A young man from the Midwest who worships the film industry goes to Hollywood to become a serious actor but instead succeeds unintentionally as a comic actor.
Herbert and Marge Gage buy an old-fashioned farmhouse in Connecticut and then discover that two of the late owner's heirs have a legal right to live in the house. Soon after the Gages and their two daughters move in, the Jonathan Rockwoods arrive to take advantage of their relative's will. The inevitable difficulties arise when two families live under one roof. A message is received that a neighbor is expecting a child and has no one to attend to her needs. Mathilda Rockwood and Barbara Gage are the only available people, and they slip away and take over until the following morning when a nurse arrives. This incident leads to all the differences between the two families being ironed out.
A look into the lives of three generations of an acting family all living together under one roof.
Henrietta Brewster is obsessed with psychoanalysis and is driving her husband Stephen crazy. She wakes him up at night to interpret his dreams and hounds him to consult Dr. Russell, her mentor. Mabel,Henrietta's sister, tells them of a dream in which she battles a hen while some creature yells at her ""Step, Hen! Step, Hen!"" Two weeks later, Stephen tells Henrietta that he has been seeing Dr. Russell and he has interpreted his dreams as a desire to leave her. She is appalled but insists that he leave her. Mabel returns from a session with Dr. Russell, who has interpreted her dream as a suppressed desire for Stephen. He and Mabel are astounded by their desires but concede to the insight of the science which Henrietta defends. Henrietta then repudiates psychoanalysis and she and Stephen are reconciled.
A wealthy man, who lives on the Dover Road, traditional path of elopers, forces these couples to see one another in the sober light of home life in his house. One such encounter leads to a personal involvement for him.
A woman who has been long married to an institutionalized man finally divorces him and is free to marry another.
An elderly man who is in love with a young girl discovers that too many people are interested in his romance. The love affair is the immediate concern of the middle-aged widower's daughter-in-law, his housekeeper, and the neighbors. Their interference almost deprives him of years of happiness.
During World War II, an American G.I., who went overseas and fell in love with a French girl, returns to Kansas and a job at a filling station, all the while never forgetting his French love. When he learns that she is coming to New York, he and his pals go to meet her. In New York, he and the French girl are suspected of illegal activities concerning some jewels picked up in the war and the story of their romance in France is told in flashback.
A man who has a strange controlling effect on his wife is mysteriously killed.
Nora rebels against being treated as a mere plaything by her husband Torvald. She wants to be a companion rather than just someone to be protected. When the crucial test of their marriage is brought about by a bit of blackmail, her husband thinks more of his honor than of his wife. Nora leaves Torvald and her home to lead a life as an individual rather than that of a wife.
Don Richie, an Air Force captain who is shot down over Germany during World War II, returns in spirit form to comfort his grieving family. He discovers that his wife, mother, father, and son remember him in different ways. At first, he is unable to ""get through"" to them, but then the family believes that whenever ""the wind is ninety"" or from the East, Don will be with them in spirit.
Herbert and Marge Gage buy an old-fashioned farmhouse in Connecticut and then discover that two of the late owner's heirs have a legal right to live in the house. Soon after the Gages and their two daughters move in, the Jonathan Rockwoods arrive to take advantage of their relative's will. The inevitable difficulties arise when two families live under one roof. A message is received that a neighbor is expecting a child and has no one to attend to her needs. Mathilda Rockwood and Barbara Gageare the only available people, and they slip away and take over until the following morning when a nurse arrives. This incident leads to all the differences between the two families being ironed out.
A story about a man looking for a beautiful girl from his past
A shy woman with low self-esteem finds inner strength when her husband almost loses his business.
Mr. Lazarus appears at the boardinghouse of the Sylvesters and claims that he is John Molloy, Mrs. Sylvester's first husband. He proves Dr. Sylvester to be a fraud and helps Pat, Mrs. Sylvester's daughter, and Booth, her fiance, on the road to the altar. Mr. Lazarus suddenly leaves, but the family is undecided as to who he really is.
Eben Stone, mate on the brig Ellen B, takes over as master after the first mate is murdered and Captain Brewster dies. The Reverend Obadiah Harkness and his daughter Tabby are passengers, and Eben falls in love with her, and she with him. When Bluey leads the crew to mutiny and a fire breaks out in the hold, Eben says he must deal with a fire below and the Devil above and he goes into the hold to save the ship. Bluey tries to gain control of the ship, but The Reverend Harkness and Tabby, with the faithful Chips, the ship's carpenter, save both Eben and the ship.
Four scenes from previous episodes are re-enacted by the original actors; the episodes include ""Of Famous Memory"" (Nancy Marchand as Queen Elizabeth I); ""January Thaw"" (Vaughan Taylor as Jonathan); ""Wuthering Heights"" (John Baragrey as Heathcliff); and ""My Brother's Keeper"" (Rod Steiger and George Roy Hill).
A man is left with only his daughter after his wife and two sons die in an automobile accident.
Story concerns the grief of a couple who are afraid of losing their adopted teenage son to his heartless mother.
A father is willing to sacrifice his lifetime's savings in order to assure a brighter future for his son.
A 67-year-old ex-major leaguer rejoins his former team after developing a freakish curve ball.
Story about a cheating scandal at a school.
Joe Harris, a young ex-con, out of jail only a few hours, visits kindly Papa Golden's delicatessen and beats the old man into a coma and eventually into a coffin. His pretty wife has moved to New Jersey and is living with Joe's father. Angry at first at the direction Joe's life has been taking, the older Harris warms to the idea of the return of the prodigal son. Describing the youth as a ""poet and a gangster,"" wife and father provide an untrue alibi for Joe when a world-weary cop with a son of his own comes to make the pinch.
The lifeguard at a wealthy resort exerts a powerful attraction upon the visitors.
A Vermont farmer applies for a loan from the U.S. government and gets a check for a million dollars.
A schoolteacher who buys an old house in a New England town under the impression that the house is of great historic importance.
Young Fred Staples is the new executive at Ramsie and Company and the unwitting replacement for good natured vice president, Andy Sloane. Ruthless Mr. Ramsie, president of the company, is determined to oust Sloane whose humanitarian outlook Ramsie feels is the enemy of big business.
The tale of a young businessman who enters the corporate world and suffers the effects of office politics.
In their apartment overlooking the Hudson River, two sisters escape from the family quarrels by daydreaming about boarding one of the ships to Europe.
A story about the Byzantine Emperor Justinian and the Empress Theodora
A divorced lawyer turned composer has changed wives as well as professions, and now his second marriage seems headed for the rocks. He conveniently becomes a victim of amnesia and loses track of both women and careers.
The hotel is the reform school to which a rigid judge is accustomed to sending the wayward youngsters who appear before him, but life has an ironic twist in store.
Since his recent retirement, Christy Fallon has taken to visiting with a night watchman friend. One night, a new element is added: a robber appears and is captured by Christy Fallon himself.
A rookie pitcher's father was once a pitcher, and his career was ruined when he beaned a player. Now he is afraid his son will do the same thing, and his fear leads to a serious conflict among father, mother, and son.
A widow dreads the thought of losing her son to his prospective bride.
Escaping from a loveless marriage to King James I of England, Lady Essex falls madly in love with the King's favorite Carr, the Lord Rochester. The romance touches off deception and violence.
The bullet-riddled body of a gangster is brought to the morgue. Since no one appears interested in arranging a funeral for him, plans are made to bury him in Potter's Field. Then, out of the blue, there steps a young waitress to claim the dead man's remains.
An Irishman places his friend's name on a sweepstake ticket.
Set in a summer place that's been shut down now that summer's over, a small boy begins to suspect that his best friend, a handyman, is a murderer.
A French village woman's day of judgment comes after the village is liberated from the Nazis. She was a collaborator and now the collective contempt of the populace comes down upon her.
Though he hasn't made a film in years, an aging Viennese director, living in the U.S., is fiercely proud of the great movie he made decades ago. He convinces himself that the ideal way to regain his vanished glory would be to remake that film, and even to have his wife play the role she created in it.
A man who killed a neighbor in a drunken rage returns to his hometown after his release from prison.
A boy living in the Midwest in post-Civil War times runs away from his foster parents' home and is initiated into the truths of good and evil.
An alcoholic lies, steals, and sacrifices personal dignity to fulfill his craving for alcohol. His sweetheart persists in what appears to be a losing battle in trying to rescue him from the moral degradation and mental corrosion into which he is rapidly sinking. Despite their efforts, he ends up stealing her fur coat to get money for a bottle of whiskey.
The death of their child almost wrecks the marriage of a truck driver and his wife. Then one night he goes against company regulations and picks up a Mexican waif on the road.
This episode about Edmund G. Ross, the Kansas Senator who kept President Andrew Johnson from being impeached, was adapted from a chapter in John F. Kennedy's Pulitzer Prize-winning book ""Profiles in Courage.""
A man from private industry, who was brought by his former boss and good friend into the government in connection with an intercontinental missile program, finds himself subject to multiple pressures--personal, political, and interdepartmental.
The story of the life of the baseball player Mickey Mantle up to age 24.
A juvenile delinquent gives the wife of his father's boss a ride home. Enroute, he gets into a race with another boy, and accidentally runs over a woman. Members of his gang threaten his passenger to keep her from telling police what she knows about the accident.
In the Kentucky Hills during the 1920s, legends have grown about the Coxes, the surviving family of an old mountain feud. One day, their self-imposed isolation is rudely threatened by the arrest of the son on a charge of murder.
An American salesman, who is about to return home from Brussels after an unsuccessful business trip, is offered a large sum of money by a stranger if he'll smuggle diamonds to the U.S. for him.
On a foggy night in the Atlantic Ocean, two passenger ships collide. In the rescue, one life is lost. During the Coast Guard investigation which follows, it turns out that Captain Sorrenson of the S.S. Wingate served under Captain Trawley of the S.S. Red Star for many years. There also appears to be some personal conflict between the two men.
A European child of American foster parents is kidnapped and flown to the Russian-controlled sector of Vienna. The Communists believe that the boy is a descendant of the dead Czar Nicholas.
A woman, and the young man she loves, plots to poison her husband. A young man comes into the life of a childless married couple, functioning in many ways as a son. Trouble begins when he and the wife fall in love and begin plotting the death of the clueless husband.
A young hitchhiker is picked up in a small town on suspicion of robbery and murder. He has no alibi, and witnesses identify him, claiming they remember his curly hair.
A story about the Strategic Air Command
A 15-year-old Puerto Rican boy, who comes to New York to live with his sister, must choose between going to school and being bullied by the neighborhood toughs into joining a gang.
The Polish-American father of three daughters takes great pride in entering the annual polka contest each year with one of the girls. Last year, when his oldest daughter married, the second daughter Theckla danced and won the contest with Papa. But this year Theckla is in love, and she refuses to put on the old-country costume and dance.
After confessing to the police his role in a narcotics gang, Joe flees from the wrath of the mob. He finally comes to a small town where he is convinced the gang will never find him. But after checking into the town's one hotel, he receives a phone call from the gang and realizes there is no hiding place. Joe goes to an all-night diner in an attempt to keep watch for the killers.
A beautiful woman, staying at an inn, plots the murder of the wife of the man she is in love with. A young girl, also a guest, learns of her plan, but is so fascinated with the older woman that she keeps the deadly secret.
This episode presented the following three plays by Tennessee Williams: ""This Property Is Condemned"" (with Zina Bethune as Willie and Martin Huston as Tom); ""The Last of My Solid Gold Watches"" (with Alonzo Bozan, Thomas Chalmers, and Gene Saks); and ""Moony's Kid Don't Cry"" (with Ben Gazzara and Lee Grant).
An obscure lawyer William Stark becomes governor of a Southern state and hires a newspaperman Jack Burden to protect him against his political enemies.
Governor Stark decides to run for the U.S. Senate. His secretary Sadie Burke and Jack Burden advise him against the move, but Stark refuses to listen.
Tracing the killer of Annie Boone, two detectives question her family and acquaintances in an attempt to learn what kind of person the victim was. They are given drastically conflicting descriptions of Annie. Her mother calls her dumb, her husband says she was brilliant. One man describes her as wild and tempestuous, another as shy and retiring.
A widow who repeatedly phones the police to complain is later found murdered.
A tough hardworking police officer, passed over for promotion, is assigned to a homicide case by his newly appointed superior. Though cautioned against using brutal methods, the officer shakes off his partner on the case and pays a visit to the suspect alone.
An ambitious politician who wants to run for Governor, is determined that nothing shall stand in the way of his nomination. When his wife says she's going to leave him, he warns her that she had better stay at his side until after the political campaign. Arriving home for dinner one evening, he finds his wife struggling with an intruder and he himself is struck on the head. When he regains consciousness, his wife has been murdered.
A lawyer defends a man who admits to writing ransom notes but denies charges of kidnapping and murder.
