Wesley’s Week (Oct. 2-8, 2006)

by Wesley

People here have asked me, the “MMI newbie,” about the books I wrote before joining the team. I haven’t said much about them or their creation to anyone else, so here goes. My first was The Encyclopedia of Daytime Television in 1997. No book had covered all daytime soap operas, game shows, cartoons, sports, news and talk shows, so I wrote one. To cover all series with cast lists and program information, I read every issue of TV Guide from 1954 through 1996 and Variety from 1946 through 1996 as well as viewed copies of shows dating back to Howdy Doody in 1948. I learned many interesting items from this research (which took two years), including that Jackie Gleason did a weekend show in the mid-1960s where he gave his predictions for that week’s pro football games. Anybody remember that?

My second book was The Billboard Book of Number One Adult Contemporary Hits, a survey of songs that topped the “Easy Listening” chart on Billboard from its creation in 1961 through the end of 1998 (it came out in 1999). Billboard already had books covering #1 hits in other genres, so this was an easy sell to them. I interviewed many singers, songwriters and producers to get their memories about making those hits. My favorite facts from this one are that Dionne Warwick recorded “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again” reluctantly even though her frequent collaborators Burt Bacharach and Hal David wrote it because Ella Fitzgerald had already released her version and it flopped, and Toni Tennille of the Captain and Tennille said that when “Love Will Keep Us Together” won Record of the Year at the Grammys, presenter Joan Baez, apparently unhappy with the choice, “looked at us like we came out from under a rock.”

Next was Short-Lived Television Series 1948-1978. Since I enjoyed writing brief bits about songs in my previous book, I imagined I could do the same with TV series that ran less than a year in the first three decades of telecasting. This was a little tough to write, as not all actors, producers, writers and directors are eager to talk about their flops, but many were forthcoming nonetheless about the problems with their series. I remember the producer of Anna and the King, a 1972 disaster on Sunday nights, told me that he created it specifically because he heard CBS programming head Fred Silverman loved the 1956 movie The King and I and thought it would be a great series. But after 13 episodes, the writers were out of ideas for the show and the crew hated its star Yul Brynner, finding him an egomaniac, so the cancellation actually was a relief for many participants.

The fourth book, A Critical History of Television’s The Red Skelton Show 1951-1971 (the publisher’s ungainly title, not mine), recounted the history of TV’s most forgotten successful series. The Red Skelton Show was a top 10 hit for more than half of its 20 years on TV, but because it hasn’t been rerun and its star held back most rights to put the shows out for sale on home video, a lot of misinformation has arisen about it and its history, and that’s a shame, given its considerable impact on TV. I talked to people who worked with Red, who died in 1997, and they loved doing the show, but did bring up his faults, such as his poor treatment of his writers and his “blue” rehearsals known as “The Dirty Hour.” There were the highest of highs and the lowest of lows in the story behind the series – I really enjoyed writing it, especially with it being my first narrative nonfiction book (the others were more encyclopedic in nature).

This entry is getting long, so I’ll tell you more in a later blog about my latest book on Emmy-winning nighttime TV series and the status of my next book, on Monday Night Football, when it comes closer to being printed next year As you might have already guessed, entertainment reference is my forte when it comes to writing. I don’t know why, I just have a knack for retaining the information and felt I should use it for something worthwhile. Reviews for the books have been mostly positive and sales have been decent, so I guess I’ve done something right.

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