Ladies' Night

First there was a long eulogy of George Bernard Shaw, then a passage from Euripides, finally a leisurely talk with Guest Pamela Brown (the leading woman of Fry's The Lady's Not for Burning) about a ghost in London's Drury Lane Theater. With these ingredients, and a background of German lieder played on a guitar, Actress Lilli Palmer (currently starring with husband Rex Harrison in Broadway's Bell, Book and Candle) last week began a new TV show over Manhattan's station WCBS-TV (Thurs. 6:45 p.m.).

In joining the bevy of women who are gradually taking over television by night as well as by day, German-born Lilli Palmer, 29, broke most of the rules laid down by TV's other success girls. Vivacious, pun-popping Arlene Francis, with her Blind Date, exploits the callow conversations of college boys and tittering models. Plump, pretty Eloise McElhone employs the standard feminine TV equipment of an indefatigable smile, a capacity for continual astonishment ("Is that so?" "You don't say!"), and the ability to talk endlessly about nothing. Willowy, fashion-plated Maggi McNellis, with Leave It to the Girls, represents the loftiest intellectual flights previously achieved by TV women; Maggi's show features a panel of four intimidating ladies in low bodices, who alternate between badgering a male guest and solving such deep questions as "Can a romance that is dead be revived?" Newcomer Palmer, in crediting her audience with enough intelligence to understand dialogue above comic-book level, was challenging a brand of entertainment that TV men had thought just wonderful.

Lilli Palmer also blazed a new trail by wearing an evening dress that modestly covered her neck, shoulders and bosom. This was a precedent-shattering break from the tradition established by such rivals as Faye Emerson (known as "the girl who put the V in TV") and blonde Actress Eva Gabor who, last week, unquestionably won the neckline sweepstakes by assembling on her show her entire decollete family (pretty sisters Magda and Sari, mother Jolie) in a memorable display of dazzling shoulders and Hungarian accents.

At week's end, Lilli Palmer's gamble on decorum and literacy seemed to be paying off. The New York Times found her 15-minute show "completely beguiling" and Sponsor Pond's was hurriedly lining up other stations to put her show on the CBS network. Lilli, claiming to be "so relieved," admitted: "I was terrified I was just going to be another chattering dame on television."

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