"Rod Serling's Night Gallery" Night Gallery (1969)"Night Gallery" Night Gallery (original title)

Directors:

Boris Sagal
Barry Shear
(more)

Writer:

Rod Serling (written by)

TV Series:

"Rod Serling's Night Gallery" (1969)

Original Air Date:

8 November 1969 (Season 1, Episode 0)

Genre:

Drama | Fantasy | Horror | Mystery | Sci-Fi | Thriller

Plot:

In the pilot of the television series _"Night Gallery" (1970)_ , Rod Serling introduces three separate paintings...

Plot Keywords:

Painting | Nazi | Museum | War Criminal | Butler

Cast

Joan Crawford	...	Miss Menlo
Ossie Davis	...	Osmund Portifoy
Richard Kiley	...	Strobe
Roddy McDowall	...	Jeremy Evans
Barry Sullivan	...	Dr. Frank Heatherton
Tom Bosley	...	Sidney Resnick
George Macready	...	Hendricks
Sam Jaffe	...	Bleum
Norma Crane	...	Gretchen
Barry Atwater	...	Carson
George Murdock	...	1st Agent
Tom Basham	...	Gibbons
Byron Morrow	...	Packer
Garry Goodrow	...	Louis
Shannon Farnon	...	1st Nurse
Richard Hale	...	Doctor
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Rod Serling	...	Himself - Host
Bruce Kirby	...	Artist (uncredited)

Directed by
Boris Sagal		(segment "The Cemetery")
Barry Shear		(segment "Escape Route")
Steven Spielberg		(segment "Eyes")

Writing credits
Rod Serling		(written by)

Produced by
John Badham	....	associate producer
William Sackheim	....	producer

Original Music by
Billy Goldenberg		(as William Goldenberg)

Cinematography by
Richard Batcheller		(director of photography)
William Margulies		(director of photography)

Film Editing by
Edward M. Abroms

Art Direction by
Howard E. Johnson

Set Decoration by
John McCarthy Jr.		(as John McCarthy)
Perry Murdock
Joseph J. Stone		(as Joseph Stone)

Costume Design by
Burton Miller

Makeup Department
Larry Germain	....	hair stylist
Bud Westmore	....	makeup artist

Production Management
Ben Bishop	....	unit manager

Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Ralph Ferrin	....	assistant director
Marty Hornstein	....	assistant director

Art Department
Jaroslav Gebr	....	painter: paintings

Sound Department
Elbert W. Franklin	....	sound
James T. Porter	....	sound

Stunts
Julie Ann Johnson	....	stunts (uncredited)

Editorial Department
Richard Belding	....	editorial supervisor
Robert Brower	....	color coordinator

Music Department
Stanley Wilson	....	music supervisor

Production Companies

• Universal TV

Distributors

• National Broadcasting Company (NBC) (1969) (USA) (TV)
• Universal Studios Home Video (2004) (USA) (DVD)

Other Companies

• Universal Title  titles and opticals

Also Known As:

"Night Gallery: Night Gallery (#1.0)" - USA (original title)

Runtime:

98 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

USA:Unrated | Argentina:13 | Iceland:12

Company:

Universal TV

Trivia:

Joan Crawford' practiced walking around her apartment blindfolded in order to get in character.

Goofs:

Factual errors: During the "Escape Route" segment, Israeli agents hold a photo of wanted war criminal SS-Gruppenfuhrer (Major General) Helmuth Arndt. However, the photograph shows Kiley wearing the one-of-a-kind uniform worn by Reichsfuhrer-SS Heinrich Himmler.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Rate It X (1986)

Enjoyable 3-part TV movie that launched "Night Gallery"

Very well made TV movie, with 3 different stories. the first stars Roddy McDowall as a bastard nephew who kills his uncle to take his money, then is haunted by the ghost of the uncle (or so he thinks) to death. Ossie Davis also stars in this episode, and he's wonderful. This is my personal favorite of the three. Roddy is snide and sly as the nephew, and when he starts to come unhinged he's marvelous. The second stars Richard Kiel as a WWII concentration camp captain hiding in some South American city, where he becomes strangely fixated with an idyllic painting of a man fishing in a mountain lake. The painting hangs in a museum, and he spends day after day in there just staring at it and eventually feels himself drawn into the painting. It's a relief to be hounded no longer by the war crimes police when he's in the painting. But back in reality he's recognized as a Nazi who was condemned after the war, and a former camp inmate tells the police about him. Kiel runs to the museum, intent on going into the life in the painting for good. But he makes a big, big mistake and will spend eternity paying for it and his crimes against humanity. The last episode stars Joan Crawford in a pretty much one-woman play. She's a blind rich woman, living in a huge penthouse apartment in NYC, who pays a loser for his corneas so that she can have them transplanted in her eyes. The kicker is that she will only be able to see for about 8 hours, and she doesn't care a bit that the man she takes the corneas from will be blind forever. She has the operation, and when the time comes to take the bandages off, the instant she does the city is plunged into a blackout. She spends the 8 hours trying to get out of the apartment building in the dark stairwells, and finally makes it back to her apartment when the sun comes up. She finally sees the sun, but it's the last thing she does.

I love this movie; and I also loved Night Gallery, but this film has 3 different viewpoints and would appeal to a large audience. All the performances are excellent. Steven Spielberg directed the Joan Crawford segment, "Eyes"; it was one of his first director assignments.