Word: saudek
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Ruined Chances. Disconcertingly, for those who have read the book, the series started with two figures, one of whom was given only two paragraphs by Kennedy, the other mentioned not at all. Reason is that Producer Robert Saudek, who has been responsible for much of the best in television, from Omnibus to the New York Philharmonic, needed fourteen more profiles than President Kennedy had chronicled. But Kennedy himself approved the additional choices...
...Threats. Producer Saudek has hired good actors. Sidney Blackmer, who played the defense attorney in A Case of Libel, was an effective Underwood, and Victor Jory was full of smoke and chalk, manning the blackboards as Underwood's campaign manager. But best of all, the Underwood program gave a beaded-forehead impression of oldtime political conventions, with 103 ballots and whispered threats in hot hotel rooms. Ironically, it was good television about the good old days before political conventions were ruined by television...
Absent Edges. Omnibus Producer Robert Saudek presented a reasoned argument centered in the idea that the "networks must not go on, in the name of freedom, polluting air they do not own." His proposal: set up several nonprofit organizations, staffed by experts in various fields who would select programs; the networks would simply function as agents selling air time, but would have no control over shows. Writer-Producer Robert Alan (The Sacco-Vanzetti Story) Aurthur, whose rhetoric was particularly eloquent when he was describing the "cold, slitted eyes of advertising men," revealed that low-flying, low-quality ABC, the network...
...program jockeyed uncomfortably between the three networks. The years also saw some memorable shows: Peter Ustinov playing "The Life of Samuel Johnson," Leonard Bernstein describing "What Makes Opera Grand," Joseph Welch pondering "Capital Punishment." The program had lived up to the credo of its imaginative producer, Robert Saudek: "I don't believe in the principle of the high rating. My faith lies in the well-conceived idea, the well-written word, the well-spent dollar...
...Saudek's first principles were again evident in the season's Omnibus curtain raiser, "He Shall Have Power," which explored the evolution of the U.S. presidency with a succession of evocative vignettes of its most forceful incumbents. George Washington, fussily acted by Larry Gates, fought with a Machiavellian Hamilton and a statesmanlike Jefferson over nonintervention in the French Revolution, establishing the principle of presidential supremacy in foreign affairs. A rasping, well-cast Jackson (J. D. Cannon) was seen raging against the National Bank. Webster and Clay replied in opposition and in kind, but Jackson torpedoed Biddle...