Television Festival Replaying Old and New Goodies

The Museum of Broadcasting’s television festival at the County Museum of Art, which is about to have its sixth running, has become an important annual fixture.

The festival’s artful blending of past and present, nostalgia and current celebration, would be a hit in Syracuse or Minneapolis, but it goes down particularly well here, where a good deal of the product originated and where many of its creators live and can be persuaded to come along, take a bow and explain how the magic happened.

This year’s offerings begin on March 1 with a tribute to the television version of Neil Simon’s “The Odd Couple,” with its long-running stars Tony Randall and Jack Klugman on hand along with producer-director Garry Marshall and Harvey Miller.

The festival ends on March 23 with an evening honoring Loretta Young and presenting two dramas from her anthology series, “The Pearl” and “The Prettiest Girl in Town.”

The rarities--treasures amid the treasures--include Stephen Sondheim’s only original work for television, “Evening Primrose,” a musical starring Anthony Perkins and set in a department store. It was broadcast in 1966 and has not been shown since. It’s being presented on March 2 and introduced by Perkins.

Bob Elliott and Audrey Meadows will host an evening of the splendidly foolish television work of Bob and Ray (March 9). Partner Ray Goulding, sadly, is seriously ailing and unable to attend. While the team and their innumerable voices were most at home on radio, their TV work had a wonderful innocent silliness, like Ray’s cookery lessons as Mary Margaret McGoon, featuring recipes for half-baked Indian pudding and quince and kumquat jelly.

The other archival treats include the Mary Martin “Annie Get Your Gun” from 1957, to be introduced by her co-star, John Raitt, and the young Dennis Hopper in “The Last Summer,” a Studio One drama from the ‘50s, with Hopper present. It screens March 17.

There’ll be a tribute to “The Waltons” on March 10, with its creator Earl Hamner Jr. and many of the cast, Ellen Corby, Michael Learned and Richard Thomas among them, on hand.

Jack Lemmon talks about his early life in television on March 18, and will present a Ford Theater production, “Marriageable Male,” in which he co-starred with Ida Lupino.

It’s 35 years since Steve Allen invented--or gave an enduring style to--”The Tonight Show,” and thereby established insomnia as a national trait. Allen and two of the show’s vocalists--Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme--along with producers Bill Harbach, Dwight Hemion and Nick Vanoff and announcer Gene Rayburn will reminisce about those remarkable nights on March 3.

There’ll be three late-night offerings--well, 10 p.m., not too late--on March 4, 11 and 18, consisting of excerpts from the early television writing and performing of Woody Allen. One of the pleasures is a Kraft Theater Music Hall special called “Woody Allen Looks at 1967.”

The present-day series to be honored are equally interesting, and range from “The Wonder Years” (March 4) to “Family Ties” (March 22). Michael J. Fox and most of the other principals will be present, along with creator Gary David Goldberg, for that evening.

Producer Stephen J. Cannell will host an evening with “Wiseguy” on March 11. All the Golden Girls are scheduled to attend an evening devoted to their show on March 15. Garry Shandling will present two episodes of his show the next evening (Mar. 16), and Candice Bergen and a large number of the creators and co-stars of “Murphy Brown” will appear on March 21. It’s the newest of the television offerings to be honored.

The Museum of Broadcasting has become an important and accessible archive of the radio and television past. What it does at its year-round presentations in New York and at the festival here is offer reminders that there were always a goodly number of oases in the wasteland, and that, like any art form, television has gained subtlety, sophistication and strength as time has passed.

What is also true to say is that the museum rescues television from the curse of its own terrible transience. Out of sight is not out of mind and, for another evening at least, the delights are back in sight.