"Of Human Bondage" | |
---|---|
Studio One episode | |
Episode no. | Season 2 Episode 11 |
Directed by | Paul Nickel |
Written by | Sumner Locke Elliott |
Based on | Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham |
Original air date | November 21, 1949 |
Running time | 60 minutes |
"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]
A medical student has a disastrous love affair.
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]
William Somerset Maugham was an English writer, known for his plays, novels and short stories. Born in Paris, where he spent his first ten years, Maugham was schooled in England and went to a German university. He became a medical student in London and qualified as a physician in 1897. He never practised medicine, and became a full-time writer. His first novel, Liza of Lambeth (1897), a study of life in the slums, attracted attention, but it was as a playwright that he first achieved national celebrity. By 1908 he had four plays running at once in the West End of London. He wrote his 32nd and last play in 1933, after which he abandoned the theatre and concentrated on novels and short stories.
Eleanor Jean Parker was an American actress. She was nominated for three Academy Awards for her roles in the films Caged (1950), Detective Story (1951), and Interrupted Melody (1955), the first of which won her the Volpi Cup for Best Actress. She was also known for her roles in the films Of Human Bondage (1946), Scaramouche (1952), The Naked Jungle (1954), The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), A Hole in the Head (1959), The Sound of Music (1965), and The Oscar (1966).
Of Human Bondage is a 1915 novel by W. Somerset Maugham. The novel is generally agreed to be Maugham's masterpiece and to be strongly autobiographical in nature, although he stated, "This is a novel, not an autobiography; though much in it is autobiographical, more is pure invention." Maugham, who had originally planned to call his novel Beauty from Ashes, finally settled on a title taken from a section of Spinoza's Ethics. The Modern Library ranked Of Human Bondage No. 66 on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.
John Cromwell was an American film and stage director and actor. His films spanned the early days of sound to film noir in the early 1950s, by which time his directing career was almost terminated by the Hollywood blacklist.
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Charles Alfred Selwyn Bennett was an English playwright, screenwriter and director probably best known for his work with Alfred Hitchcock.
Philip Ives Dunne was an American screenwriter, film director and producer, who worked prolifically from 1932 until 1965. He spent the majority of his career at 20th Century Fox. He crafted well regarded romantic and historical dramas, usually adapted from another medium. Dunne was a leading Screen Writers Guild organizer and was politically active during the "Hollywood Blacklist" episode of the 1940s–1950s. He is best known for the films How Green Was My Valley (1941), The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947), The Robe (1953) and The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965).
The Philco Television Playhouse is an American television anthology series that was broadcast live on NBC from 1948 to 1955. Produced by Fred Coe, the series was sponsored by Philco. It was one of the most respected dramatic shows of the Golden Age of Television, winning a 1954 Peabody Award and receiving eight Emmy nominations between 1951 and 1956.
Sumner Locke Elliott was an Australian novelist and playwright.
The Great Gatsby is a 1949 American historical romance drama film directed by Elliott Nugent, and produced by Richard Maibaum, from a screenplay by Richard Maibaum and Cyril Hume. The film stars Alan Ladd, Betty Field, Macdonald Carey, Ruth Hussey, and Barry Sullivan, and features Shelley Winters and Howard Da Silva, the latter of whom later returned in the 1974 version. It is based on the 1925 novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Set during the raucous Jazz Age on Long Island near New York City, the plot follows the exploits of enigmatic millionaire and bootlegger Jay Gatsby who attempts to win back the affections of his former lover Daisy Buchanan with the aid of her second cousin Nick Carraway.
Of Human Bondage is a 1934 American drama film directed by John Cromwell and regarded by critics as the film that made Bette Davis a star. The screenplay by Lester Cohen is based on the 1915 novel Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham.
Of Human Bondage is a 1964 British drama film directed by Ken Hughes and starring Kim Novak and Laurence Harvey in the roles played by Bette Davis and Leslie Howard three decades earlier in the original film version. This MGM release, the third screen adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham's 1915 novel, was written by Bryan Forbes from the novel by Somerset Maugham.
Rex Rienits was an Australian writer of radio, films, plays and TV. He was a journalist before becoming one of the leading radio writers in Australia. He moved to England in 1949 and worked for a number of years there. He later returned to Australia and worked on early local TV drama.
Buy Me Blue Ribbons was a 1951 play by Australian writer Sumner Locke Elliott. It was one of the few Broadway plays to be written by an Australian.
"The Mystery of a Hansom Cab" is a 1961 Australian television drama play based on Barry Pree's 1961 play adaptation of the novel by Fergus Hume. It appeared as an episode of the anthology series The General Motors Hour. It aired on 6 August 1961 in Sydney and on 19 August 1961 in Melbourne.
"The Grey Nurse Said Nothing" is a television play written by Sumner Locke Elliott. It was based on elements of the Shark Arm case but is mostly fictitious. The play was screened in the US in 1959 as an episode of Playhouse 90. It was performed on American and Australian television.
Lester Cohen was an American novelist, screenwriter and author of non-fiction. He is best known as the author of the novels Sweepings and Coming Home, and the screen play for Of Human Bondage.
Edens Lost (1969) is a novel by Australian writer Sumner Locke Elliott.
"Friday the 13th" is a 1954 American television play by Sumner Locke Elliott. It originally aired as an episode of The Philco Television Playhouse produced by Fred Coe and directed by Arthur Penn.
"Jane Eyre" is a 1949 American television play adapting the novel Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. It aired as an episode of Studio One and starred Charlton Heston as Rochester.