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Twentieth Century: Tersely titled FBI and scripted by bestselling Author Don (The FBI Story) Whitehead,* the latest edition of CBS's new documentary series bulged this week with mystery, mobsters and storied shots: closeups of Killer John Dillinger spreading his dimpled, farm-boy charm counterpoised with his hairy, half-covered corpse in the morgue; the sad-faced mourners at his funeral (where a photographer got slugged for being "disrespectful"); a Hollywood extortionist waiting on a street corner for money from Actress Betty Grable, getting caught by agents disguised as gardeners. There were absorbing glimpses of malefactors from George ("Machine-Gun") Kelly to Fritz Kuhn and his Nazi German-American Bund, as well as behind-the-scenes sleuthing heroes at work in the FBI's Quantico, Va. laboratories. From secret files came a sequence of rare excitement. Filmed by G-men through a transparent mirror in his office wall, it showed German Spy Frederick Joubert Duquesne clandestinely removing diagrams of the M-1 rifle from his sock.
Wisdom: What artistic differences put asunder 26 years ago TV joined last week when Dancers Ruth St. Denis, 80 and Ted Shawn, a flabby 66, did a conversational pas de deux for NBC's Wisdom. Though the long-married, long-separated ancients displayed some vigorous dancing form—"Miss Ruth" can still kick up a ripply Oriental routine—they were liveliest when kicking TV. Shawn on TV choreography: "The cameras are so nervous they're always coming up under the girls' skirts or having wind machines or closeups. The camera ought to stay in one spot and let the dancer have his day." Said silver-haired Ruth: "I'm green with envy at the space TV gives to baseball. Do you suppose we will ever grow up like the Athenians—where we really put art first and just entertainment things second?"
Budapest String Quartet: Almost as unlikely as Wyatt Earp at Carnegie Hall, but much more welcome, the famed chamber-music ensemble made its debut on TV last week in an hour's recital of pieces by such rare television tunesmiths as Beethoven. Debussy and César Franck. Manhattan's WCBS and Metropolitan Educational Television Association deserved the hosannas they got for putting on a rare treat. They also fell into a pitfall of TV culture worship. It occurred to no one to point out that chamber music was returning to the living room, where it started, and to stage the presentation with informality befitting four musicians playing for their own enjoyment. Instead, in its grave, concert-hall atmosphere and the overearnest tone of introductions by Composer Norman Dello Joio, the TV men presented the music as if it were spinach—very good for you, but rather forbidding.
* Who last week resigned as Washington bureau chief of the New York Herald Tribune because of ill health and was replaced by Trib-man Robert J. (Eisenhower: The Inside Story) Donovan.