Headline!
Headline!! Read all about it!!!
The Film Chest Media Group announced this past week
that years of both research and ends-of-the-earth searching have finally paid
off with the news that all 39 episodes of Deadline will
be available for the first time on DVD on Nov. 19.
Back in 1959 Arnold Perl produced a 30-minute
episodic series titled simply Deadline. The gimmick was that each of the episodes
was based on headlines (news stories) that appeared in newspapers of the
time. Real stories, only the names of
the participants were changed.
Filmed in glorious black and white, the series was
hosted by one of the original Mercury Theatre participants, Paul Stewart, he
would appear in Citizen Kane as
Raymond and go on to have quite the career in both film, television and radio (Twelve
O'Clock High, Walk
Softly, Stranger, Deadline
- U.S.A., Kiss Me Deadly, King Creole,
etc. are among his numerous film credits).
The series, once it aired, did not go into
syndication, but literally disappeared.
Film Chest finally tracked down the missing elements to a storage
facility in New Jersey … all 39 broadcast episodes in pristine condition,
unseen since the 1959/60 television season.
The guest stars in the series reads like a who’s who
of actors from the period, many of them were just getting started in their
careers. Example, the opening episode,
which aired on Sept. 17, 1959, featured three-time Oscar nominee Diane Ladd in
one of her earliest television appearances.
Larry Haines, who would go on to win three Emmys for his portrayal of
Stu Bergman on the soap opera Search for Tomorrow, was
her co-star and he played the role of a crusading reporter who exposes labor
racketeers.
In the episode that aired on Nov. 12, 1959, future
TV star George Maharis (the following year, 1960, he would hit it big as Buz
Murdock in Route 66) plays
a college-age killer with an airtight alibi until a crusading reporter (played
by Walter Brooke) cracks the case.
39 complete episodes — the entire run of the series
— are included in the collection … other guest stars in series are Robert
Lansing, Peter Falk, Frank Sutton (who is perhaps best known as Sgt. Vince
Carter on the Gomer Pyle: USMC sitcom)
and future two-time Emmy-winner Michael Conrad (as Sgt. Phil Esterhaus on Hill
Street Blues).
Bonus features include an interview with Broadcast
Journalism Professor Joe Alicastro, the series promotional trailer and an
extensive photo gallery.
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