Where Have You Gone, Mr. Slattery? (Part Two)

In part two, guest blogger Dr. Joseph Harder continues his look at the 1960s CBS political drama Slattery's People. (Read part one)

In late December 1964, newspapers began running stories that CBS was considering canceling Slattery's People. The resulting criticism, not just from television critics but from the general public as well, was exceptional. CBS programming head Michael Dann said at the time that the network had never seen so much mail accumulate on behalf of a TV series. Hollywood gossip columnist Hedda Hopper, who loved the show, urged readers to write CBS. However, even more important for the show's future, a power struggle was taking place inside CBS, and thereby hangs a tale. 

Someone should do a Mad Men—like show about television in the sixties. There is only one problem: there would have to be a character based on James T. Aubrey, Jr. (pictured below). Aubrey was so incredible in real life that any fictional version would probably seem tame in comparison. The "Smiling Cobra" was a brilliant, hard-working, Princeton-educated, vulgar, Machiavellian, abrasive, and ruthless philistine, whose stated formula for successful television was "Broads, boobs, and fun." He had a knack for picking hit shows—and canceling those he deemed "too highbrow." He disliked Slattery's People as much as he had disliked East Side/ West Side, The Great Adventure, and The Defenders. Aubrey had made CBS the unchallenged king of the Nielsen ratings, but had made many enemies in the process. In addition there were lurid rumors about his private life. In February, the stunning news came that Aubrey had resigned as head of CBS (to be precise, he was "persuaded" to resign) , and that he had been replaced by the obscure John T. Schneider, a far more low-key personality. CBS president Fred Stanton stated that the network wanted to go in a different direction from the one charted by Aubrey. 

Aubrey's downfall, coupled with the public outcry, helped lead to the renewal of Slattery's People (the network had planned to replace it with Coronet Blue, which wound up premiering in 1967). However, the network mandated several changes designed to make the show more "viewer friendly." To begin with, Slattery would now have a first name: Jim. In addition, the theme music would be changed, to something less dissonant. Matthew Rapf was replaced as producer, giving way to Irwin Elfman (though Moser and Crenna remained the show's guiding spirits). Instead of being phrased as questions, most of the episode titles would now be short, punchy, declarative statements. However, the biggest changes were in the show's cast. 

Though Richard Crenna had clearly been the star of the first season, he was backed by a solid supporting troupe. A then little-known actor named Ed Asner  portrayed the skeptical but principled newspaperman Frank Radcliffe. Veteran character actor Tol Avery was cast as Slattery's friendly adversary, House Speaker Bert Metcalf. Slattery's middle-aged secretary, B.J. Clawson, was played by Maxine Stuart, from the Twilight Zone episode "The Eye of the Beholder." Finally, Slattery had a young aide, Johnny Ramos, portrayed by a then-promising-but-now-largely-forgotten actor named Paul Geary (note the Hispanic name; Slattery's People was, among other things, a pioneering show in terms of giving good roles to blacks and Hispanics). Though Asner and Avery were retained for the second season, Stuart and Geary were let go. Slattery now had a younger (and sexier) secretary, Wendy Wendkowski, played by Francine York (pictured right), and a more dynamic (and more obviously Hispanic) aide, Mike Valera (Alejandro Rey). Finally, Slattery was given a steady girlfriend—in the first season, his little black book had been populated by women played by such actresses as Barbara Eden, Joan Blackman, Sally Kellerman, and Elizabeth Allen. Now there was just one: TV anchorwoman Liz Andrews (Kathie Browne, [pictured left] who in 1969 married actor Darren McGavin). 

However, two things did not change: Slattery's People continued to draw much critical  praise, and to tackle controversial issues. "The Unborn," for instance, dealt with abortion (though Moser was a devout Catholic—and the first winner of the Gabriel Award from the Academy of Catholic Broadcast Professionals for "creating shows that uplifted the human spirit"—there was nothing sectarian about the show). Most notably, in the Emmy-nominated "Rally Around Your Own Flag,  Mister," Slattery sent an undercover agent, Stu Burns (Warren Oates), to infiltrate a John Birch–style vigilante group led by a retired admiral (Lloyd Nolan).

Sadly, another thing remained unchanged: the ratings. CBS programmers insisted on keeping the show in its old time slot, opposite The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and The Jimmy Dean Show. The former, especially, was a runaway hit, particularly among younger viewers. This author still remembers how, as a seven-year-old, he would thrill to the adventures of Napoleon Solo and Ilya Kuryakin, and how puzzled he was by his mother's sorrow that he wasn't watching another show. Somehow, despite the bushels of fan letters CBS received on the show's behalf, Slattery's People's Nielsen numbers indicated that nobody was watching. After thirteen episodes, Slattery's People was off the air for good, replaced by The Trials of O'Brien, starring Peter Falk.

Slattery's People, and those associated with it, had an interesting afterlife. Crenna finally won recognition as a serious dramatic actor, as the sucesse de estime that was Slatttery's People soon helped him win complex, meaty, roles in such films as Wait Until Dark and The Sand Pebbles.  Moser created another failed television show, O'Hara, U.S. Treasury, and wrote many excellent scripts for the acclaimed religious anthology show Insight. Ed Asner went on to appear in several television shows more famous than Slattery's People (in fact, Crenna directed his old friend in an episode of Lou Grant).

And what of Slattery's People itself? To say that it has been "forgotten" is an understatement. It is barely mentioned in most histories of television. The Encyclopedia of Television has no entry on it (nor on Moser or Crenna, for that matter) [Slattery's People does have an entry in Total Television, ed.]. It was rerun in many foreign countries in the seventies, sometimes under the auspices of the United States Information Agency, which thought it would help explain American democracy. The Canadians even came up with their own show about a crusading legislator, Quentin Durgens M.P., starring Gordon Pinsent, in 1966. A graduate student at the University of North Carolina named Susan Keith-Lucas wrote a master thesis on Slattery's People, but it dealt only with the first season. (Moser had CBS send her the scripts). The script for the pilot episode, "What is Truth?" can be found in its entirety in an excellent book by Coles Trapnell called Teleplay: An Introduction to Television Writing, available in most college libraries. However, other than that, Slattery's People lives almost entirely in the memories of people fifty and older. Trio never got around to running it as one of their "brilliant but canceled" shows, while as far as TV Land, Retro, and Antenna are concerned, it might as well not exist. A few specialized archives have a couple of episodes, and The Jesse Unruh Center at The University of Southern California shows the pilot every year as part of a teaching seminar for state legislators.

I had heard about Slattery's People for years, in a fragmentary way. Everything I had heard had been excellent. Anyone who bothered to mention it regarded it as an exemplary instance of what television could be, at its best. Finally, a few years ago, I managed to obtain two episodes, "Do You Remember The Dark Sins of Youth ?" (guest-starring Michael Constantine, Arthur Hill, Steve Ihnat, and Joan Blackman) and "When Do They Hang the Good Samaritan?" (with Barbara Eden and Claude Akins), which I often show to my political science students. Most of them are highly impressed (and voice amazement that it is not on DVD), though a few of the younger ones object to watching anything in black and white. All thirty-two episodes remain in the vaults at CBS, in God knows what condition. The Tiffany Network apparently has little interest in releasing Slattery's People or any of their other forgotten classics, on DVD. To paraphrase a more famous television show, there are at least a thousand stories in the annals of network stupidity, and this has been one of them.