Independent producer Robert Saudek had acquired the rights to adapt President John F. Kennedy's acclaimed, Pulitzer Prize winning best-seller, Profiles in Courage, into an anthology series for television, dramatizations of the chapters in the book.
However, NBC slotted Profiles on Sunday nights at 6:30 pm (ET), which back in those days was an optional lead-in slot for the primetime schedule. Today, NBC has news at that time most weeks. Because of the early hour, and the fact that it would likely be airing opposite football during its first two months on the air, having launched in November 1964, viewers had trouble finding the show, which was cancelled after 1 season, and certainly deserved a better fate.
Here, Union College graduate Lee Tracy stars as second generation politician Robert Taft.
Rating: A.
5 comments:
Profiles In Courage is a special case, for several reasons:
- When the series was proposed, President John F. Kennedy was still alive.
Furthermore, it was generally known that he intended to run for reelection in 1964.
The November premiere date was set long before, so as to happen after the '64 election (whatever the result).
- Also: since Kennedy's book was specifically about United States Senators (which JFK was when the book was published), Bob Saudek determined that the field be opened up to include other figures from American history, from all walks of life.
John Kennedy personally approved all the real-life figures who didn't figure in his book for use in the series (a tag appears at the end of all such episodes; I know this because I've got a C2C DVD set).
- Also also: Following JFK's assassination, Saudek and the Kennedy determined that there would only be twenty-six programs to comprise the entire series - no more and no less.
So that's why Profiles In Courage only had the one season.
Of course, we'll never really know what would have happened had Kennedy not been killed: the determining factor was JFK's authorization of subjects for dramatization - the family held the authority to continue, and decided (long before Profiles even went on the air) not to do so.
In an earlier post, you wrote about The Great Adventure, CBS's historical drama series from the previous season.
I think of these two series as a kind of matched set; had either or both shows had greater success, we might have seen a trend of sorts.
Alas …
Part II:
I mentioned this at an earlier posting, but it seems to bear repeating.
In 1964, professional football was nowhere nearly as important on TV as it came to be a decade later.
As I said in the earlier comment, CBS had the NFL, NBC had the AFL (the merger was still a few years away), and there was rarely more than one regional game in any city on Sunday, usually ending by midafternoon.
That early Sunday evening timeslot (here in Chicago this would be 5:30 pm, Central Standard Time) was considered by the networks to be an extension of prime time - and remained so up to the early '70s and the Merger, when Pro Football became the Bookmakers Delight.
So much for history.
The merger was about six years away at the time Profiles in Courage was on the air. IIRC, after it ended its run, Profiles was replaced at least at one time by GE College Bowl, and when that ended, Wild Kingdom took its place, at least in my neck of the woods, because my folks & I watched College Bowl & Wild Kingdom.
A check of my reference shelf shows the following:
- In the '64-'65 season, Wild Kingdom, GE College Bowl and Meet The Press aired back-to-back in the 90 minutes before Profiles In Courage - here in Chicago, that would have been 4 to 5:30 pm, Central Standard Time, up to the end of Profiles's run in spring of '65.
The following fall, Wild Kingdom and College Bowl continued as they were, with The Frank McGee Report displacing Meet The Press to the morning hours.
At that time, the Profiles slot was split between NBC News Specials and The Bell Telephone Hour; the football incursion began slowly along about this time, abetted by pro golf and other such things.
Like, I was a toddler when Profiles first aired. I know College Bowl was gone around 1970-ish, and I think when Wild Kingdom went into syndication, the local affiliate kept it at 6:30.
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