The Rare Medium Well Done: An Appreciation

EVERY ONCE in a while when I'm in New York with an afternoon with nothing to do, or if it's raining, I go watch television.

I know. Perverse. But not just any Television. At the Paley Center (The Museum of Radio & Television) you can request videos of programs from their library, and watch them in your own little study carrel. I've watched part of the Watergate hearings, Nixon's resignation, the JFK, MLK, and RFK assasination coverage, episodes of Tom Snyder and Carson -- all manner of stuff. It connects me to this medium and to its amazing history. It makes me appreciate where what I do fits in to what's come before.

One of the programs that's always held a special place in my imagination -- vastly influential, but so before my time, is Playhouse 90. The nobility of the enterprise, what they were trying to do, to push the medium in its earliest days, well, that kind of moves me.

I've yet to see anyone rise to that challenge in the internet TV age, for example. Well. Maybe that program of the guys' daily lives in Iraq.

Anyway, one of the pioneers of that program, and of television, died the other day. If you're my age, or younger, you probably have never heard of Martin Manulis. take a moment and read this:

Mr. Manulis’s achievement was more than putting on a high-quality drama for 90 minutes every seven days, although that he did. He corralled some of America’s brightest actors, writers and directors and paid them less than they were accustomed to, on the basis of the artistic opportunity he offered.

He oversaw a breakneck three-week production schedule; placated often-nervous sponsors and network executives; and planned subsequent episodes even as he dealt with mounting second-by-second tension that peaked with the tightrope walk that is a live broadcast.

In 1957, Mr. Manulis (pronounced MAN-you-liss) described his job as “Playhouse 90” producer in an interview with The New York Times as involving elements of “mother, wet-nurse and psychiatrist.”

The pace prompted Mr. Manulis to cut back to doing just one-third of the episodes his third year. (The show continued until 1961.) That he produced quality as well as quantity is demonstrated by the six Emmy Awards the show won for its 1956 season, including single best program of the year, “Requiem for a Heavyweight.” It was written by Rod Serling of later “Twilight Zone” fame and starred Jack Palance as an ugly, down-and-out, second-rate boxer.

“Playhouse 90” won five Emmys its second season. In a poll of television editors by Variety in 1970, it was voted the greatest television series of all time. In 2002, TV Guide ranked “Playhouse 90” No. 33 in its list of the 50 greatest television shows ever.

It adapted works of writers like Hemingway, Odets, Faulkner and Fitzgerald. Directors included John Frankenheimer and George Roy Hill. Actors stretched themselves: Robert Redford played a Nazi, Boris Karloff a dignified man, deeply in love. The 90-minute time-frame broadened dramatic possibility.

In addition to “Requiem,” Mr. Manulis’s most heralded shows included “The Miracle Worker,” directed by Arthur Penn; “The Comedian,” written by Mr. Serling and directed by Mr. Frankenheimer; and “The Days of Wine and Roses,” directed by Mr. Frankenheimer and starring Cliff Robertson

Martin Manulis was 92. His full NYTimes obit can be read here.