“Later, in the 1960s and 1970s there would be many variations, most of them live rather than recorded: Dial-A-Shoulder, in New York, offering a sympathetic listener to any problem; Medicall in Chicago, offering quick medical consultation for a small fee; Operation Venus in Philadelphia, a free venereal-disease information service; Hot Line in Los Angeles, offering advice on personal problems to teenagers; and Dial-A-Joke, in New York, designed to make callers laugh at a recorded routine by a professional comedian.
“Today, these seem routine...but at the time they were a revolution—a whole new way to use the telephone.”
—Telephone: The First Hundred
Years, by John Brooks
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DR. WHO?
“Dr. Who” was the longest running sci-fi show in television history, and one of the longest running dramatic programs. Here’s the story of how the good Doctor came to be.
BACKGROUND. Before “Dr. Who” debuted, there had never been a family-oriented science fiction show in Britain. There had been a few radio shows, but on TV they’d all been strictly adult or strictly for children. There was no precedent for “Dr. Who.” No one had any idea it would become an overnight success. But it did—literally.
How It Started. It was 1962. The BBC was expanding its line of TV programs and wanted to offer a new Saturday evening family show that would be educational as well as entertaining. They called in two people—Sydney Newman (creator of “The Avengers”) and Donald Wilson (later creator of “The Forsythe Saga”) to come up with it. Newman wanted to make the program science fiction. Wilson wanted history. So they compromised and came up with a time traveler.
OK. Now what was he going to travel in? They wanted 1) a space ship that didn’t look like a space ship and 2) something cheap. It was originally planned for the device to have “chameleon circuits” that would enable it to blend in with its surroundings (in Greece it would like a column, in a field it would like a rock, etc.) Since the first story took place in London, the time machine started off looking like a telephone booth. An immediate problem: the budget didn’t allow them to keep changing it. So the time machine remained a telephone booth.
“Dr. Who” was an immediate sensation. For six years the writers got away without saying anything specific about the doctor’s origin. There were vague hints that he was fleeing from something, but that was it. Finally the producers needed an explanation. So they finally “revealed” that Dr. Who was a time lord from the planet Gallifrey.
INSIDE FACTS
In The Beginning. H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine was the source that inspired Sydney Newman, “Dr.Who’s” co-creator, to come up with his time-traveler.
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Bad Timing. The first episode of “Dr. Who” was aired in England on Nov. 23, 1963, the day after John F. Kennedy’s assassination. Because of the assassination, the BBC figured a lot of people had missed the first show (good guess), so the following week they showed the first episode again, right before the second one.
It Seemed Like a Good Idea. The original idea behind “Dr. Who” was serious. By having contemporary characters travel back in time and witness important historical events, the show could make the past seem alive to its young audience. Ratings of the historical episodes were poor, while the fantastic adventures in outer space attracted huge numbers of viewers.
Calling Dr. Who. The Doctor’s time machine, which looks like a police telephone booth, is called a TARDIS. The name is an acronym invented by Dr. Who’s companion, Susan. It stands for Time and Relative Dimension in Space.
Successful Transplant. “Dr. Who” was first sold to American TV in 1973. It never really caught on and it wasn’t until Lionheart Television syndicated it through PBS in the early 1980s with a different star, that the show really took off. All the PBS channels started carrying it. Then they started ordering newer episodes, with yet another star. That led to the resyndication of the earlier series.
DR. WHO’S ENEMIES
The Daleks. Mutated organisms living in mobile war machines, they have a “dislike for the unlike.” Anything that isn’t a Dalek shouldn’t be allowed to exist, so they kill everything in sight.
The Cybermen. Were human once, but all their bodies have been replaced by mechanical parts. Have no emotions and believe that, logically, they should control the universe.
The Yeti. Robots controlled by the Great Intelligence, an extradimensional entity attempting to enter our universe.
The Sontarans. Cloned warriors who live for combat. They’re fighting “an interminable war against the Rutans.”
The Ice Warriors. The only villains in “Dr. Who” who ever reformed. They’re Martians who left home and have returned.
The prosecution rests its case: Howard Cosell and Fidel Castro both have law degrees.
WHO KILLED MALCOLM X?
The film version of Malcolm X’s autobiography put this controversial leader in the spotlight again, 27 years after his assassination. But it also raised some interesting questions about how and why he was killed. Was it a government plot? Read this excerpt from It’s a Conspiracy!, by the National Insecurity Council, and judge for yourself.
On February 21, 1965, Malcolm X rose to address a largely black crowd in the Audubon Ballroom in New York City. But before he could begin speaking, a scuffle broke out in the audience.
In his book Seven Days, Alan Berger describes what happened next: “All heads turned to see what was happening...Malcolm’s bodyguards moved down from the stage toward the disturbance. Malcolm himself stepped out from behind the podium and toward the front of the stage.
“There was a muffled explosion at the rear of the hall and smoke...a woman screamed. A man in one of the front rows held up a sawed-off shotgun and fired into Malcolm’s chest. As Malcolm keeled over, two or three men were seen standing in the front row, ‘like a firing squad,’ pumping bullets into him. After he had fallen, the gunmen emptied their revolvers into the inert body.”
According to a 1967 article in The Realist, “All eyewitness reports of the assassination indicated a total of five gunmen had been involved, but only one, Thomas Hagan, was caught after he was slowed by a thrown chair and shot in the leg.” Hagan was a member of a militant religious sect—the Black Muslims—from which Malcolm had recently broken off. The following week, two more suspects (both Black Muslim “enforcers”) were arrested. All three were convicted and sentenced to life in prison.
BACKGROUND
• Malcolm X’s pilgrimage from street tough to international figure began in prison when he discovered the writings of Elijah Mohammed. This Black Muslim philosophy of racial separation and black self-reliance appealed to Malcolm, and when he was released from jail in 1952, he joined the group. He quickly became their most effective evangelist...and their most prominent spokesman. He was often quoted in the national press.
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• In 1963, while the country was still grieving the death of President Kennedy, he remarked that the murder was just a case of “the chickens coming home to roost.” His remark so incensed the public that the Black Muslims suspended him.
• Unrepentant, he quit the church in March 1964 and started his own group, taking so many Black Muslims with him that Elijah Mohammed’s followers vowed revenge. Malcolm repeatedly told aides that he had been “marked for death.”
• From the beginning of the investigation, the police and FBI assumed the killing had been ordered by the Black Muslims. The media echoed that official story. The New York Herald Tribune’s report was typical: “Now the hatred and violence that he preached has overwhelmed him, and he has fallen at the hand of Negroes.”
WAS IT A CONSPIRACY?
Many prominent blacks saw a different reason for Malcolm X to have been killed. Some suspected the U.S. government. Said CORE National Director James Forem
an in The New York Times: “The killing of Malcolm X was a political act, with international implications and not necessarily connected with black nationalism.”
A THORN IN THE GOVERNMENT’S SIDE
• In 1964 Malcolm X visited Mecca and Africa. He was greeted as the roving ambassador of an American black nation; he met with presidents, prime ministers, and kings. In Ghana, for example, he addressed a joint session of the Ghanian parliament—the first American to do so. Wherever he went, he encouraged African governments to speak out against American racism. He also reported that wherever he went in Africa, he was followed by CIA agents.
• In July 1964, he traveled to Cairo to address the Summit Conference of African prime minsters. There he introduced a program to “bring the American racial problem before the U.N. under the Human Rights provision of its charter, as South Africa had been.” (The Realist)
• A few weeks later, the State and Justice departments acknowledged that they considered Malcolm a threat. A spokesman told The New York Times: “If [Malcolm X] succeeds in convincing just one African government to bring up the charge at the United Nations, the United States government would be faced with a touchy problem.”
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• After returning to the U.S., Malcolm X continued to push for his U.N. program. In the fall of 1964, he spent most of his time at the U.N., lobbying African delegates to support his efforts. In November 1964 the U.S. intervened in the Congo Civil War. Malcolm X warned African leaders that if they didn’t speak out, “the same thing can happen to you.”
• They took his advice. During a U.N. General Assembly debate on the Congo, African delegates condemned the U.S. as being indifferent to the fate of blacks everywhere, citing as evidence the U.S. government’s attitude toward the civil rights struggle in Mississippi. The State Department reportedly blamed Malcolm X for its embarrassment.
• Friends and family were concerned that Malcolm X was taking a great risk by interfering in American foreign policy. He was under constant surveillance. His half sister, Ella Collins, said she had heard from reliable sources that there were even CIA agents in the group Malcolm X had founded, the Organization of Afro-American Unity. “Malcolm knew the dangers, but he said he had to go ahead.” (Seven Days)
• Just before he was killed, Malcolm X told his biographer, Alex Haley, that he no longer believed that the biggest threat to his life was the Black Muslim organization. “I know what they can do, and what they can’t, and they can’t do some of the stuff recently going on.” (ibid.)
SUSPICIOUS FACTS
In Cairo
• The U.S. State Department didn’t want Malcolm X to attend the summit in Cairo. The U.S. embassy in Cairo tried, and failed, to get the Egyptian government to bar his appearance. (The New York Times)
• The day before Malcolm X was scheduled to speak at the summit, he ate dinner at the Hilton Hotel in Cairo. Shortly after the meal, he collapsed with severe stomach pains. He was rushed to a hospital.
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• “His stomach was pumped out, cleaned thoroughly, and that saved him,” said an associate. “Malcolm said afterwards he would have died if he had not got immediate treatment.” Reportedly, a “toxic substance” was found, and natural food poisoning was ruled out. Malcolm suspected the CIA. (The Realist)
In France
• Two weeks before he was killed, Malcolm X was scheduled to address a conference in France, as he had on other occasions. But when his plane landed, he was told he could not disembark—the French Government had branded him “an undesirable person.” He was ordered to leave the country immediately.
• Three months earlier, Malcolm X had visited France without incident, so he was baffled by the expulsion order: “I was surprised when I arrived in Paris and was prohibited from landing. I thought that if there were any country in Europe that was liberal in its approach to the problem it was France.”
• After the assassination, a prominent North African diplomat approached an American journalist with information about the incident. “This official, who insists on anonymity, said that the French Department of Alien Documentation and Counter Espionage had been quietly informed that the CIA planned to murder Malcolm, and France feared he might be liquidated on its soil.” (Seven Days)
Firebombing
• Ten hours after Malcolm X’s return from France, four firebombs were hurled into his home in Queens, New York. It looked like a professional hit job, with bombs positioned to block all possible escapes. Fortunately the fourth bomb glanced off a windowpane and exploded harmlessly on the front lawn, allowing Malcolm, his wife, and their four children to narrowly escape. The house was destroyed.
• To Malcolm X, the timing of the attack could not be chalked up to coincidence: “It was no accident that I was barred from France, and ten hours after I arrived home my home was bombed,” he declared at a February 17, 1965, press conference.
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• Malcolm X announced, “We are demanding an immediate investigation by the FBI of the bombing. We feel a conspiracy has been entered into at the local level, with some local police, firemen and press. Neither I, nor my wife and child have insurance, and we stand in no way to gain from the bombing....My attorney has instructed me and my wife to submit to a lie detector test and will ask that the same test be given to police and firemen at the scene.” But Malcolm X’s hopes of pursuing this investigation were cut short eight days later.
THE ASSASSINATION
Police Protection
• Malcolm X had held meetings in the Audubon Ballroom many times before. Usually, there was a large contingent of uniformed police to prevent violence from followers of Elijah Mohammad. But on the day he was murdered, there were only two uniformed police officers—posted at the exit. (Seven Days)
• After the murder, New York Deputy Police Commissioner Walter Arm claimed that protection had been offered to Malcolm X, but that he had refused it. According to Alex Haley, however, Malcolm X had made repeated requests for increased protection, but the police had ignored him. (Seven Days)
Gene Roberts
• The police certainly knew about the threats against Malcolm X. His chief bodyguard, Gene Roberts—who was with him when he was assassinated—was an undercover New York City policeman.
• Roberts actually did his best to save Malcolm X. He attacked one of the armed assailants with a chair and chased him into a crowd. When the assailant was captured by the crowd, Roberts returned to give Malcolm mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
• According to Newsday, later in the evening, Roberts was called by his supervisors and questioned extensively. Why had he, for example, given Malcolm mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and tried to stop the gunman? “Isn’t that what I’m supposed to do?” Roberts responded. “I’m a cop. It’s my job to save people’s lives. What was I supposed to do...let him bleed to death?”
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• Years after the assassination, Roberts voiced his doubts about the integrity of the police and raised questions about a larger conspiracy. Certain events at that meeting seemed particularly suspicious to Roberts:
After the shooting, “people were trying to get medical help from Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital,” which was across the street from the hall. “It damn near took them a half an hour.”
No other policemen came to Gene’s assistance. “The cops were outside. None of them came inside.”
The Patsies
• Although eyewitness accounts suggest there were as many as five gunmen, only three were captured, and only one of those was actually apprehended in the ballroom.
• Gunman Thomas Hagan was shot in the leg as he fled the ballroom and was quickly trapped by the crowd and arrested by police. But it was only after an “intensive investigat
ion” that two others, Norman Butler and Thomas Johnson, were arrested weeks later. Both were “enforcers” for the Black Muslims who were awaiting trial for the shooting of a Muslim defector.
• When Hagan stood trial he confessed to the murder, but he told the court that the other two suspects were innocent: “I just want the truth to be known—that Butler and Johnson didn’t have anything to do with this crime. Because I was there. I know what happened and I know the people who were there.” (Seven Days)
• On March 1, 1966, The New York Times reported that Hagan “said that he had three accomplices, but he declined to name them. He said he had been approached early in the month of the murder and offered money for the job, but he declined to say by whom....One thing he did know, he said, was that no one involved in the murder was a Black Muslim.”
• Regardless, on April 16, 1966, Hagan, Johnson, and Butler were each sentenced to life imprisonment for Malcolm X’s murder.
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The One That Got Away
• There may have been another suspect caught at the scene who mysteriously disappeared. The first edition of The New York Times the next day reported that one of the two police officers at the exit “said he ‘grabbed a suspect’ whom people were chasing. ‘As I brought him to the front of the ballroom, the crowd began beating me and the suspect,’ Patrolman Hoy said. He said he put this man—not otherwise identified later for newsmen—into a police car to be taken to the Wadsworth Avenue station.” (The Realist)
• That second suspect was never heard from again, and the press did not pursue the issue. In later editions of the Times, the story had been changed and the earlier subhead, “Police Hold Two For Question,” had been changed to “One Is Held In Killing.” (ibid.)
• What makes the case of this mystery suspect even more intriguing is that his appearance—”a thin-lipped, olive-skinned Latin-looking man”—matches the description of a man whom Malcolm X had noticed trailing him through London and on the plane to New York one week before his death. (ibid.)
Uncle John’s Legendary Lost Bathroom Reader Page 24