An NBC public affairs executive called in Writer-Producer George Lefferts and told him to work up a show on the problems of women.
"Can I do a show on the menopause?" asked Lefferts cautiously.
"Yes." "On frigidity?" "You bet." That is how the Purex Specials for Women were started. For a year and a half, the network has been presenting them once a month or so. both in daytime hours and in the evening. In ratings, they have slaughtered everything from ABC's American Bandstand to CBS's Playhouse go. Their titles alone have been irresistible —"The Cold Woman," "The Glamour Trap," "The Trapped Housewife," "Change of Life." The program hires first-rate talent, too. such as Sylvia Sidney (menopause), Kim Hunter (frigidity) and Phyllis Thaxter (the trapped housewife—in real life, Thaxter is the wife of James Aubrey, president of CBS-TV).
This week, Purex (Sweetheart soap, Dutch Cleanser) presents "The Indiscriminate Woman." Like the others, it is a drama wrapped in documentary sheathing.
It begins with statistics establishing that problems exist: venereal disease among young people is up 132%, births out of wedlock are up 194% since 1956. Then Dane Clark and Carol Lawrence perform in a play about an engagement that is bro ken when he discovers that she has been making and faking love to man after man after man. As the girl herself describes it, with two lines from A. A. Milne: The more it snows, tiddely-pom, The more it goes, tiddely-pom.
"Marty," she tells her fiance, "it's been like this all my life — men — I don't even remember the faces. I'm what they call a promiscuous woman." Marty: You say it as if it was a badge.
Doris: It isn't a badge. It's a disease.
Right, says the program's voice of doc umentary authority. "A short circuit of the emotions prevents the promiscuous person from enjoying really meaningful relationships." That is about as deep as the diagnosis goes, although at the end of all Purex shows there is a sort of analytical epilogue featuring guests with responsible-sounding names and six-inch titles. This week's visitor is Dr. Aaron Rutledge, whose billing is "Director of the American Association of Marriage Counselors and Head of the Counseling and Psychotherapy Program at the Merrill-Palmer School in Detroit." His wisdom will be seined with questions that range upward in difficulty from "Are there promiscuous men?" to "Does promiscuity itself constitute a threat to our society?" Unsurprisingly, NBC's Specials for Women have been showered with awards from organizations like Fame magazine and Radio-TV Mirror. The Specials for Women are reasonably good shows, marked on TV's achievement curve, but they are not what they purport to be: serious studies of women at the crossroads.
They are lye-soap operas—shot through with strong stuff, but soap nonetheless.
"We get a lot of heartbreaking mail," says Writer-Producer Lefferts. "People write in who didn't know they had a problem until they saw the show." But no matter. Nine out of ten women think the Purex Specials are divine. And that's a lot of Sweetheart soap.