Radio: The Week in Review

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A good deal of television seemed star-crossed last week—and the rest was tugged and buffeted by the ebb tides of summer.

In Hollywood, rehearsing for his show, Red Skelton plunged headlong into a "breakaway"* door. It didn't break, and Red was hospitalized with concussion and a mild case of shock. Skelton seems to be growing accident prone: last year he narrowly missed blowing off his head with a shotgun; last January he fell through a glass shower door, requiring 30 stitches in his arm; last April he sprained his back falling down a flight of stairs. This time, on only 30 minutes' notice, Nightclub Comic Johnny Carson (who is also M.C. of CBS's Earn Your Vacation) took over and did a very funny job. particularly in a doubletalk explanation of the economics of TV.

Toil & Trouble. In Manhattan, Author Meets the Critics—minus one critic—came on the air for a discussion of William Faulkner's A Fable. Author Frank (Five Gentlemen of Japan) Gibney arrived ten minutes late, breathing hard and blaming the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad. Gibney's first comment was that he thought most readers would have difficulty understanding A Fable. In reply, Critic Irving Howe took a surprising potshot at his own publisher. Random House President Bennett Cerf, who also doubles as a humorist and a panelist on What's My Line? Noting that Publisher Cerf had praised Fable's lucidity, Howe added: "If Bennett Cerf understands it, I'm sure that everyone else will."

The Morning Show, CBS's early-hour rival to NBC's successful Today, started the troublous week with a new star, dapper, 36-year-old Jack Paar, and a new format—fun and games instead of just news and weather. The fun turned out to be slightly repetitious. On his opening show Paar observed: "I went to Phila delphia once on a Sunday, but it was closed." The same joke turned up again on Friday. Paar's idea of early morning games included complaints about the placement of cameras and pretending to misunderstand the off-screen signals of his technical staff. After the first go-around The Morning Show's co-Producer David Heilweil commented: "At least, Ernie Kovacs rehearses his confusion; Paar just creates it."

The Philco-Goodyear TV Playhouse had troubles both onstage and off. Last week's play, Recoil, by A. J. Russell, had a good plot (a nice guy wants to get through life without stepping on anyone, but his girl and events won't let him), an adequate cast, and uneven, but sometimes moving, writing. However, the actors had more than average difficulty remembering the words; even bright-eyed Susan Shaw, doing the Goodyear commercials, blew her lines.