The Philco Television Playhouse
The Philco Television Playhouse
| 03 October 1948 (USA)
SEASON & EPISODES
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  • Season 8 : 1955 | 12 Episodes

    EP1 The Miss America Story Sep 04, 1955

    The Philco Corporation and ABC network televised the first live Miss America broadcast on Saturday September 11, 1954. Twenty seven million viewers from coast to coast shared the thrills of the Boardwalk Hall audience as they watched from their own homes as California's Lee Meriwether captured the title for 1955. Bob Russell was the emcee. For the first time, the pageant also featured it's first "Illuminated Night Parade" down the Boardwalk.

    EP2 The Outsiders Sep 18, 1955

    The work of US engineers in a South American country is disrupted by angry local people.

    EP3 A Man is Ten Feet Tall Oct 02, 1955

    Axel, secretly AWOL from the army, joins a black waterfront worker in his fight against bigotry.

    EP4 A Business Proposition Oct 23, 1955

    Plot of this episode is not specified yet.
    Please check back later for more update.

    EP5 The Mechanical Heart Nov 06, 1955

    A businessman commits an unpardonable breach of ethics in order to keep his business alive.

    EP6 One Mummy Too Many Nov 20, 1955

    Three crates, one contains a mummy, one a dead body and one an air-conditioning unit that gets shunted around with utter confusion.

    EP7 The Trees Dec 04, 1955

    A little girl returns from a fresh air camp to her slum district home and brings a sapling with her. The tree is planted in the parking. Ridicule of the family's efforts to keep it alive comes from all sources. Angered, the father sets out to get more trees planted, trouble brews.

    EP8 Christmas 'Til Closing Dec 18, 1955

    A poor family tries to make the best out of Christmas with little income.

    EP9 Rise Up and Walk Jan 01, 1956

    A polio victim's battle to conquer polio is a potent weapon for recovery.

    EP10 This Land is Mine Jan 15, 1956

    Plot of this episode is not specified yet.
    Please check back later for more update.

    EP11 The Starlet Jan 29, 1956

    Plot of this episode is not specified yet.
    Please check back later for more update.

    EP12 Kyria Katina Feb 12, 1956

    The life of a widow is likely to change the day a gentleman suitor proposes to her. For the better?
    Reviews
    F Gwynplaine MacIntyre

    'Philco Television Playhouse' was one of the earliest anthology series from tv's Golden Age. Although this series had much lower production values than what was on offer in more prestigious anthologies such as 'Playhouse 90', the Philco series nonetheless featured some of the best actors, scripters and directors in the industry at that time. Grace Kelly starred in several episodes. James Dean starred in the last episode of the sixth season, almost exactly a year before his death.'Philco Television Playhouse' was transmitted live fortnightly, alternating in its time slot with 'Goodyear Television Playhouse': effectively the same series with a different sponsor. Several episodes of 'Philco' were based on public-domain works by authors including Shakespeare, Jane Austen and Nathaniel Hawthorne ... but many episodes featured original dramas written especially for this series. All of the episodes were performed on soundstages, so the series favoured stories that took place entirely indoors, on minimal sets.The episode broadcast 6 February 1955 was 'A Sense of Justice', an original drama scripted by Gore Vidal. Character actor E.G. Marshall stars as Dennis Leighton, a corrupt businessman in a modern-day Western town with the peculiar name Talisman. Leighton is backing Harris Rhodes (Frank Overton) to campaign for Congress. Rhodes was a good man once, but he is now corrupted by Leighton; if Rhodes gets elected, he'll be Leighton's cat's-paw in Congress.Arriving from the East is Peter Chase (John Hudson), a former Army buddy of Rhodes. Chase has never met Leighton, but he has come to Talisman specifically to murder him. Chase was an idealist who became embittered after a road accident (he sustained minor injuries, but his wife was killed). Chase blaimes Leighton for Rhodes's fall from grace, and feels that he must serve justice by shooting Leighton.This is an earnest drama with some good dialogue, but it suffers from the technical problems of live tv in 1955. The climactic scene is a long thick-ear dialogue in which Chase and Leighton sit in front of a static camera while Chase explains why he's going to murder Leighton. (Instead of just squeezing the trigger, he talks about it at great length.) It's a dull scene with little action, but I recognise that the huge lumbering orthicon cameras of this period required actors to stay in one spot for long periods.SPOILERS COMING. During the long confrontation between Chase and Leighton, actor E.G. Marshall's hands are concealed by the tabletop. At the end of the scene, we discover that he's wearing handcuffs: the authorities got to Leighton first, so Chase won't have to kill him after all. I found this hidden-handcuff business a cheap gimmick. Gore Vidal claimed that this business was inserted by director Robert Mulligan, which may indeed be the case.The entire cast of 'A Sense of Justice' give good performances, notably Paul Tripp as a newspaper editor whose house is torched by Leighton's goons. Tripp (an underrated character actor, best known for his work in children's series) gives a touching performance as a man who has lost his home and all his property, yet seems most concerned that his three Siamese cats were killed in the blaze.

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    Lou Rugani

    As we enter Y2K, it's good to look back on such terrific programs as The Philco Television Playhouse (so named for a time when one sponsor would pick up the whole tab for the series), when the production people strove for excellence, to do the very best they could on the air for their audience, and when actual thought and attention to the on-screen activities was mandatory. (It was for programs such as this that the "TV Dinner" was created, for better or worse. But at least there was something then to attract our continuous attention.) Philco Television Playhouse and the other anthologies of the day were very, very good television, indeed.

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