Television: Backstage at Playhouse 90

It was two days before showtime, and CBS's Hollywood Studio 31 was a reptile house of cables, clotted with men and monitors, cameras and booms, eight sets. "Tuesdays are miserable.'' a man explained. "The actors are just getting aware of the cameras and the feel of the set." This time, matters had got miserable well before Tuesday.

The play was The Troublemakers, a drama about college students who beat to death another boy because of some campus newspaper articles he had written.* Director John Frankenheimer (Williams. '51), a gangly TV veteran of 27, was disappointed from the start with George Bellak's TV adaptation of his original play. So Frankenheimer called in TV Author Rod (Requiem for a Heavyweight) Serling to doctor the script. With accomplished Actor Ben Gazzara to play the role, Frankenheimer wanted to expand the part of Stanley, the dead boy's roommate, who makes an effort to stop the fatal roughhouse, then suffers with a conscience-driven urge to tell all. "I want to be conscious of Benny Gazzara every minute," said Frankenheimer. "This is the most creative actor I've ever worked with."

Serling had hardly begun his suturing job when—only six days before showtime —Producer Martin Manulis called his director. "We've had it,'' he said. "The Catholic press is saying we are doing a Communist play." All that had happened was that a columnist for some 45 Roman Catholic newspapers and magazines had written a story complaining that CBS was about to stage a play whose off-Broadway version in 1954 pleaded "for soft handling of suspected Communists." The story sent Madison Avenue into a flap, and ad agencies for go's five sponsors talked of backing out. Officials at CBS rushed down a wad of proposed script changes.

"Shoot Tight." "Suddenly," said Frankenheimer, "it became very important to me to get this show on." In long conferences of Manulis, Frankenheimer, cast and whole production staff, ten lines were excised for appeasement purposes. So, by Miserable Tuesday, the unexpected crisis was over, and all the principals—Frankenheimer, Serling and Gazzara, Associate Director Jim Clark and Technical Director Brooks ("Nimble Fingers") Graham—could concentrate on the ordinary weekly Playhouse 90 crisis, the need to get out a show.

Crouching before the mobile monitor unit and chain-smoking ("Three packs of Sponsor Marlboros a day"), Frankenheimer bellowed comments to his cast and production staff. "That's the shot! It's beautiful. I love it." "It's sloppy. It stinks." "Shoot tight on someone in the foreground." He turned to direct a scene where Gazzara has just discovered that his roommate is dead. "Okay. Start Benny out of the bathroom, fellows. C'mon, I don't have much time." (Explained Frankenheimer on the side: "If you don't drive them, you have last-minute panic.")