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Playhouse 90
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Playhouse 90 is a 90-minute dramatic television anthology series, telecast on CBS from 1956 to 1961 for a total of 133 episodes. Since live anthology drama series of the mid-1950s were hour-long shows, the title highlighted the network's intention to present something unusual, a weekly series of hour-and-a-half dramas rather than 60-minute plays.
producers were Martin Manulis, John Houseman, Russell Stoneman, Fred Coe, Arthur Penn and Hubbell Robinson.
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Encyclopedia
Playhouse 90 is a 90-minute dramatic television anthology series, telecast on CBS from 1956 to 1961 for a total of 133 episodes. Since live anthology drama series of the mid-1950s were hour-long shows, the title highlighted the network's intention to present something unusual, a weekly series of hour-and-a-half dramas rather than 60-minute plays.
Background
The producers were Martin Manulis, John Houseman, Russell Stoneman, Fred Coe, Arthur Penn and Hubbell Robinson. The leading director was John Frankenheimer (27 episodes), followed by Franklin Schaffner (19 episodes). Other directors included Sidney Lumet, George Roy Hill, Delbert Mann and Robert Mulligan.
With Alex North's opening theme music, the series debuted October 4, 1956 with Rod Serling's adaptation of Pat Frank's novel Forbidden Area. The following week, Requiem for a Heavyweight, also scripted by Serling, received critical accolades and later dominated the 1956 Emmys by winning awards in six categories, including best direction, best teleplay and best actor. Serling was given the first Peabody Award for television writing. For many viewers, live TV drama had moved to a loftier plateau. Playhouse 90 established a reputation as television's most distinguished anthology drama series and maintained a high standard for four seasons (with repeats in 1961).
Productions were planned from the start to be both live and filmed, with a filmed show every fourth Thursday to relieve the pressure of mounting the live telecasts. The first filmed Playhouse 90 was The Country Husband (November 1, 1956) with Barbara Hale and Frank Lovejoy portraying a couple in a collapsing marriage.
The ambitious series frequently featured critically acclaimed dramas, including the original television versions of The Miracle Worker (with Teresa Wright as Annie Sullivan), and The Helen Morgan Story (with an Emmy to Polly Bergen for her performance in the title role), In the Presence of Mine Enemies (Rod Serling's Warsaw ghetto drama starring Charles Laughton, with Robert Redford in an early role), and the original television version of Judgment at Nuremberg, featuring Maximilian Schell in the role he would repeat in the 1961 film, but with an otherwise different cast, including Claude Rains in the Spencer Tracy role. Playhouse 90 received many Emmy Award nominations, and it later ranked #33 on TV Guides 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time.
Writers
Writers for the series included Robert Alan Aurthur, Sumner Locke Elliott, Horton Foote, Frank D. Gilroy, Roger O. Hirson, A. E. Hotchner, Abby Mann, JP Miller and Leslie Stevens. Playwright Tad Mosel, who wrote four teleplays for Playhouse 90, recalled:
- My first
Playhouse 90 was glamour... Glamour had come to television because CBS had built this magnificent Television City in Los Angeles... Television had come to deserve buildings for itself. This was a whole new idea, that you'd have a building for television. Playhouse 90 was one of the first shows to go into that mammoth building.
John Frankenheimer
Between 1954 and 1960, John Frankenheimer directed 152 live television dramas, an average of one every two weeks. During the 1950s he was regarded as television's top directorial talent, and much of his significant work was for Playhouse 90, for which he directed 27 teleplays between 1956 and 1960. He began with Forbidden Area (4 October 1956), adapted by Serling from the Pat Frank novel about Soviet sabotage, following with Rendezvous in Black (25 October 1956), adapted from Cornell Woolrich's novel of twisted revenge; Eloise (22 November 1956), adapted from the book by Kay Thompson and Hilary Knight; and The Family Nobody Wanted (20 December 1956), from the Helen Doss novel about a childless couple who adopt a dozen children of mixed ancestry, a novel brought to TV again in 1975.
As Playhouse 90 moved into 1957, Frankenheimer directed a science fiction drama, The Ninth Day (10 January 1957), by Howard and Dorothy Baker, about a small group of World War III survivors and a Serling original, The Comedian (14 February 1957), featuring a powerful performance by Mickey Rooney as an abrasive, manipulative television comedian. In later interviews, Frankenheimer expressed his admiration for Rooney's acting in this memorable drama.
After The Last Tycoon (14 March 1957), adapted from the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel about a film studio head, Frankenheimer followed with Tad Mosel's If You Knew Elizabeth (11 April 1957) about an ambitious college professor; another Fitzgerald adaptation, Winter Dreams (23 May 1957), dramatizing a romantic triangle; Clash by Night (13 June 1957), with Kim Stanley in an adaptation of the Clifford Odets play; and The Fabulous Irishman (27 June 1957), a biographical drama tracing events in the life of Robert Briscoe. Frankenheimer used a fake bull's head jutting into the frame when he staged The Death of Manolete (12 September 1957), Barnaby Conrad's drama about the death of the legendary bullfighter, a production later ranked by Frankenheimer as one of his worst.
Robert Alan Aurthur's script for A Sound of Different Drummers (3 October 1957) borrowed so heavily from Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 that Bradbury sued. The Troublemakers (21 November 1957) was George Bellak's adaptation of his own 1956 play about a campus newspaper editor killed by other students. Frankenheimer ended the year with The Thundering Wave (12 December 1957), starring James and Pamela Mason in an Aurthur drama about acting couple who agree to do a play together despite their separation.
Frankenheimer kicked off 1958 with The Last Man (9 January 1958), an Aaron Spelling revenge drama, followed by The Violent Heart (6 February 1958) from Daphne du Maurier story of romance on the French Riviera, Rumors of Evening (1 May 1958) about a WWII pilot obsessed with USO entertainer and Serling's Bomber's Moon (22 May 1958) about a WWII pilot accused of cowardice. A Town Has Turned to Dust (19 June 1958), a Serling drama about 1870 lynching of innocent Mexican in Southwestern town, was based on the Emmett Till case.
In The New York Times for October 3, 1958, the day after JP Miller's Days of Wine and Roses was telecast, Jack Gould wrote a rave review with much praise for the writer, director and cast:
- It was a brilliant and compelling work... Mr. Miller's dialogue was especially fine, natural, vivid and understated. Miss Laurie's performance was enough to make the flesh crawl, yet it also always elicited deep sympathy. Her interpretation of the young wife just a shade this side of delirium tremens--the flighty dancing around the room, her weakness of character and moments of anxiety and her charm when she was sober--was a superlative accomplishment. Miss Laurie is moving into the forefront of our most gifted young actresses. Mr. Robertson achieved first-rate contrast between the sober man fighting to hold on and the hopeless drunk whose only courage came from the bottle. His scene in the greenhouse, where he tried to find the bottle that he had hidden in the flower pot, was particularly good... John Frankenheimer's direction was magnificent. His every touch implemented the emotional suspense but he never let the proceedings get out of hand or merely become sensational.
Old Man (20 November 1958) was adapted by Horton Foote from William Faulkner's short novel set during the 1927 Mississippi River flood. Face of a Hero (1 January 1959), based on the Pierre Boulle novel, starred Jack Lemmon, who took this play to Broadway for a run of 36 performances in October-November 1960. The following year, Frankenheimer began with The Blue Men (15 January 1959), an Alvin Boretz drama about the trial of police detective who refused to make an arrest. A.E. Hotchner adapted Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls into a two-parter (12 March and 19 March 1959). Journey to the Day (22 April 1960) was a Roger Hirson drama about group therapy.
Live to tape
Playhouse 90 began as a live series, making a transition to tape in 1957. Kevin Dowler, writing for the Museum of Broadcast Communications, noted:
- Its status as a "live" drama was short lived in any case, since the difficulties in mounting a 90-minute production on a weekly basis required the adoption of the recently developed videotape technology, which was used to pre-record entire shows from 1957 onward. Both the pressures and the costs of this ambitious production eventually resulted in
Playhouse 90 being cut back to alternate weeks, sharing its time slot with The Big Party between 1959 and 1960. The last eight shows were aired irregularly between February and May of 1960, with repeats broadcast during the summer weeks of 1961...
- The success of
Playhouse 90 continued into the 1957-58 season with productions of The Miracle Worker, The Comedian and The Helen Morgan Story. Although these shows, along with Requiem and Judgment at Nuremberg were enough to ensure the historical importance of Playhouse 90, the program also stood out because of its emergence in the "film era" of television broadcasting evolution. By 1956, much of television production had moved from the east to the west coast, and from live performances to filmed series. Most of the drama anthologies, a staple of the evening schedule to this point, fell victim to the newer types of programs being developed. Playhouse 90 stands in contrast to the prevailing trend, and its reputation benefited from both the growing nostalgia for the waning live period and a universal distaste for Hollywood on the part of New York television critics. It is also probable that since the use of videotape (not widespread at the time) preserved a "live" feel, discussion of the programs could be easily adapted to the standards introduced by the New York television critics.
The program was normally telecast in black-and-white, but on Christmas night, 1958, it offered a color production of Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker, starring the New York City Ballet and choreographed by George Balanchine.
Source for movies
More than a few teleplays in the series were later filmed as theatrical motion pictures, including Requiem for a Heavyweight, The Helen Morgan Story, Days of Wine and Roses and Judgment at Nuremberg. Seven Against the Wall was scripted by Howard Browne, who later reworked his teleplay into the screenplay for Roger Corman's 1967 movie, The St. Valentine's Day Massacre. Three of the actors in the Playhouse 90 production reprised their roles for the Corman film: Celia Lovsky, Milton Frome and Frank Silvera.
In at least one case, the reverse was true; William Saroyan's The Time of Your Life starring Jackie Gleason had been a James Cagney film of the same title ten years earlier, and used one of the original cast members from the film in a supporting role.
An indifferently received TV movie production of In the Presence of Mine Enemies, starring Armin Mueller-Stahl in the Charles Laughton role, was shown on cable TV in 1997 by Showtime.
Awards
Peabody Awards
Requiem for a Heavyweight 1959 Playhouse 90
Golden Globe Awards
Playhouse 90 1958 Best Dramatic Anthology Series – Playhouse 90
Emmy Awards
- 1957 Best New Program Series –
Playhouse 90 1957 Best Art Direction - One Hour or More – Albert Heschong in Requiem for a Heavyweight 1957 Best Single Performance by an Actor – Jack Palance in Requiem for a Heavyweight 1957 Best Single Program of the Year – Requiem for a Heavyweight 1957 Best Teleplay Writing - One Hour or More – Rod Serling in Requiem for a Heavyweight 1957 Best Director - One Hour or More – Ralph Nelson in Requiem for a Heavyweight 1958 Best Single Performance by an Actress – Polly Bergen in The Helen Morgan Story 1959 Best Dramatic Series - One Hour or Longer – Playhouse 90 1960 Outstanding Program Achievement in the Field of Drama – Playhouse 90
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