The Week in Review

Except for the elections (see above), last week was most notable for three returning shows and an off-screen squabble. Du Mont's second-highest rated program, Life Is Worth Living (the first: professional football), again featured Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, resplendent in his ecclesiastical robes and as pontific in gesture and incisive in speech as before. There were some additions: 1) a new set, giving the appearance of a paneled, tile-floored room, 2) a new statue of the Virgin Mary that was conceived and commissioned by the bishop and introduced as "Our Lady of Television," 3) a new blackboard gimmick, which, instead of last year's "angel," who hastily erased when Bishop Sheen walked to another part of the stage, now uses a system of sliding panels that permits quick removal of a chalked-up board and its replacement with a fresh one.

Bishop Sheen spoke on the "Psychological Effects of the Hydrogen Bomb" and, as usual, tempered the ominous parts of his message with a sprinkling of jokes and puns. The bishop also scored a partial triumph over his sponsor, Admiral Corp., which last summer announced that the show would be limited to some 60-odd stations. Bishop Sheen countered by promising his fans that he would be seen on "close to 200 stations." His opening show was carried by 126 stations, and at week's end Du Mont reported that the number had reached 144.

NBC began the sixth year of its outstanding TV Opera series with a capable colorcast of Mozart's Abduction from the Seraglio; it did even better with the returning cultural show, March of Medicine. Produced by Smith, Kline and French Laboratories in cooperation with the American Medical Association, March of Medicine opened with an unprecedented trip by TV cameras to New York's Hudson River State Hospital, for a study of the care and treatment of the mentally ill. Viewers are likely to remember for a long time the shots of patients on the lawns and benches of the hospital grounds. No faces were shown, but none needed to be, for there was overwhelming pathos in the pictures of patients' hands either plucking nervously at grass or gripped together in numb despair.

The off-camera crisis racked the Buick-Berle Show. Tiny Ruth Gilbert (Mrs. Emanuel Feinberg), who plays Max, a secretary madly in love with Milton, is scheduled to have a real-life baby in February. Unfortunately, as one of the show's producers puts it, "she looks as if she's going to have it today." Since her comic line is that she passionately wants to marry Berle, her pregnancy presented a problem that has, so far, been avoided only by keeping her seated at a desk. Berle's writers suggested that she be written out of the show until she has her baby. Ruth objects because, "I've been told that if I'm off the show too long, I would lose my value for coming-back purposes." An actor can be barred for physical disfigurement but, asks a lawyer: "Is pregnancy that kind of disfigurement?" Possible solution: arbitration that will enable Ruth Gilbert both to have her baby and some of her $1,500-a-week salary.

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