ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, January 24, 1996 TAG: 9601250008
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: NEW YORK
SOURCE: FRAZIER MOORE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Flash to fans of Nick at Nite: Television didn't start with ``Mr. Ed.'' Or even ``I Love Lucy.''
Why, it even predates Milton Berle, who was christened ``Mr. Television'' nearly 50 years ago.
For the untold story not only of how TV used to be, but also how it came to be, just turn off the box and pick up ``The Box: An Oral History of Television, 1920-1961'' (Viking), a new book by Jeff Kisseloff.
TV history tends to reach back no further and go no deeper than fusty recollections that begin, ``Back in the '50s, y'know, television was live, and...''
Fascinating tales, sure, the first few dozen times. But ``The Box'' is about more than show biz and glamour and stage sets falling down in the middle of a telecast. It pays tribute to the plucky idealism that drove TV's real pioneers, most of whom toiled, unobserved, outside camera range.
Here are just a couple of witnesses from ``The Box's'' hundreds:
Art Hungerford, who cooked up a forerunner of Nielsen rating reports for NBC. In those days, who needed random sampling?
``Since we pretty much knew at the beginning where all the [TV] sets were, it was practical to send out cards to each of the viewers.''
Loren Jones, a retired engineer now in his 90s, who found diversion with his colleagues while tinkering with TV antennas on high.
``You're talking to a world champion here. I flew a paper airplane from the top of the Empire State Building. I followed it with binoculars, and it landed in Brooklyn.''
Broken into chapters both topical and chronological, ``The Box'' reads like a rich narrative of television war tales swapped among spirited vets.
``I tried to capture not what happened, but what was it like to be there when it happened; not who was there, but what were they like to know,'' Kisseloff says.
``The Box'' begins by introducing us to the late, great and largely forgotten Philo Farnsworth. A visionary who perhaps more than anyone is the true ``Mr. Television,'' he was already inventing TV when only a youngster, as his sister and widow recall.
The book ends four decades later, the year of FCC Chairman Newton Minow's barn-burning speech that summed up what TV had become.
The contrast is poignant: ``Farnsworth thought television would bring truth to the world. Minow said TV is `a vast wasteland.'''
A New Yorker who resembles ``NYPD Blue'' creator Steven Bochco, Kisseloff grew up with the tube and, he notes with pride, is the grandson of one of the nation's first TV dealers.
``But this book is about something more than television,'' he says. ``It's about the people who HAPPENED to be in television, the shows that HAPPENED to be on television.''
The author of an oral history of Manhattan, ``You Must Remember This,'' Kisseloff is clearly a believer in that form.
``It lets people have their voices,'' he says. ``The best way to get the story is to sit there with my tape recorder and let them talk, and stay out of it as much as possible.''
Living on a publishing advance that ``almost covered'' his expenses, Kisseloff spent six years compiling and editing some 400 interviews.
He spoke with veteran comic Jack Carter, Barbara ``Leave It To Beaver'' Billingsley, Dr. Frank Stanton of CBS, Hugh Downs, Tony Randall and director Arthur Penn.
Kisseloff was racing against time - ``people are dying'' - which makes his book all the more valuable. For instance, we hear from Harold Beverage, who, born in 1893, was one of RCA's original employees. He died three years ago.
Kisseloff got turndowns, of course. He says Mel Brooks wouldn't talk to him. Nor would Edd Byrnes (``Kookie'' on ``77 Sunset Strip''), who explained he didn't have any ``good antidotes.''
``Sid Caesar would have nothing to do with me, or Milton Berle,'' Kisseloff says. ``I don't care. They're not going to tell me anything new.''
Clearly, his heart - and the book's - are with the people who plunged into the fray not for glory or wealth.
Instead, what awaited them were a challenge, a miracle and fun.
Delicious stories, too. For proof, read ``The Box.''
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