THE EASTER BREACH - Spring 1965 (Suspense Theatre)

Recently through the interest, kindness and generosity of David Lanza's Kraft Suspense Theatre blogsite at http://kraft1963.blogspot.com, I received a much better transciption of this show than the one I published in January, 2010.  So here are new film clips.

Late morning the second day of filming THE EASTER BREACH I received a telephone call from the producer. He had just viewed the first day’s rushes and was calling to tell me how pleased he was with what he had seen. He was especially impressed with Richard Beymer’s performance. As was my custom I immediately went over to where Richard was seated to relay this information. He looked up at me with the saddest eyes and said, “That’s what they told me on WEST SIDE STORY."

I was back at the factory to film my third and last SUSPENSE THEATRE. The script was an intelligently written love story by Leon Tokatyan about the difficult escape from East Berlin of an elderly couple. It was decided the story would be even more poignant if it were a young couple, and I had just the young couple in mind to play it. Earlier that season I had directed a FUGITIVE guest starring Diana Hyland and a 12 O’CLOCK HIGH guest starring Keir Dullea. I thought they would make an ideal pair to enact this story, and relayed my wishes to the casting director, Bill something-or-other. That was the last I heard until I was informed that Richard Beymer and Katherine Crawford (daughter of Universal producer Roy Huggins and wife of Universal executive Frank Price) had been signed to star in this Universal production. There is no other word for it -- I was pissed. I decided I was not going to break my back over this little venture. The script was okay. I scouted the necessary locations on Universal’s backlot. I visited the various sets assigned to the project. But not one pencil mark of staging or camera instruction was entered into my script. I was going to wing it, start to finish. Then came the first day, and Richard Beymer showed up impressively prepared. He had a fine German accent; he was totally committed in attitude and preparation, and the excellence of what he was doing lifted my spirits and pulled me in. I still was committed to not doing any homework, but because of my feelings of responsibility to the actors, I would still function to the best of my ability on the set.

The staging of the flight at the beginning of the story presented a bit of a problem. We were to film it on the Universal backlot, and the wooded area selected just wasn't long enough. So we filmed the same short distance several times -- first in a two shot, then a close-up of Richard, and a close-up of Katherine; thus I was able to prolong the sequence in the editing process. The director of photography for this show was John Russell. We had worked together once before on the ARREST AND TRIAL episode starring Mickey Rooney, FUNNY MAN WITH A MONKEY.  And oh yes, he was the director of photography on Alfred Hitchcock's PSYCHO!

Where MGM was letting their backlots deteriorate, Universal was improving theirs. Because of the Berlin location of our story, I was able to use their European streets to good advantage. Werner did not die; he was rescued and brought to a West Berlin hospital.

After a couple of days working with Richard, I was compelled to pose a question to him. I said, “Before meeting you, I did not understand how you could have been cast as Tony in WEST SIDE STORY. Now that I’ve worked with you, my question is ‘What happened?’”

He told me. He did not go to view the dailies, but he was praised each day by the director for his work. Near the end of the filming, when he had completed what he considered the main and difficult part of his role, he went to a viewing of the dailies. He was horrified by what he saw; he was even more disturbed that at that point there was nothing he could do to correct it.



  I’m afraid because of the possible nepotism involved in her casting, I underestimated Katherine Crawford’s talent. When Werner, while visiting an art museum sees a woman who looks remarkably like his wife (she should, she’s played by the same actress), I was going to need a certain reaction from Katherine as she looked at him on the ground. So at the end of her close-up, instead of saying “Cut, print,” I tore the page out of my script, dropped it to the floor and said, “Well, I guess we’ve got that one in the can.” Watch the reaction that ends the art gallery scene.

The producer for this episode was Norman MacDonnell.  A decade before this, when I first started working at CBS in the radio mimeo department (yes, I was a lowly typist, cutting stencils for CBS radio shows).  One of them was GUNSMOKE starring William Conrad in the role that James Arness later portrayed in the television series. The mimeo department was next to a viewing booth that looked down on the studio where GUNSMOKE was recorded.  I watched many of them in production.  I became acquainted with the script supervisor on the show and even sat in on some of the rehearsals.  I didn’t meet him at that time, but Norman was the producer.  

I really didn’t have any idea of what a checkpoint between East and West Berlin looked like. But even if I had had a detailed drawing, there was no chance the studio would build it, not on a television budget. So we found a tunnel-like structure on the European street on the backlot, put up some signs and we had our checkpoint. Actually it looks pretty effective.

An added plus was the restaurant set being located on the backlot adjoining the exterior street. So now for some nefarious business!

Werner finds Liese; they are in line at the checkpoint to go to West Berlin. In the scenes that followed both characters portrayed by Katherine were involved. However, since they did not have a scene together, I did not have to cope with the problem of the split screen, but I did need to use a photo double. First in the wide angle shot where Werner walks away from Liese and sees Victoria -- Victoria, with her back to the camera is a photo double. And then the final shot of the sequence when Werner and Liese on the West Berlin side of the wall exited the two shot and you see through to East Berlin as Victoria was taken away by the police, that Victoria was a photo double.

It would be a year shy of two decades before Richar Beymer and I would work together again (ignoring a test I directed of him for a role in the pilot for DYNASTY). And that later project, through no fault of Richard’s or other members of that cast, was a miserably grievous experience for me.  I think Richard was aware of the problems, because one day when we were lunching together, he looked at me very wisely across the table of the booth we shared, and with a twinkle in his eye he said, “You appear to be a gentle poodle, but I can see the pit bull ready to pounce.”

As I explained before, I did no pre-planning in my script for this show. In fact when I checked my files for a script for this production to help me with this posting, there was no script. I had thrown it away, page by page, as I completed filming each scene. It is the only script missing of the almost two hundred productions I directed. So did I then decide, “Boy this is the way to go. You can do this job without all that laborious homework.” I’m afraid not. Now that I knew I could wing it and get by, I made the decision and never wavered from it -- NEVER AGAIN!

A HERO FOR OUR TIME - August 1963 (Suspense Theatre)

(Thanks to blog follower, Les Kirikpatrick, who has sent me a much better copy of this production, I have replaced all of the film clips with this new material.  In the process I have made some revisions and additions to the text, as well as expanding the film clips.)

A HERO FOR OUR TIMES was my first SUSPENSE THEATRE assignment and my first adventure in color. And very definitely it was a return to studio sound stage filming. Except for a car chase sequence later in the script, this was a very talky script that was reminiscent of the live television dramas from the decade before. And it certainly owed a debt to REAR WINDOW..

My last day of prep, I still didn't have the complete script. The final scene was still to be written. I had lunch that day with Roy Huggins, the executive producer for the project. He was the one who was going to write the final scene. But he was neurotically nervous because he had a class to teach that afternoon (I think at UCLA) and was trying to figure out when he would have time to do the writing. What was the big problem? That scene was scheduled to be the first thing filmed the next morning. And Roy Huggins was nervous? How about me and the two actors, Lloyd Bridges and Geraldine Brooks. Somehow the schedule was changed so that final scene was filmed several days later.

Eleven years before this, the summer of 1952, I was the assistant director at a summer stock theatre north of Chicago. Our opening production was to be CHARLIE’S AUNT starring Robert Q. Lewis and featuring Tom Bosley and Tom Poston, imported from New York and Joanne Dru and John Ireland, imported from Hollywood. The day Joanne and John (who were married at that time) arrived, I was delegated to greet them. I remember they were waiting in the club’s dining room, and my knees were actually shaking as I entered the room. They were the first BIG movie stars I had ever met. John didn’t seem quite as awesome in 1963.

To help keep you apprized of our plot, the janitor in the building where the murder occurred has been accused of the killing; Mace (Lloyd Bridges) has prepared a deposition for the district attorney stating that he witnessed the crime and the janitor is not the murderer.  But to complicate his life further, Mace has just been given a major promotion in his company.

The paper that he burns, that's the deposition.

The following scene was my induction into the world of Technicolor. What I’m going to tell you won’t make a lot of sense unless you realize that the color clip here is somewhat faded and not what the set really looked like. There was a color consultant assigned to each production to coordinate the involvement of the different departments, but that involvement just didn’t take place. Either that or he was color blind, for the walls of the set were a subdued golden yellow, and when Geraldine Brooks made her entrance down the stairway, it looked like a floating head descending. Her dressing gown was the same color as the walls. Richard Rawlings, the director of photography, asked that the shot be stopped, and we now had the choice of repainting the set or replacing the dressing gown. The dressing gown won and was immediately replaced by the lavender garment you see.

I have some interesting stories about one of the actors in this production -- Dabbs Greer. His reall name was William Greer, and he hailed from Missouri. And I knew him as Bill Greer. He had been the Dean of Men when I was a student at the Pasadena Playhouse School of the Theatre in 1947-48. Bill told me he had kept the family home in Missouri and would return each year during the spring hiatus. One day he was sitting in the requisite rocking chair on the large mid-west porch when a young neighborhood boy, eight or nine years old, came by, stopped and stared intently at Bill. Finally the boy said, “How old are you?”

“Fifty-one,” answered Bill

“Are you married?”

“No.”

The boy continued to stare at Bill. Finally he said, “I never saw a fifty-one year old virgin before.”

Moving right along it is now 1957, and I was working as secretary to Russell Stoneham in my first year on PLAYHOUSE 90. Gilmor Brown, the founder of the Pasadena Playhouse, called me one day with a request. I had by that time directed five productions in his personal PLAYBOX, a theatre adjacent to his residence. Mr. Brown (and I always called him Mr. Brown; I never could lower him or raise myself to the level of calling him ‘Gilmor’ as most people did) asked me if I would direct another production for him in the Playbox.

“What play is it, Mr. Brown?” I asked

“I don’t want to tell you until you tell me you’ll do it. Will you?”

“But what is the play, Mr. Brown?”

“I’ll tell you after you agree to do it.”

But being a Taurus, I naturally outlasted him. He finally told me the play was Eugene O’Neill’s THE ICEMAN COMETH. I immediately said of course I would direct it. I would be honored to direct it. Mr. Brown then told me he had cast one actor in the production, but he had not ascertained what role he would play. The actor was Onslow Stevens. You may not recognize the name, but Onslow Stevens was a wonderful actor in both the movies and on Broadway in the thirties and the forties. I remembered him from several appearances on the main stage of the Pasadena Playhouse when I was a student. I especially remembered his RICHARD II, which he both starred in and directed. After studying the play, I decided Onslow would play Larry, the one person in Harry’s Bar who, at the play’s end, was affected by HIckey’s visit to the bar.

Dabbs Greer agreed to take on the role of Hickey, one of the longest, most difficult roles in American theatre. Hickey in the last act had a monologue that ran over fifty minutes. I set a rehearsal schedule of six weeks, weekday evenings and weekend afternoons. One evening midway through that schedule I was rehearsing a scene between Hickey and Larry. After a runthrough of the scene I was offering a critique to Bill, and he attacked me -- ferociously and in a manner I had never seen him use. He said there was no use discussing the role, it was unplayable, he was sorry he had gotten involved, but since he was involved he was going to learn the lines and that was it. There was no reasoning with him. Onslow interjected himself into the fracas, and Bill turned his wrath on Onslow. There came a time when I was able to start talking to Bill again, and we were having a quiet, reasonable discussion, when I noticed Onslow had disappeared from the rehearsal room. It wasn’t until later that I realized that Onslow, the older theatre veteran had deliberately stepped into the line of fire. He had seen a young director in trouble and had come to his rescue. The next evening when Bill came to rehearsal, he brought me the following.

Double click on the illustration above to enlarge it.  To return to normal size click on the black triangle in the upper left corner of the menu.

Well it wasn’t lousy. Bill Greer gave a brilliant, mesmerizing performance. The tragedy was that Mr. Brown’s Playbox Theatre seated fifty people, all subscription, so it was a performance that went virtually unseen. It was a performance though that did gain a reputation. Three years later when I had moved to MGM, the trade papers announced that John Houseman was going to direct a production of THE ICEMAN COMETH for the Theatre Group based at UCLA. I had worked as a production supervisor for John when he was one of the three rotating producers on PLAYHOUSE 90 who replaced Martin Manulis. I bumped into him on the MGM lot where he was producing ALL FALL DOWN. I congratulated him on his upcoming production. I told him I was sure he would enjoy directing it as much as I had enjoyed doing the production for Mr. Brown. John then said, “Oh, you did that production!” So even if the production was not seen by many, it was talked about.  And I ended up as Houseman's co-director on his production of THE ICEMAN COMETH.

Getting back to our courtroom, Dabbs Greer, the accused janitor, is on the stand.

Being a courtroom drama there were some legal shenanigans as Mace attempts to save the life of the innocent janitor. He has his friend, the John Ireland character, come forward to testify that he saw the murder and made the phone call to the DA’s office. That fails. And then the sequence that seemed to be the staple of crime shows at that time.

I don’t remember shooting the car chase or the car over the cliff, although I remember filming several sequences for other films that were very similar. The only scenes in this episode that appear in the production schedule in my archives are the interiors of the two vehicles (Mace’s and the murderer’s) and the sequence on the cliff with the two police officers. I guess the car chase itself was stock footage lifted from some past Universal feature. This was often done. I know, because this too I did.

I think this episode too was an extension of New York’s Golden Age of Live Televison Drama.  It wasn’t afraid of talk; it wasn’t reluctant to speak of personal values.  It wasn't averse to having the climax of the drama play out in words rather than action, which certainly gave actors a chance to do what they're paid to do -- ACT! Wouldn’t it be nice if we had more of that today!

Mace returned home so we could finally do the infamous sequence that had caused so much anguish at the start of filming.  But the results were certainly far superior to what they would have been if we had had to film it that first day.

The set for this final scene, for me, was also infamous. Universal was the busiest studio in town, mostly television productions. When a feature film would complete photography, Universal would not strike all of the sets. The better ones were left standing, to be used by the television companies. This staircase set with the black and white checkerboard floor was one of them. And it was so identifiable because of that floor.  I remember the night A HERO aired, at the end of the show when the trailer for the next weeks production came on, there was that floor again.

THE JACK IS HIGH - August 1964 (Suspense Theatre)

I might not have written about THE JACK IS HIGH this soon if I had not received an e-mail from a producer-director of independent films. Let me share that note with you.

Oh for those wonderful days past when weekly anthology dramatic series reigned supreme.

In an ideal episodic-television world a perfect script would be delivered to the director’s home three days before he is due to report to the studio to start preparation for the production. This would be in accordance with the DGA-Producer’s Guild contract. Once at the studio the six days of preparation and seven days of filming would go without unpleasant incident or bloodshed. This would probably result in better television, but it sure wouldn’t help in providing material for a blog. Fortunately for this blog, it was not an ideal world into which THE JACK IS HIGH was born.

A script was never delivered to my home, which was not unusual. In fact, contract or no contract it was quite normal. So I reported to the studio on the appointed day in August, figuring the script would be awaiting me there. When I arrived I was told there was a script, but ... well actually there wasn’t exactly a script. The film I was to direct was a caper movie, a story of an armored car robbery by a group of five men. The robbers all wore masks of Snow White’s dwarfs. And the studio had just found out that Walt Disney OWNED the rights to anything connected to Snow White. Therefore the script was going to have to be drastically revised. So with six working days before the beginning of filming, with loads of location scouting to do, I was relegated to the side lines awaiting the script’s arrival.

Fortunately the casting department was able to go into action. They probably had read the Dwarf version, so they just had to take off the masks and cast what was behind them. I’m just assuming this, because this being Universal, I didn’t even know in which building the casting department was deposited. But they did come up with a pretty impressive group.

Pat O’Brien. I loved working with screen legends I had watched as a kid. And I had met Pat briefly nine years before. My friend, Paul Bryar, had a role in a movie starring Pat, and one day he took me with him to a small studio at the east end of Sunset Boulevard. Paul had just been in a production I directed at the Players’ Ring of MY THREE ANGELS. In fact it was on that production that I met Paul and his wife, Claudia, who also was in it but not one of the ANGELS. I guess Paul had told Pat about the production, because Pat and his wife were going to be doing MY THREE ANGELS in summer stock that year, and we spoke about the play.

And then there were three actors with whom I had already worked, and I liked that. Henry Jones had been one of the stars of the series BANNING. I had directed an episode of that series a couple of years prior. Wait until I get around to writing about that one and the incident of the white concert grand piano. It too was at Universal. Harry Bellaver of NAKED CITY. And good old Bill Bramley. After his delivery of the line, “Honey, you wanna ride on my bulldozer!” in THE BULL ROARER, I always figured he was like money in the bank. The new kid on the block was Edd Byrnes, Kookie from 77 SUNSET STRIP, his career still warm from having been in that series.

Well finally the script arrived, well at least part of it. They still hadn’t figured out the ending, of how to stop a speeding gasoline tanker. But my starting concern was robbing the armored car. We were going to film it on the Universal backlot at night. We had decided on our needed hilly, country dirt road, and on the appointed day the company assembled there very late afternoon to prepare to shoot as soon as it was dark. The various crews were at work preparing for the evening’s filming. When filming on rough terrain we used a jeep crane, a jeep with a camera crane mounted on its rear. The jeep driver was slowly driving up the fairly steep incline, a member of the gaffers crew holding and guiding the end of the very long arm of the crane which extended off the body of the vehicle. The camera was of course not installed on the crane at this time. Two thirds of the way up the hill something went wrong with the jeep. The engine stopped, and the vehicle started to roll back down the hill. The jeep driver hit the brakes of the vehicle, but they didn’t work. So the vehicle gained speed. The man holding the end of the crane had to let go, and as the vehicle plummeted down the hill, the crane arm swinging wildly, members of the company who were spread out over the hillsilde, scrambled to get out of the way of this lethal weapon. The driver to his credit (he could have jumped out of the careening vehicle) stayed at the wheel trying to steer it down the hill. At the bottom of the hill, the jeep rammed into something, and the driver was thrown from the vehicle. We all assembled there, the medical person on the set was summoned. The driver was rushed to the hospital. Filming for the evening was, of course, called off. Two or three days later we learned the driver died.

A day or so later we reassembled at the same spot to shoot what you are now going to see -- the sequence for which a man gave his life.

We were scheduled to return to the same location on the back lot the next morning to film the sequence of the beginning of the investigation. I had qualms about what the next morning would be like. How do you go back to the scene of a tragedy and carry on as if nothing has happened? It is amazing what a night’s sleep and the morning sunlight will do. It was not the nightmare I expected. At this point, of course, we knew the driver had been injured, but he was still alive in the hospital. And then there was Pat O’Brien, the consummate pro.

Take notice of the opening shot, a rising crane shot filmed with the camera mounted on a different jeep crane.

We actually filmed the aftermath of the robbery BEFORE it happened. We still had to return to this location later to film the opening sequence.

Since we were filming on location away from the studio the first few days, I didn’t have the opportunity to attend the viewing of the dailies. But I would receive a report from the producer about them. After the first day’s work, his report was very positive. I relayed this information to the cast. Pat O’Brien said, “That’s what they used to say to Jimmy Cagney and me. Cagney’s response was, 'If the dailies are so good, why don’t you just release them. Why bother to put the picture together.'”

The director of photography for this production was Walter Strenge. Walter, a contract cameraman at Universal, was the one who replaced Lionel Lindon on ARREST AND TRIAL. Walter had explained to me the previous year on that production that the coming of color was going to simplify filming. No longer would there be a need for the cross lighting of black and white cinema. Just put two arc lights, one on either side of the camera and say "action." Walter was not one of the artists of the profession. Well he was not going to be able to use large arc lights on the 'guest room' set they had provided for me on this production.

Now let’s be frank right from the start. This script was no great character study. It was a caper with five stock characters. When casting stock characters the goal is to select actors whose personalities will flesh out the thinly drawn people in the script. Henry Jones was a fine choice for the English professor, with that underlying quiet sinister quality that had been so brilliantly utilized in THE BAD SEED, first on Broadway and then in the film. Larry Storch as the comic and William Bramley as the professional criminal -- need I say more? Harry Bellaver was a good choice for the sickly welder. The weak link was Edd Byrnes. Nice capable actor, who could have been a war hero. But our story is going to have him in a physical confrontation with Bill Bramley. In defense of the casting department, it’s possible they didn’t have the full script so they would know about this confrontation. Another reason to have a finished script before beginning production. But even then that might not have made a difference. Did you notice who got top billing on the opening credits. Ralph Meeker would have been a better choice. But at this point in their careers, Edd was the ‘hotter’ actor. And that’s the way Universal and the networks cast.

We spent several days away from the studio on location on California highways. When filming exteriors there was always the problem of extraneous noise -- airplanes above, cars in the area -- and Universal had a policy: Keep filming and print what you shoot. Don’t kill a shot because of airplanes or other noise. This applied to exterior work on the back lot as well, which was especially noisy because Universal Studio was very close to the Burbank airport. The sound department would then prepare loops of each line of dialog. The actor would report to the sound proof looping stage, be handed a set of earphones and would then listen to the loops and rerecord the dialogue, line by line until the sound engineer felt he had a perfect match. Most studios waited until the film was edited before calling the actors back to loop defective dialogue. But that meant paying the actors another day’s salary. Universal had the actors report to the looping stage on their final day of employment, but since the film had not been edited yet, that meant they had to loop EVERY LINE OF EVERY PRINTED TAKE THAT HAD BEEN FILMED. I was not in favor of this policy. These looping sessions paid absolutely no attention to performance. The engineer’s only responsiblity was to get a sound track that would match the filmed image. So if I heard an airplane or an automobile or any other sound that I knew would be affecting the sound track, I would find a performance or camera technical problem and kill the take. Imagine the following scene with Larry Storch and the police officer if you were seeing it not in Larry’s actual performance but in a technically manufactured one, assembled line by line from the results of a loopiing session.

And now for the confrontation between Kober and Mueller. Casting is more than fitting the right actor into the right role. In this case Edd Byrnes could be a good fit to play a war hero, and William Bramley a good fit for a bullying criminal. It’s the pairing of the two that is wrong. As I wrote before, Ralph Meeker would have made a good opponent for Bramley (they faced off in THE BULL ROARER on BREAKING POINT), but a smaller toughie would be needed opposite Byrnes. So what’s a director to do when it comes to staging a mismatch like this.

And finally the final pages of the script arrived with the solution of how to stop the speeding tanker.

I am in a perpetual state of amazement that series’ episodes like this, created close to half a century ago, are still around, that they are fondly remembered by people who viewed them then and that they are still relevant to younger people who have seen them since, first in syndication and later on the profuse cable outlets. They’re like old generals; they never die, they just go into reruns.