Playhouse 90
Playhouse 90 is an American television anthology drama series that aired on CBS from 1956 to 1960 for a total of 133 episodes. The show was produced at CBS Television City in Los Angeles, California. Since live anthology drama series of the mid-1950s usually were hour-long shows, the title highlighted the network's intention to present something unusual: a weekly series of hour-and-a-half-long dramas rather than 60-minute plays.
Playhouse 90
John Brahm
James B. Clark
Fielder Cook
Vincent J. Donehue
John Frankenheimer
David Greene
George Roy Hill
Arthur Hiller
Herbert Hirschman
Buzz Kulik
Delbert Mann
Burgess Meredith
Robert Mulligan
James Neilson
Ralph Nelson
Arthur Penn
David Lowell Rich
Oscar Rudolph
Boris Sagal
Franklin J. Schaffner
Alex Segal
Stewart Stern
Robert Stevens
David Swift
Charles Marquis Warren
Paul Wendkos
United States
English
4
134
Peter Kortner
Gert Andersen
Albert Kurland
Henry Batista
Robert L. Swanson
Sam Gold
Richard K. Brockway
72–78 minutes
CBS Productions
Filmaster Productions
Screen Gems
October 4, 1956 –
May 18, 1960
Background[edit]
The producers of the show 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 J. 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 starring Charlton Heston. 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 television 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).
From the start, productions were planned 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 filmed episodes were produced variously, by Screen Gems and CBS.
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, Werner Klemperer, Torben Meyer and Otto Waldis in the roles they would repeat in the 1961 film, but with an otherwise different cast, including Claude Rains in the Spencer Tracy role and Paul Lukas in the Burt Lancaster role.
Playhouse 90 received many Emmy Award nominations, and it later ranked #33 on the TV Guide 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time. In 1997, the acclaimed Requiem for a Heavyweight was ranked #30 on the TV Guide 100 Greatest Episodes of All Time.[1] In 2013, the Writers Guild of America ranked Playhouse 90 #65 on their list of the 101 Best Written TV Series.[2] In 2023, Variety ranked Playhouse 90 as the nineteenth-greatest TV show of all time.[3]
Early on, in 1956, Playhouse 90 faced some controversy due to scheduling. It was thought by independent producers that, in Playhouse 90's procurement, scheduling, and promotion decisions, major networks favored programs that they produced or, in which they had ownership interest. Worried about this issue, CBS suspended its plans for the series in fear that they had violated antitrust laws. Soon afterward, however, CBS received an oral opinion from its legal counsel that no laws had been violated, and the show continued.[4]
Writers[edit]
Writers for the series included Robert Alan Aurthur, Rod Serling, Whitfield Cook, David E. Durston, Sumner Locke Elliott, Horton Foote, Frank D. Gilroy, Roger O. Hirson, A. E. Hotchner, Loring Mandel, Abby Mann, J. P. Miller, Paul Monash, 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."
Source for films[edit]
Several teleplays in the series were filmed later 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.
An indifferently received television movie production of In the Presence of Mine Enemies, starring Armin Mueller-Stahl in the Charles Laughton role, was shown on cable television in 1997 by Showtime.
Media related to Playhouse 90 at Wikimedia Commons