American Playhouse - Season 9

First aired: 1/24/1990 18 episodes
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Episodes

1. Sensibility and Sense

Aired: 1/24/1990

Three friends, once bonded over their radical beliefs in the 1930s, reunite after becoming estranged over a book one of them wrote.

2. Women and Wallace

Aired: 1/31/1990

After his mother's suicide, Wallace Kirkman struggles in his relationships with the women in his life.

3. The Wizard of Loneliness

Aired: 2/7/1990

After his mother dies and father goes to fight in World War II, young Wendall Oler moves in with his aunt and uncle in the countryside. Lonely, he starts believing he has superpowers. Then a 'dead' man shows up.

4. Zora Is My Name!

Aired: 2/14/1990

A celebration of the life of Zora Neale Hurston, who was born at the turn of the 20th-century and grew to be an important voice with her written portrayals of Black American life in the rural south of the 1930s and 40s, and the stories, songs and folklore that were her heritage and inspiration.

5. In a Shallow Grave

Aired: 2/21/1990

Disfigured WWII veteran Garnet Montrose returns from Guadacanal and enlists a drifter to court his former sweetheart through letters, leading to a complex love triangle with unexpected romantic developments.

6. Andre's Mother

Aired: 3/7/1990

Katherine Gerard has lost her son Andre to AIDS. At his memorial service, we follow Katherine confronting the death of her son, the anguish of his lover Cal Porter, and, in flashbacks, the key moments of denial and miscommunication with those closest to her.

7. The Wash

Aired: 3/21/1990

Nobu Matsumoto is a neglectful husband. Not the most loving man. His wife Masi gradually encounters a widower, a kind, gentle figure. She eventually makes the transition to leave her husband and go to this fellow.

8. Triple Play

Aired: 3/28/1990

A trio of short films by Chanticleer Films and Columbia Pictures: Ray's Male Heterosexual Dance Hall (an older widower accidentally stumbles into a lively, eccentric male dance class in a desolate mall, finding a new lease on life); Teach 109 (futuristic surgeons practice their skill on androids designed to imitate patients, but Dr. Garrett sees this as pointless since she cares little about fake robotic patients; however, her latest patient changes her mind); and Homesick (a young boy named Sam navigates family changes during the 1920s).

9. Break of Dawn

Aired: 4/11/1990

In 1930s Los Angeles, Mexican immigrant Pedro J. González becomes a pioneering Spanish-language radio star before being wrongly convicted and imprisoned at San Quentin.

10. Prisoners of Inertia

Aired: 4/25/1990

Indecisive newlyweds get into a series of misadventures while on a day trip from Manhattan to Hoboken, New Jersey.

11. Eat a Bowl of Tea

Aired: 5/2/1990

An American-Chinese man brings over his wife from China to America, but the challenges of making a living and adjusting to a new life, plus the attentions of a gambler threaten their marriage.

12. All God's Dangers

Aired: 5/9/1990

Ned Shaw recounts his life as an illiterate Black tenant farmer born into a society of former slaves and slaveholders. The story ends in December 1932 when he courageously stood his ground against white deputy sheriffs who were attempting to seize a neighbor's livestock.

13. Sidewalk Stories

Aired: 5/16/1990

A New York City street artist rescues a baby girl after her father is murdered. He then sets off to find the mother, but has to first learn how to care for the child. Ultimately, he ends up in a horse-drawn chase for the murderers.

14. Bloodhounds of Broadway

Aired: 5/23/1990

On New Year's Eve 1928, in the New York underworld, a gambler sells his body to science, a gangster needs a transfusion, and a gambler is on the run

15. Where the Spirit Lives

Aired: 6/6/1990

In 1937, a young First Nations girl named Ashtecome is kidnapped along with several other children from a village as part of a deliberate Canadian policy to force First Nations children to abandon their culture in order to be assimilated into white Canadian/British society. Taken to a boarding school where she's forced to adopt Western Euro-centric ways and learn English, often under brutal treatment, she has the support of one sympathetic white teacher.

16. An Enemy of the People

Aired: 6/13/1990

When a scientist learns that his town's lucrative springs present a serious health threat, the community refuses to listen to him.

17. Separation

Aired: 6/27/1990

When neurologically ill American actress Sarah calls emotionally crippled English playwright Joe, they begin a very special relationship conducted through trans-Antlantic phone calls. In order to face reality, both must overcome their conditions.

18. Hyde in Hollywood

Aired: 7/6/1990

In 1939, closeted director/actor Julian Hyde finds himself targeted by vicious and unscrupulous attacks by a gossip column by the name of Hollywood Confidential.