From: grammatim@verizon.net   
      
   On Wednesday, March 25, 2015 at 9:35:48 PM UTC-4, hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:   
   > On Friday, March 20, 2015 at 9:40:22 AM UTC-4, Peter T. Daniels wrote:   
      
   > > At the moment they're doing *Naked City*. I saw three 1961 episodes last   
   night:    
   > > Martin Balsam -- directed by Arthur Hiller -- as a murderer whose brain   
   tumor caused him to lose all memory of the event, being retried (unfortunately   
   I    
   > > dozed off during a commercial break so I don't know how it came out);    
   >    
   > I can answer that:  they do not tell audience the verdict.  The episode   
   closes with the lawyers' statements to the jury.   
   >    
   > A physician had testified that the brain tumor could have caused physical   
   damage so that the man was insane during the commission of the crime.  But the   
   defense didn't seem to run with that very well.   
   >    
   > A L&O SVU had a similar theme.  Turned out a principal involved with a kid   
   had a huge brain tumor that would've gotten her off the hook.  However, there   
   were other issues.  The kid's mother was an alcoholic, brilliant portrayed.   
   >    
   >    
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   >    
   > > of appearances, the church's attitude toward divorce ... one Ray Novello    
   >    
   > I think he did a few of them.  So did Robert Duvall.   
   >    
   > > In the second one, a bus trip was briefly taken on a brand-new 1961-model   
   3, down a two-way Fifth Avenue from 72nd to 59th. The interior didn't look   
   right,    
   > > though.    
   >    
   > I saw one episode that I think used a private bus's interior rather than a   
   'TA bus interior.  Probably a heck of a lot easier to rent the private bus.    
   (As an aside, in Phila, PTC and PSTC were glad to rent charter buses, as was   
   SEPTA, until the Feds    
   ordered them to stop; trains only.)   
   >    
   >    
   > I think Naked City would be far too cerebral to be aired today.   Glad   
   you're enjoying it.   
      
   I saw at least 10 of them during the "binge." Arthur Hiller directed another    
   of them. The creative genius behind the series seems to have been Stirling    
   Silliphant.   
      
   The couple of duds in the batch were the ordinary crime stories.   
      
   Sandy Dennis -- 4 years before *Virginia Woolf* -- as a woman obsessed with    
   a football player; I wonder whether 1961 audiences would have seen through    
   her stories from the beginning and known she was making it all up. And the    
   football player was Aldo Ray. But there was a scene on an el platform    
   overlooking a football stadium, and I couldn't figure out where it was -- not    
   the Polo Grounds (I saw the Mets there, their first season, and I'm sure its    
   el spur was gone by '61), not Baker Field (too far from the el), not Ebbett's    
   (gone already). Wait, maybe it was Gaelic Park? Maybe it could be seen from    
   238th or 242nd? The other day, Curtis Sliwa referred to it as "used to be,"    
   but he's not exactly a reliable witness.    
      
   Silvia Sidney was the name star of the one filmed around Yankee Stadium, but    
   Robert Duvall was her crooked nephew who turned out go have entered on a life    
   of crime because he misunderstood why she was no longer the wife of a wealthy    
   industrialist who financed her opera career. And one of the local Bronx cops    
   was "Edward Asner" -- with plenty of hair, dark hair, almost slender, but    
   instantly recognizable by both voice and the sort of sneer/twinkle that   
   _still_ does him in good stead as a con man on *Hawaii Five-O* more than 50    
   years later.   
      
   And then there was Theodore Bikel as the Ukrainian immigrant hit man, with    
   Keir Dullea as his college-bound basketball-star son (not so surprising; he'd    
   been a movie juvenile), whose coach was David Doyle (everyone's sidekick for    
   decades).   
      
   And then there was the gang of jewel thieves led by Luther Adler -- in a    
   wheelchair; it must have been one of the last things he ever did (explicitly    
   a Christian, which seemed odd; he was one of the greatest stars of the Yiddish    
   theater) -- with Michael Conrad, who 25 years later was Sgt. "Let's be careful    
   out there!" on *Hill Street Blues*. Walter Matthau was a millionaire who got    
   conned in that one, but he was billed as "special guest star."   
      
   What a casting director they had.   
      
   How many drama series these days can one remember so vividly after almost a   
   week?   
      
   > Not part of Naked City,b ut a great movie is A Catered Affair with Ernest    
   > Borgnine and Bette Davis, about a taxi driver faced with paying for a huge    
   > wedding his daugther doesn't even want.  Davis was fantastic as a poor    
   > working class mom.  Not everybody had money in the 1950s.   
      
   I think she got an Oscar nomination for *Pocketful of Miracles*, a very    
   misleading title!   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)