Radio: The Week in Review

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Television, more and more, was getting into other people's business. NBC's American Inventory gave an upbeat plug to the stock market in a playlet about the joys of being a small investor, while on Youth Wants to Know. Arkansas' Senator William Fulbright (see BUSINESS) deplored the market's excesses. Indiana's Senator Homer Capehart got in the act by appearing on Walter Winchell's ABC telecast for the express purpose of asking Winchell some friendly questions about his broadcast stock tips. Unfortunately, the Senator began by answering questions instead of asking them, and whenever he seemed likely to get in stride, was forced to make way for a commercial for Gem razors.

Another Senator, Maine's Margaret Chase Smith, was back at work for TV, interviewing three heads of state—Franco, U Nu of Burma, Nehru—for CBS's See It Now (to the tune of much grumbling by G.O.P. colleagues at work on Capitol Hill). And Oklahoma's Robert Kerr defended both the oil industry and the Democratic record on Meet the Press.

Manic Depression. Health hints were scattered throughout the week in TV's typical buckshot fashion. Omnibus showed the staccato heartbeat of a pretty girl suddenly confronted by a spider, moments later probably scared more viewers than it enlightened with a closeup film sequence of a delicate heart operation. Medic used Lee J. Cobb to illustrate the dangers of manic depression in the case of a bachelor bank clerk. The Search, explaining that marriage produced so many problems because it was the most complex of all human relationships, blamed most failures on the lack of adequate communication between husband and wife—which left the viewers just about where they were originally.

Ed Murrow's Person to Person reached to California to show how the other half of 1% of the population lives—in a visit to Hotelman Conrad Hilton's 61-room Bel-Air home. Hilton led the cameras through endless hallways, lounges, state dining rooms, silver vaults and patios—all of them bearing a startling resemblance to Statler lobbies. It was almost a relief, in the second part of. the program, to visit the 4½-room Manhattan apartment of Red Buttons, who did a serviceable imitation of Hilton by patting his wall and confiding that it was made of "solid plaster."

Two Left Feet. To viewers who were still warmly remembering the enchantment of Mary Martin and Peter Pan on NBC, CBS bravely offered a lavish musical version of Burlesque, starring Dan Dailey and Marilyn Maxwell. The show had everything—jokes, dances, action—except the ability to make viewers care very much about what happened to the leading characters.