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High Adventure: Lowell ("Hello Everybody") Thomas, 65, has finally found a spot on the globe where nobody ever heard of Lowell Thomas: the "uncontrolled territory" of New Guinea. In fact, the local headhunters had never even heard of TV, and when Lowell ran off the "rushes" for some native chiefs, they were "utterly bored." This week Thomas put U.S. viewers to the test with the first of seven new color travelogues on CBS. Gleeful headhunters waded shoulder-high in scummy New Guinea swamps to catch crocodiles with their bare hands; the barebreasted "debutantes of Kambaramba" skimmed along opal waters in narrow canoes at breathtaking speeds, and Headline-Hunter Thomas appeared every few feet to remind viewers of the "increasing perils." There were hackle-raising scenes of wizened, bedizened village elders carving tribal designs into the backs of young boys in manhood initiation rites, and, water-borne again, Lowell waving "Hi, there" at "wary and suspicious" natives. "We push on, and the navigation grows more dangerous," at last to reach the May River territory—scene of recent festivities where "the hosts ate the guests, 32 of them, keeping their heads for trophies." Thus the high pasha of Pawling shuttled between the exotic and the exasperating, displaying characteristic glimpses of the old world as it revolves around Lowell Thomas.
Studio One: Less a play than a mood piece, The Bend in the Road nonetheless offered some good acting and a grown-up theme: how an elderly minister and his wife adjust to the prospect of sitting out the rest of their lives. Onetime Glamour Boy Franchot Tone, 51, donned whiskers and did his husky-voiced best to play a spry octogenarian fighting the years. Cathleen Nesbitt was fine as his gentle wife. But Playwright John Vlahos never crystallized in a dramatic moment just why the minister surrendered to a tranquil life and moved off to a home for the aged where his friends "sit like potted plants." As a result, Vlahos did not lay the groundwork that could have built power into a touching last scene in which Tone, finally accepting the fate his years have brought, sang a hymn to God in an empty church.