Word: susskindly
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...trouble with television." says TV Producer-Performer David Susskind, "is that nobody aspires to anything but money." (Personally, he ekes out his $100,000-a-year salary and expenses from his own package firm and draws an extra $100,000 from the annual profits.) The networks, he complains, are copycats, scorning new ideas in a race for the bandwagon. (But his own firm, Talent Associates, Ltd., has made its reputation with such tried old "original" offerings as The Bridge of San Luis Rey, The Swiss Family Robinson and A Tale of Two Cities...
Happily for television, while David Susskind (rhymes with bus mind) talks and talks and talks, he is far too busy to listen to himself. He goes right on producing adaptations while claiming to prefer originals, bolsters his shows with big-name stars (a technique he says he deplores), and brightens a commendable number of evenings with some of the best, most tastefully produced shows television has to offer. Last week, while he prepared his own Open End talk show for New York's gabby Channel 13 and juggled projects that will keep him busy from Broadway to Hollywood well...
Safe & Superlative. In both spectaculars, which went on the air within four days of each other, Susskind was backing a sure thing. Meet Me matched the light-fingered direction of George (Green Pastures) Schaefer with a cameraful of Hollywood glamour: Myrna Loy, Walter Pidgeon, Jeanne Crain, Tab Hunter, Jane Powell, Ed Wynn. The Browning Version was also star-packed: Sir John Gielgud, Margaret Leighton, Cecil Parker, Robert Stephens. With so much to offer, neither show could fail. And in the case of The Browning Version, Gielgud's superlative performance could have done the job alone. Sir John...
...last week Susskind rushed in and out of rehearsals, spending almost as much time on the phone as he did watching the actors, yet seeing enough to scribble endless notes of advice; e.g., "Keep Myrna alive." He supervised the cutting of Jeanne Crain's lines ("She's no Duse"), and hesitated not a moment to order the taping of an entire scene from The Browning Version when one actor showed a tendency to blow his lines. (This last maneuver, by a man who has always championed live TV and frowned on tape and other mechanical aids...
...addition to Monologuist King, Cott fills his Newark studios with an impressive line-up of talkers. Producer David Susskind has no time limit at all on his Sunday-night round table, Open End (TIME, Nov. 24), and it usually rambles on for two hours. Mike Wallace, the waspish interviewer of a few seasons back, conducts half-hour sessions Monday through Friday. Bishop Fulton Sheen holds forth on Tuesdays, New Jersey's Governor on Sunday, Beauty Consultant Richard Willis Monday through Friday; Fannie Hurst's Showcase follows Willis. Henry Morgan snarls at his sponsors Friday evenings. Actor Martin...