Of Human Bondage (Studio One)

"Of Human Bondage"
Studio One episode
Episode no.Season 2
Episode 11
Directed byPaul Nickel
Written bySumner Locke Elliott
Based onOf Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham
Original air dateNovember 21, 1949 (1949-11-21)
Running time60 minutes
List of episodes

"Of Human Bondage" is a 1949 American television play. Adapted from the novel Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham it was an episode of the anthology series Studio One. The adaptation was by Sumner Locke Elliott and the success of the show helped launch Elliott's television career.[1][2][3]

Premise

A medical student has a disastrous love affair.

Cast

  • Charlton Heston as Philip Carey
  • Felicia Montealegre as Mildred Rogers
  • Guy Sorel as M. Foinet - Art Critic
  • E.A. Krumschmidt as Emil - Restaurant Patron
  • Philippa Bevans as Nelly
  • Robin Craven as Crenshaw
  • Faith Brook as Sally Athelny

Production

The show had a script but producer Worthington Miner was unhappy with it. He contacted Elliott and asked for a script in two days. Elliott said "I'd never been in a studio in my life, nor seen a TV camera: I really knew nothing; but I took the book — Miner had marked with a slip of paper where the dramatization should start, two hundred pages into Maugham's story — and somehow or other I got that script written for him... and I'd become a television writer."[1]

Miner had mixed feelings about the production. He later said "I had great success with adaptations of novels of Henry James — The Ambassadors, for example. These stories concerned a small number of people in a mass of extraneous material that can be caught by the television camera. So I got carried away and decided to do Bondage. This was a fiasco. I got a pretty good script from Sumner Locke Elliott, all things considered; but it had one fault - it was 27 minutes too long!"[4]

References

  1. ^ a b Wilk, Max (1989). The Golden Age of Television: Notes from the Survivors. Moyer Bell. p. 32. ISBN 978-1-55921-000-3.
  2. ^ "Of Human Bondage to be broadcast for the first time". Chicago Tribune. 20 November 1949. p. 9.
  3. ^ "A business-minded young author". The Daily Telegraph. Vol. XV, no. 93. New South Wales, Australia. 8 July 1950. p. 23. Retrieved 26 September 2024 – via National Library of Australia.
  4. ^ Sturcken, Frank (1990). Live Television: The Golden Age of 1946-1958 in New York. McFarland & Company. p. 30. ISBN 978-0-89950-523-7.