Ends Of The Earth

FILMED  February 1973

And now we get to a television series that I’m sure the majority of people today do not remember.

Robert Justman, the first producer of the series, in his interview for the Archives Of American Television said:

“It (SEARCH) was a show almost sci-fi. It had three revolving stars –Tony Franciosa, Doug McClure and … Hugh O’Brian, and each one of them alternated. … It was a show that puzzled me at times, and I think it was kind of empty …”

Tom Palmer (Austin, Slater’s lawyer) was the only one of my close circle of friends who appeared in my very first television directing assignment, JOHNNY TEMPLE on DR. KILDARE. Born in Canada, he moved to New York to pursue his theatrical career. One of the high points was his appearance with Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne in the 1941 production of Robert E. Sherwood’s THERE SHALL BE NO NIGHT, the play that won the Pulitzer Prize for drama that year. Also in that production was twenty-year old Montgomery Clift. In the years that followed, whenever the Lunts visited the west coast, they always spent time with their “Tommy.”

Anthony Spinner, the producer who took over when Robert Justman left, once told me that in creating a series, the object was to create something old with a difference. I think SEARCH managed to do that on a couple of levels. Five years earlier Paramount Studios debuted MANNIIX, the adventures of a private eye who worked for Intertect, a detective agency that relied heavily on computers and a large network of operatives. That format lasted for just one season. The following year Mannix opened his own agency, and the series stayed on the air for seven more seasons. World Securities on SEARCH was an international high-tech private investigation company with operatives who were equipped with technical equipment of sci-fi capabilities. To do a little imitating further of something old with a difference, on their 1968 ninety-minute series, THE NAME OF THE GAME, Universal instituted a groundbreaking concept – they used three rotating stars. One of those stars was Tony Franciosa.

ENDS OF THE EARTH was a reunion for the actress playing Ellen Slater and me. Eighteen years earlier I directed seventeen-year old Judy Lewis in a showcase scene at the Players Ring Theatre – the soda fountain scene from Thornton Wilder’s OUR TOWN. One day when she, Jimmie Hayes and I met at the theatre to rehearse, we discovered there was no available rehearsal space. Judy quickly suggested that we go to her house and rehearse. I questioned where that was. She said it was just up the street, so she, Jimmy and I traipsed the long block up to the corner of Fountain Avenue, where we entered an imposing building, and I found myself standing in what felt like a set for an MGM movie. Marble floors! Tall white columns! I had never seen anything like that in Mason City, Iowa.. And then I saw an Academy award statuette up on a shelf.

“Whose is that?” I asked.

Judy replied, “My mother’s.”

“Who’s your mother?”

“Loretta Young.”

And I don’t know why, but I blurted out, “But you don’t look like her.” (Although actually she does.)

And Judy said, “I’m adopted.

After the rehearsal I returned to the theatre, eager in my naivete to tell anyone who would listen about this exciting news about the young girl helping out at the theatre. That was when I learned that Judy was not adopted, she was really Miss Young’s daughter, the child of a liaison between Loretta Young and Clark Gable during the making of the film, CALL OF THE WILD. Many years later when I read Judy Lewis’ wonderful book, UNCOMMON KNOWLEDGE, I discovered that I knew the facts of her parenthood before she did.

I must admit, ENDS OF THE EARTH was another of my shows that I was not intending to write about on my website. Recently I had correspondence with a friend and in discussing SEARCH he wrote:

Field investigators in constant contact with Mission Control via miniaturized electronics” was a neat idea for a TV series.  I always thought that they bit off more than they could chew.  It was a neat idea, but 1972 technology just wasn’t up to the task of providing the proper optical effects to do justice to the idea.  I think that it was a show that was ahead of its time.

Somehow that spurred me to screen ENDS OF THE EARTH again. And here we are!

ENDS OF THE EARTH was the sixth and final time I worked with Diana Muldaur. It goes without saying that the best collaborations were our two STAR TREKs, and the better one of those two was IS THERE IN TRUTH NO BEAUTY, filmed during the tumultuous third season. Diana and I have different memories of that show. She said during a TV archives interview on the internet, “The whole script was thrown out as we’re sitting there about to start shooting, and hour-by-hour we would get pieces and none of them were in order.” It is true the first scheduled day of filming was a day created in hell. William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy objected to a long dinner table scene in in which Spock wore an Idic, a pin that Gene Roddenberry designed. They felt Gene was using the scene as a promotion, a commercial launching to sell it to the public. Gene vehemently denied their accusation, but the guys were adamant in their refusal to play the scene as written. The final result of the long morning’s angry combat was that Gene agreed to rewrite the scene. Looking for something to replace the scene on the day’s schedule, I suggested we do a dramatic three-page scene between Diana and David Frankham. I checked with them, and they both said they had memorized the words, although both also added they were not as prepared to film it as they would like to be. And that was what we did that first day. I want to commend those two professionals. Their work was impeccable; the scene was great. The whole script was NOT thrown out. That was the ONLY major change in the script that was made. Diana in that same interview did say that when the show aired, she was surprised to find she thought it wonderful.

Jay Robinson (Mr. Johansen) was the only guest star in ENDS OF THE EARTH with whom I had not worked before. Jay was an unusual performer. He began his acting career in summer stock, graduated to Broadway and finally film, where he made an auspicious (some said outrageous) debut playing the notorious Emperor Caligula in THE ROBE, the first production filmed in Cinemascope.

ENDS OF THE EARTH was the second time I worked with Sebastian Cabot, but I can’t say I knew the man. The two times were eleven years apart, the first time being when he was one of the regulars on CHECKMATE in 1962. SEARCH could have been another reunion for him – but he wasn’t cast in an episode starring another of the CHECKMATE stars – Doug McClure.

The hood seated to the right of Franciosa in the car was Max Kleven, one of the premier stunt men in films. I had worked with Max in New York on NAKED CITY and later when he transferred to the west coast he appeared as one of the gladiators in BREAD AND CIRCUSES on STAR TREK. He did double duty in ENDS OF THE EARTH – playing one of the hoods and later he will appear as a stunt double in a fight scene.

When I saw Burgess Meredith on the set of ENDS OF THE EARTH, it was the first time we met since we wrapped PRINTER’S DEVIL on TWILIGHT ZONE in 1962. The first thing he told me was that the night PRINTER’S DEVIL aired, he received a telegram from director John Huston. I had mixed feelings about seeing him in the role of Cameron. Producer Robert Justman in his interview on Archives Of American Television said, “Burgess Meredith was in every episode … he was the brains back at headquarters. Burgess Meredith –- fabled actor.” But I only got to work with him one day. We shot all of his scenes the first day of filming. I’m sure he was being paid a respectable sum for his services. The fact that his scenes were confined to the headquarters set and could be filmed in one day did leave him free to accept other offers. But what a waste of a supreme talent!

No, I didn’t get a trip to Africa. We didn’t go there for our location work; we brought Africa to southern California partly by driving our company up to Lake Sherwood and completing the operation with stock footage of a giraffe and some racing zebras. The exterior of the Compound was also at Lake Sherwood. The interior of the Compound was Stage 18 back on the Warner Bros. lot.

For those of you who follow this website post-to-post, did you recognize Simon Scott who played the villainous Slater as the same actor in my last post (THE MAN WHO WENT MAD BY MISTAKE) who played the upstanding lawyer, John Goddard?

My unfavorite question when being interviewed is, “What was it like working with… and then the name of the actor: William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, David Janssen, Raymond Burr, Bill Cosby and on and on? Since nobody is questioning me here, I guess I’ll have to ask the question: What was it like working with Tony Franciosa? Let me start by returning to Robert Justman’s Archives of American Television interview where he also said,

“…there were some idiosyncrasies in most of the cast.”

Using my imagination I can draw some conclusions from that. Then returning again to the correspondence with my friend about SEARCH, he wrote:

“James Garner tells the story that Tony Franciosa was abusing the stunt men on a certain production. If I recall correctly, Tony wasn’t pulling his punches. Garner told Franciosa to stop, but Tony wouldn’t, so Garner punched him. I always heard that Tony was a bit of a firecracker, and could only be tolerated for just so long.”

There was one oddity; before doing a scene we would hear the sound of Tony behind one of the flats, retching. I didn’t know if he was ill, or if it was some activity to get him emotionally prepared to do the scene. Having said all of that, I found him very professional. Always prepared. Always on time. And always very inventive in what he did. But just a couple of nights ago I rescreened A HATFUL OF RAIN. I had not seen it in a very long time, and I was very moved. Playing against powerful performances by Don Murray, Eva Marie Saint and Lloyd Nolan I thought as Polo, the brother, Tony stole the show. He was the character I empathized with the most. I admired the simple sensitivity in his acting. And that was what I find missing in his Bianco. He’s so glib, so surface, but I don’t think he is the one solely at fault. The material didn’t allow for a sensitive performance, and that was a condition that pervaded television. Gone were those great days of the early 1960s when I went from DR. KILDARE to TWILIGHT ZONE to ROUTE 66 to NAKED City to ARREST AND TRIAL to BREAKING POINT to SUSPENSE THEATRE to EAST SIDE WEST SIDE to THE FUGITIVE to 12 O’CLOCK HIGH … I miss those days!

For the fight scene in the lobby of the compound there were stunt doubles for all three actors: Tony Franciosa, Simon Scott and Diana Muldaur. Max Kleven, who played the hood earlier, doubled Simon Scott.

The journey continues