Playhouse 90 - "Requiem For a Heavyweight"

Season 1, Episode 2

Original Airdate: October 11, 1956

Writer: Rod Serling

Director: Ralph Nelson

Producer: David J. Eagle, Martin Manulis, Alvin Rakoff

Cast: Jack Palance, Keenan Wynn, Ed Wynn, Kim Hunter

This was my first experience watching one of the hundreds of live television broadcasts from the ‘50s, and I must admit I did not have the highest of expectations going in. I thought I was going to see a low-quality version of a soap opera—a filmed play with the actors talking and monologuing instead of communicating while reading off unseen cue cards. I couldn’t have been more mistaken.

“Requiem For a Heavyweight” vibrates with energy, has better direction and camerawork than any other television program I’ve seen from the period and features a trio of performances with incredible depth and nuance. This was all done live, and that just adds to my admiration for the episode.

Writer Rod Serling and director Ralph Nelson present us with a fascinating opening: in the aftermath of an especially brutal boxing match, we first see the triumphant fighter exit the ring, surrounded by his adoring fans. Moments later, Maish (Keenan Wynn) and Army (Ed Wynn) drag the barely conscious Harlan “Mountain” McClintock (Jack Palance) out and into an empty changing room. A doc comes in to investigate the damage, and the truth becomes clear immediately: Mountain cannot continue to fight without doing permanent injury to his already-damaged body.

“Just like that?” Mountain’s manager Maish asks. But of course it wasn’t “just like that.” Mountain has two cauliflower ears and Palance’s face looks more like a patchwork of broken bones pieced together oddly than a human being. This is the tipping point of Mountain’s life. He’s a heavyweight fighter who was once very good (he placed fifth in the country a few years back), recently fair and now done with fighting whether he is ready or not. He’s not.

Mountain dropped out of school in the ninth grade to become a boxer and has only known this life. For over a decade he’s depended completely on Maish and Army, his trainer, for literally everything in his life, from his bed to his next bout to his next meal. Now that is all gone. Serling implies, but does not underline, that Mountain has probably sustained brain damage during his career, another impediment for a man already stuck behind the eight-ball. I know little to nothing about boxing and the life of these fighters (beyond the fact that Rocky Balboa is the coolest one ever), but that doesn’t matter. My heart immediately and totally goes out to him. I can’t fathom someone ever taking my voice as a writer away from me, and to think that Mountain has lost everything he’s ever known (at only 33 years old!) is like an emotional sucker punch, and I’m dreadfully sorry about that accidental pun.

The show doesn’t offer up a whole lot of hope for Mountain as he tries to start over. He goes to 35 employment firms with nothing, and when a pretty young employee named Grace (Kim Hunter) at lucky number 36 calls him back for a meeting, Mountain almost begs Army to go back with him…simply because he does not know how to function without him in the room. Grace hypothesizes that Mountain might do well in teaching children, but is accidentally (and realistically) harsh when she compares Mountain’s plight with that of returning veterans who have sustained horrible injuries during the war.

We also follow Maish and learn that he had bet against Mountain in that final fight (specifically that Mountain wouldn’t last three rounds when he went seven) and has lost $3000 as a result. Instead of owning up to it, he handles the situation like the snake he is—using Mountain’s loyalty to try to get him to become a “wrestler” and play in fixed games. Army is sickened by this and tells Maish as much on multiple occasions, but in a realistic twist, when the chips fall and Mountain learns the truth, it’s Army who gets the uppercut to the jaw and not Maish. Then there’s a beautiful, quiet moment where Mountain cradles Army as his surrogate father begs him to leave and move on with his life.

Serling introduces Grace as the necessary love interest for such programs, but has a different, more interesting agenda for her. She’s curious about Mountain more than she is attracted to him. She tracks him to a boxer’s bar, where Mountain seems destined to join the other dozen former boxers who can do nothing more than get drunk and recount the glory days, and they have something like a date together. But the scene isn’t about the characters and their chemistry—Serling uses Grace as our eyes into understanding Mountain. They don’t end up together, and by treating the relationship more realistically than so many other similar shows, it is all the more impactful.

The tape used to film the show has faded somewhat, but certainly not enough to hurt your enjoyment. It’s about the equivalent of watching a movie from one of those 50-films-for-2.99 sets. I was shocked by the atmosphere Nelson was able to build on just a few sets. The way he shoots the street set in relation to the ring and the bar is especially moody and memorable. And where I expected the actors, particularly Palance, to overact because of the live television format, I was so pleasantly surprised to see them giving subtle, multi-layered performances. I’d actually dare to rank Palance’s work here equal to Marlon Brando’s washed-up fighter in “On TheWaterfront.”

And while there are long sections where you genuinely forget that this was a live television program, it is still fun to watch every inch of the frame to look for things that might not have gone according to plan. At one point Keenan Wynn seems to have misplaced a book of matches, and Ed Wynn points them out to him. In another, Palance tries to pour an empty bottle of beer. But really, isn’t that how life is? Sometimes you really do lose the damn matches, after all, and while it gives this viewer a little smile to see it, the tiny mess-ups work as a reflection of real life more than anything else.

Here and with other such live teleplays, Serling proved he was one of the greatest writers in the history of television, reinforced that statement with “The Twilight Zone” and then put an exclamation point on it with “Night Gallery.” The most shocking thing is that he worked so well in so many different genres and could write with such speed and power. Like David E.Kelley or Paddy Chayefsky, Serling has so many crowning moments it’s impossible to point a single one out as his definitive work. That must be an amazing problem to have.

Like several of these live broadcasts (including “Days ofWine and Roses” and “Marty”), “Requiem for a Heavyweight” was turned into a feature film written by Serling and directed by Nelson. The roles in that version were filled by Anthony Quinn, Jackie Gleason, Mickey Rooney and Julie Harris, respectively. I have not seen the film version, and don’t know if I want to. In a way, the live version says just about everything that can be said about the story in only an hour and twelve minutes. You really feel as if you are seeing four souls onscreen trying to make sense out of this unfair life.

“Requiem for a Heavyweight” is available on as part of the Criterion Collection’s “The Golden Age of Television” DVD set.

I Love Lucy : "Hollywood at Last"

Season 4, Episode 16

Original Airdate: February 7, 1955

Writer: Bob Carroll Jr., Madelyn Pugh, Jess Oppenheimer

Director: William Asher

Producer: Desi Arnaz, Lucille Ball, Jess Oppenheimer

Cast: Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz, Vivian Vance, William Frawley

It’s a general consensus that, among all the classic sitcoms ever produced, “I Love Lucy” is the greatest ever created (sorry, “Seinfeld”). And though there are other amazing episodes and set-pieces created throughout the show’s run, “Hollywood at Last” is (for my money) the funniest, most thoroughly enjoyable…dare I say best?…from beginning to end. So, by using that logic, does this mean that we are looking at the greatest, funniest half hour of television ever produced? Lucille Ball called this her favorite episode, and I’m not going to argue.

The credits barely fade before we get a huge title filling the screen that declares we have arrived at “Hollywood at Last!” Yes, with the exclamation point and everything. Apparently it wasn’t only the characters who were excited. The Hollywood episodes reenergized the series in every possible way, and for its remaining seasons (and its continuation show “The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour”) the Ricardos and the Mertzes always seemed to be going…somewhere. First Italy, then Florida, then the move to the country, then Havana (in a flashback episode, but still), then Vegas, then Sun Valley, then Mexico, then Alaska, then a cabin in the woods somewhere, then Japan. Phew. And why wouldn’t they? We’d come to consider the Ricardos and the Mertzes our own family, so we were living vicariously through them.

The episode opens with the Ricardos and Mertzes being shown the suite Ricky was given by the studio while he shoots “Don Juan.” Everyone exits stage except for Lucy (Lucille Ball) and Ricky (Desi Arnaz), and the writers find time for a really brief, sweet scene before the chaos begins. Essentially, Lucy tells Ricky how proud she is of him and how much she believes in him. The moment can’t be more than thirty or forty seconds, and it’s sad to think that little beats like this have been lost in the hectic nature of the modern sitcom. Now every scene, every moment has to be set-up/punchline/set-up/punchline. How much character development gets lost in the incessant need for a joke? There are so many funny beats in this episode, but the characters are still allowed to be people. They can look out their hotel window and point out sights without having to turn the phrase into a pun. Giving the audience the room to breathe between gags allows us to really engage in the big moments instead of losing them in the mix, and I must admit I miss that when I turn on network or cable today.

Of course, Lucy is almost immediately on the hunt for movie stars, and though Eve Arden has a brief (brilliant) cameo, the main attraction in the episode is William Holden, and they couldn’t have chosen a better first celebrity. He’s a magnificent straight man for comedy, so much so that I wish he would have done more comedies during his career. His subtle smile is the perfect reaction to Lucy’s shenanigans, and he’s at the center of not one, but two fantastic set-pieces.

The first is in the Brown Derby (which I would be able to see from my apartment if it hadn’t been torn down). Lucy is on the hunt and reacts in about the way we expect she would react, but then Holden decides to turn the tables on her. There’s a perfect comedy moment where Lucy turns to oogle Holden when Holden is already oogling her, and their noses barely touch in a near-collision. How many times did they practice that, and what happened if Lucy went an inch too far!? Holden turning the tables is a wonderful twist on our expectations for the scene, and any sequence showing Ball’s trademark eyes going wide in horror is worth a watch. The interaction between the two becomes something of a dance, one that ends with Lucy tripping a waiter and nailing Holden with an entire tray of pies. Hollywood at last, indeed.

There’s a nice scene between the madness that has passed and what is still to come where Ricky gets stuck in a very unbecoming suit or armor and seems very grateful to be able to clown around for once instead of just staring at Lucy in horror and/or telling her she can’t be in the show.

Ricky brings Holden home and Lucy does everything to stay away from him except barricade herself in the bedroom (“I’m fickle!” she exclaims while hiding herself in a corner), and finally decides her only way to get through the meeting is to use putty to elongate her nose, wear librarian glasses and put her hair up. Since this is her first day in Los Angeles, one has to wonder where she got the glasses and putty, but never mind.

Usually when a comedian has to make a quick change for a laugh he/she rushes offstage for thirty seconds then comes back on in drag/bad makeup/etc. Almost all sitcoms incorporate this, including “I Love Lucy.” “Hollywood at Last” does something very ballsy by having Ball actually adjusting her make-up during the filming, in front of the audience. After accidentally nudging her nose this way and that, she attempts to “fix” it on the couch next to Ricky and Holden. Holden is doing some product placement for “The Country Girl,” but all eyes are on Ball as she playfully tries to hide what she is doing right there on camera, which makes the payoff of her turning around with a nose that is at least six inches long all the funnier. You always get a bigger kick out of seeing magicians performing the trick in plain sight.

The first few episodes of “I Love Lucy’s” fourth season weren’t the best, but the moment Ricky heard the results of his screen test (episode 9), the show began firing on all cylinders. It actually turned the preparation for leaving into a beautiful four-episode arc with many memorable moments, especially one where Lucy monologues about a car accident. And then we get another three excellent episodes of them traveling across country (one of which, “First Stop,” will soon be appearing in this blog). After the comedic heights of “Hollywood at Last,” one had to wonder how the show could follow it up. But the next string of 18 episodes (which bled into season five) represented some of the best in the series’ storied run, with only one stinker (“Bullfight Dance”) in the bunch. Lucy had yet to steal John Wayne’s footprints, or hang off Cornel Wilde’s balcony, or get that infamous tan. I chose “Hollywood at Last” as an individual great episode, but you’ll find it impossible to watch just one.

“Hollywood at Last” is available on the fourth season DVD of “I Love Lucy” and on iTunes.