Morris Carnovsky

New York City English professor Axel Freed outwardly seems like an upstanding citizen. But privately Freed is in the clutches of a severe gambling addiction that threatens to destroy him.

A fictionalized account of famous French writer Emile Zola and his involvement in the Dreyfus Affair. After struggling to establish himself, Zola wins success writing about the unsavory side of Paris and settles into a comfortable upper-class life. However, Zola's complacency is shaken when Jewish officer Alfred Dreyfus is imprisoned for being a spy. Realizing that Dreyfus is an innocent victim of anti-Semitism, Zola boldly pens a newspaper article exposing the truth, is charged with libel and must defend himself in a dramatic courtroom testimony.

France, 1640. Cyrano, the charismatic swordsman-poet with the absurd nose, hopelessly loves the beauteous Roxane; she, in turn, confesses to Cyrano her love for the handsome but tongue-tied Christian. The chivalrous Cyrano sets up with Christian an innocent deception, with tragic results.

Nick Garcos comes back from his tour of duty in World War II planning to settle down with his girlfriend, Polly Faber. He learns, however, that his father was recently beaten and burglarized by mob-connected trucker Mike Figlia, and Nick resolves to get even. He partners with prostitute Rica, and together they go after Mike, all the while getting pulled further into the local crime underworld.

Bart Tare is an ex-Army man who has a lifelong fixation with guns, he meets a kindred spirit in sharpshooter Annie Starr and goes to work at a carnival. After upsetting the carnival owner who lusts after Starr, they both get fired. Soon, on Starr's behest, they embark on a crime spree for cash.

War heroes Rip Murdock and Johnny Drake are sent to Washington, D.C, to receive top honors for their service. Johnny, seemingly terrified by the publicity that awaits him, jumps off the train and later turns up dead. Suspecting foul play, Rip begins digging into his pal's past. He encounters cover-ups, threats to his own life and deadly femme fatale Coral Chandler.

A prescient documentary about city planning, which presents idyllic suburbs and nuclear families as a solution to the chaos, poverty and social decay of industrialized inner cities.

The film pivots around the local Norwegian doctor and his family. The doctor's wife (Ruth Gordon) wants to hold on to the pretence of gracious living and ignore their German occupiers. The doctor, Martin Stensgard (Walter Huston), would also prefer to stay neutral, but is torn. His brother-in-law, the wealthy owner of the local fish cannery, collaborates with the Nazis. The doctor's daughter, Karen (Ann Sheridan), is involved with the resistance and with its leader Gunnar Brogge (Errol Flynn). The doctor's son has just returned to town, having been sent down from the university, and is soon influenced by his Nazi-sympathizer uncle. Captain Koenig (Helmut Dantine), the young German commandant of the occupying garrison, whose fanatic determination to do everything by the book and spoutings about the invincibility of the Reich hides a growing fear of a local uprising.

In flashback from a 'Rebecca'-style beginning: Ellen Foster, visiting her aunt on the California coast, meets neighbor Jeff Cohalan and his ultramodern clifftop house. Ellen is strongly attracted to Jeff, who's being plagued by unexplainable accidents, major and minor. Bad luck, persecution...or paranoia? Warned that Jeff could be dangerous, Ellen fears that he's in danger, as the menacing atmosphere darkens.

This omnibus release consists of three playlets filmed and aired during television's Golden Age, and starring some of the legends of film and television. The collection originally ran as a two-hour segment on December 14, 1959, on the anthology series The Play of the Week, broadcast locally in New York City via the independent radio station WNTA. Each "tale" in the anthology was adapted from a single tale by the inimitable Sholom Aleichem, regarded by many as the "Yiddish Mark Twain". Included are: "A Tale of Chelm" starring Zero Mostel and Nancy Walker in the story of a bookseller attempting to buy a goat; "Bontche Schweig" about a poor man (Jack Gilford) whose recent arrival in Heaven makes the angels cry; and "The High School" about a Jewish merchant (Morris Carnovsky) persuaded by his wife (Gertrude Berg) to let their son attend a particular high school despite the enforcement of quotas for Jewish students.

A study of the Group Theatre, a company that changed the face of American drama. The Group was founded in 1931 by Cheryl Crawford, Harold Clurman and Lee Strasberg, who were strongly influenced by the naturalistic acting of Konstantin Stanislavski’s Moscow Art Theatre.

The third of the Monogram series based on Ham Fisher's "Joe Palooka" comic strip, opens with Knobby Walsh, the manager of Joe Palooka trying to talk his way out of a traffic citation, and the story leading to that point is told in flashback as narrated by Walsh. Heavyweight champion Joe, after knocking out an opponent who later died in his dressing room, feels responsible and threatens to give up boxing. But the dead fighter's fiance thinks he died as the result of a drug that was given to him by a gang of gamblers, who made a rich haul betting on Palooka. Joe, Knobby and the police unite to run down the gamblers, but not before Joe also is nearly murdered by the same means...a poisoned mouthpiece. Elyse Knox is along as Joe's sweetheart Anne Howe, although Anne and Joe had long been married in the comic strip.

Welcome to Fuller Junction, Wisconsin, a friendly small town settled by Norwegian farmers. Here we see the exploits of two young cousins, Selma and Arnold, who learn about their world and experience the ups and downs of life as the season pass.

Art editor Madeleine Damian carries on numerous loveless affairs. After a failed relationship with advertiser Felix Courtland, the increasingly depressed Madeleine attempts suicide. When Jack Garet, her secretary and former lover, tries to blackmail her, Madeleine resigns and seeks a reclusive life. Neighbor David Cousins befriends Madeleine, but soon Courtland and Garet discover her whereabouts and disrupt her new life.

When a German art dealer living in the US returns to his native country he finds himself attracted to Nazi propaganda.

When upper-class Parisian Charles Dupont and his family hire Tina and Michel as their servants, they have no idea that the domestics are in fact Tatiana, the Grand Duchess Petrovna, and her husband, Mikail, Prince Ouratieff. Recent exiles from the Russian Revolution, Tatiana and Mikail befriend the Dupont family, keeping their true identities a secret -- until one night when Soviet official Gorotchenko arrives for dinner.

A betrayed queen takes a terrible revenge.

A doctor hunts a vicious, man-eating tiger that terrorizes a native jungle village. In time the doctor experiences a personal change when he accepts their native customs and beliefs.

A World War II veteran hunts down the Nazi collaborators who killed his wife.

Two Foreign Legion soldiers, Jean (Dennis O'Keefe) and Andre (Jean Pierre Aumont), accidentally discover the famed lost continent of Atlantis. Bewitched by the sultry, beauty of the Queen of Atlantis (Maria Montez) the two men vie for her affections; little realising that her previous lovers have been embalmed into statues that line the passages of her kingdom.

Fictionalized biography of George Gershwin and his fight to bring serious music to Broadway.

After World War II Larry learns that his flying buddy Mike will only live a short time despite the efforts of the doctors. He takes on a profitable flying job for profiteers Maris to finance a good time for his buddy. As the plane takes off he shoves Maris' secretary Susan on board. When Mike falls for her, Larry tells her to play along for Mike's sake. She, of course, falls for Larry.

A student nurse falls in love with a young intern in 1910 Baltimore, but tragedy ensues when he contracts a fatal disease.

Joris Ivens’s wartime documentary of China’s resistance to the Japanese invasion, cross-cutting civilian exodus and bombing with the Nationalist state’s mobilization—schools, industry, dispersed war production, foreign relief—and guerrilla fighting. Framing an ancient nation of “400 million,” it contrasts tradition with modernization and closes on the unresolved question of victory.

American Playhouse is an anthology television series periodically broadcast by Public Broadcasting Service in the United States.