Crusader (TV series)
Encyclopedia
Crusader is a half-hour black-and-white
Black-and-white
Black-and-white, often abbreviated B/W or B&W, is a term referring to a number of monochrome forms in visual arts.Black-and-white as a description is also something of a misnomer, for in addition to black and white, most of these media included varying shades of gray...

 American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 adventure
Adventure (genre)
The adventure genre, in the context of a narrative, is typically applied to works in which the protagonist or other major characters are consistently placed in dangerous situations...

/drama series
Dramatic programming
Dramatic programming in the UK, or television drama and television drama series in the US, is television program content that is scripted and fictional along the lines of √a traditional drama. This excludes, for example, sports television, television news, reality show and game shows, stand-up...

 that aired 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...

 for two seasons from October 7, 1955 to December 28, 1956.

Synopsis

The series stars Brian Keith
Brian Keith
Brian Keith was an American film, television, and stage actor who in his four decade-long career gained recognition for his work in movies such as the 1961 Disney family film The Parent Trap, the 1966 comedy The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming, and the 1975 adventure saga The Wind and...

 as the fictitious free-lance journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...

 Matt Anders, whose mother's death in a World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 concentration camp in Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

 propels him to combat injustices worldwide during the height of the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...

. Keith's Crusader has been compared to Zorro
Zorro (TV series)
Zorro is an American action/adventure drama series produced by Walt Disney Productions. Based on the well-known Zorro character, the series premiered on October 10, 1957 on ABC. The final network broadcast was June 2, 1959...

, The Lone Ranger
The Lone Ranger
The Lone Ranger is a fictional masked Texas Ranger who, with his Native American companion Tonto, fights injustice in the American Old West. The character has become an enduring icon of American culture....

, or The Cisco Kid
The Cisco Kid (TV series)
The Cisco Kid is a half-hour American Western television series starring Duncan Renaldo in the title role, The Cisco Kid, and Leo Carrillo as the jovial sidekick, Pancho...

in that the principal character is devoted to altruism
Altruism
Altruism is a concern for the welfare of others. It is a traditional virtue in many cultures, and a core aspect of various religious traditions, though the concept of 'others' toward whom concern should be directed can vary among cultures and religions. Altruism is the opposite of...

. Anders is particularly interested in liberating oppressed peoples from communism
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...

. The series began as Nikita S. Khrushchev emerged as the premier and the general secretary of the Communist Party
Communist party
A political party described as a Communist party includes those that advocate the application of the social principles of communism through a communist form of government...

 in the former Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

. The 52-episode program, Keith's first television series, aired on CBS at 9 p.m. Eastern on Fridays. It was replaced on January 4, 1957, by the Howard Duff
Howard Duff
Howard Green Duff was an American actor of film, television, stage, and radio.Duff was born in Charleston, Washington, now a part of Bremerton. He graduated from Roosevelt High School in Seattle in 1932 where he began acting in school plays only after he was cut from the basketball team...

 and Ida Lupino
Ida Lupino
Ida Lupino was an English-born film actress and director, and a pioneer among women filmmakers. In her 48-year career, she appeared in 59 films and directed seven others, mostly in the United States. She appeared in serial television programmes 58 times and directed 50 other episodes...

 sitcom
Situation comedy
A situation comedy, often shortened to sitcom, is a genre of comedy that features characters sharing the same common environment, such as a home or workplace, accompanied with jokes as part of the dialogue...

, Mr. Adams and Eve
Mr. Adams and Eve
Mr. Adams and Eve is a CBS sitcom starring Howard Duff and his then wife, Ida Lupino, as a fictitious acting couple, Howard and Eve Adams, residing in Beverly Hills, California. In the television series, Lupino is known professionally as Eve Drake. The program aired sixty-six episodes from January...

, the story of the private lives of two fictitious married Hollywood
Hollywood, Los Angeles, California
Hollywood is a famous district in Los Angeles, California, United States situated west-northwest of downtown Los Angeles. Due to its fame and cultural identity as the historical center of movie studios and movie stars, the word Hollywood is often used as a metonym of American cinema...

 actor
Actor
An actor is a person who acts in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio in that capacity...

s.

Production notes

Crusader was filmed at Revue Studios, later part of Universal Television
Universal Television
Universal Television is the television production arm of the NBCUniversal Television Group, and by extension, the NBC television network...

. Edwin Reimers
Ed Reimers
Edwin W. Reimers , known as Ed Reimers, was an American actor active during the 1950s and 1960s, who also served as the stentorian-voiced announcer for such early Warner Brothers television series as Cheyenne and Maverick: "From the entertainment capital of the world, this is a Warner Brothers...

, a Warner Brothers and Allstate Insurance
Allstate
The Allstate Corporation is the second-largest personal lines insurer in the United States and the largest that is publicly held. The company also has personal lines insurance operations in Canada. Allstate was founded in 1931 as part of Sears, Roebuck and Co., and was spun off in 1993...

 announcer, narrated the series.

Special appearances

Charles Bronson
Charles Bronson
Charles Bronson , born Charles Dennis Buchinsky was an American actor, best-known for such films as Once Upon a Time in the West, The Magnificent Seven, The Dirty Dozen, The Great Escape, Rider on the Rain, The Mechanic, and the popular Death Wish series...

 appeared twice on Crusader as Mike Brod, an escapee from a communist country who becomes involved with dishonest fight promoters in the episodes "The Boxing Match" and "Freeze-out", the latter episode also featuring Diane Brewster
Diane Brewster
Diane Brewster was an American television actress most noted for playing three distinctively different roles in US TV series of the 1950s and 60s: confidence trickster Samantha Crawford in Maverick; pretty young second-grade teacher Miss Canfield in Leave It to Beaver; and doomed wife Helen...

 in the role of Charlene Hayes.Raymond Bailey
Raymond Bailey
Raymond Thomas Bailey was an American actor on the Broadway stage, movies, and television. He is best known for his role as wealthy banker, Milburn Drysdale, in the television series The Beverly Hillbillies....

, later the banker Milburn Drysdale on CBS's The Beverly Hillbillies
The Beverly Hillbillies
The Beverly Hillbillies is an American situation comedy originally broadcast for nine seasons on CBS from 1962 to 1971, starring Buddy Ebsen, Irene Ryan, Donna Douglas, and Max Baer, Jr....

, appeared twice as the boxing commissioner.

Inger Stevens
Inger Stevens
Inger Stevens was a Swedish-American movie and TV actress.- Early life :Inger Stevens was born Inger Stensland in Stockholm, Sweden. She was an insecure child and was often ill. When she was nine, her parents divorced and she moved with her father to New York City...

 appeared as Alicia in the 1956 episode entitled, "The Girl Across the Hall". Actor and director Aaron Spelling
Aaron Spelling
Aaron Spelling was an American film and television producer. As of 2009, Spelling's eponymous production company Spelling Television holds the record as the most prolific television writer, with 218 producer and executive producer credits...

 guest starred in two episodes as the character Andrew Hock. Don Haggerty
Don Haggerty
Don Haggerty was an American film actor appearing in films in the 1940s and 1950s. Before entering films in 1947, Haggerty was a Brown University athlete and served in the US military...

, formerly a star athlete at Brown University
Brown University
Brown University is a private, Ivy League university located in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. Founded in 1764 prior to American independence from the British Empire as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations early in the reign of King George III ,...

, appeared twice as Fred Martin. Character actor
Character actor
A character actor is one who predominantly plays unusual or eccentric characters. The Oxford English Dictionary defines a character actor as "an actor who specializes in character parts", defining character part in turn as "an acting role displaying pronounced or unusual characteristics or...

s Claude Akins
Claude Akins
Claude Marion Akins was an American actor with a long career on stage, screen and television.Powerful in appearance and voice, Akins could be counted on to play the clever tough guy, on the side of good or bad, in movies and television. He is best remembered as Sheriff Lobo in the 1970s TV series...

 and Robert F. Simon
Robert F. Simon
Robert F. Simon was an American character actor, often portraying military or authority figure roles. Though his face was recognized by audiences, he was mostly unknown by name...

 each appeared twice as characters named "Glenn" and "Dave Bridley", respectively. Robert O. Cornthwaite
Robert O. Cornthwaite
Robert O. Cornthwaite was an American film and television character actor who began his acting career in 1937, appearing in a college production of Twelfth Night, while attending Reed College in Portland, Oregon....

 starred twice too in the role of "Joe Brennan". Two years before he was cast as Dr. Alex Stone on ABC
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...

's The Donna Reed Show
The Donna Reed Show
The Donna Reed Show is an American sitcom starring Donna Reed as the upper middle class housewife Donna Stone. Carl Betz appears as her pediatrician husband Alex, and Shelley Fabares and Paul Petersen as their teenage children Mary and Jeff. The show originally aired on ABC at 10 pm from September...

, Carl Betz
Carl Betz
Carl Betz was an American film and television actor. A native of Mount Lebanon, Pennsylvania, Betz participated in childhood theatricals and later worked in summer stock. He graduated from Mount Lebanon High School in 1939 and then served in the military...

 apepared twice on Crusader as Alan Kingman. Jay Novello
Jay Novello
Jay Novello was an American radio, film, and television character actor.Born in Chicago as Michael Romano, of Italian descent, Novello began his career as a radio actor, playing Jack Packard on the Hollywood version of I Love a Mystery for a brief period, circa 1944...

 also appeared twice as Bruno Menotti. Francis De Sales
Francis De Sales (actor)
Francis A. De Sales was an American actor. He was known for his roles on two early television series: as police Lieutenant Bill Weigand on the CBS and then NBC drama Mr. and Mrs. North and as Sheriff Maddox in the syndicated western Two Faces West...

, formerly on Mr. and Mrs. North
Mr. and Mrs. North
Mr. and Mrs. North are fictional American amateur detectives. Created by Frances and Richard Lockridge, the couple were featured in a series of 26 Mr. and Mrs. North novels, a Broadway play, a motion picture and several radio and television series....

and later on the syndicated
Television syndication
In broadcasting, syndication is the sale of the right to broadcast radio shows and television shows by multiple radio stations and television stations, without going through a broadcast network, though the process of syndication may conjure up structures like those of a network itself, by its very...

 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...

 series, Two Faces West
Two Faces West
Two Faces West is a 39-episode half-hour syndicated television western series set in Gunnison in southwestern Colorado, which aired from October 17, 1960, to July 31, 1961. It stars Scottish native Charles Bateman in the dual roles of twin brothers, Rick January, M.D., and Marshal Ben January...

, appeared in two episodes as Sheriff Smithers. Simon Scott appeared twice too in the role of Jim Farragut. Child actor
Child actor
The term child actor or child actress is generally applied to a child acting in motion pictures or television, but also to an adult who began his or her acting career as a child; to avoid confusion, the latter is also called a former child actor...

s Sandy Descher
Sandy Descher
Sandra "Sandy" Descher is an American former child actress of the 1950s.-Biography:Although born in Burbank, California, she was discovered by accident while on vacation. When Descher was about five years old, her family had travelled across country to New York City where the girl fell in love...

 and Bobby Driscoll
Bobby Driscoll
Robert Cletus "Bobby" Driscoll was an American child actor known for a large body of cinema and TV performances from 1943 to 1960. He starred in some of The Walt Disney Company's most popular live-action pictures of that period, such as Song of the South , So Dear to My Heart , and Treasure Island...

 appeared as war orphan
Orphan
An orphan is a child permanently bereaved of or abandoned by his or her parents. In common usage, only a child who has lost both parents is called an orphan...

s awaiting adoption.

Other guest stars

  • Jack Albertson
    Jack Albertson
    Jack Albertson was an American character actor dating to vaudeville. A comedian, dancer, singer, and musician, Albertson is perhaps best known for his roles as Manny Rosen in The Poseidon Adventure , Grandpa Joe in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, Amos Slade in the 1981 animated film The Fox...

  • Leon Askin
    Leon Askin
    Leon Askin was an Austrian actor best known for portraying the character "General Burkhalter" on the TV sitcom Hogan's Heroes.-Early life:...

  • Arthur Batanides
    Arthur Batanides
    Arthur Batanides was an American film and television actor, originally from Tacoma, Washington.In the 1959-1960 season, Batanides appeared in a supporting role as police Sergeant Olivera in the syndicated crime drama, Johnny Midnight, starring Edmond O'Brien as a New York City actor-turned-private...

  • Anthony Caruso
    Anthony Caruso (actor)
    Anthony Caruso was an American character actor in over 100 American films, usually playing villains, including the First Season of Walt Disney's Zorro as Don Juan Ortega...

  • Virginia Christine
    Virginia Christine
    Virginia Christine was an American film and television actress and voice artist. Christine had a long career as a character actress in film and television. She played "Mrs...

  • Walter Coy
    Walter Coy
    Walter Darwin Coy was an American stage, radio, film, and, principally, television actor, originally from Great Falls, Montana. He was best known for narrating the NBC western anthology series, Frontier, which aired early Sunday evenings in the 1955-1956 season.-Career:Coy performed on Broadway...

  • John Dehner
    John Dehner
    John Dehner was an American actor in radio, television, and films, playing countless roles, often as a droll villain. Between 1941 and 1988, he appeared in over 260 films and television programs. Prior to acting, Dehner had worked as an animator at Walt Disney Studios, and later became a radio...

  • Frank Dekova
    Frank Dekova
    Frank Dekova was an Italian-American character actor.-Biography:Dekova was born in New York City and taught at a school in New York before joining a Shakespeare repertory group...

  • Beverly Garland
    Beverly Garland
    Beverly Garland was an American film and television actress, businesswoman, and hotel owner. Garland gained prominence for her role as Fred MacMurray's second wife, "Barbara Harper Douglas", in the 1960s sitcom My Three Sons...

  • Anthony George
    Anthony George
    Anthony George was an American actor mostly seen on television. He is best known for roles of Don Corley in Checkmate, Burke Devlin and Jeremiah Collins on Dark Shadows, and Dr. Will Vernon on One Life to Live....

  • Clegg Hoyt
    Clegg Hoyt
    Clegg Hoyt was an American actor who appeared primarily on television.- Filmography :* In the Heat of the Night ... as Deputy...

  • Lamont Johnson
    Lamont Johnson
    Lamont Johnson was an American actor and film director who has appeared in and directed many television shows and movies. He won two Emmy Awards....

  • Werner Klemperer
    Werner Klemperer
    Werner Klemperer was a comedic and dramatic actor, best known for his role as Colonel Klink on the CBS television sitcom, Hogan's Heroes.-Early life:...

  • Michael Landon
    Michael Landon
    Michael Landon was an American actor, writer, director, and producer. He is widely known for his roles as Little Joe Cartwright in Bonanza , Charles Ingalls in Little House on the Prairie , and Jonathan Smith in Highway to Heaven...

  • Dayton Lummis
    Dayton Lummis
    Dayton Lummis. Sr. , was an American actor of film and television who specialized in the genre of anthology and western series, often playing authority figures. From 1959-1960, he appeared as Marshal Andy Morrison in nine episodes of NBC's Law of the Plainsman western, with Michael Ansara and...

  • Strother Martin
    Strother Martin
    Strother Martin was an American actor in numerous films and television programs. Martin is perhaps best known as the prison "captain" in the 1967 film Cool Hand Luke, where he uttered the line, "What we've got here is...failure to communicate."-Early life:Strother Martin Jr. was born in Kokomo,...

  • Burt Mustin
    Burt Mustin
    Burton Hill "Burt" Mustin was an American character actor.-Early life:Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to W. I. and Sadie Mustin, Mustin was a 1903 graduate of the Pennsylvania Military College , earning his degree in civil engineering...

  • Jeanette Nolan
    Jeanette Nolan
    Jeanette Nolan was an American radio, film and television actress. Nolan was nominated for four Emmy Awards.-Early life:...

  • Jerry Paris
    Jerry Paris
    Jerry Paris was an American actor and director best known for playing Jerry Helper, the dentist and next door neighbor of Rob and Laura Petrie, on The Dick Van Dyke Show.-Life and career:...

  • Paul Richards
    Paul Richards (actor)
    Paul Richards was a Jewish American actor who appeared in films and on television in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s until his death from cancer at the age of fifty. He married actress Monica Keating in 1953.Richards guest-starred in a number of classic television western series, including Gunsmoke...

  • Roy Roberts
    Roy Roberts
    Roy Roberts was an American character actor. Over his more than 40-year career, he appeared in more than nine hundred productions on stage and screen.-Biography:...

  • Gregory Walcott
    Gregory Walcott
    Gregory Walcott is an American television and film actor. He is perhaps best known for having appeared in the 1959 Ed Wood film, the cult classic Plan 9 from Outer Space.-Early life and career:...

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK