ABC, The Untouchable(s) Network

 

The American Broadcasting Company wasn’t like the first Big Two networks, both founded in the mid-twenties by pioneers of national radio. A funny thing about ABC: Time and time again, whether on the air or in real life, its history involved Washington hearings and federal task forces of one sort or another. FDR’s “new deal” Department of Justice ruled that the NBC radio network was too dominant, and needed to be broken in two. The lesser part, the Blue Network, soon to be renamed ABC, was spawned by court order in 1943 after five years of federal litigation.

By the laws of the time, the Feds had a point: NBC had so many affiliated radio stations, often competing with themselves in so many overlapping markets, that AT&T engineers needed red and blue pencils to trace the wires connecting them. The red pencils mapped out NBC’s main network, the archrival of the Columbia Broadcasting System. Blue was the next tier down in prestige and audience size, a network for up-and-coming or fading talent. The Blue Network was packaged for divestiture, as the US government demanded. It sold to Edward Noble, who made his multimillions from Life Savers candy. He immediately made plans to get into television.

ABC radio was relatively late to TV, opening five stations in 1948. CBS, NBC, and television technical pioneer Du Mont had all been operating since the end of the Thirties. AT&T was in charge of bringing the TV network signals out into the country, beyond their original homes in the northeast and Midwest. While ABC was still largely confined there, it had a surprising, if advertiser-less “hit” of a most unusual type. Democrat Estes Kefauver became nationally famous holding widely publicized Congressional hearings on organized crime in 1950 and ’51. Since some witnesses objected to being televised, news cameras, including ABC’s live cameras, focused on their nervous wringing hands while testifying, often a strangely dramatic sight. CBS and NBC didn’t air the hearings live, so nationally it was a boost to ABC.

Postwar America now had four television networks, but only enough national advertising, as It turned out, to support roughly two and a half networks. Du Mont was the first loser of this game of musical chairs, and left the TV network business in 1955. (It continued as manufacturer of TV sets and studio equipment, and retained ownership of five stations, which would eventually form the nucleus of the Fox Broadcasting Network.)

By then, cash-strapped ABC had a lifeline. It merged with Paramount Theaters in 1953, which had been separated from Paramount Pictures by yet another industry-busting federal anti-trust ruling. Theater executive Leonard Goldenson was made president of the reborn company. For most of the next twenty years, ABC—with fewer affiliates–would fight to catch up to its two big, better-funded rivals.

Up till then, the major studios refused to sell their films to television, or to make TV shows. The first to break the blockade was Walt Disney, not then considered to be in same league. ABC agreed to invest millions in Disney’s new park, which would open the following year. Disneyland, their weekly prime-time TV show, became must-see TV for anyone with children during those boom years for families. But Disney’s and ABC’s real breakout hit was a filmed show that played every weekday after school, The Mickey Mouse Club.

Also on weekday afternoons, the network began carrying a live program from its Philadelphia station called American Bandstand. 25 years before MTV went on the air, Bandstand was one of the very first television shows with teen appeal. Back in the wholesome era, there wasn’t the level of cultural contradiction between teen values and family values that would soon be familiar.

In the Fifties, the marketing wizard of ABC was Ollie Treyz, a tenacious and crafty bulldog when it came to convincing advertisers to buy. ABC’s evening shows focused on families—The Real McCoys (1957), The Donna Reed Show (1958). For decades to come, ABC, the network of Lawrence Welk and The King Family, would present itself to audiences, and more important, to advertisers as being a little more populist, a bit more politically centrist than NBC or CBS. The competitive weakness of ABC’s much smaller news division was, if anything, helpful to that perception.

By the turn of the sixties, their low-budget sports division, headlined by ABC’s Wide World of Sports, punched above its weight. ABC primetime programs usually had competitive ratings in cities where all three networks were available. Unfortunately for ABC, there weren’t enough of those cities yet. Too often, ABC was carried by less popular stations with weaker or more distant signals, yielding lower viewer numbers for ad selling. Strong popular programming could convince strong independent local stations to join ABC, and occasionally even win over an affiliate of a competitor, but it was a sluggish, decade-long process.

One of ABC’s vice presidents, a man who lived up (or down) to every interpretation of the job title, was James Aubrey, at the beginning of a meteoric showbiz career that would transform the fortunes of ABC, go on to do the same at CBS, and then eventually earn him a rare promotion to the then-Imperial thronelike job of head of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The now-forgotten Aubrey was a fascinating television programmer and a repellent character personally, practically the originator of “grab ‘em by the”… well, you know. To this day, you can look him up by his showbiz nickname: “The Smiling Cobra.”

ABC’s Leonard Goldenson was a quieter, more methodical strategist than his more famous counterparts at NBC, David Sarnoff, or at CBS, William Paley. He used his Hollywood connections to persuade Warner Brothers to become the second studio, and the first major one, to break Hollywood’s shaky blockade and produce shows for ABC television. Their late fifties/early sixties Warner shows were glamorous and suspiciously similar—77 Sunset Strip, Surfside 6, Bourbon Street Beat, and Hawaiian Eye. In fact, it was true: the studio frequently used the same scripts across their range of nearly identical shows, set in exotic locations but filmed on the same Burbank lot.

By 1959, James Aubrey decided that the likes of The Donna Reed Show wasn’t going to be enough to pull even with CBS and NBC. He bought a pilot film from Desilu, a TV company fronted by Lucille Ball, and largely run by Desi Arnaz. Based on the recent memoirs of a prohibition enforcement agent named Elliot Ness, The Untouchables would affect ABC’s public image, not in a good way. But this one hit was big enough to transform the network’s financial prospects for the better, almost magically.

It would soon become the focus of yet another set of Washington hearings, this time as TV’s prime example, its poster boy of potentially harmful, pointedly immoral TV violence. Backlash to that era led to legislative and network-directed change.

There had been violent TV shows before. Westerns were gun-happy, though in a different era, distanced from present-day life. Cop and detective shows were also quick on the trigger, and more violent than they’d been, not like early fifties hits Dragnet and Highway Patrol. NBC alone had Peter Gunn, M Squad, and The Thin Man. But there was something about The Untouchables that struck a nerve, both with mass audiences and with moral critics. Its style was different, colder, and darker.

The culture of the late fifties was heavily influenced by realistic, cynical postwar novelists like Norman Mailer, James Jones, and paperback king Mickey Spillane. The Untouchables was the first American TV show that reflected a touch of that sensational, sick wave of moral darkness.

The timing was right. There was an ongoing revival in interest in World War I, prohibition, and the Depression. The squarish black cars with running boards, the speakeasys, Tommy guns, and gangster clothes were “in.” The fad for The Untouchables was so big that ABC rushed two other shows set in that period onto the air, Roaring Twenties and Margie.

The show’s timelines were always vague, jumping randomly between the years of prohibition and repeal. The October 1931 conviction of Al Capone, which you might think would be the climax of the show, took place in the first minute of the first episode. The scripting was better than average, and so were the guest stars. Bruce Gordon, who played Nitti, became everyone’s pinstriped image of a bootlegger and gangster.

The show’s first public relations crisis came from incensed Italian-Americans, none too thrilled with the historically correct, but offensively prominent Italian names of Ness’ usual opponents. An awkward situation. Desilu quickly added a brave young Italian who stood up to the mob and was rewarded with a place on Elliot Ness’s Untouchables squad. A few scripts did manage to find villains whose last name didn’t end in a vowel.

The world of Elliot Ness was a strict one. “I don’t make deals,” and he meant it. This uncorruptible federal agent worked in a threadbare office where it always seemed to be the middle of the night. A coffee pot was always on. Desilu was not a rich studio, so the streets of the Forty Acres back lot could only look so much like Chicago in 1931, but they made do. Generally, you only ever saw the street anyway when there was a Duesenberg racing along it, mowing down pedestrians with a spray of bullets.

In its day, The Untouchables was widely considered the most violent show on TV. Almost every episode featured big shootouts carried to the level of a Zucker brothers parody. Opposition to television sex and violence, particularly from parents and clergy, was beginning to bubble upwards.

The intro of almost every episode sets up an act of violence against an innocent person: a crippled newsboy, a movie theater manager, a restaurant owner. It usually happened off-screen, and by the end of the episode, the law usually (though not always) caught up with the perpetrator. But whatever the judicial punishment later, they acted with cold, inhuman impunity. They enjoyed it. This was, to put it mildly, something new for TV.

Newton Minow, the new Kennedy administration’s FCC chief, blasted network TV as a “vast wasteland.” When Congress started grilling network chiefs about excessive violence, NBC and CBS hid behind their polished images of responsibility and public service. But upstart ABC, with less public goodwill to lean on, was cut loose to face the hearings. They were under the gun, so to speak.

Clearly, times were changing, so ABC and Desilu retooled The Untouchables, taking some of the sting, and some of the shine, from the show. The opening credits now open like a history book, titled “The Untouchables 1929-1933.” There were still shootouts, but briefer ones, rationed two per show. The sadism and shock factor was dialed down. A female social worker became an occasional character, and more plots dealt with crime’s victims, the widows and orphans that the Mob created. These changes made it a more honest, less sensationalistic show, but it lost some of its gritty appeal and ended after four seasons. It outlived the fad that it had created.

Next Week, Part 2: ABC finally hits it big, with talent as varied as Adam West, Tom Jones, Howard Cosell, The Fugitive, The Avengers, Marcus Welby, and The FBI. A look behind the scenes: a summer ’70 job at ABC HQ when I was eighteen. The history of America’s rogue network, in color! Tune in next week, same time, same website!

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  1. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    Quite the history.

    • #1
  2. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    Arahant (View Comment):

    Quite the history.

    That’s like Frank Sinatra saying, “Yeah, that’s a song”. Thanks!

    • #2
  3. Judge Mental Member
    Judge Mental
    @JudgeMental

    Gary McVey:

    Next Week, Part 2: ABC finally hits it big, with talent as varied as Adam West, Tom Jones, Howard Cosell, The Fugitive, The Avengers, Marcus Welby and The FBI. A look behind the scenes: a summer ’70 job at ABC HQ when I was eighteen. The history of America’s rogue network, in color! Tune in next week, same time, same website!

    As soon as you mentioned ABC Sports, I thought of Cosell.  But given I’m remembering the late 60s, they didn’t seem  like upstarts.  When I think of sports commentators of the era, they all have that yellow-gold blazer, with the logo on the pocket.

    Good stuff, Gary.  I look forward to part 2.

    • #3
  4. OccupantCDN Coolidge
    OccupantCDN
    @OccupantCDN

    American Bandstand – if only MTV would program music related programs again.

    The King Family sounds like the Partridge Family.

    ABC was a lot more innovative than the other networks – ABC NightLine was programed during the Iran Hostage Crisis, but then became a regular show… I am sure the network wishes they still had night line instead of Jimmy… I preferred to watch nightline over the other late night talk shows – I really didnt care for comedians and movie stars… At least night line was real. Maybe Night Line could make a comeback during the writer’s strike – news writers dont seem to be affected.

    • #4
  5. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    Judge Mental (View Comment):

    Gary McVey:

    Next Week, Part 2: ABC finally hits it big, with talent as varied as Adam West, Tom Jones, Howard Cosell, The Fugitive, The Avengers, Marcus Welby and The FBI. A look behind the scenes: a summer ’70 job at ABC HQ when I was eighteen. The history of America’s rogue network, in color! Tune in next week, same time, same website!

    As soon as you mentioned ABC Sports, I thought of Cosell. But given I’m remembering the late 60s, they didn’t seem like upstarts. When I think of sports commentators of the era, they all have that yellow-gold blazer, with the logo on the pocket.

    Good stuff, Gary. I look forward to part 2.

    As always, Judge, I appreciate your patronage. 

    I’ve always thought that the broadcast network blazer that James Garner’s character wears (temporarily) in Grand Prix (1966) was a reference to, or parody of, that distinctive TV sports jacket. 

    • #5
  6. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    OccupantCDN (View Comment):

    American Bandstand – if only MTV would program music related programs again.

    The King Family sounds like the Partridge Family.

    ABC was a lot more innovative than the other networks – ABC NightLine was programed during the Iron Hostage Crisis, but then became a regular show… I am sure the network wishes they still had night line instead of Jimmy… I preferred to watch nightline over the other late night talk shows – I really didnt care for comedians and movie stars… At least night line was real. Maybe Night Line could make a comeback during the writer’s strike – news writers dont seem to be affected.

     

    The production and marketing dynamo behind ABC’s Wide World of Sports was Roone Arledge. In the mid-Seventies, he took over ABC’s moribund news division and looked for opportunities to expand the News Division’s turf within the daily schedule. Nightline was one of his most successful programs. 

    • #6
  7. Jimmy Carter Member
    Jimmy Carter
    @JimmyCarter

    Gary McVey (View Comment):

    Judge Mental (View Comment):

    Gary McVey:

    Next Week, Part 2: ABC finally hits it big, with talent as varied as Adam West, Tom Jones, Howard Cosell, The Fugitive, The Avengers, Marcus Welby and The FBI. A look behind the scenes: a summer ’70 job at ABC HQ when I was eighteen. The history of America’s rogue network, in color! Tune in next week, same time, same website!

    As soon as you mentioned ABC Sports, I thought of Cosell. But given I’m remembering the late 60s, they didn’t seem like upstarts. When I think of sports commentators of the era, they all have that yellow-gold blazer, with the logo on the pocket.

    Good stuff, Gary. I look forward to part 2.

    As always, Judge, I appreciate your patronage.

    I’ve always thought that the broadcast network blazer that James Garner’s character wears (temporarily) in Grand Prix (1966) was a reference to, or parody of, that distinctive TV sports jacket.

    I first thought of Battle of the Network Stars.

    That was ABC. ESPN before ESPN was ESPN.

    • #7
  8. Percival Thatcher
    Percival
    @Percival

    Walter Winchell. That’s what did it. Walter’s typewriter delivery of the narration. The country had been hearing if not listening to the OG Uncle Walter for decades.

    • #8
  9. tigerlily Member
    tigerlily
    @tigerlily

    Percival (View Comment):

    Walter Winchell. That’s what did it. Walter’s typewriter delivery of the narration. The country had been hearing if not listening to the OG Uncle Walter for decades.

    Yeah, I agree.

    • #9
  10. OccupantCDN Coolidge
    OccupantCDN
    @OccupantCDN

    Gary McVey (View Comment):

    OccupantCDN (View Comment):

    American Bandstand – if only MTV would program music related programs again.

    The King Family sounds like the Partridge Family.

    ABC was a lot more innovative than the other networks – ABC NightLine was programed during the Iran Hostage Crisis, but then became a regular show… I am sure the network wishes they still had night line instead of Jimmy… I preferred to watch nightline over the other late night talk shows – I really didnt care for comedians and movie stars… At least night line was real. Maybe Night Line could make a comeback during the writer’s strike – news writers dont seem to be affected.

     

    The production and marketing dynamo behind ABC’s Wide World of Sports was Roone Arledge. In the mid-Seventies, he took over ABC’s moribund news division and looked for opportunities to expand the News Division’s turf within the daily schedule. Nightline was one of his most successful programs.

    So the same guys are also responsible for “the View” which has really become “THE View”. Arguably the worst show on TV – for cultural carnage…

    • #10
  11. James Lileks Contributor
    James Lileks
    @jameslileks

    Violent, you say? Check out the opening moments. Didn’t exactly require the services of a dialogue coach.

     

    • #11
  12. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    Jimmy “The Weasel” Fratianno claimed that he and a group of other mobsters were mad enough to kill Desi Arnaz. The story is disputed to this day, but there’s no question the show angered some of the “wrong” people. Eventually, the obvious truth occurred to them: assassinating him wouldn’t exactly help improve the image of Italian-Americans.

    In any case, the mobsters had a change of heart about The Untouchables. They decided they liked it. Until The Godfather came along ten years later, it was the top portrayal of gangsters in modern media. 

    • #12
  13. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    Percival (View Comment):

    Walter Winchell. That’s what did it. Walter’s typewriter delivery of the narration. The country had been hearing if not listening to the OG Uncle Walter for decades.

    It was a brilliant idea, and was one of the touches that made it more than just a crime show. That rat-a-tat-tat delivery made it feel like part of history. Sometimes the narration was exceptional. 

    “The Otto Frick Story” was about a chain of traveling carnivals that surreptitiously spread narcotics around the midwest, with drugs supplied by the Nazis, who used the profits to recruit. Okay, not the usual Untouchables plot, but if it was far-fetched, it was well written and effective. It ends with the slimiest Nazi dead, backstage at a Madison Square Garden rally for the Bund. 

    I can’t remember it verbatim, but Winchell ends with, “They’d suffer total loss in a world war, but the loud voices of hatred continue to echo. And you can still hear them–if you listen”. 

    • #13
  14. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    Nelson Riddle was a busy man back then. That same year he had two new TV themes on the air, Route 66 and The Untouchables, which needless to say didn’t sound remotely alike.

    Thing about that Untouchables music: it’s distinctive and powerful–I bet you can play it in your head while you read this, more than 60 years after it first aired–but nothing about it says “1930”. There’s no musical nostalgia for Chicago, that toddlin’ town; it’s not exciting and fast, like most action scores; it’s not even jazzy. Instead, it’s dynamic, staccato, then melancholic and bluesy. 

    • #14
  15. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    Robert Stack began his education in Europe and spoke Italian before he spoke English. He found it regrettable and rueful that he’d end up as TV’s #1 enemy of Italians. He often laughed and pointed out that the actor who played Nitti was Jewish, the one who played Rossi was Greek, the one who played an American Indian was Latino, and the whole outfit was headed by a Cuban–not exactly a Wasp supremacy setup. 

    Stack served in WWII. He was an expert marksman, one of the few actors who was as knowledgeable as the studio armorers providing the show’s weaponry. Stack was also a staunch Republican, friends with Fred MacMurray, another Hollywood conservative. 

    • #15
  16. Miffed White Male Member
    Miffed White Male
    @MiffedWhiteMale

    Gary McVey (View Comment):
    Robert Stack began his education in Europe and spoke Italian before he spoke English. He found it regrettable and rueful that he’d end up as TV’s #1 enemy of Italians. He often laughed and pointed out that the actor who played Nitti was Jewish, the one who played Rossi was Greek, the one who played an American Indian was Latino, and the whole outfit was headed by a Cuban–not exactly a Wasp supremacy setup. 

    Weren’t most of the Nazis in Hogans Heroes played by Jews?

     

    • #16
  17. Percival Thatcher
    Percival
    @Percival

    Miffed White Male (View Comment):

    Gary McVey (View Comment):
    Robert Stack began his education in Europe and spoke Italian before he spoke English. He found it regrettable and rueful that he’d end up as TV’s #1 enemy of Italians. He often laughed and pointed out that the actor who played Nitti was Jewish, the one who played Rossi was Greek, the one who played an American Indian was Latino, and the whole outfit was headed by a Cuban–not exactly a Wasp supremacy setup.

    Weren’t most of the Nazis in Hogans Heroes played by Jews?

     

    Werner Klemperer (Klink) had a father who was born Jewish, but converted to Catholicism, then back again. His mother was Lutheran. John Banner (Schultz), and Howard Caine (Hochstetter) were born to Jewish families. 

    Robert Clary (LeBeau) survived Buchenwald.

    • #17
  18. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    Miffed White Male (View Comment):
    Weren’t most of the Nazis in Hogans Heroes played by Jews?

    Yes.

    • #18
  19. Percival Thatcher
    Percival
    @Percival

    And Leon Askin (Burkhalter) was an Austrian Jew who got beaten up by SA and SS before he lit out for the territories in 1940.

    • #19
  20. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    The controversial, slightly disreputable air that its greatest hit gave ABC meant The Untouchables was also partly responsible for the loss of Walt Disney at the turn of the Sixties. Disney’s westerns–Davy Crockett, Zorro–had faded, and afternoon cartoons on local stations began to catch up to the Mickey Mouse Club. Truth is, both Disney and ABC had done very well in the Fifties, and very well out of their deal, but neither needed the other as much as they did in 1954. It was an amicable breakup. ABC sold back its share in Disneyland, at a considerable profit. Walt Disney wanted one thing that Leonard Goldenson couldn’t afford to give him quite yet–broadcasting in color. 

    • #20
  21. Jim Kearney Member
    Jim Kearney
    @JimKearney

    Gary McVey: Postwar America now had four television networks, but only enough national advertising, as It turned out, to support roughly two and a half networks. Du Mont was the first loser of this game of musical chairs, and left the TV network business in 1955.

    The deck was stacked against DuMont when the regulators decided against putting all broadcasters on UHF frequencies. Stuck with mostly UHF affiliates outside of the major markets, DuMont never had a fair chance with national advertisers.

    Later on TV sets were mandated to have UHF-clicking dials, but even then, no fourth network. A combination of factors paved the way for Fox, prior to John Kluge’s Metromedia station group being sold to Rupert Murdoch. 

    Regional spot advertising — national brands aggregating local avails to reach a broader footprint — grew on the sales muscle of their New York based rep firms like Blair, Petry and TeleRep. By the late 1970’s indie stations were being bolstered by strong off-network reruns, and competitive positions in early prime timeslots after the Prime Time Access Rule (1971.)

    In 1976, Al Masini of TeleRep (who had previously pioneered the individual spot pricing of TV commercials while at Petry in the 1950’s) put together a national coalition of independent and network stations into Operation Prime Time, offering studio quality miniseries on an occasional basis, an “ad hoc” network. Additionally Masini’s own production company launched Entertainment Tonight as the first daily live satellite distributed series in first run syndication, providing satellite dishes where needed. 

    Must carry rules requiring cable systems to include UHF indies had helped keep those stations in business in the late 1960’s. Masini’s innovations demonstrated their viability as an alternative platform for advertisers chafing at network prices . Then the deregulatory moves of the Reagan Administration in the 1980’s and the wealth generated by more off-network hits and more syndicated originals made it apparent, at least to Murdoch, that the pieces were all in place to challenge “the big three.”

    One of those off-network series which so strengthened local stations in the 1980s was the ABC hit Three’s Company, a show developed from a British series by Bergmann-Taffner Productions. Ted Bergmann, Executive in Charge of Production for Three’s Company, had formerly been the Managing Director of the DuMont Network at the time it was closed down.

    • #21
  22. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    Always believe content from Jim Kearney! A fine and relevant story. A still-unsolved mystery of early TV is, why didn’t Du Mont and ABC merge? It’s an interesting case where both sides of the suggested merger agree, yes, it should have happened…but why it didn’t is sketchy. It wouldn’t have solved the problem completely–there were overlaps that would have to be sold–but it would have helped.

    It may just be a case of the personalities and egos of the top executives involved. One or another of them is not going to be boss anymore, or in all probability, even employed by the merged company. 

    • #22
  23. James Lileks Contributor
    James Lileks
    @jameslileks

    Gary McVey (View Comment):

    Nelson Riddle was a busy man back then. That same year he had two new TV themes on the air, Route 66 and The Untouchables, which needless to say didn’t sound remotely alike.

    Thing about that Untouchables music: it’s distinctive and powerful–I bet you can play it in your head while you read this, more than 60 years after it first aired–but nothing about it says “1930”. There’s no musical nostalgia for Chicago, that toddlin’ town; it’s not exciting and fast, like most action scores; it’s not even jazzy. Instead, it’s dynamic, staccato, then melancholic and bluesy.

    A modern analogue: the theme for HBO’s Boardwalk Empire, which starts off with a mid-60s Rolling Stones-type riff. (Tells you Scorcese was involved, perhaps.) Has nothing to with the era, and it’s at odds with the show’s scrupulous recreation of the period.  

    • #23
  24. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    There’s a whole post somewhere in Musical Anachronisms. The farther back they are, the less significant they are. Nobody got on Kubrick’s case because Schubert didn’t write a certain piece of music until roughly 30 years after the end of Barry Lyndon‘s storyline.

    Closer to our own time, but still not very close, I’ve always wondered why the numerous subtle time-shifts of The Sting never got noticed. It’s a Depression-era story set in (IIRC) 1937, but everything except the cars reflect a much earlier period. The key artwork of the in-film intertitles and the official poster, in the style of George Montgomery Flagg, is WWI-early Twenties in look. The music, adapted from Scott Joplin’s rags, similarly cries out 1905-1922. BTW, so does the plot, largely taken from the 1900-1920 stories that make up most of The Big Con (1940). “The Wire” (in this early case) is the classic elaborate fake setup used by so many episodes of Mission: Impossible as well as the bookie joint in The Sting. Those schemes were much harder to pull off once radio came along in the mid-Twenties.

    It’s not a big deal. But it’s as if I were watching a show set in a forward-looking suburban town of 1970, and the clothes, music, and attitudes were a mixture of Guy Lombardo and Duran Duran.

    • #24
  25. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    Gary McVey (View Comment):
    I’ve always wondered why the numerous subtle time-shifts of The Sting never got noticed.

    All of the wrong things about Joliet, where it supposedly starts, were noticed. Trust me on that.

    • #25
  26. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    One smart thing about the way the show’s producer’s worked: they had a few modestly paid staffers (in a later period, they’d have been interns) who combed the card files of stock shot “libraries”, and screened footage of notable newsreel events of 1925 to 1935 or so. They’d jot down subjects and possible story hooks for the perusal of the Untouchables writing staff, just in case they came up with any ideas that involved the Dust Bowl, bread lines, labor riots, flagpole sitting contests, mobsters leaving Thirties courtrooms with hats in front of their faces, floods in the Midwest, Bonus Army marchers on the National Mall,  newsreel footage of words in the form of “chaser” lights wrapped around buildings on Times Square , F.D.R. SIGNS BILL—PROHIBITION ENDS—

    • #26
  27. Stad Coolidge
    Stad
    @Stad

    My history lesson for the day . . . thanks!

    • #27
  28. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    Stad (View Comment):

    My history lesson for the day . . . thanks!

    Pleased to have you with us, Stad.  The ABC Television Network has had an interesting history. Hope you come back for next week’s part 2!

    • #28
  29. Stad Coolidge
    Stad
    @Stad

    Gary McVey (View Comment):

    Stad (View Comment):

    My history lesson for the day . . . thanks!

    Pleased to have you with us, Stad. The ABC Television Network has had an interesting history. Hope you come back for next week’s part 2!

    But wait . . . there’s more!

    • #29
  30. Charlotte Member
    Charlotte
    @Charlotte

    Gary McVey (View Comment):
    a show set in a forward-looking suburban town of 1970, and the clothes, music, and attitudes were a mixture of Guy Lombardo and Duran Duran.

    I’d watch the hell out of that.

    Good post, as usual! Looking forward to part two.

    • #30
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