Episode 347: Magnavox Theatre - "Hurricane at Pilgrim Hill"
An episode from a short-lived but still historic anthology drama
What I watched: The seventh and final episode of the anthology series Magnavox Theatre, “Hurricane at Pilgrim HIll.” This episode starred Cecil Kellaway, Clem Bevans, Virginia Grey, David Bruce, Bob Board, and Leslye Banning. It was directed by Richard Bare and produced by Hal Roach. “Hurricane at Pilgrim Hill” first aired on November 24, 1950 on CBS at 9:00 pm, and is currently available to view on YouTube.
What happened: Two Indigenous guys are sitting around a Western town complaining about how they haven’t made any money from their oil wells this month. An older guy, Sam (Bevans) arrives to tell them off, and is quickly followed by his family, trying to make nice. The mother is collecting money for charity. Grandpa Sam is heading out to the titular Pilgrim Hill to visit his granddaughter, and leaving his grandson in charge as the man of the house.
He gets on the train, and is immediately out of place among the businessmen, carrying a rucksack and whittling a giant piece of wood. At Pilgrim Hill, his adult granddaughter Janet (Grey) and her husband Tom (Bruce) are waiting for him. Tom says that Jonathan Smith is coming, and Janet is worried about how Sam will react. Smith is apparently the big man in town. Both of the men arrive, with Sam ornery because the train has been strict about their rules. He mistakes Smith (Kellaway) for the butler. A young mechanic, Steve (Board), laughs at the situation on the way out.
Once he gets home, Sam seems more aware of the situation, and confirms that he doesn’t like Smith. He helps Tom out with his golf game, and ends up knocking the ball into Smith’s property. He also meddles in a young local relationship by counseling a crying Debbie (Banning), Smith’s daughter, who wants to run off with Steve but is unsure. Sam then intentionally uses his laser-like golf shot to intentionally break Smith’s window.
This is all part of Sam’s meddling, as he wants to hire Steve to replace the broken windows. Smith wants to arrest him. Tom intervenes, threatening to sue for false arrest. Sam seems both mad at Tom and happy for standing up to Smith. Meanwhile, Steve and Debbie kiss through the broken window. Tom and Janet take Sam out to the golf course to figure out how far he can hit the ball into a very convincing golf course backdrop. Smith tries to butt in on their tee time, and gets in an argument with Tom. Sam lets Smith play through but heckles his shot.
Tom expects that he’ll be fired the next day, but Smith comes by to make nice. They talk about planning to re-zone the beachfront, so you know they’re up to some Robert Moses shit. Smith wants Sam to teach him his golf swing, but Sam refuses, citing his interference in Steve and Debbie’s relationship. They agree to meet on Smith’s private island.
Sam’s plan is to conjure a hurricane to hit the island while Smith is on it. Steve and Debbie are inside watching TV, where the weather report is predicting a big storm. The storm hits, and Sam is happy, while Steve and Debbie are worried. His plan is for Steve to save Smith to convince him to allow the coupling. Steve and Sam go out into the storm in a boat, with fairly convincing storm effects. Debbie comes along, and rescues her exhausted father. Sam and Smith fight, but eventually calm down. Smith is portrayed more sympathetically and agrees to let the two young lovebirds get together. The two old men even end up as friends.
What I thought: Magnavox Theatre was a short-lived anthology show which was created to promote Magnavox televisions and other appliances, although we don’t have any ads in this recording besides a subtle-for-the-era integration of a TV set. It alternated with the much longer-running anthology show Ford Theatre, another example of a “wheel show” that networks were experimenting with this season. Magnavox Theatre received poor reviews for its first few episodes, and was generally seen as a weaker version of the already-established show.
I can’t speak for the earlier episodes, but “Hurricane at Pilgrim Hill” is an episode that suggests that Magnavox Theatre, while not great, was at least doing things a little different from other anthologies. While the first five episodes were broadcast live on-stage, the last two were shot on film. We’ve seen this used for half-hour Westerns and comedies, but this is possibly the first time an hour-long drama was shot on film. “Hurricane at Pilgrim Hill” isn’t doing much that would stand out in a feature film, but the multiple sets and relatively convincing storm sequence stand out from the stagey and often claustrophobic nature of live dramas.
The episode’s story uses the popular trope of an outsider who disrupts a staid small town’s way of life, in this case the cantankerous southerner Sam, perhaps the real “hurricane” of the story. Sam’s influence actually ends up leveling the inequalities of the town, bringing rich and poor closer together. This type of story essentially depends on how much you buy into the charismatic outsider. In this case, unfortunately, Sam comes off as annoying more than compelling, a stereotypical Southerner whose fixation on the young couple’s romance never really feels justified.
The biggest star in the play is not Sam’s actor but Cecil Kellaway, a South African actor who had at the time been recently Oscar nominated for the movie The Luck of the Irish. (He would go on to be nominated again for playing a priest in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.) Kellaway gives the otherwise stock rich guy character of Smith some humanity, and his face turn at the end of the episode feels like a genuinely emotional moment. It’s a world of contrast between him and the cartoonish Sam.
Ultimately, “Hurricane at Pilgrim Hill” isn’t a bad episode of television, but it perhaps reflects the generic confusion of Magnavox Theater. The previous week’s episode, which had also been shot on film, was an adaptation of Three Musketeers, and earlier editions had featured stagings of acclaimed plays. “Hurricane at Pilgrim Hill”, on the other hand, doesn’t really come off as highbrow drama, and isn’t really funny enough to be a comedy. This is the peril of the anthology show: absent a strong tone or creative vision, it’s hard to attract people to a show that could be radically different in tone and content each week. Magnavox Theatre never really got the chance to figure out what it wanted to be.
Coming up next: We skip ahead to Sunday and another trip to the ranch with Gene Autry