Thirty-second season

The temptation to sum up decades in culture has existed for quite some time, but it reached its first peak in the second half of the 20th century. Witness this week’s focus, a variety TV “spectacular” that CBS aired called “The Fabulous Fifties.” The show, which aired in January 1960, was directed by soon-to-be feature director Norman Jewison and Charles and Ray Eames (yes, the couple who designed furniture) and featured a bunch of segments about the past decade, ranging from the recounting of straight news events to comedy sketches and musical numbers. I discuss the show’s rather odd structure, its at-times stern demeanor (conveyed by hosts Henry Fonda and Eric Sevareid), and shameless promotion of CBS shows over those of the other networks (and Elvis as the one-person representation of rock ’n’ roll). But the entertainment portions of the program are memorable, thanks to the talent hired. Dick Van Dyke (a year and a half before his sitcom debuted) does a salute to popular Fifties dances, Shelley Berman gets put in a sitcom bag in a sketch about a father and son, Rex Harrison does a tune from “My Fair Lady,” and Nichols and May are wonderfully tongue-in-cheek in two sketches (a conventional N&H two-hander and a deftly-handled ad for GE refrigerators). Add to that a catalog of both famous faces and a necrology of the famous who died during the Fifties.