The Play of the Week
Other (ended 1961)
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Season 2
- Ep 31All Summer Long5/1/61
Portrait of a complacent Midwestern family. Blustering father, bumbling mother, brainless daughter, whose river bank house is threatended by erosion. Two brothers work together to make retaining wall to save their home form the rising river. They fail, the house crumbles, and the family has to flee for its life. - Ep 30Close Quarters4/24/61
One apartment and two possible renters, solves these unusual problem. - Ep 29The Wingless Victory4/17/61
Set in 1800 Indian princess, rejected form white society, commits suicide with her children after losing her husband's love. - Ep 28In A Garden4/10/61
The story of Adrian Terry, a wealthy, fortyish playwright who has decided to retire from writing plays. His jealous hack-writer friend Roger Compton insists that Terry keep on writing, telling him he is a dramatist to the soles of his shoes. When Terry demurs, Compton attempts to provoke him with an idea: he states that every man's wife is another man's mistress. Compton then tells Terry that he has information that Terry's young wife Lissa had a dalliance when she was a debutante with dashing Ivy Leaguer Norrie Bliss, in a garden in Katonah.moreless - Ep 27Waiting for Godot4/3/61
Two tramps are waiting by a sickly looking tree for the arrival of M. Godot. They quarrel, make up, contemplate suicide, try to sleep, eat a carrot and gnaw on some chicken bones. Two other characters appear, a master and a slave, who perform a grotesque scene in the middle of the play. A young boy arrives to say that M. Godot will not come today, but that he will come tomorrow. He does not come and the two tramps resume their vigil by the tree, which between the first and second day has sprouted a few leaves, the only symbol of a possible order in a thoroughly alienated world.moreless - Ep 26A Cool Wind Over the Living3/27/61
Torn by love between two men, and overcoming a crippling illness, she decides to remain alone. - Ep 25The Wooden Dish3/20/61
Clara and the father-in-law she has been trying to dislodge ever since she married who is a tough, asthmatic old wreck combining all the pride and cunning of his age with the simplicity of a baby. His son, Glenn, is tossed helplessly from one loyalty to another, and Clara has grown desperate enough for anything, even an attempted love affair with another man, anything to release her from this burden. When Pop finally gives up the fight to remain in his son's home, it is left to his granddaughter, Susan, to see with the compassion that only youth can feel for age, the true tragedy of his going.moreless - Ep 24Therese Raquin3/13/61
An unhappily married Parisian man finds his controlling wife difficult to be with. Feeling rejected Therese has an affair with her husband's friend Laurent and together they conspire to murder her husband. - Ep 23The Old Foolishness3/6/61
A family feud set in Bromley, Kent when their religious beliefs overtake their reasoning. - Ep 22No Exit -- The Indifferent Lover2/27/61
(1) "No Exit" with Colleen Dewhurst, Dane Clark, Diana Hyland
Three people are stuck in hell without the convenience of a torturer on whom to focus their fear and hatred. Naturally being resourceful humans, they find infinite ways to torment each other. Best line Sartre wrote is "Hell is other people".
(2) "The Indifferent Lover" with Miriam Hopkinsmoreless - Ep 21The Magic and the Loss2/20/61
Grace Wilson is a divorced Manhattan career woman intent on a much bigger job at her advertising agency. She has an agency executive for a lover, a 14-year-old son who stumbles onto the love affair, and an ex-husband, a West Coast professor, who comes east on a visit and captures the boy's affections.''moreless - Ep 20The Sound of Murder2/13/61
A murder plot is accidentally recorded and the victims secretary holds the tape, the lovers tiff develops. - Ep 19Four by Tennessee2/6/61
The Four Tennessee Williams plays are: ''''"I Rise in Flame, Cried the Phoenix" (1959) based on the last few days and death of DH Lawrence.''''"Hello from Bertha." (1954) A disturbed drunk prostitute named Bertha wallows around while her two housemates try in vain to help her.''''"The Lady of Larkspur Lotion." (1949) Sedlachek, the owner of a fleabag hotel, who wants to evict her deadbeat tenant. She is a faded Southern belle who, despite being reduced to prostitution, tries gamely to maintain a facade of gentility. What she refers to as lotion is actually hooch. Her castle in the air is a plantation in Brazil, and the man of her dreams a "rubber king"; but the knight who rides to her rescue turns out to be the alcoholic blocked writer who lives down the hall.''''"The Purification" (1959)moreless - Ep 18He Who Gets Slapped1/30/61
A clown becomes disenchanted with life as the drama unfolds. - Ep 17New York Scrapbook1/23/61
Humourous musical revues of life in New York City.''''Songs: ''Mister Off-Broadway (M: Harvey Schmidt, L: Tom Jones)''Summer/Autumn/Winter/Spring (M: Harvey Schmidt, L: Tom Jones)'' - Ep 16Black Monday1/16/61
In a small southern town, the integration of a Negro girl into a white school for the first time has the residents both black and white in an uprorar. - Ep 15The Potting Shed1/9/61
The story concerns the son of a famous atheist who seeks to uncover a childhood mystery in his past. He eventually discovers that he committed suicide in the eponymous potting shed at the age of 14, but was revived when his uncle, a priest, entered into a strange bargain with God.moreless - Ep 14A Clearing in the Woods1/2/61
A young woman seeking asylum from an urban world where she is in crisis, caught between madness and reason. In her search for solace in the woods, she is propelled into a world far more disorienting - where time is turned upside down and the phantoms of her past meet the realities of her present in a storm of illusion and desire.moreless - Ep 13Emmanuel12/19/60
The story of the journey of Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem. - Ep 12Rashomon12/12/60
In the heat of the afternoon, a bandit sees a husband and wife moving along a path. He decides he must have the woman, even if he has to kill the man. - Ep 11Uncle Harry12/5/60
A fabric designer who is henpecked by his spinster twin sisters with whom he lives, become enraged when he meets and falls in love. His jealous sister, drives him to a murder plot. The wrong sister gets the poison, but he gets the torment. - Ep 10Highlights of New Faces11/28/60
Great comedy skits to introduce the newest comedians of their time. - Ep 9The Iceman Cometh (2)11/21/60
The dreams and failures of the denizens of a seedy New York saloon circa 1912. - Ep 8The Iceman Cometh (1)11/14/60
The spotlight is on the failed lives, empty hopes, and perpetual pipe dreams of an assortment of down-and-out denizens of a seedy saloon, set in New York in 1912. Their sad, but complacent existences are rattled when Hickey arrives for his annual bender a changed man - forswearing alcohol and preaching a deliverance from "the lie of the pipe dream."moreless - Ep 7Two by Saroyan11/7/60
In ONCE AROUND THE BLOCK, a playboy screenwriter gives advice to a young writer on how to appeal to the opposite sex. In MY HEART'S IN THE HIGHLANDS, a poet and his son, poor in funds but rich in spirit live their day to day existence. - Ep 6Seven Times Monday10/31/60
The problems of a factory worker who dreams of becoming a "cop," of replacing the drudgery of the machine shop with the thrill of riding along on a motorcycle. But there are family responsibilities to meet, and the problems of prejudice to be dealt with - which they are, in a most heart-warming and honest way.moreless - Ep 5Duet for Two Hands10/24/60
Abigail Sarclet gets word from her father that he's returning to their castle on the Orkney Islands with a celebrated poet. - Ep 4The Velvet Glove10/17/60
When beloved Mother Hildebrand returns from a tour of her many convents, she is upset to learn that the bishop intends to dismiss young Professor Pearson from the college staff. She reluctantly agrees to the bishop's order, but in her heart she has other plans. - Ep 3Legend of Lovers10/10/60
When they meet in a railroad station and fall in love and escape by themselves to a shabby hotel room, it is the rest of the world that seems unreal. Their lovers' avowals are their center of the universe. Everything that goes on around them seems mean and contrived.''''In the Greek legend, Eurydice dies; Orpheus persuades death to restore her to him. But death extracts one condition: Orpheus must never look at her. M. Anouilh has restated the legend in terms of a romantic street musician and the soubrette of a provincial theatre troupe.moreless - Ep 2The Dybbuk5/1/61
According to Yiddish folklore, a Dybbuk is the disturbed spirit of a dead man or woman which can inhabit the body of a living person. This story takes place in an Old Country village where such mystical matters can become reality. - Ep 1Henry IV9/26/60
The story of a young man's elevation from immature prince to responsible king.
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Season 1
- Ep 35The House of Bernarda Alba6/6/60
Bernarda Alba is a widow, and her five daughters are incarcerated in mourning along with her. One by one they make a bid for freedom, with tragic consequences. Lorca's tale depicts the repression of women within Catholic Spain in the years before the war. - Ep 34The Grand Tour5/30/60
Nell Valentine is a no longer young, school teacher, who for the first time in her sheltered life falls desperately in love during the course of a summer tour through Europe. Nell has planned this trip as a climax to long years of hope and preparation. But Ray Brinton, who has fallen in love with her and hopes to marry her, must tell her that not only he is already married but he is a fugitive from justice, having stolen money from his own bank. Nell is ready to marry him in spite of everything, until Ray's wife appears on the scene and shows she is still deeply attached to him.moreless - Ep 33Mary Stuart5/23/60
The tale of two queens separated by historic identity but joined in their dramatic isolation' Observer. Mary Queen of Scots has been held prisoner for nineteen years by her cousin, Elizabeth I, who has condemned her to death, but is reluctant to be seen to carry out the sentence. Leicester, Elizabeth's favourite and Mary's ex-lover, engineers a meeting of the two Queens - an encounter which never took place in historical fact - from which Mary emerges triumphant but doomed.moreless - Ep 32Archie and Mehitabel5/16/60
He is very sardonic and romantic attitude towards her. He disapproves of her wanton behavior but is also fascinated by her. - Ep 31A Piece of Blue Sky5/9/60
During the Depression in the Bronx unhappiness and disappointment send Rose in search of a better life. - Ep 30Night of the Auk5/2/60
Arrogant millionaire industrialist Rohnen has financed the first manned lunar expedition and has come along for the ride.''Having reached the moon and now heading back to Earth. The mission was not a complete success: one member of the six-man expedition died on the moon, and his shipmates left him there. Now, on the way home, the five remaining spacemen make a terrible discovery: the ship has only enough oxygen left for TWO crewmen to reach Earth alive. Three of the men must stop breathing very soon, or else all five will run out of air long before the ship reaches Earth. Unless three men are willing to do the gentlemanly thing and commit suicide for the sake of their shipmates, someone will have to commit multiple murder to ensure his own survival.''However, while the ship was on the moon, a nuclear war has broken out on Earth. Now, while the crewmen are arguing over which three of them should sacrifice themselves to save the other two, they also hear transmissions from their Earth base, describing events back home. An all-out nuclear holocaust has already begun, and the entire human race has been doomed by the radioactive fallout.moreless - Ep 29Mornings at Seven4/25/60
The lives of the four Gibbs sisters stir up a lifetime of familial affection and resentment, the joys with spurts of darker emotions sends us into a plot with the arrival of a stranger. - Ep 28The Girls in Room 5094/18/60
Two ladies live like hermits as a result of the Democrat victory in the 1932 presidential election. Their humorous tribulations are compounded because the hotel they live in is scheduled for demolition and one of the ladies is out to trap a man--literally. Their story and reputed wealth attract a motley group of reporters and politicians.moreless - Ep 27The Enchanted4/11/60
A small French town is thrown off its equilibrium by a drowning and subsequent reports of a haunting ghost. A young schoolteacher, Isabel, is enchanted by the spirit and visits him nightly. An officious inspector comes from Paris to disprove this affront to rational society -- death is bones and worms, she argues -- and to return the town to order.moreless - Ep 26A Palm Tree in a Rose Garden4/4/60
Rose Frobisher once won a beauty contest and on the strength of that came to Hollywood. After years of frustration she settled down to keep an apartment-rooming house which she called the Rose Garden. For a while she pinned her hopes on her daughter, but Lila was not interested in getting into the movies so Rose turned to a succession of roomers, young, beautiful and all with a burning desire to be a movie star.moreless - Ep 25The Grass Harp3/28/60
A band of sweet misfits who defect from materialistic society and set up their own ideal civilization in a tree house. An orphaned boy sent to live with his two eccentric spinster aunts who helped shape the lad's way of looking at and listening to the world. - Ep 24The Master Builder3/21/60
Halvard Solness is a well known builder, a master builder, who has driven many of his rivals out of business in the course of his long career. He is currently building a house for himself and his wife, Aline, to be a home to properly replace Aline's family house which burnt down some years ago killing his twin baby sons.moreless - Ep 23The Rope Dancers3/14/60
Margaret his oppressive, overbearing and quarrelsome wife has failed to come to terms with her guilt-ridden past. She makes life hell for her aspiring writer husband James Hyland and her daughter Lizzie is pale from being kept home and away from school and friends. In trying to cope with her mother's tempestuous outbursts, she succumbs to an incurable nervous disorder.moreless - Ep 22Volpone3/7/60
Three English tourists in Venice and their refusal to succumb to the allure of Italian decadence embarks on a journey of human acceptance and frailities. - Ep 21Climate of Eden2/29/60
A family of missionaries live in the jungles of British Guiana, where they have worked out an unconventional philosophy of life based on a practical compromise with civilization. Religion and morality are tempered with humour and tolerance. To this happy household comes Gregory Hawke, a young man who suffers from various complexes and neuroses. He joins the family, hoping that their simple way of life will cure him. He falls in love with one of the daughters and ultimately takes her with him after his recovery.moreless - Ep 20A Very Special Baby2/22/60
Joey Casale is 34 years old, the youngest of a family of six children; except for a brief period of glory during the War, he has stayed at home all his life, never held a steady job, and lived on the allowance his father has given him. His father is a self-made man, generous with all his children, outwardly very fond of Joey and of Anna, the eldest daughter who lives at home and keeps house for her father and brother. The two older sons are successful professional men, and his father teases Joey about his lack of achievement.moreless - Ep 19Don Juan in Hell2/15/60
The Devil is at a loss to explain why anyone would want to be in that "most angelically dull place," heaven.''The Statue, who has been there, agrees, comparing heaven to a classical music concert: Most people don't really appreciate it--they just think they ought to, he says.''The hero who is being pursued by a determined woman falls asleep in the mountains of Spain and dreams himself as the legendary lover Don Juan, who is locked in a sprawling debate with three other denizens of Darkness: the Devil who has more charm and wit than fire and brimstone, a Soldier once felled by Don Juan in an earthly duel, and that man's daughter, Ana, whom Don Juan had seduced.moreless - Ep 18Tiger at the Gates2/8/60
Set in Troy, a city doomed to betrayal and destruction. The story is of Hector's struggle to preserve peace in the face of patriotic sentimentality and mob hysteria. - Ep 17Juno and the Paycock2/2/60
Captain Boyle is "Captain" by virtue of a single trip made as a seaman on a collier bound from London to Liverpool. He is usually known to his neighbors, however, as the "paycock" on account of his strutting, consequential gait. He and his crony, Joxer, spend most of their time drinking in "pubs" or playing cards in the Boyle flat, where Joxer flatters him to his face and steals from him behind his back. Boyle has nicknamed his wife "Juno" because she "was born and christened in June. I met her in June; we were married in June and Johnny was born in June." Throughout all the trouble and turmoil, Captain and his crony remain blissfully drunk and obtuse to their problems.moreless - Ep 16Strindberg on Love1/25/60
(1) Miss Julie = A poignant study of the ill-fated sexual encounter between an ambitious footman and a neurotic count's daughter.'' ''(2) The Stronger = Two women, one of whom silently listens to the other's compulsive confession. - Ep 15Lullaby1/18/60
A 38-year-old truck driver who elopes with a cigarette girl, but problems arise when they realize they don't know much about each other and his domineering mother won't leave the couple alone. - Ep 14The Emperor's Clothes1/11/60
It's Christmas in 1930 Budapest and schoolteacher Elek Odry has been blacklisted by the totalitarian government regime. - Ep 13The Closing Door1/4/60
A once-great photographer who pretends to his family that he works at an office but really gets his money elsewhere. Scarred by an unhappy childhood, he harbors a bitter hatred towards his successful brother. - Ep 12The Cherry Orchard12/28/59
Mme. Ranevskaya is brought home to her Russian estate after having fled to France amidst family tragedy. Returning home in 1900 after the liberation of the Serfs, nothing seems to have changed. The mansion has been impeccably kept up and the trees in the cherry orchard are in romantic bloom. The reality, however, soon sets in: The family fortune has been squandered. Lyubov holds out for a miracle to save her home, her past, and her beloved orchard. When wealthy friend Lopakhin, who grew up as a servant on the property, recommends selling and developing the orchard land in order to save the property, he is met with fierce opposition from the family. With the mortgage date drawing nearer, Lyubov's hopes become as empty as the leafless wintry appearance of the trees in the orchard.moreless - Ep 11Thieves Carnival12/21/59
Two attractive young girls reside in a palatial home, when their residence is invaded by three affectionate thieves, a romance unexpectedly develops between one of the girls and the youngest thief. Being too honest for his own good, he cannot in good conscience accept her love, and instead turns back with a vengeance to his criminal life ... but she happens to be swiftier and wilier than he is!moreless - Ep 10The World of Sholom Aleichem12/14/59
Famed Yiddish storyteller Sholom Aleichem as he tells three tales: "A Tale of Chelm," about a bookseller who tries to buy a goat in a town of fools; "Bontche Schweig," a tale of a poor man whose heavenly arrival coaxes tears from the angels; and "The High School," about a couple's attempts to send their son to a nonreligious school.moreless - Ep 9Simply Heavenly12/7/59
Jesse B Semple is a hardworking man, often down on his luck, with an expensive divorce looming. He has a good woman to love but is tempted by the local siren and even more so by the neighbourhood bar. Life is very complicated! - Ep 8Crime of Passion11/30/59
The mentality and morality of Communism in its story of a young Party member assigned to shoot a "deviationist". - Ep 7The White Steed11/23/59
The alchemist Irish Priest, Father Shaughnessy, is an intolerant moralist who temporarily replaces Canon Matt Lavelle, whose legs have been paralyzed by a stroke. Father Shaughnessy forms a vigilance committee to stamp out sin, which in his view includes drinking, courting, and interfaith marriages. Through his committee he breaks up the engagement of schoolmaster Denis Dillon to a Protestant girl and discharges librarian Nora Fintry because she has been seen with a man.''''Denis is intimidated, but Nora is determined to fight the priest. She and Denis fall in love, and through her Denis finds the strength to stand up to the priest. Inspector Toomey, who has tried to protect the secular rights of those oppressed by the vigilance committee, threatens to arrest the priest, and a mob gathers to prevent him from doing so. Then Canon Lavelle appears, miraculously walking. He calms his parishioners, sends them home, and rebukes Father Shaughnessy for his hot-headedness and "spiritual snobbery."moreless - Ep 6The Waltz of the Toreadors11/16/59
France 1910: a general fancies himself to be a toreador with the ladies, but he is disgusted with himself and the hollowness of his triumphs. - Ep 5A Month in the Country11/9/59
A bored wife living in the Russian countryside falls in love with her little boy's handsome new tutor, just like all of the other women in the household. The wife's chief rival turns out to be her seventeen year-old ward. - Ep 4Back to Back -- The Dock Brief & What Shall We Tell Caroline?11/2/59
The Dock Brief = A seedy broken down barrister attempts to defend innocuous murderer who is acquitted due to defence incompetence. ''''What Shall We Tell Caroline? = Parent's resolve to teach their eighteen year old daughter the facts of life - despite their own ignorance. - Ep 3Burning Bright10/26/59
A wife who commits adultery out of the desire to give her sterile husband an heir. Acting out of love for her husband, she becomes pregnant by the third member of their acrobatic troupe. - Ep 2The Power and the Glory10/19/59
The last priest is on the run. During an anti-clerical purge in one of the southern states of Mexico, he is hunted like a hare. Too human for heroism, too humble for martyrdom, the little worldly "whisky priest" is nevertheless impelled towards his squalid Calvary as much by his own compassion for humanity as by the efforts of his pursuers.moreless - Ep 1Medea10/12/59
The story focuses on Medea's jealousy and revenge when she discovers that her husband Jason plans to wed the daughter of the King of Creon.
