The Busy Air

Television continued to make news last week:

P: From Madison Square Garden, the circus was presented in five three-hour telecasts. The Greatest Show on Earth turned out to be one of TV's greatest shows, with a smash Hooperating (67.2). There were a few missing ingredients (the color and smells), but the long-distance lens caught such unusual details as a close-up of Unus' one-fingered stand, the dazed expression on a midget bareback rider's face, an elephant's wink.

P: U.S. television got a new playwright when Gertrude Lawrence starred in a lavish Theatre Guild treatment of Bernard Shaw's Great Catherine. The Guild and NBC spared no kopeks to give the telecast an opulent, St. Petersburg flavor. Czarina Lawrence had a star-emblazoned court (David Wayne, Joan McCracken, Erik Rhodes, Micheal MacLiammoir), required six sets in NBC's big, new Studio 8G (TIME, May 3). Actress Lawrence could have claimed to be making, as well as re-creating history: ten years ago, in a telecast of Susan and God, she was the first big star to try television.

P: The New York Daily News's up & coming Station WPIX (to open June 15) solved its cinema problem for a year or so with a shrewd buy. For $130,000 the News picked up 24 of British Cinemogul Sir Alexander Korda's best old films, including such past hits as The Scarlet Pimpernel and Lady Hamilton.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.