$75 Million Package

With a blare of trumpets, a glitter of sequins and an outburst of romantic candles, television's most Spectacular season opened last week. NBC pronounced the summer prematurely over and raised the curtain on a season of high promise with a 90-minute version of the 1943 Broadway musical, One Touch of Venus. Janet Blair had the tiptoe grace required of a goddess awakened after slumbering for thousands of years in marble; Kurt Weill's pleasant music occasionally gave the show levitation; Russell Nype and George Gaynes struggled bravely against the shackling grasp of the heavyhanded plot. But Venus underlined the fact that once a Broadway musical is robbed of its racy dialogue and incident, there is little left to put on TV.

Very quickly, the season's opening stumble should be forgotten, however, in the torrent of big shows to come. The three networks are pouring more than $75 million into the next few months. The deluge will include some memorable repeats from other seasons: there will be, for example, another Peter Pan with the matchless Mary Martin and Cyril Ritchard. But there will also be new productions that ransack libraries, scoop in ballerinas, acrobats, actors, film and ideas from just about everywhere. Most favorites will be back. For the first time, the major Hollywood studios will be onstage or on cathode, shuffling for attention: after years of sulking, the movies have decided to embrace TV. The hug will approach strangulation, but until the oxygen runs out it ought to be the most fun TV fans have ever had.

ABC, in a strong bid for viewers' eyes, brings on The Mickey Mouse Club, a new companion piece to Disneyland, combining all the famed cartoon characters with live entertainment. Disneyland itself will be back with a new series about Davy Crockett and a science-fiction film called Man in Space. Wyatt Earp, billed as the first adult Western TV series, is aimed at achieving the quality of such films as High Noon and Shane. Warner Bros. Presents is an hour-long filmed show that will alternate adventure, romance and Western drama. M-G-M Parade will present shorts and film clips from new productions. Famous Film Festival offers 35 British movies, including such excellent ones as Great Expectations, Brief Encounter, Odd Man Out, Caesar and Cleopatra, The Red Shoes and Tight Little Island.

CBS breaks into the Spectacular field with 14 90-minute shows, starting next month with a Judy Garland production, to be followed by three Noel Coward shows, two musical dramas starring Bing Crosby. Ed Murrow's See It Now will include TV "profiles" of New York and Paris and a camera's report on Africa. Omnibus goes musical with Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates, score by Brigadoon's Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Lowe. Also scheduled: a documentary on the Renaissance by LIFE Writer Robert Coughlan, a comedy starring British Jack-of-All-Jokes Alec Guinness, The Battle of Gettysburg by Bruce (A Stillness at Appomattox) Catton. Victor Borge in two one-man shows, Jack Benny in three original comedies, and Julie Harris in A Wind from the South. CBS viewers will also get a new cartoon series made by UPA, the producers of Gerald McBoing-Boing and Mr. Magoo, the new Phil Silvers show, long film dramas by 20th Century-Fox, a weekly mystery show produced by suspenseful Alfred Hitchcock, and a new children's series, The Adventures of Robin Hood.

NBC has lined up more Spectaculars (some 75) than ever, and most of them will be in color. On the list: The Skin of Our Teeth, with Mary Martin, Helen Hayes, George Abbott; a musical version of Thornton Wilder's Our Town, with Frank Sinatra and Eva Marie Saint; Jerome Kern's The Cat and the Fiddle; Dearest Enemy, with a Rodgers and Hart score; a musical based on Heidi with Wally Cox and Jeannie Carson; Patrice Munsel in The Great Waltz; and Maurice Chevalier in a variety show. Straight drama also will get the 90-minute treatment from NBC. Jose Ferrer will put on putty for another re-creation of Cyrano de Bergerac. Eva La Gallienne will star again in Alice in Wonderland. Maurice Evans becomes a son of the American Revolution for George Bernard Shaw's The Devil's Disciple. Opera will range from Puccini's Madame Butterfly through a new English version of Mozart's The Magic Flute and Tchaikovsky's Eugen Onegin to world premieres of two new operas: Lukas Foss's Griffelkin and Stanley Hollingsworth's La Grande Breteche. Britain's Margot Fonteyn will dance in the ballet, The Sleeping Beauty. Ex-Ambassador Chester Bowles will give an hour-long report on India, and The Constant Husband, starring Rex Harrison and Margaret Leighton, will be the first full-length movie to be presented on TV before being released to movie theaters.

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