Dramas

Climax

Bill Lundigan & Mary Costa 1954

DUPONT THEATER: "THE BLESSED MIDNIGHT" & ARMSTRONG CIRCLE THEATER "THE BLESSED MIDNIGHT " & "THE USE OF DIGNITY"
(approx 60 min)

"THE BLESSED MIDNIGHT
with Maureen O'Sullivan, Francis Bavier
DuPont sponsored this 1956-57 ABC anthology series, which usually featured a major star in its weekly offerings.

"The Blessed Midnight" is a beautifully made drama about juvenile delinquency and child abuse. Twelve-year-old Billy is very worried about his friend Teddy O'Hara, who is misunderstood and disliked by most of the adults around him--already branded a juvenile delinquent, Teddy seems to live up to those expectations when he steals a Bar Mitzvah cake from a local store.

The police are looking for Teddy, and he seems headed for a juvenile home, when Billy intervenes with help from Sr. Mary Benedict (Maureen O'Sullivan) and tells the authorities some of the reasons behind Teddy's behavior.

His abusive father (Ray Teal), the aunt (Virginia Gregg) that he loves, and for whom he stole the cake, and his bravery in trying to keep his life together despite the beatings from his father.

Includes the original DuPont Company infomercial advertisement telling how DuPont helps small businessmen succeed in realizing their dreams, and presenting the virtues of the big chemical company in general.

Directed by Lazlo Benedek (THE WILD ONE). With Carole Wells.

"THE USE OF DIGNITY"
- with Cliff Robertson, Ed Begley Sr. Albert Paulsen, Jim Boles
This drama is reminiscent of ON THE WATERFRONT, with Cliff Robertson playing John Robinson, a young longshoreman who wants to break up the corruption on the docks. Up against him is Ed Begley Sr. as Louis Giordano, the hiring boss, who doesn't like what the mob tells him to do but is too haunted by his past, and a son who died fighting corruption, to encourage anyone to try and stand up to them.

When mob boss Mr. Allison (Joseph Downing) orders another $2 a day in kickbacks per man, Giordano finally decides he may have to take the men out in a wildcat strike, but he's still afraid, and drinks too much in order to forget his fears.

When Robinson takes the lead and confronts the bosses himself, the docks blow up in a riot as Louis leads the men in a walk-out and the gangsters decide to take care of him.

Program includes original wrap-arounds with Armstrong Circle Theater hosts Kay Campbell and Bob Sherry.

ASSIGNMENT TOMORROW
(approx 55 min)
Jim Fleming hosts this August 23, 1953 special saluting the 8th anniversary of NBC News, essentially a retrospective of the events covered by NBC News beginning in 1945 with the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.

Footage of the American B-29 and the attack; the Japanese surrender in August of 1945; Truman's speech to the American people announcing the end of World War II, the celebration of the American people in the streets; General MacArthur's speech at the Japanese surrender aboard the battleship U.S.S. Missouri...

Shots of American soldiers and sailors returning by the thousands, aboard ships, planes, or anything else that could get them home, including thousands of men seen on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier, and being greeted by wives, children, parents etc.

Toscanini is seen conducting a Verdi work in honor of the end of the war.

Postwar material includes shots of the destruction of most of Texas City, Texas, on April 16, 1947, one of the largest explosions in the history of the United States up to that time, caused by chemical fertilizers being unloads from a ship in port; floods, tornadoes, and 16 inches of snow in New York City; the 1948 political conventions, with glimpses of leftist dissident candidate Henry Wallace and rightist dissident Strom Thurmond, and the subsequent upset of Tom Dewey by Harry Truman...

The beginnings of the Korean War, with shots of men fighting in the field, soldiers talking over guns, being fired on and returning fire; accounts of the extended duels in the air over Korea between Russian MIGs and American F-86 jet fighters, with long odds involved, 823 MIGS against 58 Sabrejets;

VACATION PLAYHOUSE Volume 1
(approx 55 min) #700 Back in the 1960's, it became customary during the late summer months for the networks to program in pilots of series that had not been sold.

This prevented over-exposure of popular series during weeks when viewership was at its lowest, and gave the networks and producers a chance to salvage something from their investments in the failed pilots.

THREE ON AN ISLAND (1963), starring Pamela Tiffin, Julie Newmar, Monica Moran, with Rhodes Reason.

How this series failed is beyond us, since it featured three gorgeous career girls trying to make it in New York, and was produced and directed by no less a Hollywood figure than Vincent Sherman.

Pamela Tiffin plays Taffy, an aspiring artist who goes down to a gym one day to sketch some boxers working out and falls in love with Julius Sweetly (Jody McCrea, son of Joel McCrea and a regular in the Beach Party movies), a too-gentle would-be boxer.

She uses roommate/model Kris (Julie Newmar) to get her sportswriter boyfriend (Rhodes Reason) to get him a series of matches, which he loses thanks to his glass jaw, much to the consternation of Sweetly's manager (Ned Glass).

In the end, after a series of name changes for the ring (including Bull Dogg), he finds himself in another way. The early 1960's New York ambience is beguiling, but the three women are both stunning and very funny.

How this missed at least a place on some network's schedule is anyone's guess.

SYBIL (1965) starring Suzy Parker and Wilfrid Hyde-White, with John Ericson. Co-created by actor Richard Bakalyan and writer Richard Michaels (BEWITCHED), this buasted pilot was made during the first great wave of 1960's "gimmick" shows like BEWITCHED and I DREAM OF JEANNIE.

Ex-model Suzy Parker (best remembered today by TWILIGHT ZONE fans for her work in the episode "Number 12 Looks Just Like You") plays Sybil, a wood nymph who is serving out a sentence on earth for the crime of undue pride.

With a near-omnipotent guide played by Wilfrid Hyde-White, she is to carry out a long series of good deeds involving mortals, in order to redeem herself.

John Ericson is her first case, as a man bitter over imprisonment for a crime he didn't commit, who has decided to carry out a jewel robbery. Sybil has to prevent him, but first she has to figure out the ways of mortals a little better.

The reason this show didn't sell is that it had no continuing relationships, and was too difficult to explain each week, but Parker looks great and Hyde-White is very funny in a role reminiscent of Samantha's father on BEWITCHED.

Both shows include the original commercials for Post Puffed Corn Flakes, Gravy Train (with a big St. Bernard named "Tiny"), Maxwell House Coffee (a man awakening from sleep to the sound of thge percolator), and SOS Soap Pads featuring Jerry Seinfeld's TV father Barney Martin.

VACATION PLAYHOUSE Volume 2
(approx 55 min) #701
DOWN HOME (1960), starring Pat Buttram, El Brendel, Sarah Hayden, Jonathan Hale, and Mary Jane Saunders.

This show turned up as a summer replacement for GOMER PYLE, USMC years after it was made, and starred Pat Buttram in a Will Rogers-type role as Hardy Madison a G.I.-turned-journalist and humorist who returns to his hometown after years overseas to run the tiny paper that his father left to his aunt.

No sooner does he get there, however, then he runs up against stuffy banker Warren Bullard, who doesn't like the paper or Madison and his folksy humor, and decides to make life difficult for both of them until Madison takes a gamble and challenges Bullard in the pages of his newspaper.

Veteran character actor El Brendel plays the paper's eccentric Swedish pressman, Sarah Hayden plays Madison's aunt, Jonathan Hale is the paper's cub reporter, and Mary Jane Saunders is Hale's sweetheart, Bullard's daughter.

COOGAN'S REWARD (1957), starring Tony Randall, Alan Carney, and Roxane Berard.

Tony Randall plays Willie Coogan, a foreign correspondent in France during World War II who is too busty romancing women to actually go up to the battle-front to get his reports; instead, he gets information from G.I.'s who have returned to the rear areas, but somehow he is always good enough as a writer to attract attention as a hero correspondent back home.

His colleagues figure out what he's been doing and decide to trap him by feeding him a story on an attack on a German town that never happened.

The story runs, however, and suddenly the Americans and the Germans see the point of holding the town, and he's once more a hero to his employers and the public, especially when he accidentally ends up at the front when the real fighting starts.

Both of these shows contain their original commercials, including the Post Toasties ad with the cereal box popping out of the toaster, Gaines Prime dog food, Tang, and Sanka Coffee ("We served these people Sanka without telliung them....").

KAISER ALUMINUN HOUR: "THE ARMY GAME"
(approx 50 min)
with Paul Newman, George Grizzard, Edward Andrews, Philip Abbott
(approx 60 min)
Originally broadcast for this anthology series' debut, on July 3, 1956, "The Army Game" is one of the most intense and beautifully made and complex dramas of its period.

Newman plays Danny Scott, a top college athlete who is drafted into the peacetime army with his best friend (George Grizzard). But Danny has more problems than he could ever guess.

He's convinced that he's too good to serve in the army, and with his mother's encouragement, he's planning to get out of the army on a Section Eight, pretending to be suffering from a crippling emotional instability.

But as the army psychiatrist (Edward Andrews, in one of the best performances of his career) points out, the fact that he may be faking only points to a much deeper problem than anything he is pretending to have.

Danny doesn't believe him, but the men in his platoon guess the truth and are soon tormenting him physically and emotionally, because his malingering is costing them leave.

By the time it is over, Danny has confronted some of these problems, but not before sinking to depths of despair that shock all of those around him.

Bishop Sheen

M.D. DETECTIVES & SUNRISE SEMESTER
(approx 60 min)
A production of Upjohn Company and the American Medical Association, this 1950's documentary/industrial film delves into the testing that goes on in the chemical industry.

Focusing on the Kettering Laboratory of Cincinnati, Ohio, M.D. DETECTIVES shows tests involving neurological problems involving factory workers, experiments with irritants on the skin of human subjects, noise tested as a pollutant, and an account of the daily life of a test subject, who must, among other things, prepare two meals--one to eat and another to be analyzed by the lab.

Some of the conclusions and predictions are a little too ambitious (like the idea that Cincinnati would have no air pollution problem), while other problems are still being worked on 30-odd years later, like lead paint contamination and its effect on children.

SUNRISE SEMESTER
(approx 55 min)
An early 1960's installment of the long-running home-education series.

Comparative Literature professor Dr. Floyd Zulli, Jr. discusses the roles of time and memory in the work of Marcel Proust.

LITTLE THEATER & TRUE STORY &
STAMP DAY FOR SUPERMAN
(approx 55 min)
LITTLE THEATER: An anthology series built around people in turnabout situations, with an O HENRY-type twist.

In "POPPY LOVE," a pair of frustrated suburban fathers (Bill Boyett, Bill Kennedy), upset about their children's idolizing of television heroes, learn that it is possible to have too much faith in their children, and that it isn't wise to make bets on how their children will act, react, or hear things.

In "$10,000 Look," a card-cheat (Robert Rockwell) and his wife (Cay Forrester) are undone in their plans for one last big score by a pair of sunglasses.

Look for Bobby Jordan of the Dead End Kids in a small role as the hotel clerk. Both shows were directed by William Asher (BEWITCHED etc.)
TRUE STORY: An anthology series (1957-61) from NBC, hosted by Kathi Norris, presenting dramatizations supposedly based on actual incidents.

Suburban gun enthusiast Dick French (Hugh Reilly, of LASSIE) is cleaning a rifle in his den one night when he accidentally fires a round that he didn't know was in the chamber, and it hits his neighbor Jean Manchester (Selma Halprin) down the street in the back.

While she lies near death in a hospital, Dick tries first to convince himself that it couldn't have been his bullet that hit her, and then to convince his wife (Mary K. Wells) that he isn't culpable.

STAMP DAY FOR SUPERMAN (1954): The only SUPERMAN episode not shown in syndication, this was done specially for the Department of the Treasury to push kids to buy U.S. Savings Stamps and Savings Bonds.

Superman (George Reeves) breaks up a jewelry store burglary, but the ringleader (Billy Nelson) gets away and is spotted by Lois Lane (Noell Neil). Back at the Daily Planet, Jimmy Olsen (Jack Larson) is showing off the new portable typewriter that he bought with the money he earned from investing in U.S. Savings Stamps as a grade-school student, which gives Clark Kent (Reeves) the idea of sending Jimmy back to his old school to do a story on Stamp Day.

Meanwhile, Lois is kidnapped and held hostage by the burglar, and she manages to use Jimmy's typewriter to get a secret message to the outside, and Superman arrives to save her.

Then he goes to Jimmy's old school and gives a speech appealing to the students' common sense and patriotism to get them to buy Savings Stamps.

The show ends with the presentation of personalized Savings Stamp folders to the reporters, and an extra one that Clark keeps for Superman.

IMPACT/MEDIC
#525
(approx 55 min)
IMPACT was a mid-1950's syndicated thriller anthology series, reminiscent in many ways of ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS, supposedly based on true stories of suspense involving ordinary people.

"THE FRANK CHAMBERS STORY": Whit Bissell plays Frank Chambers, a $75-a-week employee of the Marth Jewelry Company, with a family to provide for and seemingly no future. One night at closing time, his frustration gets the better of him and, in a weak moment, he takes $15,000 out of the cash drawer in the vault.

Then his boss Mr. Marth calls him into his office for a meeting and tells him that, as of the next day, he is making Chambers an equal partner in the company, with the intention that he eventually inherit Marth's interest as well.

The office is locked up and the vault sealed until the next day by a time-lock, and Chambers has to find a way to replace the $15,000 before the auditors open the cash drawer the next day.

He tries everything he can think of, including locating the safecracker who once opened the vault, but it seems like he is certain to be caught and ruined when the office opens the next day.

MEDIC, starring Richard Boone, was television's first serious medical drama, created by James B. Moser, who later contributed to BEN CASEY, starring Richard Boone as Dr. Konrad Styner.

The series presented serious medical issues in a surprisingly low-keyed dramatic context, often with graphic visual elements.

"WHITE IS THE COLOR": Larry Collins (Lee Marvin) and Estelle Alberta Collins (Beverly Garland) are due to have a baby, but there is a serious complication--Estelle is terminally ill with leukemia, and Dr. Styner (Richard Boone) must help her live long enough to give birth to the baby--they know that the odds of her surviving the seven months are poor, but he vows to try, and does his best to help Larry through his side of the ordeal.

In order to help her survive, he tries a dangerous anti-white cell drug, but in the end he must do emergency surgery in the delivery room to save the baby.

3-2-1-ZERO
#519
(approx 55 min)
A 1954 NBC documentary about the development of the atomic bomb and its consequences. Alexander Scourby narrates this film, which opens with a description of the events on July 15, 1945:

People at an amusement park, the Yankees rained out, Mrs. Roosevelt, widow of the president, making a speech, Berlin laying in ruins and occupied by Allied troops, London lit up at night--and at Alamagordo, New Mexico, J. Robert Oppenheimer waits in a control shed to give the signal that will detonate an operational nuclear bomb.

We see Truman, Churchill, and Stalin at Potsdam, and, at Guam, Admiral Nimitz preparing to execute orders for the invasion of Japan. B-29 bombers are shown raiding the Japanese mainland, while the single crew of the bomber Enola Gay prepares for its mission.

We see Hiroshima before the bombing, including civilians going about their business and Japanese observers in action watching the American aircraft fly over, followed by the explosion and near-obliteration of the city.

The film then takes us back to the origins of the atomic age: To the origins of the word and concept of the "atom," from the Greeks to the Romans, from the alchemists to modern scientists, including Lisa Meitner and Nils Bohr, Hahn and Strassner splitting the atom in 1939 without realizing it...

Einstein at Princeton, writing to Roosevelt on October 11, 1939, to urge the development of the atom bomb; Enrico Fermi at the University of Chicago, establishing the first chain reaction on December 2, 1942...

The army's take-over of the project under the command of Major General Leslie R. Groves, under the cover name of the Manhattan Engineering District, and its growth from an original appropriation of $6000 to over $10 billion.

From there we go to Winston Churchill's "Iron Curtain" speech; Mao meeting with Stalin in Moscow; soldiers attacking civilians in Eastern Europe...

Bernard Baruch's proposal for an international committee to monitor the development of atomic weapons; the Berlin airlift; the postwar Red scare; a look at the Soviet educational system, and its goal of turning out 100,000 new physicists each year...

The September 1949 announcement by Vinaver Bush and the Atomic Energy Commission that the Soviet's have the atomic bomb; H-Bomb work from 1949 on, and the Eniwotok H-Bomb test, engulfing the island and a flotilla of ships; missiles, intercontinental bombers; bomb shelter construction.

ROBERT MONTGOMERY PRESENTS: INVITATION TO MURDER
#520
(approx 60 min)
starring John Newland, Vaughn Taylor, Cliff Robertson
A group of men and women gather together for a dinner party where one of them--but which one?--has said they intend to kill the evil, sadistic Mr. Elliott Vines (Vaughn Taylor). Vines can't help but accept this challenge, and learns to his regret that there is more than one killer in the room. He is done in while Ravel's Bolero plays in the background. But nothing is quite as it seems, however, and at least one more guest may die before the police find the identity of the murderer. John Newland later became familiar to audiences as the host of the occult/mystery series ONE STEP BEYOND.

ROBERT MONTGOMERY PRESENTS: "OUR HEARTS WERE YOUNG AND GAY"
#521
(approx 60 min)
starring Elizabeth Montgomery, Cliff Robertson, Sally Kemp From 1950 thru 1957, actor/director Robert Montgomery produced and hosted this weekly anthology series.

Featuring a repertory company that, in addition to occasional appearances by Montgomery himself, included his daughter Elizabeth, Jan Miner, John Newland, Anne Seymour, Vaughn Taylor, and Cliff Robertson. "Our Hearts Were Young And Gay" was a best-selling book by actress Cornelia Otis Skinner and her friend Emily Kimbrough recounting their trip to Europe during the summer of 1923, which had been filmed at Paramount in 1944.

Elizabeth Montgomery makes a comically sophisticated Cornelia while Sally Kemp is a convincingly wide-eyed Emily in this funny, lively adaptation, juggling approaches from various men including the son (Elliott Reid) of an English nobleman and a young doctor-to-be (Cliff Robertson) from America while fighting off their own inexperience as world travellers and attacks of nerves and measles.

Includes original plugs for Johnson's Wax by the cast, and an appeal for funds for Voice of America. Done live from NBC's Studio 8-H.

SINGER FOUR STAR PLAYHOUSE
with Charles Boyer, Natalie Wood, Dick Powell and Joanne Woodward
(approx 60 min)
FOUR STAR PLAYHOUSE, sponsored by the Singer Sewing Machine company, was broadcast from 1952 thru 1956, and featured the four original founders of Four Star Productions as its leads: Joel McCrea, Rosalind Russell, Charles Boyer, and Dick Powell.

McCrea and Russell left partway through the run of the anthology series, which featured a different dramatic setting and characters each week, and were replaced by David Niven and Ida Lupino. The two stories contained here are among the best of the later series run.

In "THE WILD BUNCH" (not to be confused in any way with the Peckinpah movie of that title), Charles Boyer plays the new husband of a widow with three children, who is forced to make peace with this untamed brood when he is left alone with them for a week.

How he does it is funny, poignant, and very convincing, as he wins the children and even the household pets over to him in the space of that week. Gigi Perreau plays the younger daughter, a would-be poet, and Natalie Wood portrays the older daughter, headed for trouble at age 17 until Boyer intervenes on her behalf against a nasty drunken would-be boyfriend (Tommy Cook).

In "INTERLUDE," Joanne Woodward plays Vicki, a brilliant, sensitive, but lonely student at Lowell Hall, an exclusive girls school. Vicki is bitterly disappointed that her globe-trotting parents are going to miss her graduation, and decides to lose herself in poetry.

Instead, she loses the book over the edge of the dock where she's sitting, after a boat piloted by Dick Powell distracts her.

He's a journalist still recovering from a divorce. These two lonely people, 20 years apart in age, get to know each other, and suddenly life opens up for them both--she gets the attention that her parents' freewheeling lifestyle has denied her, and he finds a fresh outlook on life from this sensitive girl.

Powell and Woodward are both superb, and they get excellent support from the rest of the cast in this simple, touching drama.

This tape also features several original Singer Sewing Machine company commercials.

IT GIVES ME GREAT PLEASURE/STOPOVER IN BOMBAY
(approx 60 min)
"IT GIVES ME GREAT PLEASURE," starring Myrna Loy, Zachary Scott, Robert Preston.
Myrna Loy plays Kate Kennedy, a successful author and speaker who is at her wit's end--forced by widowhood to pursue a career speaking about motherhood, she's on a grueling 76 city tour that she decides to abandon out of exhaustion and frustration.

Not all of the conniving of her manager (Zachary Scott) can get her to change her mind, but when she meets a handsome Texan (Robert Preston) who tries to sweep her off her feet, she begins to realize just how important her work is to her.

"STOPOVER IN BOMBAY," starring Charles Laughton, Casey Adams, Heather Angel, Carleton Young, Henry Corden. Director: Sidney Lanfield.

An almost fiendishly Hitchcock-like show, introduced by Laughton. He plays Charlie Claxton, a blowhard Philadelphia lawyer who prides himself on always being right, in and out of a courtroom.

He and his wife join a group touring the world, and he proceeds to browbeat everyone with his compulsive arguing, catching all of the locals at their attempts to mislead or swindle the travellers.

Finally, in Bombay, he seemingly meets his match in a confrontation with a snake handler. Eerie.

PARADE OF STARS: THE MAN WHO INHERITED EVERYTHING & SHOTGUN SLADE #467
(approx 55 min)
with George Sanders, Carolyn Jones
George Sanders stars in this tale of betrayal and fraud, which is worthy of an ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS episode. He plays William Claxton, the faithful servant to Mr. Conklin-Smythe, a drunken and dissolute heir to a fortune in England.

While returning to England after 20 years in America and Canada to collect his inheritance, Claxton's employer literally drinks himself to death--but through an error, Claxton's name ends up on the death certificate. Before he can correct it, Conklin-Smythe's floozy of a travelling companion (Carolyn Jones) convinces him to leave the mistake in place, so they can live off of the half-million pound inheritance.

Claxton reluctantly goes through with it, because he wants the woman and can't have her without the money, but his betrayal of his late employer's trust weighs heavily on him, and he begins drinking to excess--then he learns that his employer's uncle, not trusting his nephew, left all of his money to William Claxton.

Unable to reclaim his own identity, Claxton sinks into the same chronic drunkeness that eventually killed his employer in the first place.

SHOTGUN SLADE: "SALTED MINE" with Scott Brady, Ernie Kovacs, Marie Windsor, Frank Ferguson
SHOTGUN SLADE was a sort of cross between WANTED: DEAD OR ALIVE and M-SQUAD.

It featured a western hero riding the range, a free-lance trouble-shooter for hire named Shotgun Slade (Scott Brady), who carries a special gun that he calls a two-for-one--a shotgun in one barrel and a .32 caliber rifle in the other.

With Brady narrating the the action, it was also strongly reminiscent of M-SQUAD, starring Lee Marvin (which came out of the same studio), and had a fast moving jazz score (courtesy of Gerald Fried) that didn't fit the western setting but kept the pace of the show very brisk.

It was also very violent, and extremely well handled by director James Neilson.
In "SALTED MINE," Slade is hired by A.S. Batson (Marie Windsor) to prove that the Missouri Mine that she bought from Mike Collier (Frank Ferguson) was salted.

He is ambushed and his horse killed before he even gets to town, and then a crazy old prospector named Hack (Ernie Kovacs) tries to keep him away from town.

When Collier turns up dead, hanged inside his own mine, anybody might have done it--and when he finds out how the mine was salted, who did it, and why, Slade suddenly finds himself fighting for his life in a cave-in.

One of the best things about this show is the dialogue, which is incredibly suggestive for its era--when Slade, angry over the ambush, knocks on the door of A.S. Batson's home and discovers that Batson is a beautiful woman, she asks, "Why didn't you use a battering ram."

He answers, "If I'd known you were on the other side I might've." No surprise that the show is good, tough, and violent, as it was produced and written by legendary western/thriller writer Frank Gruber.



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