Word: beanstalking
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...four. "With the contents of food packages my mother had sent me," he wrote in his vanity-published autobiography, Rogue of Publishers' Row, "I inveigled a fascinating storyteller among the older boys into spinning yarns for me. A chocolate bar was good for Jack and the Beanstalk; a banana would buy Bluebeard or The King of the Golden River . . . My friend, however, was a cold-blooded proposition; as soon as he got his fists on my food, he'd quit . . . Today the tables are turned. The yarn spinners...
...Sullivanish souffle, La Périchole, which he also staged. "I sound like a sick walrus when I'm in good voice," he says. Within a matter of months he also bested Mike Wallace on Night Beat, played the bean peddler in TV's Jack and the Beanstalk, made some records with Bea Lillie, played all the parts in a recording of Alice in Wonderland, recorded Peter and the Wolf with the Philadelphia Orchestra, did several benefits and filled various speaking engagements. "I simply drift around like flotsam and jetsam," he says with creaks and squeaks...
Jack scampered up a tottering prefabricated beanstalk on NBC's Producer's Showcase and came home with the highest audience rating of any 90-minute show in TV history. The musical spectacle of Jack and the Beanstalk topped the two-hour reissue of Peter Pan with a 33.9 rating, attracted an estimated 55 million viewers -a 75% bigger audience than the average of all three competing CBS shows...
Jack's pull, however, was not always in proportion to its charm, which was sporadic. Top-heavy with talent (Celeste Holm, Cyril Ritchard, Dennis King, Leora Dana, Billy Gilbert) and electronic gimmickry, the big beanstalk was often heavy on its feet. Main trouble: for a 90-minute musical, the music just wasn't very good. Best scene: Choreographer Rod Alexander's March of the Ill-Assorted Guards, with Newcomer Joel Grey, 24, who as Jack showed real promise in the difficult triple chore of actor, singer and dancer...
Producer's Showcase (Mon. 8 p.m.. NBC). Jack and the Beanstalk, with Celeste Holm, Cyril Ritchard, Dennis King...