TV / Coming Home To Laughter

If you like Ted Knight in his TV role as Ted Baxter, the all­American boob newsman, then you should be pleased with his one­hour special tonight on CBS.

It's called "Terryville Revisited" and is a fictional account of Knight's real­life visit to his hometown in Terryville where he was feted last June as "Man of the Year." Everyone gets a chance to let the air out of his over­inflated ego.

His egomania is only a one­joke bit-like Jack Benny's cheapness or Groucho's lechery. But Knight, a skillful character actor, gets as much mileage out of it as possible.

Our Knight in shining self­amour doesn't exactly tilt at windmills on this amusing, fictional homecoming episode. It's more like massive indifference ... the same sort of ennui that his braggadocio inspires among his colleagues in the newsroom on the Mary Tyler Moore show.

Friends and relatives play games with Ted's vanity.

Even his old high school heart throb (Rue McClanahan) makes sport of his obese ego when they meet accidentally in a cocktail lounge just before the big banquet in his honor. Ted, being Ted, naturally assumes that his handsome demeanor and impeccable newsman's diction, has once, again stoked the flames in Rue's heart. They dance to soft music and he does his romantic macho bit-all macho on the outside, all little boy on the inside.

But Rue says phooey to the would be rue.

Ted's ego is bruised again when he discovers that his birthplace has been turned into a butcher shop. What could be more appropriate for such a ham, and a nutmeg ham at that? Ted thought the homestead would be a national landmark or shrine by now. But Ed Asner, (his boss on the Mary Tyler Moore show) is the butcher and soon makes mincemeat of his conceited ways.

Also on hand in the Terryville ego deflating team are Fred MacMurray, Phil Silvers, Ethel Merman and Loretta Swit. Miss Merman gets a chance to belt out "There's No Business Like Show Business," and Rue McClanahan and Loretta Swit romp through a 1940s song­and­dance number.

Ted Knight-or Tadeus W. Konopka as he was named back in his pre­show biz days-was born Dec. 7, 1924 on Allen Street in Terryville, a section of Plymouth. One of seven children in the Konopka family, he did indeed attend Terryville schools. Later he studied at the Randall School of Dramatic Arts in Hartford for three years while working parttime as a disc jockey and announcer on various local radio stations.

Much good­natured sport is made of Terryville's distinguished comic actor tonight on the musical variety show which airs at 8 on WFSB­TV, Channel 3.