Jan

2

1968: Always Something Next

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\\\\n\\\\n\\\\nby Michael Winship\\\\n\\\\nAs two of those who view New Year\\\\\\\’s Eve as the ultimate Amateur Night, this year we hunkered down safe at home in the West Village, just out of stampede range from the madding crowd to the north in Times Square.\\\\n\\\\nBut on Tuesday, New Year\\\\\\\’s Night, Pat and I emerged from the fallout shelter and ventured uptown to see a month-old Broadway play called “The Farnsworth Invention.”\\\\n\\\\nWritten by Aaron Sorkin, who created “The West Wing” and wrote Tom Hanks\\\\\\\’ current film, “Charlie Wilson\\\\\\\’s War,” it purports to tell the story of how, as many allege, David Sarnoff, the chairman and president of RCA, stole the idea for television from an eccentric inventor named Philo T. Farnsworth.\\\\n\\\\nThe reviews of the play have not been especially kind, and as a semi-historian of television, I could quibble with some of the facts, but to hell with all that. We enjoyed it. Great acting, direction and script.\\\\n\\\\nAt the end of the first act, following the 1929 stock market crash and a series of other calamities, Sarnoff\\\\\\\’s secretary tells him that in similar straits her father used to tell the family to stop worrying because there was “nothing next.” Sarnoff, whose family was chased from Russia by Cossacks when he was ten, replies that his father said, “There\\\\\\\’s ALWAYS something next.”\\\\n\\\\n \\\\n
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