Confession (TV series)
Encyclopedia
Confession is a short-lived ABC
crime
/police
reality show which aired from June 19, 1958, to January 13, 1959, with interviewer Jack Wyatt
questioning criminals from assorted backgrounds. The program was carried by videotape from WFAA-TV
, the network affiliate in Dallas
, Texas
, the first station to reveal some five years later the assassination
of U.S. President John F. Kennedy
.
ers. A 22-year-old transvestite named Darrell Wayne Kahler was interviewed late in 1957, when the program was local in scope, ran late on Sunday evenings on WFAA, and had not yet joined the ABC schedule. According to a news article in Time
magazine
, on December 30, 1957, Kahler was supplied to Confession by the police, who had arrested him as a drunken woman being molested by three men. The officers did not discover his sex until he reached the station house. The police permitted Kahler to get into a cocktail dress for a filmed re-enactment of his arrest. Wyatt used the film and then placed the camera on Kahler in a jail uniform behind bars.
In a contralto
voice, Kahler said that he earned his living as a nightclub B girl. Kahler said that he had never known his father and that his mother had "a lot of marriages." He said that schoolmates had long taunted him and that he was a chain smoke who used large quantities of alcohol
in despair. The program was shocking by the television standards of the 1950s.
Methodist minister Walter Underwood joined the program to say that his denomination does not condemn tranvestities but offers "its sympathy, its help, its counsel." A psychiatrist
, John C. Montgomery, said that Kahler's conditions "can be helped if it can be gotten to soon enough. He's been trying to be like his mother all his life. Physically, organically, there's no reason in the world why this should be. He has all the attributes of the male—except for the fact that he doesn't want to be." Montgomery said that the "problem can be laid at the parents' doorstep."
As Kahler returned to jail on a vagrancy
conviction, calls flooded the WFAA switchboard. One caller declared the transvestite episode a "disgrace," but 80 percent of the callers favored keeping Confession on the air.
, an attorney, and a sociologist or a penologist. The program attempted to determine the root causes of crime and to recommend remediation for the offenders. At times, Wyatt said that the "authorities tell me that we've actually helped criminals change their ways."
Before he relocated to Dallas in 1954, Wyatt had been an advertising executive on Madison Avenue in New York City
. A native of Kansas City
, Missouri
, Wyatt was reared in Forest Hills in the borough
of Queens, New York. At the age of fifty, Wyatt began studying for the Episcopalian
priesthood. He died of cancer
at the age of ninety at his home in the resort
city of Rockport
in Aransas County
on the Texas Gulf Coast.
and was retained by ABC during the first half of the 1958-1959 schedule. It aired on Tuesday evenings opposite the first season of the revamped The Garry Moore Show
on CBS
and the second season of the drama series with a western
setting, The Californians
. Confession also appeared at times as a filler program on Thursday evenings opposite You Bet Your Life
, hosted by Groucho Marx
. Confession was replaced at mid-season by a paranormal
anthology series, Alcoa Presents: One Step Beyond. Confession followed the half-hour version of the Naked City
police drama on ABC and preceded John Daly
and the News.
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
crime
Crime
Crime is the breach of rules or laws for which some governing authority can ultimately prescribe a conviction...
/police
Police
The police is a personification of the state designated to put in practice the enforced law, protect property and reduce civil disorder in civilian matters. Their powers include the legitimized use of force...
reality show which aired from June 19, 1958, to January 13, 1959, with interviewer Jack Wyatt
Jack Wyatt
John Francis Minford "Jack" Wyatt was an advertising executive and television host from New York City and Dallas, Texas, who, during his early fifties, was ordained as an Episcopalian priest...
questioning criminals from assorted backgrounds. The program was carried by videotape from WFAA-TV
WFAA-TV
WFAA, channel 8, is an ABC-affiliated television station serving the Dallas–Fort Worth Metroplex, one of the top ten media markets in North America. The station is the flagship of Belo Corporation and the largest ABC affiliate not owned and operated by the network...
, the network affiliate in Dallas
Dallas, Texas
Dallas is the third-largest city in Texas and the ninth-largest in the United States. The Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex is the largest metropolitan area in the South and fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States...
, Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
, the first station to reveal some five years later the assassination
Assassination
To carry out an assassination is "to murder by a sudden and/or secret attack, often for political reasons." Alternatively, assassination may be defined as "the act of deliberately killing someone, especially a public figure, usually for hire or for political reasons."An assassination may be...
of U.S. President John F. Kennedy
John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....
.
Episode about the transvestite
Criminals contacted included prostitutes, drug abusers, sex offenders, and murderMurder
Murder is the unlawful killing, with malice aforethought, of another human being, and generally this state of mind distinguishes murder from other forms of unlawful homicide...
ers. A 22-year-old transvestite named Darrell Wayne Kahler was interviewed late in 1957, when the program was local in scope, ran late on Sunday evenings on WFAA, and had not yet joined the ABC schedule. According to a news article in Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
magazine
Magazine
Magazines, periodicals, glossies or serials are publications, generally published on a regular schedule, containing a variety of articles. They are generally financed by advertising, by a purchase price, by pre-paid magazine subscriptions, or all three...
, on December 30, 1957, Kahler was supplied to Confession by the police, who had arrested him as a drunken woman being molested by three men. The officers did not discover his sex until he reached the station house. The police permitted Kahler to get into a cocktail dress for a filmed re-enactment of his arrest. Wyatt used the film and then placed the camera on Kahler in a jail uniform behind bars.
In a contralto
Contralto
Contralto is the deepest female classical singing voice, with the lowest tessitura, falling between tenor and mezzo-soprano. It typically ranges between the F below middle C to the second G above middle C , although at the extremes some voices can reach the E below middle C or the second B above...
voice, Kahler said that he earned his living as a nightclub B girl. Kahler said that he had never known his father and that his mother had "a lot of marriages." He said that schoolmates had long taunted him and that he was a chain smoke who used large quantities of alcohol
Alcohol
In chemistry, an alcohol is an organic compound in which the hydroxy functional group is bound to a carbon atom. In particular, this carbon center should be saturated, having single bonds to three other atoms....
in despair. The program was shocking by the television standards of the 1950s.
Methodist minister Walter Underwood joined the program to say that his denomination does not condemn tranvestities but offers "its sympathy, its help, its counsel." A psychiatrist
Psychiatrist
A psychiatrist is a physician who specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders. All psychiatrists are trained in diagnostic evaluation and in psychotherapy...
, John C. Montgomery, said that Kahler's conditions "can be helped if it can be gotten to soon enough. He's been trying to be like his mother all his life. Physically, organically, there's no reason in the world why this should be. He has all the attributes of the male—except for the fact that he doesn't want to be." Montgomery said that the "problem can be laid at the parents' doorstep."
As Kahler returned to jail on a vagrancy
Vagrancy (people)
A vagrant is a person in poverty, who wanders from place to place without a home or regular employment or income.-Definition:A vagrant is "a person without a settled home or regular work who wanders from place to place and lives by begging;" vagrancy is the condition of such persons.-History:In...
conviction, calls flooded the WFAA switchboard. One caller declared the transvestite episode a "disgrace," but 80 percent of the callers favored keeping Confession on the air.
Wyatt's background
After each interview, as with Kahler, Wyatt (1917–2008) discussed each case with a clergyman, psychiatrist or psychologistPsychologist
Psychologist is a professional or academic title used by individuals who are either:* Clinical professionals who work with patients in a variety of therapeutic contexts .* Scientists conducting psychological research or teaching psychology in a college...
, an attorney, and a sociologist or a penologist. The program attempted to determine the root causes of crime and to recommend remediation for the offenders. At times, Wyatt said that the "authorities tell me that we've actually helped criminals change their ways."
Before he relocated to Dallas in 1954, Wyatt had been an advertising executive on Madison Avenue in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. A native of Kansas City
Kansas City, Missouri
Kansas City, Missouri is the largest city in the U.S. state of Missouri and is the anchor city of the Kansas City Metropolitan Area, the second largest metropolitan area in Missouri. It encompasses in parts of Jackson, Clay, Cass, and Platte counties...
, Missouri
Missouri
Missouri is a US state located in the Midwestern United States, bordered by Iowa, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska. With a 2010 population of 5,988,927, Missouri is the 18th most populous state in the nation and the fifth most populous in the Midwest. It...
, Wyatt was reared in Forest Hills in the borough
Borough
A borough is an administrative division in various countries. In principle, the term borough designates a self-governing township although, in practice, official use of the term varies widely....
of Queens, New York. At the age of fifty, Wyatt began studying for the Episcopalian
Episcopal Church (United States)
The Episcopal Church is a mainline Anglican Christian church found mainly in the United States , but also in Honduras, Taiwan, Colombia, Ecuador, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, the British Virgin Islands and parts of Europe...
priesthood. He died of cancer
Cancer
Cancer , known medically as a malignant neoplasm, is a large group of different diseases, all involving unregulated cell growth. In cancer, cells divide and grow uncontrollably, forming malignant tumors, and invade nearby parts of the body. The cancer may also spread to more distant parts of the...
at the age of ninety at his home in the resort
Resort
A resort is a place used for relaxation or recreation, attracting visitors for holidays or vacations. Resorts are places, towns or sometimes commercial establishment operated by a single company....
city of Rockport
Rockport, Texas
Rockport is a city in Aransas County, Texas, United States. The population was 7,385 at the 2000 census. It is the county seat of Aransas County. The coastal community has approximately 8000 citizens. Large windswept live oaks are a dominating feature of the area and the state's oldest live oak,...
in Aransas County
Aransas County, Texas
Aransas County is a county located in the U.S. state of Texas. It is part of the Corpus Christi Metropolitan Statistical Area. As of 2000, the population was 22,499. Its county seat is Rockport. Aransas County was formed in 1871 from Refugio County.-Geography:According to the U.S...
on the Texas Gulf Coast.
Scheduling
Confession began as a summer replacement series for The West Point StoryThe West Point Story (TV series)
The West Point Story is a dramatic anthology television series shown in the United States by Columbia Broadcasting System during the 1956-57 season and by ABC during the 1957-58 season....
and was retained by ABC during the first half of the 1958-1959 schedule. It aired on Tuesday evenings opposite the first season of the revamped The Garry Moore Show
The Garry Moore Show
The Garry Moore Show is the name for several separate American variety series on the CBS television network in the 1950s and 1960s. Hosted by experienced radio performer, Garry Moore, the series helped launch the careers of many comedic talents, such as Don Adams, George Gobel, Carol Burnett, Don...
on CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
and the second season of the drama series with a western
Western (genre)
The Western is a genre of various visual arts, such as film, television, radio, literature, painting and others. Westerns are devoted to telling stories set primarily in the latter half of the 19th century in the American Old West, hence the name. Some Westerns are set as early as the Battle of...
setting, The Californians
The Californians (TV series)
The Californians is a 54-episode half-hour Western television series, set in the San Francisco gold rush of the 1850s, which aired on NBC from September 24, 1957, to May 26, 1959...
. Confession also appeared at times as a filler program on Thursday evenings opposite You Bet Your Life
You Bet Your Life
You Bet Your Life is an American quiz show that aired on both radio and television. The original and best-known version was hosted by Groucho Marx of the Marx Brothers, with announcer and assistant George Fenneman. The show debuted on ABC Radio in October 1947, then moved to CBS Radio in September...
, hosted by Groucho Marx
Groucho Marx
Julius Henry "Groucho" Marx was an American comedian and film star famed as a master of wit. His rapid-fire delivery of innuendo-laden patter earned him many admirers. He made 13 feature films with his siblings the Marx Brothers, of whom he was the third-born...
. Confession was replaced at mid-season by a paranormal
Paranormal
Paranormal is a general term that designates experiences that lie outside "the range of normal experience or scientific explanation" or that indicates phenomena understood to be outside of science's current ability to explain or measure...
anthology series, Alcoa Presents: One Step Beyond. Confession followed the half-hour version of the Naked City
Naked City (TV series)
Naked City is a police drama series which aired from 1958 to 1963 on the ABC television network. It was inspired by the 1948 motion picture of the same name, and mimics its dramatic "semi-documentary" format....
police drama on ABC and preceded John Daly
John Charles Daly
John Charles Patrick Croghan Daly John Charles Patrick Croghan Daly John Charles Patrick Croghan Daly (generally known as John Charles Daly or simply John Daly (February 20, 1914 – February 24, 1991) was an American journalist, game show host and radio personality, probably best known for hosting...
and the News.