The Stranger (1954)

Genre

drama

Country

United States

Length

1 season, 33 episodes

Rating

6.5 of 10 from 2 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A stranger appears when someone is in trouble, helps them resolve their problem, and then vanishes. He never accepts payment for his assistance. The show relies more on visual storytelling than on dialogue.

mysterioushelpfulsereneunderstatedepisodicneutralquiet

What happens

The Stranger is an American television crime drama broadcast on the DuMont Television Network from June 25, 1954, to February 11, 1955. Robert Carroll played a mysterious man who helped those in distress. The stranger mysteriously appeared when people needed help and disappeared just as mysteriously after each problem was resolved, never taking any pay for his assistance. Some episodes relied more on video than on words, with the stranger "often having scarcely a mouthful of dialogue." The 30-minute program aired Fridays at 9 PM. The series was produced and directed by Frank Telford, with Nelson Gidding and Carey Wilbur as writers. Most of the program's content was live, with film used for outdoor action. Carroll did his own stunts. Pharmaceuticals Inc. was the sponsor. Geritol, which sponsored The Stranger, cancelled it because only 23 DuMont affiliates carried the series. Geritol executives wanted to expand coverage by buying time on stations affiliated with CBS and NBC and providing kinescope recordings of episodes for those stations to show. When DuMont officials rejected that proposal, cancellation resulted. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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