Vacation Playhouse 

Summer replacement show featuring pilot programs that had not been sold.

Creators:

Hal Kanter, Richard Michaels

Stars:

Darryl Hickman, Dwayne Hickman, Pat Crowley

Cast

Series cast summary:
Darryl Hickman	...	Rok / ... 2 episodes, 1963-1966
Dwayne Hickman	...	Joe Hannon / ... 2 episodes, 1964-1967
Pat Crowley	...	Elizabeth Williams / ... 2 episodes, 1966-1967
Soupy Sales	...	Fireman Smokey / ... 2 episodes, 1966
Wallace Ford	...	Lester Tinney / ... 2 episodes, 1963-1964
Marvin Kaplan	...	Marv / ... 2 episodes, 1963-1964
Reta Shaw	...	Aunt Josie / ... 2 episodes, 1963-1964
Ned Glass	...	Professor / ... 2 episodes, 1965-1966
Sid Gould	...	Angelo 2 episodes, 1965
Cherylene Lee	...	Kim Chi / ... 2 episodes, 1963-1964
Ann Jillian	...	Bev Ferguson / ... 2 episodes, 1965-1966
Cliff Norton	...	Phil / ... 2 episodes, 1966
Dave Willock	...	Carl Ryan / ... 2 episodes, 1966
Jerry Van Dyke	...	George / ... 2 episodes, 1967

Storyline

Summer replacement show featuring pilot programs that had not been sold.

---

Plot Keywords:

anthology | 

---

Genres:

Drama | Comedy | Crime | Mystery

---

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

22 July 1963 (USA)

Filming Locations:

Desilu Studios - 9336 W. Washington Blvd., Culver City, California, USA

Company Credits

Production Co:

Bing Crosby Productions, Desilu Studios, Four Star Productions

Technical Specs

Runtime:

30 min

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Black and White Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Did You Know?

Connections

Spun-off from An American in Paris (1951)

User Reviews

Not Great, But Better Than Double and Triple Reruns!

In these days TV series episodes are sometimes rerun within months, sometimes weeks, of their original broadcast and sometimes two or three times in the first year, but there was a time back in the 1960s when the three networks tried to avoid showing reruns at all! Then series produced as many as 39 new episodes a year (compared to maybe 20 to 22 today) so you didn't need to rerun episodes at all until the summer months and often the networks would try to avoid this by running a replacement program instead until the fall. Sometimes this was a cheap original variety show, sometimes they would run a British TV show they had bought (this is how both "The Avengers" and "the Prisoner" first appeared on US TV).

This show was a clever idea of salvaging something from what would ordinarily have been a dead loss. Every year, a number of ideas for new TV shows would get to what was called the "pilot" stage, that is, they would film a sample episode so the powers that be could make a final decision on whether to order a full season of shows. If the pilot was successful, the show would go on the air in the fall, if not that would be the end of it. Some TV exec got the bright idea of putting the failed pilots on as a summer replacement series. Since they were failures, they were of course not of the highest quality, but they undoubtedly felt (and rightly) that it was better to show them than forcing the viewers to watch something again they had already seen. And sometimes it was actually interesting to see familiar stars playing entirely different roles from what you were used to. I particularly remember a pilot Dwayne Hickman made after "Dobie Gillis" went off the air in which he played an elementary school teacher.