Old Ironclads

Designing to appeal most to the most, NBC has discovered a somewhat ultimate weapon. Ram a Hollywood movie into prime time; fire one, fire two, and pom--the nearest enemy network goes down without a bubble.

CBS, for example, has been cruising along in the early part of Monday evenings, comfortably ahead of all opposition with To Tell the Truth, I've Got a Secret, The Lucy Show and The Danny Thomas Show. NBC was running a poor third with It's a Man's World and Saints and Sinners. It was TV show against TV show, and CBS was tops.

So NBC rolled in the big cannon: a new series called Monday Night at the Movies. The first show, with Robert Mitchum, was The Enemy Below (1957), the superbly worked out battle between a U.S. destroyer-escort skipper and the captain of a Nazi submarine fathoms beneath him.

With that one movie, NBC blew CBS out of the water, and of course ABC too, which had been doing fairly well in the same hours with The Dakotas, The Rifleman and Stoney Burke. The following week, as Gregory Peck went out manhunting in 20th Century-Fox's The Bravados (1958), CBS lost again. Then the next week Mitchum was back in Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (1957). The mere thought of Mitchum now starts small fires at CBS. NBC's Hollywood movies were obviously as superior to CBS's TV shows as the old ironclads were to the wooden gunboats.

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