Here's Looking at Us: Celebrating 50 Years of CBC TV [Hardcover]

Stephen Cole (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 3, 2002

On September 8, 1952, English-language CBC-TV went to air for the first time, albeit with the logo upside down. Apart from that one little glitch, the terrified group of talented young people who put on that first live show launched the new network with imagination and verve.

In Here’s Looking at Us, Stephen Cole takes the reader on an eye-opening, evocative, often funny journey through the first 50 years of CBC-TV, from the excitement of filming its first drama starring future author Timothy Findley, to the thrill of bringing Olympic gold medal hockey games to the entire country thanks to satellite technology.

This popular history of the shows, people and events that define the first half century of the network is told through the reminiscences, profiles and oral histories of more than a hundred on-air and behind-the-scenes personalities, including Norman Jewison, Robert Goulet, Don Harron, Juliette, Anne Murray, Norman Campbell, Don Chevrier, David Suzuki, Wendy Mesley, and Jonathan Torrens. Their stories are complemented by a wealth of archival photographs, memorabilia and illustrations – more than 350 in all, many previously unpublished. Both text and images provide snapshots of Canadian life past and present as viewed through the lenses of CBC-TV cameras filming docudramas, comedy shows, news programs, variety shows, children’s programs and sports events.

From the network’s longest-running program, Country Canada, to one-night tours de force, Here’s Looking at Us is a celebration of the quietly entertaining as well as the most memorable Canadian television moments of the past 50 years.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Stephen Cole is a freelance writer and author of two books, The Last Hurrah and Slapshots. He lives in Toronto.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The fifties/ Arts & Entertainment
Bandwagons and hay bales

Variety shows ruled Canadian television in the ’50s. In crowded CBC-TV studios and in private affiliates across the land, emcees, gag men, canaries, hoofers, jazzbos, and fiddlers stirred alive every weeknight between 7 and 10.

Three singing Tommys – Hunter, Ambrose, and Common – became household names. There were also two Joyces (Hahn and Sullivan) and as many Jacks (Duffy and Kane), Juliette of course, a Jackie (Rae), and a Joan (The Joan Fairfax Show).

And that’s just the T’s and J’s.

A few performers, like Holiday Ranch’s Cliff McKay, formerly of the Happy Gang, were familiar from radio. But mostly TV made its own stars. And predictably, many viewers wanted to get in on the act. Maclean’s reported that in 1957, eight thousand Canadian singers and dancers auditioned for television.

And why not? Hadn’t Robert Goulet, the Hames Sisters (Country Hoedown), and Paul Anka, pining for babysitter Diana – “I’m so young and you’re so old, this my darling I’ve been told” – been discovered on the popular mid-’50s talent contest, Pick the Stars?

Some talent was easy to spot. Chiselled baritone Goulet had the looks and carriage of a matinee idol. But you couldn’t always tell who was going to make it. Or how. Future Canadian broadcast journalist Lorraine Thomson was the first dancer hired for The Big Revue (1952-54), CBC’s first variety showcase. She remembers how Country Hoedown singer-dancer Gordon Lightfoot would try to impress loiterers in the CBC cafeteria, telling all who would listen, “I’m going to be a big, big star someday.”

“And the girls would look at him and say, ‘Dream on, fella, dream on,’ ” Thomson says.

The eighteen-year-old Thomson dreamt of being swept away by Fred Astaire as she swirled through production numbers. And she remembers loving every minute of a performing career that saw her adorn guest Duke Ellington’s piano – “I’m going to tickle the ivories and I hope to tickle you,” Duke purred – and leap from The Big Revue to CGE [Canadian General Electric] Showtime, Cross-Canada Hit Parade, The Denny Vaughan Show, The Barris Beat, Here’s Duffy, and The Jack Kane Show.


The sixties / News and Information
This Hour has three million viewers

Like Charles Foster Kane’s the Inquirer, Patrick Watson and Douglas Leiterman’s This Hour Has Seven Days began with a grandiloquent manifesto.

This Hour, the two executive producers promised in 1964, would be “a one-hour show of such vitality and urgency that it will recapture public excitement in public affairs television and become mandatory viewing for a large segment of the nation.... We will probe dishonesty and hypocrisy. By encouraging leads from our viewers, we will provide a kind of TV public ombudsman to draw attention to public wrongs and encourage remedial action.”

The comparison to Orson Welles and Citizen Kane is not made idly. Both Welles and Patrick Watson were child magicians who acted in radio as teenagers. Boredom was, for both storytellers, a constant enemy, and their creative instincts frequently led them to risk sensible narrative flow by indulging in bold dramatic flourishes.

“I can remember getting into lively editing room debates with our very knowledgeable production supervisor, Ken Lefolii,” Watson recalls. “We’d be looking at an interview subject talking and I’d get restless and say, ‘Cut that out, he’s going on too long.’”

“You can’t, Patrick, it’s vital information,” was Lefolii’s inevitable response.

“It’s dull.”

“If you take it out, people won’t understand the story.”

“If you don’t take it out, people will turn the channel and they’ll understand even less of the story,” replied Watson.

Although Watson respected Lefolii, former editor of Maclean’s, the one-time magician lived in fear that his “audience might take their eyes off the screen.”

Few did. This Hour charmed and bullied its way into three million Canadian homes on Sundays at 10 with a fast-spinning combination of skits, documentaries, music, and always-intemperate news reports. Most often, the show focused on the forbidden topics of polite society: sex, drugs, religion, and politics.

When Queen Elizabeth visited Quebec City in 1964, CBC ordered This Hour not to cover the event. Watson immediately dispatched a crew. Asked today whether the story might have been handled some other way, Watson admits, “Sure it could have.” Well, then didn’t sending a crew represent a kind of death wish? “Absolutely, without a doubt,” he replies.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: McClelland & Stewart (September 3, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0771022514
• ISBN-13: 978-0771022517
• Product Dimensions: 11 x 8.6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,605,129 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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