Word: susskind
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...What the engine is to the automobile," said M.C. David Susskind on his talkathon Open End, "the writer is to a theatrical production. Our guests tonight are seven Cadillacs, the key creators of many of TV's finest hours." The Cadillacs: Robert Alan Arthur, Paddy Chayevsky, Sumner Locke Elliott. James Lee, J. P. Miller, Tad Mosel, David Shaw-almost all of whom have abandoned TV. As a producer (Du Pont Show of the Month) and the Custer of live TV drama (TIME, June 2), Susskind wanted to know why the writers had given up. Why not stay...
...explain the answer, the writers spent two lively, free-associating hours last week on Susskind's couch (WNTA-TV, Newark), a kind of group therapy that left them feeling sorry for themselves together instead of for each alone. Their main reasons for the decline of live TV drama: ¶ The public got bored with the sort of slice-of-life vignettes that Chayevsky and the other "agony boys" used to turn out every month. Eventually, the boys got bored themselves. "I didn't get tired of it," said J. P. (Days of Wine and Roses) Miller. "I just...
There were some kind words for TV, too. Conceded Bob Arthur: "TV may be getting to be a medium of mediocrity, but there are still five or six wonderful hours a week. That's all I need. With more, I'd become a blithering idiot." Concluded Susskind, addressing the disgruntled Cadillacs: "You seem to be wallowing in self-abnegation ... As opposed to making Olympian comments, why don't you-the men with a creative mark to etch-do something about...
...last week threatened what may become known as the Great Undershirt Riposte. Wald was agitated by TV's "unspeakable hijacking." Examples: last year Playhouse go produced The Helen Morgan Story just in time to capitalize on Warner Brothers' Helen Morgan Story, and this month TV Producer David Susskind announced plans for a $400,000 quickie that would beat the release of MGM's $12.5 million Ben Hur. Said Wald: Hollywood ought to fight back with movies that "in a tasteful manner will show their vast world audiences the disadvantages of buying, using or owning" products made...
Near week's end Producer Susskind withdrew plans for his TV Ben Hur. Still in the works for CBS's U.S. Steel Hour: a TV play about the life of Sigmund Freud, anticipating a planned movie. The odds are nicely balanced. While the movie makers have Existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre to write the script, TV has Farley Granger to play Professor Freud...