"He throws her to the floor. She gets up. He knocks her down again. She kicks him. She stomps him hard with her foot and uses karate to toss him over her shoulder....Then Time out for Bible Study".
So begins Richard Warren Lewis' cover story, written some eight months after Miss Graves was baptized a Jehovah's Witness. Her trailer on set is noted to have a New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures and several copies of Awake magazine rather than the expected "Hollywood trade papers and dog-eared scripts".
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| Maybe this issue, from July 1974, was one of them |
Graves relates spending 100 hours per month (nights and weekends) pioneering for Jehovah, and her agreement with producers guaranteed her a 5 P.M. release once a week for Bible study along with a two day furlough to attend the sect's Dodger Stadium assembly.
It's too bad TV Guide is typically skimpy with the photos, as the only accompanying one is shown above. Still, we do get a thorough retrospective on Graves' career, with the star apparently time limited (or perhaps reticent) and co-manager Laura Brillstein filling in the blanks for Lewis. "She played the hippy-dippy girl on LAUGH-IN, but that's not Teresa". Indeed it isn't, Miss Graves is a non-smoker and non-drinker who lives with and supports her mother. (This would incidentally also be the case some 28 years later when Graves sadly perished in a house blaze; Graves' mother had recently had a stroke and was hospitalized and thus not at the home when it caught fire in October 2002.)
Manager Laura Brillstein keeps a scrapbook for her client, admitting that "in six years, I don't think she (Teresa) has saved a clipping". She also admits that "we have no immediate plans for what Teresa is going to do if and then this series is over". Further, "she has expressed no tremendous desire to be a superstar. If it happens, it is going to be in spite of Teresa". As it would turn out, GET CHRISTIE LOVE! would be her Hollywood swan song: a year after this issue was on the newsstands, Graves had already walked away from showbiz for good at age 27.
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| Teresa Graves in VAMPIRA |
One can certainly see that coming from reading Lewis' article. VAMPIRA (playing a titular creature) and BLACK EYE (as a bisexual girlfriend of the lead detective) are cited as two projects Graves had taken pre-conversion but would not have considered after it. Lewis himself notes the impact on her vehicle: "with the downgrading of violence has come a lessening of the show's original bite".
To further that thought, Cleveland Amory's review in this issue is POLICE WOMAN, NBC's more successful female undercover officer given a Friday time slot following SANFORD AND SON and new hits CHICO AND THE MAN and THE ROCKFORD FILES. Predictably, Amory isn't all that impressed with the show, but the review certainly describes the key difference between it and CHRISTIE succinctly. POLICE WOMAN has "so far given you either rape or prostitution every week, although once in a while, as a special treat, you get drugs!" Proving that POLICE WOMAN was giving the 10 P.M. audience wanted half a century ago, Angie Dickinson and the late Earl Holliman were off to a four year run on NBC. Meanwhile, the content restricted CHRISTIE was gone by the Spring of '75. GetTV has run POLICE WOMAN on weekends recently, though it is currently on hiatus.
This issue (mine is the Cleveland edition) contains a six-page TV Guide insert that you would only see in the heart of the Seventies: a Happy Hour Mixology with 45 drink recipes plus a Primer of Happy Hour Astrology! The picture makes it clear, this is your guide to impressing the opposite sex (and presumably, drunkenly getting it on after the Christmas party!).
Yes, you'll have all the answers when inevitably asked "What's your sign?"
And you'll have new fewer than 45 bartending choices, so your odds of being able to mix her favorite just got worlds better. TV Guide, giving you all your viewing choices AND helping you get laid for the holidays. But just in case you strike out (maybe you're just the wrong sign?) we've got TV listings for you too!
If you're not reading Mitchell Hadley's weekly vintage TV Guide reviews every Saturday at It's About TV, you should be. When he does an issue from the 1960's, he compares ED SULLIVAN to HOLLYWOOD PALACE; for his Seventies issues, we get DON KIRSHNER'S ROCK CONCERT versus MIDNIGHT SPECIAL every week. Following Mitchell's example, I'll do the same:
The Cleveland area has an embarrassment of riches at 1 A.M. early Saturday, first off. We have NBC's MIDNIGHT SPECIAL going head to head with not one, but two KIRSHNERs. Check it out:
MIDNIGHT SPECIAL gives us Tom Jones, Chuck Berry and....Kiki Dee??? Ok, two out of three ain't bad, especially when Tom and Chuck do a medley together. KIRSHNER 1 counters with Felix Cavaliere and Donovan; KIRSHNER 2 gives us Golden Earring, Bloodstone and Jo Jo Gunne. Neither is a bad option, but SPECIAL wins this battle hands down with two Hall of Famers. Having said that, check out a third option, WIDE WORLD IN CONCERT, going head to head with Carson an hour and a half earlier:
Kirshner created this monster, which ran on ABC approximately bi-weekly from 1972 to 1975, leaving it to go syndicated with the show bearing his name. And check out this powerhouse lineup with two Hall of Famers in its own right: Sly and the Family Stone? The late, great Minnie Riperton? And Rush, fresh off their first album? Easily eclipsing both Kirshner shows later that night, and it would create a dilemma if it aired at 1:00. It's likely that this was one of Rush's earliest shows with Neil Peart, who made his debut with the band on August 11 that year. Fortunately in this pre-VCR era, you can catch this at 11:30 PM and change the channel to MIDNIGHT SPECIAL right after for a phenomenal Friday night of concerts. And if you get lucky thanks to your newfound drink and astrology wizardry, you have some great music to make out to.
KIRSHNER might be beaten on Friday by the networks, but shows the power of syndication by having three additional cracks at it on Saturday night at 11:30, going head to head to head with himself on Channels 5, 9 and 35! We don't have a listing for Channel 35's offering, so if these two lineups don't float your boat you can take your chances with that one. Channel 9 offers Fleetwood Mac (pre-Lindsay and Stevie), Weather Report and Blue Swede (ooga chaka!) Channel 5's ROCK CONCERT counters with the Edgar Winter Group and Foghat. Suffice to say that no matter what your taste you could find some live music to your liking at some point on the weekends.
Speaking of multiple options in syndication, 1974 was a great time to be a GILLIGAN'S ISLAND fan living in Ohio.
Yes, that's GILLIGAN going head to head to head with itself at 4 P.M. on channels 6, 13 and 33, and channel 43 wisely avoiding the fray by airing its GILLIGAN a half hour after the chaos at 4:30! Better still, Channel 24 offered you a fifth trip to the Island at 7 P.M. each weekday! If you don't like MIKE DOUGLAS, MERV GRIFFIN or GILLIGAN though, your options seem somewhat limited. Though I could always deal with Charo in 1974:
You could too, admit it!
Getting back to our articles for a minute, it says something that Teresa Graves got the cover over two guys at the peak of their respective powers in December 1974. First we have Paul Newman, just a week away from hitting theatres in THE TOWERING INFERNO. His TV venture for the week is narrating The Wild Places for NBC, airing Monday the 2nd and spotlighting America's wilderness areas: a caribou range in Alaska, Utah's Red Rock Canyon and Minnesota's North Woods lakes among them. Newman likely had a tough go in the ratings against THE ROOKIES and GUNSMOKE though.
And second, John Denver, who got the plum spot of 8 P.M. Sunday night on ABC for his latest special, Back Home Again. Obviously, he plays that track, sings with guest Doris Day, and of course gets around to "Thank God I'm a Country Boy".
Dick Van Dyke and George Gobel help supply the comedy, and Denver gets his own showcase article indicating that many more ABC specials are forthcoming. Indeed there are, one or two annually through 1983.
Competing with Denver is the debut of AMY PRENTISS, yet another female detective making her debut in 1974-75. Jessica Walter has the title role in this spinoff of IRONSIDE (in its final season) and has a lot going for it: William Shatner guest stars in the debut and it is the newest spoke in the NBC MYSTERY MOVIE. Alas, both POLICE WOMAN and CHRISTIE LOVE outlast it: PRENTISS airs only three installments and is gone by February. All is not lost, though: Walter does win an Emmy for outstanding actress in a limited series, beating out Susan Saint James.
My Dolphins beat the Bengals 24-3 on MONDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL, but the one and only World Bowl, 1974's World Football League championship, takes place on Thursday night at 9 P.M. on Channel 61 with Jack Gotta's Birmingham Americans edging out Jack Pardee's Florida Blazers 22-21. The Americans led 22-0 going into the fourth quarter but a furious rally by the Blazers comes up a point short. Thrilling, no doubt, but I always hated the WFL for taking Csonka, Kiick and Warfield from my 'Fins and then folding. So I probably would do it like Pruitt and watch MOVIN' ON instead. You can catch it on Tubi and on ION network yourself in 2024.
Christmas specials won't kick into high gear for another week, but we do have Santa Claus is Coming to Town at 8 P.M. Thursday and Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus at 8 P.M. Friday, both on ABC.
My tough decision of the week comes on Sunday night, with a couple of choice reruns and a personal favorite film colliding at 11:30 P.M. Eastern. You get Buddy Hackett AND Steve Martin on a TONIGHT SHOW rerun. Even if Buddy can't be as hilariously blue as he would be on his HBO Special a few years later, it's still gotta be pretty great. Meanwhile WIDE WORLD repeats an EVENT from earlier (like I said, concerts on TV were incredible a half century ago) recorded during the legendary California Jam on April 6, 1974: Earth, Wind and Fire, the Eagles, and Seals and Crofts! Jackson Browne joined the Eagles, filling in for Don Felder (whose wife was giving birth). Just a fabulous lineup, arguably the best overall 90 minutes of live music in a week full of riches.
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| Marie Gomez (L) making the movie better, as always |
And yet, I'm considering a third option: RIO CONCHOS on Channel 11 because my girl Marie Gomez is in it.
And wrapping up this look at TV GUIDE a half century ago this week, I'll take it back to another childhood crush of yours truly, cover girl Teresa Graves, who remains "eternally optimistic" and quotes the Apostle Paul for her closing quote on her way out of Hollywood stardom: "For all things I have the strength by virtue of Him who imparts power to me." We certainly missed her on the tube in the years to come, but she certainly found something in life more fulfilling to her than superstardom.
Agent Brillstein might have been about to lose a client, but hardly seems bitter: "She's found something for herself, a very calm, controlled way of life. Few people can live that way. She's very lucky."
And we were very lucky she shared her talents for a few years before moving on to her life's calling. R.I.P.
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