Mediola

East Side, West Side: More brilliant TV from the early 1960's

George C. Scott as a social worker

This hour drama series, created by the brilliant and omnipresent David Susskind and his partner Daniel Melnick, remains one of the greatest pieces of episodic television in the history of the medium.  For those of you not immediately familiar with the name George C. Scott, it was he who played Patton in the Frances Coppola movie of the same name, and was one of America's greatest actors. 

I thrilled at the opening titles--a montage of subway cars rushing past each other (as I recall it), establishing the world of a social worker in the underclass of pre-civil rights movement New York City.

As with Naked City and Route 66, the guest star casting was exceptional--major names.  And it was probably only the power of Susskind's name and the success of the series not only among critics but in Washington, DC that kept the series on the air an entire season.  The show was dropped by stations in the South because it dared to treat blacks as equal humans.

Read about East Side, West Side here.

More on David Susskind:

Naked City and Route 66

Thanks to reader Dedra Littleton, I'm inspired to tell you more about two of the most important series in television history.  I'll make it brief and direct you to excellent articles on each show.  As I have said, as a pre-teen, these two series had as much to do as anything in my life to bring me to entertainment, and thanks go to the giant Herbert B. Leonard, Sterling Silliphant, Howard Rodman, and others you will read about.

Discover Naked City here.

Martin Milner and George Maharis in Route 66

And most important, discover the series that created a genre that has become part of the TV vocabulary, the brilliant Route 66.