After months of sloppy musical extravaganzas, TV demonstrated last week that the old songs can be best, as vintage tunes and vintage show folk took over.
On NBC's The Chevy Show, Frank Sinatra and Dinah Shore teamed up to put the imprint of their own engaging personalities on a repertory of ditties reminiscent of the enchanted evening when Mary Martin and Ethel Merman just pulled up a stool in front of the camera and sang some old songs.
Celebrities & Singers. Aging (59) Gossipist Walter Winchell, who for six weeks has been frenetically plugging himself all over the air and in his column, brought all his hammy radio techniques to his new NBC-TV show, and managed to serve up the fastest variety bill of the new season. Ex-Hoofer Winchell, hat on head, staccato voice spitting old Winchellisms ("The land you love, the love you land"), clowned edgily around a stage clogged with celebrities (Sammy Davis Jr., Joe DiMaggio, Martha Raye, Dorothy Kilgallen) who did nothing much but stand around being celebrities. But the singers worked to good effect: Lola Fisher, understudy for Julie (My Fair Lady) Andrews, singing I Could Have Danced All Night as if she could have; Perry Como's cool, limp delivery of new lyrics to Debussy's Claire de Lune.
At week's end, CBS served up its first spectacular of the season (Ford Star Jubilee), a radiant TV tribute to Songwriter Cole Porter's 40 years in show business. Though pure off-Broadway Porter, You're the Top was breezy, beautiful, and one of the biggest-budgeted ($250,000) live shows in TV history. A baker's dozen of high-priced Hollywood musical stylists served up a mishmash of 24 musical numbers, stylishly staged by Broadway Choreographer Robert (Pal Joey) Alton.
When the show was first conceived, Ford executives asked: "Where are the people who sang Porter's songs on Broadway?" CBS had two answers: 1) Ethel Merman is rehearsing a new Broadway musical (Happy Hunting) and Mary Martin's heart belongs to NBC, and 2) the network hoped to avoid stirring up lingering memories. "We deliberately tried to stay away from nostalgia," said Executive Producer Jack Rayel, and "furthermore, a baritone who sang in a Porter show 20 years ago could not be compared with Gordon MacRae today in appeal."