This week I watched the episode The Comedian (1957) from the Playhouse 90 television series. A comedic television personality with a Mr. Hyde personality and a god-complex backstage makes life miserable for everyone around him including his manager brother. This episode was amazing in the fact that it was not edit intensive and much of the story was taped live. Surprisingly for the shooting style it remained highly engaging throughout the entire film. Mickey Rooney played the difficult personality of the comedian named Sammy Hogarth, who bullies everyone around him. The interesting thing about this viewing experience is that it seems very relatable. This is a very real personality and those of us who have experienced this can attest that Mickey Rooney's portrayal of Sammy was spot on to this personality type. The sad thing about this show is that it seems like a desperate cry for help from people in the film and television industry. It says that this abuse in the industry is overlooked and no one seems to care. This episode was actually based on a novel by Ernest Lehman and the screenplay was written by the Twilight Zone founder Rod Serling. The screenplay was very strong and I think some of its greatest strengths are that it uses the character of Sammy Hogarth as the abusive, self-inflated boss to tell a very relatable story, not just in film but in many workplaces. The weakness in this script is what I refer to as the leatherface syndrome, which was a prevalent outbreak amongst directors during the golden age of television. Sufferers of this disease would cast actors and write screenplays where old men would hook up with women who could be their granddaughters. The writers and directors minds would delude them into believing that not only would these young, attractive, 20 year old women fall for their grandfathers, but the men they would fall for would look nothing like a George Clooney or Tom Cruise. Thankfully, years later the outbreak subsided and directors and writers were no longer as prone to this disease. The episode was directed by John Frankenheimer, who would later write classics like Reindeer Games (2000). One of the strongest points of directing was the fact that this episode used very little editing (as stated earlier in this review). This appears to have taken quite a bit of contemplation and direction to pull off effectively and a part of me wonders if we still have this level of directing talent today, or if anyone really cares.

Mickey Rooney plays Sammy Hogarth, a famous comedian of stage and television, adored by the masses, hated and despised by his intimates.There are two plots here, the lesser involving Sammy's brother, Lester, played by Mel Torme--a grown crybaby who clings to his big brother's shirttail from which comes his job as an abused go-for, and along with the job comes a weekly sketch portraying him as Lester the bumbling fool. There's a desire to get out from under this character abuse, but poor, weak Lester hasn't the backbone to properly make his stand without the aid of his endearing, but troubled wife played by Kim Hunter.Edmond O'Brien plays the pivotal role in this production as Sammy's head comedy writer, and the plot involving a less than honorable script he's come up with is the real fuel for this story. Deceit is the name of the game in this television... well, let's call it a mini-movie since that's what Playhouse 90 more or less turned out, and as usual, O'Brien upstages pretty much everyone he's on screen with. Mickey Rooney certainly gives him a run for his money though. Unfortunately, these bad guy type roles Rooney started playing in the 50s were a big part of what contributed to his losing the public's admiration even though he did them well.I don't think you'll be disappointed with anything, except perhaps the ending, which may leave you less contented than ole' Bossy on a late milking day. It's done well though.

Spoilers. See it first.A story in one of those "Whatever Became Of...?" books from several years ago convinced me without aiming to that Sammy Hogarth is a thinly veiled composite of the top two or three TV comics of TV's Golden Age. (No names please.) In that book, a second string comic who did a lot of TV in the 50s talks at length, with deadly, convincing examples, of the bloated egotism, vanity and ugly cruelty of THE names of early TV comedy. "The really big ones" he said "they were all b****rds."That certainly describes Mickey Rooney as Sammy Hogarth to the letter. Once you accept the premise --that over-the-top success breeds monsters of the ego-- it is easy to get swept up in a paranoid who-was-he-really? guessing game. Is Rooney as good as he is at playing Sammy because he IS Sammy? (After all, success and wealth came to him a a very early age, and he apparently had the kind of women most red-blooded American Male's dream of on tap throughout his 20s and 30s.) --Or is it another non-comic air personality, of the legendary and ultimately self-immolating high temper, a saint before the camera, a beast behind the scenes, whose rise and fall was encapsulated for all time in the contemporaneous Face In the Crowd? Clearly, turning over all the stones in the field is madness. Sammy is a postulate. As central as Sammy is to the experience of The Comedian, the story isn't really about him. It's about Al, Sammy's harried head writer, a middle-aged man who finds himself at a personal crossroads. Deep in a lucrative career most of his peers would kill for, he has come reluctantly to the realization that he doesn't have what it takes anymore. His co-writers are carrying him; he is acting mostly as editor, passive catalyst, critic and executive comedy writer. The crushing grind of turning out huge volumes of material on the tightest schedules has used up whatever he may have had. --Or maybe he never had it to begin with; Al is never sure. (Friends say this character was the great Rod Serling himself, always unsure of his own talent.) Whatever his perceived personal inadequacies, Al recognizes and savors brilliance when he sees it. Years before, he crossed paths with an aspiring young comedy writer named Davey Farber. Farber wrote knockout stuff; Al says he (Al) would be dining daily on Farber's dust, were his rival-aborning/idol alive now. But Farber was killed in WWII. Al keeps an original set of Davey's unused, unsubmitted scripts from the old days in a locked drawer in his office. Why? --To commune from time to time with a kindred spirit and dead friend/mentor/demon? --As insurance against the day when inspiration fails him, and he has to come in contact with the Godhead via the service entrance? To steal the work of somebody better than he ever was? Your answer to this question is as ultimately just as crass and condemning or as shaded and empathetic as you want it to be. Al's relationship with the image of Farber isn't exactly love/hate, but it is masochistic, and he probably hates himself for the emotions those scripts bring out in him. Every time he removes those scripts from his hiding place, he bathes in his own failure. He admires Farber immensely, while feeling stung that he could never be one of the brilliant ones, like the long departed author of his hard-copy inspiration. It's his connection with Farber that will eventually put him to the test.Sammy's brother Lester is the comedian's home base foil. For all the abuse Sammy heaps on everyone else-- and that's plenty-- he saves the very best for family, as people will. Lester is the brunt of the savage monologue that opens Sammy's show every week. Lester's wife is beginning to hate him for taking it lying down. He is squeezed tight between the allure of a cushy sustaining spot on his brother's payroll and his wife's impatient shame at a husband who got everything he will ever own by submitting to his brother's public mistreatment. Lester's desperate search for a way out of the non-stop humiliation and threatened end of his marriage sets things in motion that will force Al to finally deal definitively with his dark secret. Into a charged situation sashays gossip columnist Otis Elwood, a dilettante and foppish slimeball, with fur-collared great coat, crisp fedora and shades he never removes. His pompous and high-blown everyday speech betrays his inflated image of himself. But right off, despite all the creep cues thrown our way, we share one undeniable affinity with this 'villain' that prevents us writing him off: We despise Sammy every bit as much as Elwood does. Like him, we ache to see the little weasel fall. It may be hard for modern audiences to realize the kind of power the Earl Wilsons, Luella Parsons, Hedda Hoppers and Walter Winchells used to wield. But they did, and Elwood is no far-fetched deus ex machina. Lester hates Elwood, mumbling into his collar at the beginning of act one "He thinks he's God or somethin'." He will turn to Elwood before the play is over, for leverage against Al and his brother and for salvation from his personal hell.The obsessions of the main characters are essentially Serling's: career (as in how to earn a dollar and retain one's dignity), place in society (as in one's ultimate deemed status in the human community), the nature of talent, and the question of the importance of legacy. In Serling's world, it isn't a question of wanting to fit in and keep up with the other corporation men. Materialistic failure is always an option for Serling. But to be a nonentity, to do something that causes you to slip through the cracks of human memory, is not.If anyone wants to see what all the talk over TV drama from the Golden Age of television is about, this is the place to start.Ten Stars.

A searing behind-the-scenes look at a larger than life television personality, which still packs a punch today in spite of its many imitators. Written by "The Twilight Zone"'s Rod Serling as a "Playhouse 90" televised drama, it contains an explosive performance by Mickey Rooney that stands unparalleled in his body of work, prior to or since.Rooney plays Sammy Hogarth, an egomaniacal comedian who demands perfection from everyone around him. His main target is his weak brother, Lester (singer Mel Torme), whose job description basically consists of taking Sammy's round-the-clock abuse, doing his dirty work, and pretending to worship the ground he walks on. Another outlet for Sammy's wrath is his head writer (Edmond O'Brien), who has lost his edge and who, in his desperation to please Sammy, has stolen material from a dead comic. Lester's wife (Kim Hunter) is fed up with her husband's role as Sammy's whipping post, and threatens to leave him if he doesn't rectify the situation. His opportunity to do so comes when he catches wind of the plagiarism, and he threatens to expose Sammy to an acidic columnist unless he cuts a monologue which savagely ridicules Lester.All of the events in the story lead up to a 90-minute telecast which Sammy believes will be the highlight of his career, and must therefore be flawless. That means no last-minute cuts the day before the show, especially the monologue. O'Brien is forced to be the go-between amongst Sammy, Lester, and the columnist, navigating his way with carefully chosen words and ego-stroking. The film is told largely from O'Brien's point of view, and the audience can honestly feel for him as he digs himself into an ever-deeper hole. However, Serling's screenplay is too smart to portray Sammy as a one-dimensional hothead. Actually, he's not at all predictable. In a lesser film, upon discovering the theft of material he would simply explode, screaming his lungs out at everyone in sight. Watch the finesse with which he handles the situation here, and you will witness a marriage of great writing and direction (by John Frankenheimer).That's not to say that Sammy isn't a hothead. As played by Rooney, in a grand, scenery-chewing performance, he is a man so determined to win the undying love of all his fans that he will go to any extreme in achieving that end. Torme demonstrates great acting potential in the role of the spineless brother. His final on-camera breakdown is amazing. O'Brien has perhaps the film's most difficult role, walking a very narrow tightrope and pulling it off marvelously. The most amazing part of the production is the fact that it was filmed live, with no second chances. The actors were obviously comfortable with their assignments, as they were able to move past plain remembrance of lines and create expressions, gestures, etc. "The Comedian" stands as a testament to the capability of television to tell stories in an equally compelling manner as theatrical films.