Harry Townes
Kraft Suspense Theatre (1963)
Season 1
Kraft Suspense Theatre is an American anthology series that was telecast from 1963 to 1965 on NBC. Sponsored by Kraft Foods, it was seen three weeks out of every four and was pre-empted for Perry Como's Kraft Music Hall specials once monthly. Como's production company, Roncom Films, also produced Kraft Suspense Theatre. Writer, editor, critic and radio playwright Anthony Boucher served as consultant on the series. Later syndicated under the title Crisis, it was one of the few suspense series telecast in color at the time. While most of NBC's shows were in color then, all-color network line-ups did not become the norm until the 1966-67 season.
Released Oct. 10, 1963
Episode 48 min
14+
Keywords: tmdb.anthology, imdb.company-sponsor-name-in-title, awards.emmy-award-nominated
Network: NBC
Country: United States
Languages:
English
S1E1 - The Case Against Paul Ryker (1)
This story chronicles the court martial of a Korean War sergeant accused of treason. He is found guilty and sentenced to die, but his wife refuses to accept that her husband is a traitor and so persuades a prosecuting attorney to reopen the case and investigate further.
Oct. 10, 1963, midnight
S1E2 - The Case Against Paul Ryker (2)
Sgt. Ryker is sentenced to death for treason, but prosecuting officer David Young asks for another hearing on the grounds that Ryker wasn't properly defended. The request is granted, but Young is ordered to handle the defense this time.
Oct. 17, 1963, midnight
S1E3 - The End of the World, Baby
An artist romances both a mother and her daughter. Things get complicated when the mother wants to divorce her husband to marry the artist. The daughter acts to protect her father and ends up in trouble.
Oct. 24, 1963, midnight
S1E4 - A Hero for Our Times
A "happily married" and well thought of businessman witnesses a murder. Unfortunately, he is at his mistress' apartment when it happens. His dilemma about whether or not to report what he knows to the police is heightened further when a man he knows to be innocent of the crime is arrested.
Oct. 31, 1963, midnight
S1E5 - Are There Any More Out There Like You?
A spoiled teenager is implicated in a fatal auto accident.
Nov. 7, 1963, midnight
S1E6 - One Step Down
A dead husband turns up in a motel room, but the stunning woman he was with vanishes, leaving no fingerprints. When police show scant interest in the case, the rich widow falls off the wagon and swears revenge. With $7 million all to herself, the widow expects to track the temptress down and make her suffer.
Nov. 14, 1963, midnight
S1E7 - The Machine That Played God
A seemingly happy married couple have a fatal car crash. The husband dies and the surviving wife is suspected by the police of intentionally causing the accident. She tries to "prove" her innocence by taking two polygraph tests. The results confuse her and she comes to believe the "lie detector machines" know the real truth.
Dec. 5, 1963, midnight
S1E8 - The Long, Lost Life of Edward Smalley
Wielding a gun, Edward Smalley invades the office of attorney J. Marvin Bean. The attorney has no idea what this is all about until forced to remember an incident in World War II when Smalley had been accused of treason, and Bean was his court-appointed military attorney. The trial was cancelled before Smalley was given a chance to exonerate himself; the charges were dropped, but the accused man feels that he has never truly been cleared.
Dec. 12, 1963, midnight
S1E9 - The Hunt
A "surfer bum","600 miles from a wave", is roaming the back-roads of the U.S. in his woody wagon when it breaks down. His "rescuers" include a small town sheriff who has a habit of his prisoners escaping and then being hunted down and murdered by his bloodhounds. When the surfer is seen as a threat to report the goings-on he is arrested and is next in line to "escape".
Dec. 19, 1963, midnight
S1E10 - The Name of the Game
A professional craps player (who is habitually broke) is offered backing of up to $1,000,000 to play for a wealthy Southerner who has the goal of winning $200,000 from a Las Vegas casino. If successful they will split the winnings evenly. Complications include the craps players' love interest-and her boyfriend.
Dec. 26, 1963, midnight
S1E11 - The Deep End
A woman enters a private estate with a lake, strips down to a bathing suit and goes swimming. She is pulled underwater by a mysterious scuba diver and held until she drowns. The local police determine her death to be purely an accident, but an investigator from out of town is not so sure about that.
Jan. 2, 1964, midnight
S1E12 - A Truce to Terror
In Los Angeles,a wealthy man has a brief scuffle with a Spanish laborer and is accidentally hurt.Feeling the incident was actually a vicious attack,he vows to track down the Spaniard.He does find the man's daughter and by accident causes her to become hurt.Now the Spaniard becomes the hunter and is out for revenge.
Jan. 9, 1964, midnight
S1E13 - Who is Jennifer?
A teenager discovers that an old woman may actually be his long-lost mother
Jan. 16, 1964, midnight
S1E14 - Leviathan Five
Five men trapped in an underground Research Center determine that their oxygen will run out before they can be rescued They decide to have a "lottery" to choose who will have to die so the rest can live.After being saved,the four survivors are charged with murder and find the outcome could be fatal.
Jan. 30, 1964, midnight
S1E15 - My Enemy, This Town
A young man returns to Santa Marta, California after seven years,having been paroled on a ten year term for raping a local girl.He finds resentment from his father and the townsfolk.What no one will believe is that he is innocent.His "plan" to clear himself runs into a problem-he is set up to take a fall again.
Feb. 6, 1964, midnight
S1E16 - The Action of the Tiger
In 1943 a somewhat shell-shocked pilot is put back into action after being shot down for the second time in his total of four missions. However, he is shot down again and ends up in a German POW camp. He escapes to smuggle out intelligence information. On his way back to England he plays a game of cat-and-mouse with the Nazis.
Feb. 20, 1964, midnight
S1E17 - Doesn't Anyone Know Who I Am?
An overly stressed, financially strapped, high powered businessman goes on a sales trip and wakes up suffering from amnesia after being assaulted. He settles in a small town, meets a nice girl and gets a simple satisfying job. Then his memory returns. He goes back to his old life and finds unhappiness. What will he do?
Feb. 27, 1964, midnight
S1E18 - The Threatening Eye
In California,a young French-Canadian secretary relentlessly pursues marriage to a dull, married, middle-aged accountant. The man is flattered but mystified. What does the woman really want from him?
March 12, 1964, midnight
S1E19 - A Cause of Anger
An "overdeveloped genius" teenage boy has periodic fits of violent anger. Accompanied by a C.I.D. officer and a psychiatric nurse he is driven by car from his home in L.A. to a military installation in Kansas for diagnosis. During the journey several odd incidents occur and eventually the boy is missing. Is it kidnapping or foul play?
March 19, 1964, midnight
S1E20 - Knight's Gambit
In Majorca,Spain the U.S. Special Envoy is investigated for accepting bribes from organized crime while in his former position of D.A. The U.S. government uses an unlikely undercover operative - an international playboy worth 18 million dollars. The playboy begins the search for evidence by romancing the Special Envoy's secretary.
March 26, 1964, midnight
S1E21 - One Upon a Savage Knight
Police authorities in Chicago are seeking serial killer "Georgie Porgie." His M.O. is to murder blondes with a "cheap" reputation. He was thought to have "gone south for the winter" after a killing in Tennessee. But he has returned to Chicago and kills a woman in the middle of a strip club. Georgie Porgie is somewhere on the Illinois Tollway. However, the manhunt is complicated by a missile convoy moving through the Chicago area.
April 2, 1964, midnight
S1E22 - Portrait of an Unknown Man
A mysterious unfriendly man comes to a remote mountain town to buy supplies and causes the locals to wonder why he is there. He further puzzles them when he sets up a homestead next to a long played out mine and puts up a 'No Trespassing' sign. Meanwhile, the owner of the town's General Store and his daughter are battling their own demons.
April 16, 1964, midnight
S1E23 - Their Own Executioners
In Wickfield, Mass. (just outside Boston) a quiet clean-cut young man confesses to murdering his wife. A local attorney who is dying agrees to see the man and comes away feeling there is a more to the case than premeditated murder. He finds there are motives involving the man's "pure" mother and "tramp" wife. Helping this man brings peace to the dying attorney.
April 23, 1964, midnight
S1E24 - The Sweet Taste of Vengeance
A divorcee who skips the country and heads to Brazil, her ex-husband would normally be happy to see the back of her; unfortunately she took $2 million of his money before leaving. Private eye Forsythe is hired to bring her back. And just to keep Forsythe honest, a second private eye is engaged to bring him back.
April 30, 1964, midnight
S1E25 - Charlie, He Couldn't Kill a Fly
An alcoholic, loudmouth, unemployed man on the verge of losing his wife and son is arrested for murder. He actually is a witness to who committed the crime but no one except a family friend believes him to be innocent. He becomes a hero to his neighbors as the murdered man was a drug dealer and begins to revel in the glory. When his friend finds the real killer it may be too late as the "hero" is now fully prepared to go to prison.
May 7, 1964, midnight
S1E26 - The Watchman
An American secret agent, on the trail of a vanished scientist, must recover the scientist's revolutionary secret formula before the Enemy catches up with his quarry first.
May 14, 1964, midnight
S1E27 - The Robrioz Ring
In the San Diego area (at Coronado) a family heirloom/good luck piece ring is sold by a man's mother to raise money. A spinsterish school teacher on vacation from Philadelphia buys the ring at a gift shop and the man, just too late to buy it back, decides to romance her to recover the good luck piece. As time passes the relationship becomes more important than the ring.
May 28, 1964, midnight
S1E28 - A Cruel and Unusual Night
A stern Lucas County, California "letter of the law" judge is kidnapped and "sentenced" to death by a man he once sentenced to death. The one-time Death Row prisoner recalls the agonies he went through as he awaited death by gas chamber. As his story is detailed tension builds and two questions remain to be answered-(1) "Will the judge crack?" and (2) "Will the execution be carried out?"
June 4, 1964, midnight
NBC
48 min/ep
40 min
Oct. 10, 1963
July 1, 1965, midnight
Ended
NR
14+
Action
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