''PM East/PM West'' is a late-night talk show hosted by

Mike Wallace Myron Leon Wallace (May 9, 1918 – April 7, 2012) was an American journalist, game show host, actor, and media personality. He interviewed a wide range of prominent newsmakers during his seven-decade career. He was one of the original correspo ...

and

Joyce Davidson Joyce Davidson (14 April 1931 – 7 May 2020) was a television personality in Canada and the United States. Early life She was born Joyce Inez Brock in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan during the Great Depression and was the eldest of four children of ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

(where the ''PM East'' portion originated) and ''

San Francisco Chronicle The ''San Francisco Chronicle'' is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of Northern California. It was founded in 1865 as ''The Daily Dramatic Chronicle'' by teenage brothers Charles de Young and M. H. de Young, Michael H. de ...

'' television critic Terrence O'Flaherty in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

(''PM West''). The program was seen five nights a week from June 12, 1961, to June 22, 1962. The show was syndicated by Group W Productions to Westinghouse-owned television stations in Boston, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, San Francisco, as well as to other stations in Washington D.C., New York, Los Angeles and Dallas, Texas. It was scheduled at the same time as NBC's '' The Tonight Show'', then hosted by

Jack Paar Jack Harold Paar (May 1, 1918 – January 27, 2004) was an American talk show host, author, radio and television comedian, and film actor. He was the second host of ''The Tonight Show'' from 1957 to 1962. ''Time'' magazine's obituary of Paar repo ...

. Westinghouse, which was only a broadcaster that syndicated its programs through Group W, attempted to compete with NBC, which had had a monopoly on late-night television since Steve Allen had originated ''The Tonight Show'' in 1954. ''PM East/PM West'' was never accessible in

Chicago, Illinois (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

, the

American South The Southern United States (sometimes Dixie, also referred to as the Southern States, the American South, the Southland, or simply the South) is a geographic and cultural region of the United States of America. It is between the Atlantic Ocean ...

, the

Pacific Northwest The Pacific Northwest (sometimes Cascadia, or simply abbreviated as PNW) is a geographic region in western North America bounded by its coastal waters of the Pacific Ocean to the west and, loosely, by the Rocky Mountains to the east. Though ...

or in the state of

Florida Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to ...

WFAA WFAA (channel 8) is a television station licensed to Dallas, Texas, United States, serving the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex as an affiliate of ABC. It is owned by Tegna Inc. alongside Decatur-licensed Estrella TV affiliate KMPX (channel 29), ...

channel 8 in

Dallas, Texas Dallas () is the third largest city in Texas and the largest city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States at 7.5 million people. It is the largest city in and seat of Dallas County w ...

carried it starting with the first episode, but viewers in other Texas cities and in the American Southwest never watched it.

Episode status

Audio recordings of some of

Barbra Streisand Barbara Joan "Barbra" Streisand (; born April 24, 1942) is an American singer, actress and director. With a career spanning over six decades, she has achieved success in multiple fields of entertainment, and is among the few performers List ...

's appearances constitute nearly all that survives. The sole episode known to exist in its entirety with moving images and sound, available for viewing at the

UCLA Film and Television Archive The UCLA Film & Television Archive is a visual arts organization focused on the preservation, study, and appreciation of film and television, based at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Also a nonprofit exhibition venue, the archiv ...

, is the February 12, 1962, telecast, which was a tribute to George Schaefer. It features actors who worked with Schaefer, including

Boris Karloff William Henry Pratt (23 November 1887 – 2 February 1969), better known by his stage name Boris Karloff (), was an English actor. His portrayal of Frankenstein's monster in the horror film ''Frankenstein'' (1931) (his 82nd film) established h ...

(who is interviewed by Davidson), Ed Wynn, and Ethel Griffies. Streisand does not appear, nor does anyone mention her name. In 2018, someone uploaded to YouTube a clip that lasts 4 minutes 46 seconds from an episode in which the guests include comedian Dick Gregory and

Victor Lownes Victor Aubrey Lownes III (April 17, 1928 – January 11, 2017) was an executive for HMH Publishing Company Inc., later known as Playboy Enterprises, from 1955 through the early 1980s. Soon after he met Hugh Hefner in 1954, Hefner founded ''Playbo ...

, an executive with the company that later became known as Playboy Enterprises. The company owned the Chicago location of the

Playboy Club The Playboy Club was initially a chain of nightclubs and resorts owned and operated by Playboy Enterprises. The first Playboy Club opened in Chicago in 1960. Each club generally featured a Living Room, a Playmate Bar, a Dining Room, and a Club R ...

where Gregory performed a short time before his appearance on ''PM East''. As already noted, the program was not seen in Chicago, so it could not help the Playboy Club promote appearances there by Gregory or any other performer.

References

External links

*
Summary from ''Time'' Magazine of an interview of Dorothy Kilgallen on ''PM East'' in 1961
{{DEFAULTSORT:PM East PM West American television talk shows 1961 American television series debuts 1962 American television series endings Black-and-white American television shows First-run syndicated television programs in the United States Television series by CBS Studios Westinghouse Broadcasting Television shows set in New York City Television shows set in San Francisco Television in the San Francisco Bay Area