Paul Bogart

Adaptation of Wendy Wasserstein's play, directed by Paul Bogart.

Backstage at the Metropolitan Opera House a soprano is preparing for her debut in the opera Tosca. The stage manager gives her encouraging advice. She is visited by her "tenor for the evening." Equally terrified and nervous yet excited, she thinks fondly of her brother, who died from AIDS. He appears to her in her dressing room as a ghostly apparition.

Neil Simon's "Broadway Bound" is the Final Chapter of his acclaimed trilogy that began with "Biloxi Blues" and "Brighton Beach Memoirs".

A very personal story that is both funny and poignant, TORCH SONG TRILOGY chronicles a New Yorker's search for love, respect and tradition in a world that seems not especially made for him.

In the 1930's an aging film producer and his much younger wife live separate lives. Whenever a young starlet catches the husband's eye, he eventually manipulates her onto his casting couch. Natica Jackson (Michelle Pfeiffer) is a Hollywood star who is far from innocent, but she finds herself falling in love with a married man who has several children.

An ex-CIA agent can't convince anyone that he's no longer a spy.

A sociopathic socialite plots her father's murder.

A young American couple inherits an English castle, only to find that it is haunted by the spirit of a disgraced ancestor, doomed to stay on the estate because of his cowardice. The only way he can escape is if one of his descendants performs an heroic act, something he intends to get the husband to do.

Mama Malone is an American sitcom that aired on CBS from March 7, 1984 to July 21, 1984.

John Cheever's wry comedy of errors comes to the screen in this filmed presentation from the Broadway Theatre Archive. An upper-middle-class suburb is turned upside-down by the apparent kidnapping of Toby Wooster (Garrett Hanf). Unaware that the whole thing is a setup, the town swings into action to raise funds to meet the kidnappers' ransom demands. George Grizzard, Polly Holliday, Katharine Balfour and Celeste Holm star.

Carol Hefferman is an ambitious factory worker looking for promotion to an office job, but when she turns down her boss's lecherous advances he stands in her way. Could a chance meeting with a company lawyer help her out?

Originally broadcast by KCET (PBS) on their dramatic showcase series, "Visions," this sweet, quiet film is set during World War I. It is the story of Amy, a proper, but lonely housewife whose husband is away at war. She finds solace in a friendship with a more worldly female photographer, only to have her entire world turned upside down when the friendship becomes genuine love and she is forced to choose. Groundbreaking for its powerful yet non-prurient portrayal of lesbian first love.

The Adams Chronicles is a thirteen-episode miniseries by PBS that aired in 1976 to commemorate the American Bicentennial.

The chronicle of an average American housewife who just happens to be addicted to gambling.

In a small Nebraska town in the late 1940s, Addie Mills and her young friends are excited over the visit of a celebrity, a local woman who became a successful Broadway actress and has returned home for a short time following the death of her mother. Addie brings the woman home for the family Easter celebration, and the little girl's concern and kindness help the woman see the promise of better days ahead.

A housewife, increasingly disenchanted with her homemaker role, looks for new meaning in her life and organizes a discussion group, changing the lives of her six closest friends.

Frank Elgin's career in the theater is all washed up — but his friend Bernie thinks he can make a comeback, as long as his wife Georgie doesn't interfere.

Addie tries to invite her father's sworn enemy over for Thanksgiving dinner in the hopes of ending their long-standing feud.

Bob Hope is a stressed out talk show host who is sent on a vacation to Arizona on doctor's orders and has to play Sherlock Holmes with his wife, the lovely Eva Marie Saint, to solve a series of murders that has Bob as the prime suspect.

A young girl named Addie, living in Nebraska in 1946 wants nothing more for the holidays than a Christmas tree, but her widowed father, is bitter and refuses due to events from the family's past.

The life of a young man growing up in a small town in the mountains of North Carolina during the early part of the 20th century, based on Thomas Wolfe's autobiographical novel of the same name.

Set in summer, 1933, in the depths of the Depression, Arthur Miller's most personal and intimate play focuses on the workers in a warehouse, a grim place in which men and women work for small wages and are grateful for the work. Appearing at the beginning of this production to set the scene, Miller observes that the Civil War and the Depression were the only times in American history in which the whole country was in the same boat-"You could not do a single thing that you wanted to do because no one had any money." The warehouse, he notes, became a grotesque sort of haven for the employees since they, at least, had jobs. Miller's own experience in a warehouse shows in his exceptionally realistic portrayal of the workers, men who often lose themselves in alcohol to escape reality, and women who must put up with sexual abuse and mistreatment to save their jobs.

The producers of In Search of America never declared outright that the made-for-TV film was intended as a series pilot, but there sure are plenty of loose plot ends. Carl Betz and Vera Miles play the parents of shaggy-haired college dropout Jeff Bridges. At the boy's suggestion, Betz and Miles pack their family--including grandma Ruth McDevitt--into a 1928 Greyhound bus and hit the road, in search of you-know-where. The picaresque plotline brings the family in contact with a variety of colorful characters. Written by Lewis John Carlino, a name that would mean a lot more to filmgoers after The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea (1976), In Search of America was first telecast March 23, 1971.

Nichols is an American Western television series starring James Garner broadcast in the United States on NBC during the 1971-72 season. Set the fictional town of Nichols, Arizona, in 1914, Nichols differed from traditional Western series of the era. The main character, a sheriff, rode on a motorcycle and in an automobile rather than on the traditional horse. The hero did not carry a firearm and was generally opposed to the use of violence to solve problems, preferring other means. Margot Kidder portrayed Ruth, the love interest/barmaid of Nichols.

An all-black inner city school has to become an integrated school. Few dozen white kids are transfered there, but the black students are aggressively opposed to this. The school then approaches a tough black teacher for help.

Workers in a high-powered New York business office are stranded on the 50th floor when the power fails during the East Coast blackout of 1965.

In post-war Cape Breton, a doctor's efforts to tutor a deaf and mute woman are undermined when she is raped, and the resulting pregnancy causes scandal to swirl.

Recreating the one-man show he starred in on Broadway, Hal Holbrook portrays Mark Twain as a 70-year old humorist who skewers politicians, newspapermen and so-called patriots in this 90 minute monologue. Holbrook adapted Twain's own words for a commentary on slavery, religion and politics, mixing the satire with comic yarns about life on the Mississippi and a very effective ghost story. The show's highlight are the lengthy passages from "Huckleberry Finn".

In a Maine coastal village toward the end of the 19th century, the swaggering, carefree carnival barker, Billy Bigelow, captivates and marries the naive millworker, Julie Jordan. Billy loses his job just as he learns that Julie is pregnant and, desperately intent upon providing a decent life for his family, he is coerced into being an accomplice to a robbery. Caught in the act and facing the certainty of prison, he takes his own life and is sent 'up there.' Billy is allowed to return to earth for one day fifteen years later, and he encounters the daughter he never knew. She is a lonely, friendless teenager, her father's reputation as a thief and bully having haunted her throughout her young life. How Billy instills in both the child and her mother a sense of hope and dignity is a dramatic testimony to the power of love.

In a small Russian town at the turn of the century, three sisters (Olga, Irina, and Masha) and their brother Andrei live but dream daily of their return to their former home in Moscow, where life is charming and stimulating meaningful. But for now they exist in a malaise of dissatisfaction. Soldiers from the local military post provide them some companionship and society, but nothing can suffice to replace Moscow in their hopes. Andrei marries a provincial girl, Natasha, and begins to settle into a life of much less meaning than he had hoped. Natasha begins to run the family her way. Masha, though married, yearns for the sophisticated life and begins a dalliance with Vershinin, an army officer with a sick and suicidal wife. Even Irina, the freshest, most optimistic of the sisters, begins to waver in her dreams until, finally, tragedy strikes.

Set in a Norwegian hamlet, an idealistic physician discovers that the town's hot springs are contaminated. But with the community relying on the spa for tourist dollars, his warning to the powers that be fall on deaf ears.

A young poet gets the brilliant idea to live in a department store, hiding by day, and courting his muse by night where it's quiet, and he can have all his needs met. But, to his surprise, he learns his brilliant idea's not exactly original; there are other residents who dodge the night watchmen, and who keep their existence secret at all costs. And one of them is a young woman who wants to leave, but is too frightened to go. And Charles finds that he wants to show her the larger world outside.

Way Out was a 1961 fantasy and science fiction television anthology series hosted by writer Roald Dahl. The macabre 25-minute shows were introduced by Dahl's dry delivery of a brief introductory monologue, sometimes explaining a method of murdering a spouse without getting caught. The taped series began because CBS suddenly needed a replacement for a Jackie Gleason talk show that network executives were about to cancel, and producer David Susskind contacted Dahl to help mount a show quickly. The series was paired by the network with the similar The Twilight Zone for Friday evening broadcasts, running from March through July 1961 at 9:30 p.m. Eastern time, under the primary sponsorship of Liggett & Myers. Writers included Philip H. Reisman, Jr. and Sumner Locke Elliott. The premiere episode, "William and Mary", adapted from a Roald Dahl short story, told of a wife getting revenge on her husband. In "Dissolve to Black", an actress cast as a murder victim at a television studio goes through a rehearsal, but the drama merges with reality as she finds herself trapped on the show's near-deserted set. Other dramas offered startling imagery: a snake slithering up a carpeted staircase inside a suburban home, a disembodied brain in a jar, a headless woman strapped to an electric chair, with a light bulb in place of her head and half of a man's face erased.

The good doctor is on trial before the British Medical Association Council, if he is found guilty, he will no longer be allowed to practice medicine. The story unfolds through flashbacks which depict his career and his subsequent downfall.

Pinocchio is a 1957 TV musical broadcast shown live on NBC, directed and choreographed by Hanya Holm. This version features songs by Alec Wilder.

Appointment with Adventure is a half-hour adventure/dramatic anthology television series broadcast live on CBS from 1955-1956. The program has no host. It aired at 10 p.m. EST on the Sunday evening schedule between the better known Alfred Hitchcock Presents and What's My Line? It ran opposite The Loretta Young Show on NBC and Life Begins at Eighty, a panel discussion series hosted by Jack Barry on ABC. The series aired fifty-three episodes, having premiered on April 3, 1955, near the end of the regular 1954-1955 television season. It ran throughout the spring and summer of 1955 and began its fall run on October 2, 1955, concluding new segments on April 1, 1956. In effect, the series ran for a full year without the summer rebroadcast period standard for most programs. Episodes centered upon wars in U.S. history as well as dramatizations from events from many places throughout the world, then and in the past. In the episode which aired on May 1, 1955, Polly Bergen, Dane Clark, and Hugh Reilly starred in "Rendezvous in Paris." Tony Randall and Jack Klugman, fifteen years prior to their television roles as Felix Unger and Oscar Madison, respectively, in ABC's The Odd Couple, appeared with Gena Rowlands, later on NBC's 87th Precinct, in the September 4, 1955, episode entitled "The Pirate's House." Randall also appeared two months earlier in the Appointment with Adventure episode "Caribbean Cruise."

A Hollywood starlet is swept into a secret love affair