The Silliest

The Sylvanias, Peabodys, Oscars, Grammies, Christophers, Tonys and countless other awards had already been announced. What could the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences do to make its own Emmy awards add up to something more than another collection of meaningless statuary? The obvious answer was to pick a few deserving winners carefully and present the prizes on a tasteful show. But this time television avoided the obvious. In a season dominated by dull shows, the three-city, 42-Emmy marathon packaged for the academy by NBC last week managed to stand out as one of the worst.

The medium that once saw Bishop Sheen and Arthur Godfrey nominated for the same award ("Outstanding Personality of the Year") had changed not a bit. The academy this time managed to match lightfooted Fred Astaire with Actor Christopher Plummer and 14-year-old Robert Crawford in the race for "Best Single Performance by an Actor." Winner: Hoofer Astaire. (Astaire also won eight other awards, exactly 27 lbs. of Emmys, all for his memorable song-and-dance show last October.) The catalogue of categories seemed endless. On and on it went, until one irritated critic was moved to ask: "Is there a difference between Best Western Actor with Black Stetson and Best-Dressed Cowboy Excluding Canes and Ruffled Vests?" Almost everyone agreed with Angry Loser Ed Sullivan (his presentation of the brilliant Moiseyev Dancers went without a nod), who came away convinced that the academy's 4,000 members had again turned the election into a personal popularity contest.

If there had been any award for work on the Emmy show itself, it would have gone to the cameramen and technicians--all NBC executives, and surprisingly competent. In all three cities the pros were picketing outside, fighting for their union's claims that the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians ought to work on all NBC shows, even when they are taped abroad. One result: Vice President Nixon turned up for the award dinner three hours before it started in order to beat the pickets to Washington's Mayflower Hotel and technically avoid crossing the line. But Nixon would have done better to avoid the whole business. The show was so dull and pompous that the cast hardly had the right to laugh at itself when Comedienne Elaine May gave a mock award to her partner Mike Nichols for ten years of "quietly, unassumingly, producing garbage."

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