Underplayed Gems

The Gulf Playhouse (1952)

The Gulf Playhouse poster
Original title
Gulf Playhouse
Genre
drama
Country
United States
Length
1 season, 24 episodes
Rating
8.0 of 10 from 1 voters
Elsewhere
IMDb
The 3D catalogue: film cases on wooden shelves, with the cat sitting at the counter next to its greeting.

The catalogue in 3D

The film shelves have a room of their own that you can walk around in. The cat behind the counter is the AI Catbot, and they pick real films from the same catalogue when you tell them what you feel like watching. Nothing is for sale, here or in there. Go in from here and this series is already out on the counter, with more like it waiting on the shelf next to it.

More series like this

How it feels

This is an American anthology series from the early 1950s. Each episode told a complete story through a live performance, where actors spoke directly to the camera as if it were a character.

theatricalintimateexperimentalgroundeddirectvariedlive-performance

What happens

Gulf Playhouse, also known as Gulf Playhouse: 1st Person and First Person Playhouse is an American anthology series that aired on Friday nights from 1952 to 1953 on NBC. Originally a standard live dramatic anthology series, it was later redeveloped as a summer replacement series whose anthology stories were now told as seen through the "eye" of the camera. The actors in each episode would talk to the camera as if it were a person, animal or object. Gulf Playhouse debuted on October 3, 1952, replacing We the People. It initially ran on NBC opposite My Friend Irma. When it was canceled, Gulf replaced it with The Life of Riley. The revised version, Gulf Playhouse: 1st Person, was the summer replacement for Riley in 1953. The series ran for twenty-four episodes with stars that included Rod Steiger, Tony Randall, Kim Stanley, Eddie Bracken, Ward Bond, Wendell Corey, Felicia Montealegre Bernstein, and Kim Hunter. The show's sponsor was Gulf Oil, and it was produced and directed by Frank Telford. Among its other directors was Arthur Penn. and Wes McKee. Bill Hoffman edited the scripts. Many of the writers were relatively unknown at the time. They included Carey Wilber, Frank D. Gilroy, Abby Mann, and Norman Lessing. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

More like this

This page is from Underplayed Gems. Not quite it? You can browse by genre, country and year, or take this one into the 3D catalogue and ask the Catbot for something closer.