Dean not supreme with Dr Mead

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33870, 16 June 1975, Page 4

Dean not supreme with Dr Mead

“Michael Dean in the |studio is supreme,” runs the advertising puff. “He is smooth, suave, debonair and dangerous.” “Dean on Saturday,” with Dr Margaret Mead, was too talkative, calculating and condescending.

After enduring more than two hours of penance from “The Nun’s Story,” by Warner Brothers, the DeanEdwards show loomed as something well worth staying up for.

As it was Michael Dean’s turn this Saturday, it was a fair bet that the subject would be the redoubtable fej minist and anthropologist, Dr Mead, who, amazingly, is 74.

: Incidentally, why on earth couldn’t we be told who is to be interviewed on the programme earlier in the evening? i And for that matter, why i should the show be slotted j so late in the evening? Surety no-one sitting in an i executive chair in TVI be- | lieves “The Dick Van Dyke I Show,” “The Six Million ; Dollar Man,” or an old movie are prime time viewing.

But back to Dean and Dr Mead: After a stilted and World-Biography-of-Famous-Names introduction, the suave and smooth interviewer launched forth on a wave of self assurance concerning early days in Samoa. “I did not go native,” insisted Dr Mead, and from then on it began to get embarrassing. Dean obviously had a preoccupation with the uninhiI bited sex-life of the Samoan (adolescents he had boned up 'on. But Dr Mead was not i taking the hook he persisted ’in heaving out. “A collage of cultured and j colourful conversation, with la dash of controversy, comledy and cool chords,” reads I the blurb in “The Listener.” : Dean crashed on with his collage: “They had not seen many white people, had they?” he asked of the Samoans of 1925. “Oh come on — they werd 98 per cent literate and had had Chris-1

tianity for 100 years,” replied Dr Mead sharply.

Dean turned to Freud—perhaps he would get his subject on to sex at last. The question was a disaster, but fortunately the great American lady did not turn on her interviewer, although one felt she could have.

After a song by a singer whose name was irrelevantly supplied to Dr Mead by Michael Dean, things began to improve. The questions elicited some of the subject’s remarkable insights into men and women — and we heard her on men and maternal instinct, how women fight fori keeps, the needs of the nuclear family and the reason; for Dr Mead’s optimism; about the world. Here and there Dean-; picked up a lead and endeavoured to develop it,, but a warm rapport with his j subject did not develop. It was almost as if he had worked out a predetermined pattern of replies and was determined to strive for them.

The programme was saved by Dr Mead’s keen awareness of what was required by the medium, and the value of what she had to say.

It was a great pity it had not been Dr Edwards’s turn to interview. He could have done much better than his colleague. The Mr Wilson skit had its moments, especially the reference to the great Maori Prime Minister of New Zealand, K. Ho’ake. •Ji sj!

If there are religious orders still operating today in the manner of the one depicted in “The Nun’s Story,” then the best course would be to close them immediately. As a generalisation, old films have no real place on television. But at least this particular one provided a glance into the past and into the extremes of one rigid, institutional system which might have produced efficient nursing staff for hospitals, but which did little to develop women as people with minds and abilities of their own. or necessarily make them better Christians.

The cold heartiessness of the departure with its complete lack of concern, and sense of shame, was well done. And of course Warner Brothers made a meal of the hocus pocus of the holy rule and Audrey Hepburn’s face framed in a nun’s white veil. “Tonight at Nine” on Friday evening was quick off the mark to interview Mr Kerry Burke, member of Parliament and Mr Quigley.

However, it did not seem to add a great deal to what was already known, and the lack of discussion by either other lawyers, or a representative of the Law Society, was disappointing. Gillian Woodward’s interview with the exponent of psychic powers gave the programme a lift in more ways than one. But just how you “toon in to one another mentally” was not entirely clear. * * :js

Beryl-with-the-tight-mouth endures much with her “lot.” Sometimes this programme produces a laugh or two,' if you can stomach the constant reference to the same old theme and the accents produced by Yorkshire Television. —K.C.