Despite their initial concern about television, it didn't take the big US studios long to embrace the new medium. As explained in Casablanca - from Big Screen to Small, Warner Brothers were one of the first studios to enter television production in 1955, by lending from one of their biggest movie hits of all time. It was the beginning of a relationship that still thrives today. In this issue of TVM, we take a look at some of the successful, and not so successful examples of popular television shows being turned into big production features- and vice versa. There's also a look at a series of 'b' movies that now appear to be, but were not, made for television. This Issue Page 3 - Casablanca: The Television Series by Laurence Marcus Page 5 - The Big Routine: Jack Webb’s Dragnet by Nur Soliman Page 8 - Doctor Who and the Daleks: the Sixties Movies by Daniel Tessier Page 14 - Callan at the Movies by John Winterson Richards Page 21 - Three of a Kind: The Films of Morecambe and Wise by Brian Slade Page 24 - The Real Ghostbusters by Daniel Tessier Page 29 - Barbara Bates by Andrew Coby Page 35 - Croft on the Big Screen by Brian Slade Page 39 - Man of Mystery: The Tales of Edgar Wallace is the online magazine of Television Heaven - https://televisionheaven.co.uk/ which is a not-for-profit website. All articles are copyright of their individual authors and can not be reproduced without permission. 2 In the first big-screen version of Charlie's Angel's, a character settles into his seat in the first class cabin of an airplane whilst a screen in front of him plays a movie version of the popular US TV series T.J. Hooker. "Not another movie of an old TV show!" remarks the character. It is a tongue in cheek comment for sure, but therein lies an acknowledgement that Hollywood has for a number of years enjoyed something of a love affair with US television. In the early part of the 2000’s it certainly plundered the vaults of 1970's kitsch adventure series. With the big box- office success of Charlie's Angels and outings for The Dukes of Hazard, The A Team and Starsky and Hutch it would be easy to forget that in television's formative years, the tables were very much turned, and it was the small screen that borrowed from its larger rival. In the US, Warner Bros was one of the first of the big studios to embrace the new medium of television. Approached by ABC, the giant WB Company gave permission for the screening of its theatrical film releases. Warner's however were keen to broaden their horizons further and it was TV production that they were interested in. And so, a seminal series was created in which the company drew from three of its successful movies and presented adaptations and serialisations of them on a rotating basis, taking each of the stories beyond their closing theatrical credits under the umbrella title of 'Warner Bros. Presents', which were introduced each week by Academy Award winning actor Gig Young. The three movies from which inspiration was drawn were 'Kings Row', 'Cheyenne' and a movie that would one day be regarded as one of the finest Hollywood has ever produced...'Casablanca'. Based on the 1942 movie starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, Casablanca, the series, debuted on 27 September 1955 at 7.30pm. Taking up the story after Bogart's character, Rick, an American expatriate who owns a North African bar had seen Ilsa, the true love of his life -but now married to another, take off from a fog-shrouded aerodrome, viewers were reintroduced to the main characters of the movie version. Rick himself was renamed Rick Jason and his bar was called the Club American; a bistro that attracted both intrigue and beautiful women. Despite his gruff exterior and outward indifference to the plight of others, Rick worked tirelessly to undermine the activities of the occupying Nazis. Captain Renaud (originally Renault) was the unsympathetic police captain, Ferari -a black marketer, Sasha -a bartender, and Sam -the incomparable piano player. 3 Charles McGraw, a one-time RKO star who had starred in 'The Narrow Margin', played Rick, although he was not the director, John Peyser's first choice. No amount of money could entice Humphrey Bogart to play the inscrutable character he had created in the movie for the television series, and Peyser was convinced that the only other actor who could carry the part, was Anthony Quinn. Jack Warner, WB's president, was happy to go along with the idea, offering Quinn $5,000 per episode and two movies for Warner Brothers. Quinn, although filming Lust for Life for MGM at the time, was very keen on the idea. So keen in fact, that he approached Lust for Life's producer, John Houseman, to agree to an early release. With Houseman's agreement, Quinn would be available from the start of August to begin filming the television series. However, when Peyser returned to Jack Warner with the good news that they had secured their star, Warner had an alarming change of heart. According to Peyser, Warner's response was "I don't want to pay that greasy Mexican all that money!" Unsurprisingly, Peyser was appalled at the movie mogul's response and further distressed when McGraw was cast in the lead. "He couldn't act his way out of a hat", Peyser later commented. The combination of a less than enigmatic star and what Peyser described as "unbelievable, incredibly lousy scripts," left the director with the view that the series' fate was sealed before it even went in front of the cameras. The supporting cast for Casablanca, the television series, were most notable for their close associations with the original movie. French actor Marcel Dalio was promoted from a croupier at Rick's Place to Police Captain Renaud, whilst Dan Seymour had lived with the tag "the young Sidney Greenstreet" before actually filling the big man's shoes for this version, and Clarence Muse finally got to play Sam after auditioning for the part but losing out to Dooley Wilson in 1942. The series also featured a guest first episode appearance by Anita Ekberg as an unnamed woman who many assumed to be Ilsa Laszlo. However, only 8 50-minute stories were made before the series was cancelled (thirteen of each movie adaptation had been planned, Casablanca fared better than Kings Row which only managed 5 -although Cheyenne ran for eight years). This was one of three appearances on the small screen for Casablanca. In 1953 it had been made as a one-hour dramatisation on The Phillip Morris Program, although Warner's would not allow any recordings (kinescopes in those days) to be saved, and in 1983 producer David Wolper cast Starsky and Hutch star David Soul as Rick Blaine (the character's name in the movie), in an attempt to revive the format for NBC. The show folded after three episodes. By borrowing from its own blockbuster movies, Warner Bros’ efforts were greeted with mixed success in 1955. However, the company went on to produce dozens of hit programmes within a short space of time and eventually became one of the most important producers of TV series in America. You could say, it was the start of a beautiful friendship. 4 ‘The story you are about to hear is true. The names have been changed to protect the innocent.’ Reflecting on Jack Webb’s Dragnet can seem like a master study of adaptation. From 1949 on, iterations of the police series made their mark on audiences, with iconic recurring elements like the ominous musical opening theme, Sgt. Joe Friday’s matter-of-fact scene-setting introductions, and the unnerving -mug shot closing sequences. Dragnet became the ship that launched a thousand radio/TV ‘procedurals’ flooding the airwaves and permeating our cultural consciousness since. Today, it can appear dull, dated, even unintentionally self-parodying, as the progressive Webb began to sound jarringly staid and conservative in a changing, conflicted era. If the format feels over-familiar it’s likely because it was the first of its kind, but in a way Dragnet itself was conceived as an adaptation, after Webb befriended and spoke with Marty Wynn of the LAPD while filming that classic crime/police procedural noir He Walked by Night (1948). Webb found that even real-life ‘dullness’ had meaningful, storytelling potential and adopted a factual approach for his series; what he eventually produced became its own creature entirely. The original franchise included two tele-film adaptations. Disappointingly, they didn’t bring the successful film break Webb hoped for (what he ran with eventually ran away with him: the 1967 film reportedly got him to make the second TV series, beginning to tire the legendarily intense workhorse), and he only directed a handful of other (good) films before turning out popular series like Adam-12 and Emergency! but I feel the Dragnet films allow us to enjoy Jack Webb at his almost-finest. They’re imperfect and fall a little short, but they’re also promising glimpses of what he might have been capable of with a little more experimentation, still fine complements to the old radio/TV episodes extant today. 5 Dragnet (1954) This film feature (the first-ever theatrical film based on a television series) is essentially an extended TV episode, with Friday (Webb) and partner Frank Smith (Ben Alexander) investigating the gangland murder of a small- time bookie and ex-con.