Word: hollywoodized
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...often more embarrassing than entertaining. NBC's Kraft Theater and Theatre Guild are the best; the directors, after a few cluttered mishaps, have wisely stopped trying to paint extravaganzas on their Lilliputian canvas. The intimate kind of show they settled for hardly rivals the razzle-dazzle-of Hollywood, but it fits neatly between the living-room sofa and the book case. One recent success: Great Catherine, with Gertrude Lawrence, who back in 1938 appeared in the first televersion of a Broadway play (Susan and God). CBS, screening digests of current Broadway hits, made a cramped marionette show...
...excuses. Program directors have operated on the skimpiest of budgets (until recently as much as 80% of television's money and personnel was spent on the engineering end), and against exasperating odds: inadequate studio equipment, a Petrillo ban on live musicians (which ended only nine weeks ago), and Hollywood's cold shoulder. Under the circumstances, it is perhaps remarkable that TV has offered anything at all worth looking...
...turns, illustrated weather forecasts, and pickups of radio broadcasts (beginning June 1 We the People will be seen as well as heard). And then there are films, the wilted coleslaw on television's bill of fare. The ancient cabbages that are rolled across the telescreen every night are Hollywood's curse on the upstart industry. Televiewers, sick of hoary Hoot Gibson oaters and antique spook comedies, wonder when, if ever, they will see fresh, first-class Hollywood films...
...soon (though WPIX and Chicago's WGN have arranged to televise some less ancient English pictures). One stumbling block is Hollywood's fear that television will kill its theater market; another is that release rights of recent films are wrapped up in expensive red tape. More important is the fact that television's purse is no match for its appetite. The top price tag for a radio program (around $25,000 a week) would not pay for two, minutes of a big Hollywood movie, and the entertainment budget of the entire television industry is not as much...
Most telecasters believe that eventually Hollywood will be forced to spend at least 50% of its time and effort on making films that television can afford. So far, except for a few shorts, the only films being specially made for television are commercials, which often add a new dimension of irritation to radio advertising. In a typical TV plug, the camera peers fixedly at a chart, showing the superior cushion effect of Firestone tires. Or it may ogle a picturesque blonde, pointing out the virtues of a refrigerator. Rarely has television hit on a first-class formula, like Lucky Strike...