Buick-Electra Playhouse

American TV anthology series (1959–1960)

Buick-Electra Playhouse is a 90-minute dramatic anthology series produced by and aired on CBS from November 19, 1959, until May 19, 1960. It was sponsored by Buick. Four episodes, all based on Ernest Hemingway's works, were broadcast.

"The Killers" was broadcast on November 19, 1959, starring Dean Stockwell, Dane Clark, Robert Middleton, Ray Walston, Diane Baker and Ingemar Johansson. The supporting cast included Fred Scollay and Deborah Moldow. A review of the episode in The New York Times complimented the work of the actors but said, "The adaptation was not successful."^[1] The review pointed out the difficulty of developing "a brief but moving narrative" to fill 90 minutes of television time, noting that "most of the incidents that were added to the basic plot were generally ineffective", while "the most absorbing moments ... were those that were pure Hemingway."^[1]

Other episodes, their dates, and actors were:

"The Fifth Column" - January 29, 1960^[2] - Richard Burton, Maximilian Schell, Sally Ann Howes^[3] Sydney Pollack^[4]
"The Snows of Kilimanjaro" - March 25, 1960^[2] - Robert Ryan, Ann Todd, Janice Rule^[3]
"The Gambler, The Nun, and the Radio" - May 19, 1960^[2]

The executive producer was A.E. Hotchner,^{[citation needed]} the producer was Gordon Duff,^[1] and the directors were John Frankenheimer,^[5] Tom Donovan,^[6] James Clarke, and Albert Marre.

Notable guest stars included Richard Burton, Maximilian Schell, Eleanor Parker, Robert Ryan, Dean Stockwell and Diane Baker.

The title sequences of each episode included a bust of Hemingway that was commissioned by CBS. Sculptor Robert Berks read Hemingway's works and studied films and still photos of the author for two weeks in preparation for creating the bust. A potter in New England used clays imported from around the world to make the clay that Berks molded in his New York studio.^[7]

References

^ ^a ^b ^c Shanley, John P. (November 20, 1959). "TV Review: Hemingway's 'Killers' Loses in Adaptation". The New York Times. p. 63. Retrieved August 7, 2023.
^ ^a ^b ^c Hemingway, Ernest (2005). Dear Papa, Dear Hotch: The Correspondence of Ernest Hemingway and A.E. Hotchner. University of Missouri Press. p. 9. ISBN 978-0-8262-1605-2. Retrieved August 7, 2023.
^ ^a ^b Pomerance, Murray; Palmer, R. Barton (August 11, 2011). A Little Solitaire: John Frankenheimer and American Film. Rutgers University Press. p. 282. ISBN 978-0-8135-5098-5. Retrieved August 7, 2023.
^ Meyer, Janet L. (August 13, 2015). Sydney Pollack: A Critical Filmography. McFarland. p. 9. ISBN 978-1-4766-0979-9. Retrieved August 8, 2023.
^ Grimes, William (January 18, 1996). "A Director's Debt To a Hereford Cow". The New York Times. p. C 15. Retrieved August 7, 2023.
^ "Ingo In TV Drama". Fort Lauderdale News. October 30, 1959. p. 21-C. Retrieved August 8, 2023 – via Newspapers.com.
^ "Art for the Masses: Prominent sculptor creates bust of Hemingway for TV shows". The Warren County Observer. Pennsylvania, Warren. March 2, 1960. p. 11. Retrieved August 8, 2023 – via Newspapers.com.

External links

Buick-Electra Playhouse at IMDb
Buick-Electra Playhouse at CVTA

Ernest Hemingway

Bibliography

Novels

The Torrents of Spring (1926)
The Sun Also Rises (1926)
A Farewell to Arms (1929)
To Have and Have Not (1937)
For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940)
Across the River and into the Trees (1950)
The Old Man and the Sea (1952)

Nonfiction

Death in the Afternoon (1932)
Green Hills of Africa (1935)

Posthumous

A Moveable Feast (1964)
Islands in the Stream (1970)
The Dangerous Summer (1985)
The Garden of Eden (1986)
True at First Light (1999)
Under Kilimanjaro (2005)

Short stories

"Up In Michigan" (1921)
"Indian Camp" (1924)
"The Doctor and the Doctor's Wife" (1925)
"The End of Something" (1925)
"The Three-Day Blow" (1925)
"The Battler" (1925)
"A Very Short Story" (1925)
"Soldier's Home" (1925)
"The Revolutionist" (1925)
"Mr. and Mrs. Elliot" (1925)
"Cat in the Rain" (1925)
"Out of Season" (1925)
"Cross Country Snow" (1925)
"My Old Man" (1925)
"Big Two-Hearted River" (1925)
"Banal Story" (1926)
"Today is Friday" (1926)
"A Canary for One" (1927)
"Fifty Grand" (1927)
"Hills Like White Elephants" (1927)
"The Killers" (1927)
"The Undefeated" (1927)
"Che Ti Dice La Patria?" (1927)
"In Another Country" (1927)
"Now I Lay Me" (1927)
"A Simple Enquiry" (1927)
"Ten Indians" (1927)
"An Alpine Idyll" (1927)
"A Pursuit Race" (1927)
"On the Quai at Smyrna" (1930)
"Fathers and Sons" (1932)
"A Natural History of the Dead" (1932)
"A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" (1933)
"A Day's Wait" (1933)
"The Gambler, the Nun, and the Radio" (1933)
"A Way You'll Never Be" (1933)
"The Snows of Kilimanjaro" (1936)
"The Capital of the World" (1936)
"The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" (1936)
"Old Man at the Bridge" (1938)

Short story
collections

Three Stories and Ten Poems (1923)
In Our Time (1925)
Men Without Women (1927)
Winner Take Nothing (1933)
The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories (1938)
The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1961)
The Fifth Column and Four Stories of the Spanish Civil War (1969)
The Nick Adams Stories (1972)
The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway (1987)
Ernest Hemingway: The Collected Stories (1995)

Story fragments

"On Writing"

Poetry

88 Poems (1979)
Complete Poems

Plays

Today is Friday (1926)
The Fifth Column (1938)

Screenplays

The Spanish Earth (1937 film)

Letters and
journalism

By-Line: Ernest Hemingway (1967)
Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters, 1917–1961 (1981)
Dateline: Toronto (1985)
The Cambridge Edition of the Letters of Ernest Hemingway (2011)

Adaptations

The Sun Also Rises	1957 film 1984 film Opera The Select (The Sun Also Rises) Ballet
"The Killers"	1946 film 1956 film 1964 film Bukowski short story
A Farewell to Arms	1932 film 1957 film 1966 TV series
To Have and Have Not	1944 film The Breaking Point (1950) The Gun Runners (1958) Captain Khorshid (1987)
For Whom the Bell Tolls	1943 film 1959 TV play 1965 TV series 1984 song
The Old Man and the Sea	1958 film 1990 film 1999 animated film
Other film adaptations	The Macomber Affair (1947) Under My Skin (1950) The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952) Hemingway's Adventures of a Young Man (1962) Islands in the Stream (1977) Soldier's Home (1977) My Old Man (1979) After the Storm (2001) The Garden of Eden (2008) Across the River and into the Trees (2022)