Book Review: Who Was On First?

I've been researching, and reading about, television history, for a good many years. I know who played Mrs. Trumbull on I Love Lucy, who taught the lessons in Ding Dong School, and which CBS soap opera was interrupted when Walter Cronkite went on the air live in 1963 to tell us our president had been shot. But I still learned plenty -- and enjoyed doing it -- from Garry Berman's new book For the First Time on Television (BearManor Media).

This concise, thoroughly researched, and readable volume devotes itself to answering practically any question you could have about pioneering shows, stars, and technical innovations in broadcast history. Topics include sports, news, soap operas, and pretty much everything else the tube has to offer. Events both in front of, and behind, the cameras are covered. Berman is a meticulous researcher who sorts out the facts from the fallacies. Thought I Love Lucy was the first sitcom ever shot using a multi-camera technique? Not so. When the answer to a "first" question is open to debate, or difficult to clarify many years later, the author gives us all the available data and lets the reader draw his own conclusions.

Years ago, the great Groucho Marx (who had quite a successful video career himself) cracked that he found television very educational -- whenever someone turned it on, he went into the other room and opened a book. If you follow his example, you might try reading For the First Time on Television. There won't even be any commercial interruptions -- but you will learn about the first-ever TV commercial.

Book Review: Remembering the Perfect Fool

As a longtime aficionado of classic TV and radio, I certainly knew the name of Ed Wynn (1886-1966), but not much more than the barest outline of his lengthy career. That's been corrected now that I've read Garry Berman's Perfect Fool: The Life and Career of Ed Wynn (BearManor Media, $19.95). A slim volume at just over 200 pages, Berman's book is nonetheless a well-written, thoroughly researched account that restores Wynn to his proper place as one of the biggest funnymen of his era. 

Berman's book covers Wynn's beginnings in vaudeville, his radio stardom as Texaco's Fire Chief, and his popular Broadway revues such as Hooray for What! A clown in the classic tradition, Wynn's comedy was aimed at the masses, yet even highbrow New York critics were helpless to resist its pure fun. (For a taste of Wynn's comedy style, here's a YouTube clip).

Unlike many radio comedians, Wynn wasn't unnerved by the emerging medium of television; in fact, he was eager for it to arrive, and had been so since the early 1930s. He recognized TV's capacity to showcase his visual comedy, and undertook his first regular series, CBS' The Ed Wynn Show, in 1949, a year or so before even video pioneers such as Groucho Marx, Burns and Allen, or Jack Benny. He won an Emmy for his television efforts, and also gave a number of Hollywood stars some of their first exposure to the new medium, including Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz prior to I Love Lucy. In the mid-1950s, with his comedy style seemingly falling out of favor, Wynn took the advice of his son Keenan and launched a second career as a dramatic actor in film and television, giving impressive performances in Requiem for a Heavyweight and The Diary of Anne Frank. 

Author Garry Berman is extremely well-versed in not only show business history, but also the inner workings of radio and television in the 1930s through the 1960s, and this informs his writing throughout this fine book. You can visit the author's website at www.garryberman.com.

(No need for the usual disclaimer today - bought my own copy at full price, OK?)