Negro and dean emeritus of Boston University’s chapel, reflect the experience of a man who has given thought as well as action to the cause of his people.

NEVER CALL RETREAT, by Bruce Catton. Deservedly the bestselling of Civil War historians, Catton shows the South overwhelmed and analyzes two great leaders: Lincoln, who resisted vindictive penalties on the South, and Lee, who refused to start a guerrilla war in the Virginia hills, which would have bled the country dry.

WARD 7, by Valeriy Tarsis. A bitter novel about a group of Russian intellectuals languishing in an insane asylum because they dared oppose Soviet leaders.

REPORT TO GRECO, by Nikos Kazantzakis. The tormented Greek writer’s autobiography is a powerful, personal testament and a key to the sources of his obsession with God. Kazantzakis died when the book was only in first draft, but the occasional rudeness and awkwardness show the raw energy in his creative gift.

THE LOOKING GLASS WAR, by John le Carré. The author sends another ungimmicky thriller out to fight the cold war with James Bond. Grey East Germany and red-taped London are again the settings; the spy is another drab, lonely man.

THE GARDEN OF THE FINZI-CONTINIS, by Giorgio Bassani. The author was responsible for the posthumous publication of Lampedusa’s The Leopard, and he has learned much from the master. Bassani’s gracefully written novel depicts the elegant, decadent world of a rich Jewish family and its confrontation with Fascism and death.

Best Sellers

FICTION

1. The Source, Michener (1 last week)

2. Hotel, Hailey (3)

3. Up the Down Staircase, Kaufman (2)

4. The Man with the Golden Gun, Fleming (6)

5. The Looking Glass War, le Carré (5)

6. Don’t Stop the Carnival, Wouk (9)

7. The Green Berets, Moore (4)

8. The Ambassador, West (7)

9. Night of Camp David, Knebel (10)

10. The Flight of the Falcon, Du Maurier

NON FICTION 1. The Making of the President, 1964, White (1) 2. Intern, Doctor X (3) 3. A Gift of Prophecy, Montgomery (6) 4. Is Paris Burning? Collins and Lapierre (2) 5. Markings, Hammarskjöld (5) 6. Games People Play, Berne (4) 7. The Oxford History of the American People, Morison (7) 8. The Memoirs of an Amnesiac, Levant (8) 9. Sixpence in Her Shoe, McGinley (9) 10. Report to Greco, Kazantzakis

* All times E.D.T.

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