Playhouse 90 - Season 3

1. The Plot to Kill Stalin

Aired: 9/25/1958

In late 1952, an aging and increasingly paranoid Stalin puts in motion a purge against his doctors, with anti-Semitic overtones. His lackeys, including Khrushchev, Molotov and Beria, fear it will spread to the Politburo, and plan to strike first.

2. Days of Wine and Roses

Aired: 10/2/1958

An alcoholic falls in love with and gets married to a young woman, whom he systematically addicts to booze so they can share his "passion" together.

3. The Time of Your Life

Aired: 10/9/1958

William Saroyan's Pulitzer Prize-winning play revolves around the denizens of a San Francisco bar in 1939. Lonely, lovelorn, weary or cynical, the characters drift in and out of the bar and each other's lives, giving voice to Saroyan's philosophies as they randomly comment about the impending world war, the beauty of art, and traditional notions of good and evil.

4. The Long March

Aired: 10/16/1958

5. Shadows Tremble

Aired: 10/23/1958

An elderly immigrant tries to buy an old house in New England and is opposed by snobbish locals.

6. Word from a Sealed-Off Box

Aired: 10/30/1958

A courier for the Dutch Resistance is captured by the Nazis.

7. Heart of Darkness

Aired: 11/6/1958

A trading company manager travels up an African river to find a missing outpost head and discovers the depth of evil in humanity's soul.

8. Old Man

Aired: 11/20/1958

To fight a Mississippi flood in 1927, a prison farm releases some convicts.

9. The Return of Ansel Gibbs

Aired: 11/27/1958

After years in retirement, Ansel Gibbs is asked to return to government service.

10. Free Weekend

Aired: 12/4/1958

11. Seven Against the Wall

Aired: 12/11/1958

The story of the infamous St. Valentine's Day Massacre of 1929.

12. The Nutcracker

Aired: 12/25/1958

This telecast of George Balanchine's famous production was broadcast only four years after it was premiered by the New York City Ballet. This was the only episode of the series televised in color.

13. Face of a Hero

Aired: 1/1/1959

14. The Wings of the Dove

Aired: 1/8/1959

An impoverished woman who has been forced to choose between a privileged life with her wealthy aunt and her journalist lover, befriends an American heiress. When she discovers the heiress is attracted to her own lover and is dying, she sees a chance to have both the privileged life she cannot give up and the lover she cannot live without.

15. The Blue Men

Aired: 1/15/1959

16. The Velvet Alley

Aired: 1/22/1959

Ernie Pandish has tried to be a writer for years and has never made much money out of it. But now he seems likely to hit the big-time.

17. A Quiet Game of Cards

Aired: 1/29/1959

A few friends meet each weekend for a quiet game of cards. But they're bored with poker and, in trying to find another diversion, gradually find themselves plotting a hypothetical murder. It is hypothetical, isn't it?

18. Child of Our Time

Aired: 2/5/1959

War deprives Tanguy of his childhood. When his mother returns to Spain to oppose the Franco regime, he is left in Nazi-occupied Marseilles, France.

19. The Second Man

Aired: 2/12/1959

20. The Raider

Aired: 2/19/1959

A corporate raider plans a hostile takeover. To stall him, pressure is put on a scientist to rush through a new type of engine before all necessary tests have been completed.

21. The Ding-A-Ling Girl

Aired: 2/26/1959

A housewife is offered a Hollywood contract. She'd rather stay home, but her husband has ambitions for her.

22. Made in Japan

Aired: 3/5/1959

A young soldier in occupied Japan after World War II falls in love with a lovely Japanese girl, but is horrified about what his prejudiced family in Philadelphia will think if he takes her home with him.

23. For Whom the Bell Tolls: Part 1

Aired: 3/12/1959

During the Spanish Civil War, an American allied with the Republicans finds romance during a desperate mission to blow up a strategically important bridge.

24. For Whom the Bell Tolls: Part 2

Aired: 3/19/1959

The completion of the mission has tragic consequences.

25. A Trip to Paradise

Aired: 3/26/1959

26. In Lonely Expectation

Aired: 4/2/1959

27. The Day Before Atlanta

Aired: 4/9/1959

28. Judgment at Nuremberg

Aired: 4/16/1959

In the later stages of the Nuremberg Trials, four German judges are accused of perverting the course of justice.

29. A Corner of the Garden

Aired: 4/23/1959

30. Dark December

Aired: 4/30/1959

During World War II, an army doctor struggles to convert a Franciscan monastery into a field hospital.

31. Diary of a Nurse

Aired: 5/7/1959

The daily emergencies and stresses of a major city's hospital ward as seen through the eyes of nurse Gail Lucas.

32. A Marriage of Strangers

Aired: 5/14/1959

Marry in haste, repent at leisure? Well, maybe.

33. Out of Dust

Aired: 5/21/1959

On a cattle drive across the prairie, the sons of a wealthy cattle baron plot his death.

34. The Rank and File

Aired: 5/28/1959

A powerful union leader is interrogated by a Senate committee. Testifying before a Senate, William Kilcoyne tells the story of his career. He began as a factory worker and his shrewdness and ambition carried him up through the ranks to his present position as head of a large union.

35. The Killers of Mussolini

Aired: 6/4/1959

As the Salo Republic crumbles around him, Mussolini, along with his mistress and several of his ministers flee with retreating Nazi soldiers, but are caught at the town of Dongo by red partisans. All are brutally executed without trial.

36. Project Immortality

Aired: 6/11/1959

Key defense scientist Doner has cancer. Schramm is assigned to code Doner's thinking into a computer. He gets to know him as a friend, a husband and father. The project is successful, but he now knows identity is not programmable.

37. Dark as the Night

Aired: 6/18/1959

A British politician finds himself open to blackmail because of the indiscretion of his American wife.

38. The Second Happiest Day

Aired: 6/25/1959

A man about to be married recalls the day his life changed permanently.