Obscure Videos: Musical Ladies Go Dramatic
The recent TV series The Outer Limits was based on an earlier series of the same title that ran on ABC from 1963 to 1965. While the one-hour science-fiction anthology series may have been influenced by such other programs as The Twilight Zone and One Step Beyond, the original Outer Limits exerted its own influence on subsequent sci-fi literature and drama.
On February 10, 1964, just a few months before she would star in the Broadway musical Bajour, Chita Rivera was billed as a "special guest star" on a superior episode of The Outer Limits entitled "The Bellero Shield." Set entirely on several levels of a dark, Gothic house and featuring a cast of just five actors, the episode introduces us to Richard Bellero Martin Landau, later an Oscar winner for Ed Wood and star of TV's Mission Impossible and his father, Bellero, Sr. Neil Hamilton, best known as Commissioner Gordon on the Batman TV series. The son is a scientist seeking to aid mankind through his experiments. The controller of a large corporation, his father intends to pass over his son as his successor. This is largely because the father despises the son's ambitious wife Sally Kellerman, later the star of such films as M*A*S*H and soon to appear in the Los Angeles production of The Wild Party.
While experimenting with a laser beam, Bellero accidentally intercepts a glowing alien from a planet of light. The benevolent creature demonstrates an ability to enclose itself in a clear shield that's impenetrable to anything on earth. Realizing this to be the ultimate in defense weapons, the wife urges her husband to exploit the alien. But the scientist lacks his wife's ruthless ambition, and is content for the alien to continue on its journey. So the wife decides to take matters into her own hands.
She does so with the aid of Mrs. Dame, her housekeeper, played by a severe-looking Rivera. Clad in black and barefoot, Rivera uses her dance background in the character's sinuous, catlike movements. Mrs. Dame freely admits that she murdered her husband, and is more than willing to help the wife destroy the alien and conceal the body.
The wife attempts to persuade her father-in-law that her husband should become the head of his father's empire by demonstrating the use of the shield, which she claims her husband created. She asks Rivera to shoot at her body, illustrating the impregnability of the shield. But the wife's ambition is her tragic flaw: She destroyed the alien before learning how to remove the shield. Although the witch-like Rivera prays to the gods for help, the wife finds, to her horror, that she's unable to free herself from behind the shield.
Seeking to destroy the evidence by burying the alien in the cellar, Rivera is confronted by the father, who is suddenly proud that his son brought the creature to earth and maintains that "great men are forgiven their murderous wives." Rivera strikes and kills the father, which temporarily reactivates the alien, who performs a final act of compassion. I won't spoil the final twists of this episode, which is available on DVD.
Described by one of the guests at a party as "a trauma in three acts," beautiful, rich, hedonistic man-trap Barbie Hallam does a sinuous dance atop a coffee table for some assembled partygoers. Thus begins "A Little Sleep," an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, the half-hour anthology series created and hosted by the master director in the mid-50s. Directed by Paul Henried and telecast on June 16, 1957, "A Little Sleep" stars Barbara Cook, looking sensational and just a few weeks away from rehearsals for Marian in The Music Man. Cast sharply against type, Broadway's reigning soprano ingenue must surely have exorcised any and all personal demons by playing the dangerous, appalling Barbie.
No sooner does her boyfriend go off to get the faithless Barbie a drink than Barbie is discovered in the arms of another of the guests. Dumping both men, a bored Barbie decides to take a dawn drive up to the mountain cabin left to her by an uncle.
Stopping at Ed Mungo's cafe, she learns that Ed's brother Bennie is being sought for the murder of his girlfriend. A fearless Barbie drives off to the secluded cabin, where she meets Bennie Vic Morrow, who's soon joined by his brother. It appears to Barbie that Ed, and not Bennie, is the murderer. A fight ensues between the brothers, and Bennie knocks Ed out. Content that the real murderer is, for now, enjoying "a little sleep," Barbie is ready to drive off with Bennie. But in a final twist, the cruel, selfish heroine is punished for her sins.
Our final lady of the day is Ethel Merman, who in a TV drama called "Honest in the Rain" attempted one of the most uncharacteristic roles ever essayed by a major musical-comedy star. The one-hour program, telecast live from New York, aired on CBS TV's U.S. Steel Hour on May 9, 1956, about seven months before Merman returned to Broadway in Happy Hunting.
In her dramatic television debut, Merman plays Libby Marks, a lonely spinster who, since the death of her parents, has attempted to fill her life by betting on horse races. When we meet her, she is a compulsive gambler living in a modest New York apartment, heavily in debt, borrowing from loan sharks while also secretly depleting the joint account set up for her and her last-chance fiance, Henry, who recently lost his mother.
We watch as Libby arrives at a shady pool hall and ventures into the back room to place a bet. Henry, who has no idea that Libby has by now used up their account, wants to put a $1,000 deposit on a house for his wife-to-be. So Libby is forced to take her week's pay and go out to the track, where she loses.
Desperate, she asks for an advance on her salary to place a bet on a hot tip, one given to her by a neighbor who is then brutalized by her husband for participating in Libby's gambling activities. Libby goes to a hospital to sell a pint of blood, then faints at the bookie's office when she loses.
Increasingly desperate, she quits her job to get severance pay. Her latest bet comes in, but before she can get her money the bookie joint is raided and Libby is arrested.
Forced to call Henry for help, Libby confesses her secret life to him, even lashing out at him by declaring that he only wants her as a replacement for his mother. They part, but a tacked-on happy ending has them reconciling.
Produced by The Theatre Guild, Mort Thaw's teleplay for "Honest in the Rain" is about as bleak a script as you could come across. But Merman admirably reins herself in, trying her utmost to appear ordinary rather than one of the brassy, flamboyant dames she usually portrayed. She gives a subdued, sincere performance, and if the part doesn't require enormous range, Merman's work here indicates that she had more acting ability than she is generally credited with.