Three More Really Big Shews From CBS’ Golden Past

Ed Sullivan knew a really big shew when he saw one. So does CBS.

Energized by a retrospective of Sullivan’s long-running series, CBS’ “nostalgia weekend” last February helped the network top the Nielsen ratings that week en route to winning the sweeps competition that month.

So get ready for another nostalgia trio anchored by “Ed II,” as CBS tries to overtake NBC in the last week of a very tight November sweeps race.

“Ed I” was joined by retrospectives on “All in the Family” and “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.” Hoping the past can still be profitable, CBS this time is flanking two additional hours of Sullivan clips (9 p.m. Sunday on Channels 2 and 8) with programs celebrating two other classic series, “The Bob Newhart Show” (8 p.m. Saturday) and “MASH” (9:30 p.m. Monday).

Television historically seeks refuge from the headaches of the present in the soothing past. And with more than its share of golden oldies to celebrate, CBS has more justification than most to revisit and congratulate itself. As a bonus for the network, retrospectives are much cheaper to produce than original programming, giving CBS a shot at potentially bigger profits.

Yet whatever the motivation for all of this CBS recycling and repackaging, one can’t quarrel with the result.

George Zaloom and Les Mayfield are executive producers of Saturday’s hour saluting “The Bob Newhart Show.” It’s a time-blurring hoot, cleverly using the dream sequence that concluded the run of the more recent “Newhart” as a device to spin off clips from the earlier series. That ending had the entire “Newhart” series turning out to be a nightmare in the mind of Bob Hartley, the ever-suffering protagonist from “The Bob Newhart Show” of 1972-78.

In newly shot material for Saturday, Hartley is reunited with the rest of “The Bob Newhart Show” characters. Meanwhile, the clips rock and roll, showing just how funny, fresh and contemporary this series remains. The writing and supporting cast are grand, and as neurotic psychologist Hartley, former stand-up comic Newhart keeps you in stitches with his timing and straight-faced artistry. He’s a master of the pause and pained look, and no one has ever been better at setting up and then cashing in on a gag.

No one was better at destroying a gag than Sullivan, the New York newspaper columnist whose verbal oafery and minimal personality did not prevent him from becoming American’s most famous emcee as host of his own eclectic TV variety show (first titled “Toast of the Town”) from 1948 to 1971.

“The Ed Sullivan Show” was a national institution that could be repeatedly cultural and camp within a single episode. And Sullivan, almost always the stiff and colorless TV personality who invited parody, seemed to relish the ribbing he took from such impressionists as Frank Gorshin, Rich Little and John Byner, all of whom surface in Sunday night’s program.

Yet Sullivan was a master booker whose show attracted a broad cross-section of celebrities and performers. They ranged from international stage and music stars to circus and burlesque acts to stand-up comics. Thus, these clips from “The Very Best of the Ed Sullivan Show--II,” many of them in black-and-white, are a valuable video archive not only of television but also of national taste. This is some of what captivated America then.

Fused into two hours, the clips make up an isolated realm oblivious to the tumultuous outside world (the Sullivan show spanned McCarthyism and most of the Vietnam War, for example). But within that realm, there was much to behold.

Supported by anecdotes from some of those who appeared on Sullivan’s show, Sunday’s program at first trickles out laboriously. And the whispery quality of host Burt Reynolds’ voice will test your hearing. Otherwise, this survey from executive producer Andrew Solt is a Rolodex of highlights.

You won’t find that legendary above-the-waist shot of gyrating Elvis Presley in his famous national TV debut with Sullivan, or much of the Sullivan show’s famed Beatlemanic frenzy. “Ed I” took care of much of that in February. Among other delights, though, you do get a young Albert Brooks making his hilarious 1971 debut as a ventriloquist, with his mouth moving. You get Richard Burton and Julie Andrews wistfully singing the title song from “Camelot” in 1964.

And proving that his show itself was not always Camelot, there is something here from the show’s early years that has to be one of the funniest sequences ever shown on TV:

Center stage on this evening is famed animal trainer Clyde Beatty and his lions. But the act isn’t working, and Beatty clearly is losing control of the big cats. Now cut to that smoothie Sullivan who, in attempting to divert attention from the continuing debacle on the stage, goes into the studio audience to introduce the celebrities he has invited: “Here is jockey Eddie Arcaro!”

Even as the camera stays tight on the seemingly oblivious Sullivan beside his big shots, however, some audience members can be seen shooting nervous glances toward the now-off-camera chaos on stage, where Beatty can be heard firing blanks at the still-roaring lions. Then, time for the animal segment having expired, Sullivan abruptly whirls and thanks the unseen Beatty.

Yes, really, really big.

As was “MASH,” arguably the most unusual comedy series ever on television, and unequivocally one of the best.

Monday’s “Memories of MASH” is that rare retrospective with introspection, at once funny and thoughtful. Executive producer Michael Hirsh inserts anecdotes from the creators and cast that give texture to the clips that form the core of these 90 minutes while tracing hairpin curves in the show’s evolution.

“MASH” was the TV offspring of Robert Altman’s black-comedy film (based on a novel by Richard Hooker) about a medical unit in the Korean War. Running from 1972 to 1983, the TV spinoff advanced the original story in exhilarating new directions and became a defining period in television history, not to mention in the careers of Alan Alda and most of his fellow cast members.

As Alda notes, CBS at times was unsure whether “MASH” was a situation comedy or a “situation tragedy.” Happily, it was both, even with that laugh track. Primarily through the genius of writer Larry Gelbart and producers Gene Reynolds and Burt Metcalfe, “MASH” used humor in a war setting to tell human stories that fanned the winds of peace. The Korean War could have been any war and, despite their farcical sides, there was something universal in the wisecracking Hawkeye and his colleagues.

One of the virtues of “MASH” was its ability to depict war as an obnoxious aberration, and to identify its common denominators and use them to make points without lecturing--never more so than in probably it’s most famous episode. Excerpted Monday, “The Interview” was filmed Edward R. Murrow style, in black-and-white, with the “MASH” characters expressing their thoughts about the war and themselves to a TV interviewer played by the late Clete Roberts.

“MASH” had its clunkers, too, as well as behind-the-scenes antagonisms that are withheld from Monday’s agenda. Yet nostalgia is by definition selective, and in the cases of “MASH,” “Ed Sullivan” and “Bob Newhart,” good memories far outnumber the bad.