Gold Among the Boo-Hoos

by EDWIN O’CONNOR

ANYONE who happens to be a middle-aged woman in desperate financial circumstances, saddled with a large family of undernourished children, and wedded to a shabby, sparrow-sized unemployable whose ill health is rivaled only by her own, has fairly bright prospects: she is a natural for television. Any woman so equipped can, with little effort and no experience, become a star performer on “Strike It Rich” or any other of the half-dozen network television shows which are now regularly available to the public, and which have discovered in human misery the Comstock Lode.

The discovery was not a “television first.” Long before television came along, radio had learned, to its delighted surprise, that heartbreak was not only highly marketable, it was also dirt cheap. A handful of anonymous actors submerging themselves in a ten-cent wallow of tears: here was the beginning of the soap opera. Tears fell like rain and so, gratifyingly, did the operating costs, for radio soon found out that underlying the presentation of grief there is a great democratic principle: anyone can cry. No special high-priced talent is required for weeping.

Television did not discover cheap misery, although it profited greatly by the discovery. Week in and week out it presents such misery in ever-increasing amounts; in this sense it can, with justification, boast of being far more miserable than radio ever was. But the specific contribution of television to grief was to make it visible. This was the great drawback to radio grief: the public could hear the people crying, but it couldn’t see the tears. Television has remedied this defect. Now, when the mother explains to the sympathetic announcer how her little boy fell under the wheels of the passing car, the public can not only bear her, it can also watch her face.

Quite a number of women are invited to tell their troubles to announcers on television, for here grief is channelized into the quiz-program format: there are contestants chosen from the public before the program goes on the air: there is a master of ceremonies; there are questions: there are prizes, to be handed over once the contestant has sobbed for her supper. All contestants who appear on those programs have stories of misfortune to toll; each program becomes a study in competitive distress.

Yet while grief is plentiful on television, it does not become monotonous, for those in charge of the programs take pains to offer variety in catastrophe. On a program called “The Wheel of Fortune,” viewers were treated to a mixed diet of a small boy who had fallen forty-five feet off a railroad trestle and who, although injured, had not died; a telephone linesman who was badly burned after having been lashed by a broken highvoltage wire; a mother whose daughter had fallen into an abandoned well; a lunatic fox. Or rather, not the fox in person; just the fox’s picture, held up before the camera.

“Yes, this is a fox!” cried the master of ceremonies. “And what would you do if you were a little girl who was attacked by a crazed fox?”

The answer seemed to be that you would go on television. At least that’s what the little girl in question did. She told the master of ceremonies how the crazed fox had not injured her, although it had chewed up her little brother a bit. Since “The Wheel of Fortune” is also known as “The show that believes that one good turn deserves another!" the little girl was then awarded prizes suitable for one who has escaped being eaten by a crazy fox: a wrist watch, a hair dryer, an automatic washing machine, a fountain pen, hosiery, and many other desirable personal possessions. On these programs, no cloud is without its silver lining.

Yet the grief on “The Wheel of Fortune” is relatively mild, as television grief goes; it does not begin to compare with that offered by “On Your Account,” a daily program set in a mythical bank, whose slogan is: “Our greatest asset is . . . Friendship.” One hears a lot of talk about Friendship, Good Neighbors, and Helping Hands on most of these programs, the idea being that no matter how deep the hole you’re in, there’s always a Pal to pull you out. The Pal of “On Your Account” is master of ceremonies Win Elliot, who sets about being a Pal by handing each contestant a box of the detergent which sponsors the show, and inviting her to Tell All, as long as it’s sad.

Confession time on this program takes place in a cozy part of the bank; the Pal and his guests are seated in front of a large knitted sampler which roads, “ Friendship Corner.” Gathered in the corner with the Pal one afternoon were a woman whose only child had sot the house on lire and had died in the flames; a Korean veteran who could find no home for himself and his family; and a woman who had four adopted children, all of them mentally retarded. These guests told their stories in some detail; then, at the end of the program, just to make sure that no one had missed a vagrant tear, Pal Elliot recapitulated the story of each, while the camera focused full on the face of the troubled one. The prizes were then distributed: they are called “Friendship Dividends.” The Friendly Bank, as you may gather, is a mighty cheery place these winter afternoons.

“Welcome Travelers” is a program not unlike “On Your Account,” although it’s about twice as friendly for the simple reason that it has twice as many Pals. This show is directed by two masters of ceremonies, Bob Cunningham and Tommy Bartlett. Both are splendid examples of the Pal type. The Pal, by the way, is not quite like the usual master of ceremonies on television: he is graver and considerably less ebullient. Occasionally, faced by unbearable grief, he utters a sympathetic groan rather difficult to reproduce in print; a reasonably close equivalent would be: “ Gooowww! ” Thus; —

WOMAN: And so when my husband died I was out of work, so then I caught pneumonia, and then my baby caught it, and then our house burned down and all my life’s savings were in the piano and that burned too.

PAL: Gooowww!

The co-Pals of “Welcome Travelers” have plenty of opportunity to groan in this manner, for they specialize in the encounter with the pitiful. All interviews here are held at a table, over which hangs a huge box of the detergent which sponsors this program. Invariably there is an interesting assemblage of guests. “ This man’s story begins six years ago at the bedside of his dying wife!" says Pal Cunningham. The man then tells the story of how his wife died of cancer, following which he proceeds to the piano and plays a hymn that was a particular favorite of his dead wife. Pal Bartlett next introduces an army wife who has “experienced inhuman cruelty and the depths of despair.” Pal Cunningham returns with a set of middle-aged twins who are suffering from progressive muscular dystrophy; their story is brightened by an absorbing human-interest detail.

“By sheer coincidence,” says Pal Cunningham, “the disease has progressed at the same rate in both eases, so that both sisters were eonfined to their wheel chairs at the same time!”

It’s that long arm of coincidence which saves the situation every time.

Perhaps the most popular — and certainly the most available of all the television grief shows is “Strike It Rich,” which may be seen for a half hour every morning, Monday through Friday, and then again for a half hour every Wednesday night. Aware of the competition, it lists itself as “The Original Show with a Heart!” And indeed, hearts are all over the place: they are plastered on the walls; there is a telephone which is called the Heart Line, over which is suspended a great Heart which glows when the phone rings, promising succor to the afflicted.

The Pal on this program is Warren Hull, and a busy Pal he is, what with answering the Heart Line, saying hello to all the Helping Hands, and passing out giant-sized boxes of still another detergent to all the troubled contestants (on television as on radio, soap and grief have a peculiar and inviolable affinity for each other). After distributing the detergents, he is ready for the interview with the Brooklyn woman whose crippled son, having had four operations on his hip, is soon to be released from the hospital; he will come home to find his mother jobless and without money to buy food or clothing. The Pal moves on to a young Chinese artist, a polio victim who needs a new orthopedic brace and a long-overdue operation, but has the money for neither. Finally, there is a weeping woman, the mother of four children, who is to be evicted from her home at three o’clock that very afternoon. There is the possibility that the pathos in this situation may escape the audience. Pal Hull moves quickly: —

HULL: And your four little children, they’re in school right now?

WOMAN: Yes, sir.

HULL: And those little children, when they get out of school at three o clock, they’ll come running home, only to find their mommy on the street?

WOMAN (sobbing): Yes, sir.

HULL: Gooowww!

He is deeply moved, you see, as is everyone connected with the production of a grief show on television: the audiences who cry with the troubled ones; the troubled ones themselves, who arc given an assist out of their distress; the sponsors of the programs, for whom philanthropy happily coincides with increasing detergent sales; and, of course, all old Pals everywhere. There remain disaffected only those malcontents and irreconcilables who for some unfathomable reason feel that assistance predicated upon the compulsory exposure of private grief to public view is both tasteless and degrading, and that the whole chop-licking business is, from beginning to end, enough to make the blood run cold.