As an Oddity at the Paley Center Proves, Even with a Low Crime Rate, Tourists Can Still Be Assaulted in New York There’s so much to see and do in New York - a walk through Central Park, a day amongst the roars of Bronx Zoo lions, the beauty of Lady Liberty calling for her poor and tired - but if one should like to see something truly incredible, something that’s nearly impossible to see anywhere else in the world, then a stop has to be made at The Paley Center for Media on West 52nd street where amongst its 140,000 hour collection of radio and television programming is an entirely curious footnote of American history called Turn-On. Offensive, mind-boggling, shrouded in mystery and lore, the program aired February 5th, 1969 and immediately earned itself the distinction of being the only television show to be cancelled before its first commercial break.To this day, nearly forty years after Turn-On’s concurrent premiere and finale, the show remains an enigma, a great whatsits in the annals of media and poor judgment. Some may contend that it was simply ahead of its time, yet if aired today this same program would undoubtedly draw the host of irate telephone calls ABC received in 1969. Indeed, it was (and continues to be) so objectionable that the management of ABC affiliate WEWS-TV in Cleveland fired a telegram to the parent network. ‘If your naughty little boys have to write dirty words on the walls,’ he wrote, ‘please don’t use our walls.’ The station also pulled the show mid-broadcast and replaced it with local programming, a decision that must have compounded the confusion of Cleveland viewers, for even with the Paley Center’s luxury of video rewind, it is difficult to absorb and process the content of the show. One simply sits at the console and asks, ‘What am I seeing?’ The creative team behind this comedy debacle was George Schlatter and Ed Friendly, producers that had struck pay-dirt a year earlier with Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In. Each week, millions of Americans were tuning in for Laugh-In’s sketches, blackouts, zingers, and one-liners delivered by the now legendary cast of Arte Johnson, Ruth Buzzi, Alan Seuss, Lily Tomlin, JoAnn Worley, Henry Gibson, and Goldie Hawn. Catchphrases such as ‘Sock it to me’, ‘You bet your sweet bippy,’ and ‘Here come the judge,’ flowed from the writers’ typewriters straight into pop culture, and Schlatter and Friendly earned millions in licensing. Thus, figuring if America loved one Laugh-In, it would surely love a second, and so they set out to create Turn-On. To be produced by Digby Wolfe, the program was to nearly follow the format of the lucrative Laugh-In – there would be the same blackouts and one-liners – only the pacing would be faster and the content racier. It is only posthumously, however, that Mr. Wolfe’s exact plan was made clear. In a February 9 Daily News Sunday feature about the explosion of sex on television, Wolfe is quoted in an interview obviously conducted before the show’s broadcast. ‘There is an unreality about television,’ he said. ‘As far as I’m concerned, there is nothing wrong with a scantily dressed young lady, or a semi-nude, just as long as what you see is attractive and in the bounds of good taste.’ According to Nielsen, Digby and the American public turned out to be entirely in disagreement over those boundaries; most of its reporting families had turned off the show even before its historic twelve minute cancellation. Introduced as the first show to be programmed by computer, Turn-On begins with two operators at an extensive console. Lights flash, buttons are pushed, and there the assault commences. Among the sketches:
Yet, to a modern viewer this would all still seem comprehensible. The incomprehensible parts are what come in between and during the sketches, for the show literally flashes across the screen with sometimes two or three bits simultaneously competing for airtime. A cat puppet randomly enters the fore to watch the proceedings. Sketches are interrupted by animated airplanes hauling signs like ‘The Amsterdam Levee is a Dike’ or by sign-toting cartoon cross-dressers imploring the public to ‘God Save the Queens.’ There’s a pan of the cast in full KKK garb, yet no joke is delivered, and actor Mel Stuart suddenly walks across the set counting on an abacus. Again, no joke is delivered. Is this next one-liner even supposed to be a joke at all: ‘Friends, science has proved that worry is all in your mind.' Who knows? Watching Turn-On, one becomes, like Kurt Vonnegut’s Billy Pilgrim, ‘unstuck’ in time, and there’s real empathy with the 1969 audience. What is this eerie sound pulsating throughout the shenanigans, it has to be asked. It’s a Moog synthesizer creating a wholly ungodly racket for a public wholly unfamiliar with the sound. Wrote Newsday columnist Barara Delatiner in her next-day review, ‘The no-nonsense is accompanied by strange electronic sounds. Bubblings and gurglings. Beepings and boppings. Either the noise is background music of the electronic kind or somebody is trying to tell us something. I think I got the message. Turn-off.’ Today, it’s easy to argue that an unenlightened 1969 America still had too many sexual hang-ups to be anything but opposed to Turn-On, but prescinding the terribly unfunny content, without a doubt, it still remains offensive. Comedian Tim Conway has always joked that he was ‘proud’ of his association with the show and its place in broadcast history, but while it’s generally believed he was a full cast member, the fact is he was only the guest host for the first episode, and it is Robert Culp that hosts the unaired second episode. At the Paley Center, both episodes can be screened, and both need to be screened to understand exactly how offensive Turn-On is. For example, in a bit sure to doubly enrage today’s viewers, a woman seeking advice for the lovelorn is urged to wear revealing clothing and frequent areas where she’d have a chance of being sexually assaulted, but the most offensive and bizarre bit by far is a one-liner that comes with a pencil sketch of a Star of David talking to a monk. In a high-pitched voice the star says, ‘Tell them we’ll forget about Auschwitz if they reduce the charge against us to manslaughter.’ Huh? Did we hear that correctly? Rewind! Rewind! Though legend has it that Turn-On’s appearance caused a public uproar to the degree of Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction, the lack of coverage by New York newspapers in the days that followed (a mention or two about the flood of calls to ABC) suggests that Turn On’s assault was more like that of a bewildering dream. In an era when America was more concerned about the war, picketing, strikes, and rioting, it seems it didn’t need to dwell on the questionable effects of a one-shot television show for weeks on end. The show had aired, the people had spoken, and it was time to move on. As such, Turn-On simply went on to become another American oddity, one lost amongst the 140,000 hours of programming to be found at the Paley Center. Should a curious tourist find himself with nothing to do on West 52nd Street, ten bucks pays for a one hour assault. - Jack Newcastle |
