Written by Rod Serling, and originally aired on May 18, 1960, it was perhaps the first television play, with the possible exception of Abby Mann's "Judgment At Nuremburg", to deal meaningfully with the Nazi holocaust. Serling said he researched it eight months before writing it. Charles Laughton was memorable in it as Rabbi Adam Heller, as was a young Robert Redford as Sergeant Lutz, a sympathetic Nazi soldier, and George Macready as his superior, who explains to him the nation-unifying "morality of hating Jews."
The character of the sympathetic Nazi soldier aroused the ire of Leon Uris, author of "Exodus", who called the play "the most disgusting dramatic presentation in the history of live television", and demanded that CBS publicly apologize for it, then burn the negative of it. Hopefully, CBS did not do this. Charles Beaumont, one of Serling's fellow Twilight Zone mainstays, remarked drily in response to Uris' demand, that "book burning was a favorite hobby of the late Herr Goebbels [Hitler's minister of propaganda ?]."
I discussed this play with a good Jewish friend of mine, whose late mother was a holocaust survivor, and she said that her mother had said that there were both kind and cruel Nazi soldiers in the camps she was in.
The PBS biography of Rod Serling, "Submitted For Your Approval", in the American Masters series, used "In The Presence ..." to epitomize and dramatize the death of live television drama.
"In The Presence Of Mine Enemies" was re-done in 1997, with Armin Mueller-Stahl in the role of rabbi Adam Heller, and aired, I think, on HBO on Sunday April 20, 1997.
I think "Noon On Doomsday", on the U.S. Steel Hour, may have been Rod Serling's first attempt to dramatize the tragic Emmett Till case. Next, of course, as noted elsewhere, he wrote "A Town Has Turned To Dust", then his script promptly turned to dust. As Serling himself said of the network sponsors and censors, "They chopped it up like a roomful of butchers at work on a steer." He discussed this at length with Mike Wallace on "The Mike Wallace Interview" in 1959 shortly before undertaking "The Twilight Zone", admitting that he went along with the censorship, "all the way", albeit fighting, thinking, in some strange, oblique, philosophical way, that it was better to say something, than nothing at all, yet admitting that his original powerful script had become a "weak, lukewarm, emasculated, eviscerated" play.
It is quite true, as previously commented by F Gwynplaine MacIntyre, of Wales, that it was precisely this type of sponsor interference that led Serling to undertake "The Twilight Zone" : make it Martians and robots, instead of Republicans and Democrats, put it in the future, it'll get by the sponsors, but the viewing public will still get the moral point of the story. Thus, "The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street" was a covert indictment of the McCarthy-led Communist witch hunt in the USA of the early 1950's.
There was a remake of "A Town Has Turned To Dust" on the Sci Fi Channel on June 27 1998, starring Ron Perlman of "Beauty And The Beast", but it came nowhere near the raw power Serling's original script must have had, and which, to my knowledge, has never been filmed in its original form.
Nor has "Color Scheme", the second novella in Serling's 1967 book, "The Season To Be Wary", which, to quote the jacket copy, "recounts the life and times of King Connacher, who makes his living on the stump circuit, preaching the lynching gospel, only to find himself one night the victim of an extraordinary case of mistaken identity." Connacher finds he has become black, after a near fatal car crash, and falls prey to the white lynch mob he had incited to violence earlier with one of his speeches. The nadir of that violence was the burning of a black pastor's home, and the resulting death by fire of his four-year-old daughter. While Connacher has become black, this black pastor has also, inexplicably, become white.
Understandably, Serling wrote of "Color Scheme", by way of introduction : "TV wouldn't touch it." Duh !
I have owned "The Comedian", also written by Rod Serling, and his third Emmy, and starring Mickey Rooney, from CBS "Playhouse 90", since mid-June 1996. It is in the "Golden Age Of Television" series on Rhino / Fantasy home video. "Requiem For A Heavyweight", also from Playhouse 90 (Serling's second Emmy)is also apparently in this series, which seems to date from as far back as the early 80's. WNET-13 Newark NJ aired the original kinescope of "Requiem" the night of Wednesday November 29, 1995, right after its initial airing of the PBS Serling bio, "Submitted For Your Approval". The videos have an opening segment in which the actors and directors involved in the play give their thoughts and perspectives on it, decades after it was produced live. Jack Klugman introduces "Requiem", and Carl Reiner introduces "The Comedian".
Needless to say, given the above, and what others have posted about this series, CBS Playhouse 90 cannot, I think, ever be praised too highly, or too much, or perhaps even enough. To quote another poster, it "was and is drama at its best".
The character of the sympathetic Nazi soldier aroused the ire of Leon Uris, author of "Exodus", who called the play "the most disgusting dramatic presentation in the history of live television", and demanded that CBS publicly apologize for it, then burn the negative of it. Hopefully, CBS did not do this. Charles Beaumont, one of Serling's fellow Twilight Zone mainstays, remarked drily in response to Uris' demand, that "book burning was a favorite hobby of the late Herr Goebbels [Hitler's minister of propaganda ?]."
I discussed this play with a good Jewish friend of mine, whose late mother was a holocaust survivor, and she said that her mother had said that there were both kind and cruel Nazi soldiers in the camps she was in.
The PBS biography of Rod Serling, "Submitted For Your Approval", in the American Masters series, used "In The Presence ..." to epitomize and dramatize the death of live television drama.
"In The Presence Of Mine Enemies" was re-done in 1997, with Armin Mueller-Stahl in the role of rabbi Adam Heller, and aired, I think, on HBO on Sunday April 20, 1997.
I think "Noon On Doomsday", on the U.S. Steel Hour, may have been Rod Serling's first attempt to dramatize the tragic Emmett Till case. Next, of course, as noted elsewhere, he wrote "A Town Has Turned To Dust", then his script promptly turned to dust. As Serling himself said of the network sponsors and censors, "They chopped it up like a roomful of butchers at work on a steer." He discussed this at length with Mike Wallace on "The Mike Wallace Interview" in 1959 shortly before undertaking "The Twilight Zone", admitting that he went along with the censorship, "all the way", albeit fighting, thinking, in some strange, oblique, philosophical way, that it was better to say something, than nothing at all, yet admitting that his original powerful script had become a "weak, lukewarm, emasculated, eviscerated" play.
It is quite true, as previously commented by F Gwynplaine MacIntyre, of Wales, that it was precisely this type of sponsor interference that led Serling to undertake "The Twilight Zone" : make it Martians and robots, instead of Republicans and Democrats, put it in the future, it'll get by the sponsors, but the viewing public will still get the moral point of the story. Thus, "The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street" was a covert indictment of the McCarthy-led Communist witch hunt in the USA of the early 1950's.
There was a remake of "A Town Has Turned To Dust" on the Sci Fi Channel on June 27 1998, starring Ron Perlman of "Beauty And The Beast", but it came nowhere near the raw power Serling's original script must have had, and which, to my knowledge, has never been filmed in its original form.
Nor has "Color Scheme", the second novella in Serling's 1967 book, "The Season To Be Wary", which, to quote the jacket copy, "recounts the life and times of King Connacher, who makes his living on the stump circuit, preaching the lynching gospel, only to find himself one night the victim of an extraordinary case of mistaken identity." Connacher finds he has become black, after a near fatal car crash, and falls prey to the white lynch mob he had incited to violence earlier with one of his speeches. The nadir of that violence was the burning of a black pastor's home, and the resulting death by fire of his four-year-old daughter. While Connacher has become black, this black pastor has also, inexplicably, become white.
Understandably, Serling wrote of "Color Scheme", by way of introduction : "TV wouldn't touch it." Duh !
I have owned "The Comedian", also written by Rod Serling, and his third Emmy, and starring Mickey Rooney, from CBS "Playhouse 90", since mid-June 1996. It is in the "Golden Age Of Television" series on Rhino / Fantasy home video. "Requiem For A Heavyweight", also from Playhouse 90 (Serling's second Emmy)is also apparently in this series, which seems to date from as far back as the early 80's. WNET-13 Newark NJ aired the original kinescope of "Requiem" the night of Wednesday November 29, 1995, right after its initial airing of the PBS Serling bio, "Submitted For Your Approval". The videos have an opening segment in which the actors and directors involved in the play give their thoughts and perspectives on it, decades after it was produced live. Jack Klugman introduces "Requiem", and Carl Reiner introduces "The Comedian".
Needless to say, given the above, and what others have posted about this series, CBS Playhouse 90 cannot, I think, ever be praised too highly, or too much, or perhaps even enough. To quote another poster, it "was and is drama at its best".