Talent on Approval

The summer TV season is not wholly a faded festival of reruns. Sometimes the networks use it to examine talent on approval, testing prospects for possible recall during the dark days of winter. The newest and brightest experiment of this type is CBS's Melba Moore-Clifton Davis Show, a slick, soulful variety series now subbing for the Carol Burnett Show.

Offering a combination of urbane musical comedy and hip ghetto humor, the hour-long program features two young black stars whose previous exposure has been mainly in New York theaters. Moore and Davis, offstage roommates for the past two years, are teamed up in a TV format built around their real life relationship. Portrayed as co-inhabitants of a New York brownstone (separated, for propriety's sake, into separate apartments), they sing and socialize in a roof-and-stoop setting with visiting guest stars who check in each week as temporary roomers.

What the show lacks in lavishness it makes up in talent. Melba Moore, 27, is a former Newark schoolteacher who broke into show business doing background dooo-ahhh's on Dionne Warwicke and Harry Belafonte records. Within 18 months of joining the chorus of Broadway's Hair, she became the show's first black female lead.

Deep Growls. In her second Broadway try, in the musical Purlie, she strutted away with the show, copping the 1970 Tony Award for the best supporting actress. At 5 ft. 4 in. and 100 Ibs., she is waifish, impish and has a voice that can shift gears from blues to ballads, from glass-shattering high notes to deep-down growls in one easy swoop.

Co-star Davis is slightly outdazzled, but he has his own engaging way with his lines and songs--which is only natural, since he writes some of each. (One of his earlier songwriting efforts, Never Can Say Goodbye, earned a gold record for the Jackson Five in December.) One of 15 children born to a Baptist preacher, Davis grew up outside of Boston, once cleaned hamburger stands for a living and, like Moore, got his acting start in a Broadway chorus. At 26, he is a star of Broadway's Two Gentlemen of Verona.

Comic relief is provided by a cast of four regulars, who make up a motley, multiracial sampling of the building's tenants: an Italian con man, a black superintendent, a fiery Puerto Rican and a jittery white liberal. "Quite on!" shouted the ersatz liberal in a demonstration of solidarity with Davis in last week's installment. "You know," he added, "I was the first to complain when they took Amos 'n' Andy off the air." It is a complaint likely to be echoed by a broader audience when the Melba Moore-Clifton Davis Show ends its scheduled five-week run on July 5.

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