Tyrants of Television: An Inside View

by CHARLES C. BARRY

1

LATE in the evening of January 20, 1949, President Truman went home from the Inaugural Ball. In cities as far apart as Chicago, Boston, Pittsburgh, Richmond, and Detroit, television receivers snapped off. On that day more Americans had witnessed his inauguration than had viewed the inaugurations of all the Presidents from George Washington to F.D.R.

Earlier, on the evening of November 29, 1948, more Americans had seen and heard the Metropolitan Opera than could be packed within the Opera House in ten full seasons.

These two occasions had a special significance. Here was the proof that television had won a place for itself alongside the movies and radio. Here was the certain promise that in every phase of our society and our culture we must reckon henceforth with something called an image orlhicon camera. Those of us who are charged with the custody of this new device are not. blind to its implications.

In television I see the greatest force for understanding, education, entertainment, and participation in human affairs that man has yet devised. In it I also see an unprecedented stimulus to the production and exchange of the world’s goods through the support of American advertisers and their agencies. I am among those who hold that such a stimulus, in the troubled years ahead, will be a profoundly important thing. I believe it will be good for the United States, good for the world — and good for television.

There are those who do not share such unbridled optimism. Writing in last month’s Atlantic, Gilbert Seldes expressed in cogent fashion his fears that broadcasters will yield to commercial pressures, real or fancied; that they will succumb to expediency, content with proved techniques and tested formulas, timidly avoiding the untried and the new.

I think those apprehensions are premature. If some soap king lurks behind the door with a club in his hand, he has not made his influence felt yet.. Both the advertiser and the broadcaster are too busily — and sleeplessly — engaged in a joint effort to solve the mysteries of a new medium. On the record to date, I think there is ample proof that the advertiser does not intend to underrate American taste—that in exchange for the remarkable privilege of showing his wares in America’s living room, he intends to keep America informed, entertained, and endlessly beguiled.

Grievous hazards, to be sure, face the television broadcaster of 1949 — hazards which threaten to tyrannize the new medium. But the tyrants of television, like the prophets of old, can be classified as major and minor. And in this formative stage of development I think that Mr. Seldes’s major tyrants are in reality the lesser breed. The greater danger, in my opinion, is found in the countless petty tyrannies which confront the broadcaster at every turn, threatening to bind the new young giant with a thousand Lilliputian strings.

To cite but a few of these petty tyrants, there are the mechanical obstinacy of the equipment itself, the delicate idiosyncrasies of the tube within the camera. There are the overheated, always cramped studios and the long, grinding hours of rehearsal with never time for another “take” from the cameras. There are the astronomic man-hours of engineers, directors, cameramen, floor managers, stagehands, light crews, property men, and performers.

To those concerned with the deeper implications of a new electronic art form, these seemingly petty annoyances may appear unworthy of notice. Yet in the temptation to yield to their restrictive force lies the most likely source of mediocrity. That is why any attempt to appraise the future ol television in 1949 must necessarily concern itself with the petty tyrants and the broadcaster’s efforts to overcome them.

Nothing is more indicative of the strides television has made than the degree of maturity it has already achieved in the dramatic art. Occasionally we hear the charge that television merely puts a camera in a theater and lakes credit for what another entertainment medium has done. But that charge no longer rings true. The development of a theater which is peculiar to television, which takes full advantage of television’s unique characteristics, has already begun.

Not long ago, for instance, Actors Studio presented Jessica Tandy in Tennessee Williams’s Portrait of a Madonna, a taut, one-act tour de force to which Miss Tandy brought all the intensity that characterizes her current role in Mr. Williams s A Streetcar Sained Desire. I would not assert that Portrait of a Madonna was a better play, or better acted, or better directed than Streetcar. I do assert that it was different, that the viewer felt an impact and an intimacy which would have been denied him had he viewed the play from a seat in the theater. Here were proper use and blending of television’s properties. Scenery and lighting, handled with imagination, became allies instead of enemies. The talents of a great actress were allowed unstinted scope. The result was a vivid example of television’s ability to make the viewer a participant in the drama, rather than an observer. It eliminated the proscenium arch, that artificial barrier that separates the play from the audience. The viewer was not watching a room across a set of footlights — he was in that room.

We in television have only begun to realize what that difference will mean, but we suspect that we are adding a new dimension to the theater.

Lest I attach too much importance to a play which seems almost to have been written for the television camera, let me pay tribute to an utterly different type of production the Actors’ Equity Cyrano de Bergerac. Here again was proof of television’s capacity for the dramatic art and again there were diff erences between Cyrano in the theater and Cyrano on t he screen in your living room. The poetry of the unforgettable balcony scene and the mastery of Jose Ferrer have thrilled theater audiences, but I for one would say that in that scene, projected in dramatic close-up on a television receiver, there was a special thrill, holding rich promise for the future.

Despite the cost and physical limitations of sets in the television studio, it appears that the video drama will be less restricted physically than the stage, interesting experiments in the integration of film with live action have already proved successful, a technique which will provide unlimited maneuverability. The television camera permits start ling effects utterly unknown to Broadway.

As evidence of ingenuity in solving the physical limitations of the studio I should like to point to the television productions of Dickens s Christinas Carol. To one who had always enjoyed the annual radio reading by Lionel Barrymore, it was a revelation suddenly to be confronted with the full visual panoply of Scrooge and his ghostly friends, the latter appearing without notice by courtesy of an engineer’s “dissolve box.’

Scrooge’s peculiar problems were solved in a different but still ingenious way on the ABC network: our version was done in a full-hour marionette show. Judging from the response to this delightful bit of fantasy, the puppeteer will be with us for many a Christmas Eve.

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WHILE I believe that television has special opportunities in the drama, there are fields in which its responsibilities as a social force are much greater. What is the broadcaster doing to fulfill his obligation in the great areas of politics and government?

I have already alluded to the inaugural broadcast. Faulty though some of the coverage may have been, that day-long broadcast used every available piece of equipment and every available man-hour the combined resources of the broadcasters could offer. It appears that the industry is tacitly committed to the duty of bringing the government directly to the people, whether the subject matter be an inauguration, a Congressional hearing, a convention, or a political campaign.

Those of you who watched the conventions, while guests lingered in your living room into the small hours, may have a dim idea of the political significance of the television camera. I believe, for instance, that television has already changed the American political convention. I believe that bombast and empty political oratory have been curtailed by the television screen. I believe that the Democrats and Republicans in 1952 will shorten their speeches, control their demonstrations, and transform their conventions into orderly deliberative gatherings.

I believe, moreover, that the political influence of television has gone beyond the convention itself. The cathode tube — that cold, impersonal mirror which will not deceive or flatter — may affect every political candidacy and every political campaign. Television will provide the voters with a searching scrutiny which neither the radio nor the newspaper can give, and from which no candidate can hide.

The television broadcaster has an awesome responsibility. He must exercise the same impartiality as the camera itself, yet he must not limit his responsibility to reporting. Like radio with its documentary programs, its commentators, and its Town Meeting of the Air; like the newspaper with its cartoons, its editorials, and its exposes, television must be active rather than passive in contributing to the political awareness of the American people.

Generally speaking, I think the convention coverage showed a recognition of that responsibility. The broadcasters did not content themselves with installing cameras on the convention floor, but sought out candidates, delegates, and party bigwigs in hotel lobbies, private studios, and smokefilled rooms. They made a beginning in the documentary field by presenting life histories of the candidates on film. They tracked down not only facts but responsible opinions. And the boast that the home viewer knew more of what went on than the spectator on the scene has not been denied by those who were there.

I must emphasize that television in politics in 1948 was a novice. This was its first Presidential campaign. Whatever its shortcomings, however, its efforts involved an earnest and meaningful assault against the minor tyrannies of new and bulky equipment, inadequate relay circuits, untrained personnel, cramped quarters, and burnedout tubes. In the surprising extent to which that assault was successful, I find solid grounds for optimism.

In some areas, to be sure, the broadcaster has not been so aggressive. He is feeling his way somewhat gingerly, for instance, in the sensitive field of religion. From a technical standpoint a major advance was made on Christmas Eve when the solemn majesty of the Pontifical midnight Mass from St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York was broadcast to untold thousands along the eastern seaboard. A significant footnote to the broadcast was the fact that the Archdiocese felt it advisable to announce three times during the ceremony that viewing the Mass on television did not discharge the Catholic’s obligation to attend in person.

The video camera has entered the houses of worship of all the principal faiths. It has brought instruction and ritual to the television audience. It seems inevitable that television will find a place as a most useful handmaiden of religion. It may indeed bring solace, comfort, and inspiration not alone to the sick and old but to vast, numbers to whom religion is either a new or a forgotten experience. Yet there is always danger that television may intrude in the relationship between the worshiper and his church, and I therefore think that its true place in American religion will not soon be clearly defined.

Limitations of space prohibit a complete progress report on all the types of programs that make up the daily television schedule. There are a few categories, however, that must be mentioned. Sports events, for instance, while occupying a smaller proportion of television time than a year ago, continue to take up an important segment of each station’s programing. Despite a certain amount of criticism, I expect that they will continue to do so — although the broadcaster will tend to be more selective as to the quality of the events he offers. But any objection to sports as such — several events a week on each station seems to me to be naïve. Americans like sports because they are thrilling and entertaining. They will expect to see them on television.

Another source ol eyebrow-lifting is the emphasis which television seems to have given to vaudeville and variety. I would not hazard a guess whether vaudeo will hold its place as the medium develops. I am quite willing to grant that the average vaudeville show on television hardly is a challenge to the broadcaster’s imagination. Yet, when I consider the phenomenal audience that faithfully tunes to Milton Berle, I wonder whether television may not be expected to make a substantial contribution to American comedy and humor. The American emphasis on personality, and the manner in which that intangible trait projects through the television screen, suggest that the broadcaster might well accept the responsibility for finding and developing the Harry Landers, the Chevaliers, the Fred Allens, and the Rob Hopes of tomorrow. It is not against the public interest to help make America laugh.

The broadcast licensee who presents programs in the “public interest, convenience, and necessity” cannot and will not delegate his obligation to provide the best programs it is possible to produce. Rut the source of those programs is the American creative effort as a whole, and the broadcaster can be no better or worse than the American creative genius. He needs the aid of everyone concerned with American literature, drama, music, opera, education, entertainment, and public affairs. He can present only what America can offer. If the next decade produces no Rernard Shaw, no Paderewski, no Hemingway, no Caruso, there will be none on your television screen.

Not long ago we held a meeting of the entire ARC television staff which developed into a lively discussion of the future of television. I wish Mr. Seldes could have been there, because the people in the room were fairly typical of the medium. They were directors, writers, and technicians — the people who are overcoming t he minor tyrants today and who will build the program schedules of tomorrow. The things they had to say reflected eagerness and excitement, and a sense of the limitless promise of their craft. They realize that the medium they work in will affect the knowledge, the tastes, the customs, and the social usages of the American people — their lives, their leisure, and quite possibly their labor. I think they can be counted on to evolve a picture on the television screen that is as broad, as dramatic, and as challenging as America itself.