Television: High Wind in Havana

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"On a romantic and starry night like this, it's hard to keep your mind on your business," said Steve Allen, sticking to the script as he peered into the Havana sky last week. The sky was overcast and black, and a chilly wind sent wavelets across the swimming pool at the Havana Riviera Hotel, where NBC was beaming its first major live production over the horizon from Cuba to the U.S.

For the hour-long occasion, the Steve Allen Show reconnoitered the place two months in advance, airlifted a cast and crew of 50 (plus ten wives), shipped 16 tons of lights and more than five miles of cable. On the scene, the show enlisted three dozen technicians from Havana's TV station CMQ, and laid siege to the gleaming new hotel. The hotel surrendered eagerly, put up $25,000 of the show's $40,000 extra costs, yielded its bellhops as extras, shut off its paging system and shooed its guests away from the pool to ensure undisturbed rehearsals. "Is there any hotel plug in this script?" somebody asked at the final production conference. Cracked Allen: "Is there any script in this hotel plug?"

Bongos & Borsch. To light up the hotel's vast lobby, gambling casino, nightclub and swimming pool, plus the 20-story structure from the outside, electricians had to string out the lights the length of almost four football fields and use more kilowatts than the same NBC lighting men once used to illumine Niagara Falls.

By Friday before the Sunday show, the hotel was growing tense. The poolside restaurant, its high glass walls plastered with brown wrapping paper, was now a TV control room, sporting a DANGER—HIGH VOLTAGE sign, and sprouting cable everywhere. Fifteen Cuban cops guarded the equipment through the night. Guest Star Mamie Van Doren and Singer Steve Lawrence toiled at synchronizing their lips with songs they had recorded in Manhattan to avoid technical hitches on the Cuban location. Producer Bill Harbach and his staff kept auditioning local talent, came up with bongo beaters, a singing quartet and a dancer named Tybee Afra who hails from the New York borsch belt. At the poolside near Gambler Meyer Lansky's cabana, in the lobby and the casino. Allen & Co. and Guests Lou Costello and Edgar Bergen rehearsed in doubletalk ("Did you put the bird in the creen?") to keep their gags fresh for the bystanders who would later form their audience.

"How About East Cupcake?" The weather clouded, and travelers brought tales that Jack Paar's Tonight show, on location at a Miami Beach hotel, was laying eggs in a heavy downpour. Little crises piled up. Slight (130 Ibs.) Actor Don Knotts, who plays the nervous type in Allen's "Man in the Street" feature, passed out in the coffee shop; flown down from the U.S., his doctor diagnosed "nervous exhaustion." Bearded Orchestra Leader Skitch Henderson created consternation at Havana's CMQ when he turned up in sweater and denims resembling a Cuban revolutionary's getup.