The essential episodes of Screen Director's Playhouse
Watch these 15 in order and you've got Screen Director's Playhouse — each pick states its reason.
- 01
A "bumpkin-type" lawyer runs for governor until the opposition digs into his past.
- 02
During the catastrophic 1951 retreat of American troops in Korea, a recruit finds a Chinese bugle. His sargeant then attempts to use it to instill the fighting spirit in his men.
- 03
A young man who wants desperately to get married finds "The Girl" in, of all places, a marriage license bureau. But the happy ending is threatened by the appearance of a suave, smooth, sophisticated gambling man.
- 04
A nurse in a small-town doctor's office protests the attitude of the new young physician. His cold, impersonal treatment of patients is exactly opposite that of the kindly and gentle elderly doctor he will someday replace.
- 05
A small-town newspaper sports writer harbors an ambition to work for a big city daily. He sees his chance to achieve his goal while attending the World Series: one of the rookies shows a style reminiscent of a former all-time great banned from baseball for accepting a bribe.
- 06
Discouraged and saddened by the War Between the States, President Lincoln is cheered by the gift of a puppy from his physician.
- 07
Watching the TV broadcast of the Academy Awards presentation, a faded actress realizes that the patron at another table in the restaurant was once a well-known comic. Her happy discovery is marred, however, by a man who calls both of them has-beens.
- 08
A cardsharp and his wife aboard the Titanic on its fateful last voyage pick a wealthy Britisher as their pigeon. The cardsharp sets up the Britisher for a climactic card session, but the tables seem to turn as the ship goes down.
- 09
A chorus girl, stranded in a waterfront town in the Orient, is befriended by the skipper of a freighter. She marries the skipper and then meets a good-looking young harbor policeman who falls in love with her.
- 10
A kindly minister who believes in doing good for the unfortunate befriends a pair of itinerants who arrive in town.
- 11
A young deaf woman is left alone to look after the resort cabins owned by her father. Two dangerous bank robbers move in, using the secluded spot as a temporary hideout.
- 12
Late on Christmas Day, a man coaxes an antiques shopkeeper to let him in under the pretense of needing a gift for his fiancée, but it is soon clear he wants something else. To his surprise, what he gets is a battle with his own conscience.
- 13
A young doctor brings his second wife to his lakeside home to live. She is taunted by the presence of his pet cat, which serves to remind her that because she couldn't swim, she stood helplessly by while the first wife drowned.
- 14
In France in 1887 an impressionable youth gives his mother cause for alarm. The young man has a recurrent dream in which he searches for his dead father. The mother is further upset when the boy tells her of meeting a baron who offers to take him aboard ship for a journey to the West Indies.
- 15
Long separated, a river-tunnel foreman and his son come face to face during an under-river disaster which almost takes their lives.
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