Philco Television Playhouse
Season 3
56 episodes
- S03E01
High Tor
A man torn between his fiancee and his love for a mountain he owns, which he refuses to sell to some shady real estate agents. After an avalanche, he is stuck with the realtors in a cave, where he sees a Dutch ghost and a young woman who offers her opinion about his decision.
- S03E02
The Long Run
Murder brings about a reunion of a lot of people that had motive for the killing.
- S03E03
Dear Guest and Ghost
A Victorian house on Staten Island is haunted by a ghost more charming than macabre. The spirit plays hob with the live of the otherwise conventional and unsuspecting inhabitants.
- S03E04
The Touch of a Stranger
A scientist's life has been destroyed by another man's greed and takes out his anger on three innocent strangers, implicating them in his own death.
- S03E05
The Vine That Grew on Fiftieth Street
Three unusual seeds planted in a patch of soil in Manhattan grow with incredible speed, soon overtaking the lives of several nearby residents.
- S03E06
A Husband for Mama
After a family loses their father, they decide to find Mama a new husband.
- S03E07
Portrait in Smoke
Rising out of the shabbiness of the Lower East Side, Kathy ruthlessly climbs the social and financial ladder by using and then abandoning a series of gullible older men.
- S03E08
The Gambler
A scathing denunciation of gambling and feudal aristocrats of the 19th-century, this story relates how Philip, a young medical student, bargains away his career for the unsure success of high gambling stakes. His caution turns to uncontrollable greed when he learns that money can buy women and quick fame. His destiny is bound to Theresa's, a beautiful young woman who has been mortgaged in marriage for her stepfather's debt, and to her wealthy grandmother's, who chooses to gamble away her fortune so there will be no inheritors.
- S03E09
The Power Devil
A lawyer builds his career on dishonesty and alienates his wife thru patent opportunism.
- S03E10
The Man Who Got Away with It
A man believes he has gotten away with a crime he committed a long time ago.
- S03E11
I'm Still Alive
A writer is trying to live like his fictional hero he created in a lurid newspaper serial.
- S03E12
Torch for a Dark Journey
A Czech scientist escapes from Prague with the aid of an American industrialist, who wants to hire him for his personal benefit. The scientist is followed by a former student, now a fanatic Communist, who insists that the scientist must return to his own country to work for the People's Republic. The scientist must decide whether to return or abandon his countrymen and accept personal freedom in America.
- S03E13
Wacky, the Small Boy
Wacky can't help but find himself in all kinds of trouble, his poor parents are at their wits end with his shenanigans.
- S03E14
Bonanza
A ghost town forgotten in the march of progress tries to make a comeback from the dead with the fighting spirit of the past and present.
- S03E15
Decoy
Decoy — Season 3, Episode 15 of Philco Television Playhouse. Aired 1950-12-17. Full plot synopsis not yet on file; see the show package for context.
- S03E16
The Pupil
The Pupil — Season 3, Episode 16 of Philco Television Playhouse. Aired 1950-12-24. Full plot synopsis not yet on file; see the show package for context.
- S03E17
Leaf out of a Book
A drama about working career women and the challenges they meet and must overcome in a male dominated business.
- S03E18
The Symbol: Jefferson Davis
After the fall of the Confederate capital Richmond, Virginia, Jefferson Davis and his small group of government officials and followers fled the state in a hope to continue the struggle for the South, it was a symbol of the lost cause.
- S03E19
The Lost Diplomat
The Lost Diplomat — Season 3, Episode 19 of Philco Television Playhouse. Aired 1951-01-14. Full plot synopsis not yet on file; see the show package for context.
- S03E20
Confession
A man sets out to give a false confession to a crime committed by someone else.
- S03E21
The Great Escape
The story of the escape of 76 British and American prisoners from the infamous German prison camp, Stalag Luft 17.
- S03E22
A Matter of Life and Death
An investigative reporter is killed by a gangster who marries a naive waitress who could testify against him having witnessed the crime.
- S03E23
Kitty Doone
A faded movie star schemes to keep her career at all costs.
- S03E24
Let Them Be Sea Captains
Horace Greeley, volatile editor of The New York tribune, and Margaret Fuller, the mid-19th century femninist and first woman employed on the newspaper's staff. The show also deals with Whig opposition to the Revolutionary North American Phalanx of Albert Brisbane, a cooperative social group living in Red Bank, New Jersey.
- S03E25
The Man Who Bought a Town
A butcher purchases the town he calls home to preserve its quiet lifestyle.
- S03E26
No Medals on Pop
A young boy believes his father deserves a medal for being in the war and is heartbroken when he finds out the truth and how his father disgraced the family.
- S03E27
The Dark Corridor
The story of the Marr family which is made up of a dominant mother who bates everyone, the vacillating son, his wife and their blind son. Things are upset even moe when a new maid arrives, a miad who has served a term in prison as an accessory to a murder.
- S03E28
Bulletin 120
The story for this program is taken from the files of the U.S. Public Health Service. In 1915 in Mississippi, Dr. Joseph Goldberger works with a test group of convicts and discovers that pellagra is caused by a dietary deficiency and not infection.
- S03E29
Parnassus on Wheels
Parnassus is a sprite like figure who moves through the New England countryside with his traveling book wagon.
- S03E30
Routine Assignment
A reporter gets a confession of robbery from a man only to have the man then deny his guilt in a complex twist of events.
- S03E31
Hour of Destiny
The story of Jean Z. Owen, tells about the accident and then flashes back to show the true character of each woman.
- S03E32
The Birth of the Movies
Drama on the career of D.W. Griffith.
- S03E33
Mr. Arcularis
This drama based on the supernatural revolves around the expansion and contraction on an anesthesia rebreathing bag as Mr. Arcularis' life hangs in the balance on the operating table. While he is unconscious, he dreams that he has recovered and gone on a sea voyage to regain his health. However death follows him in a recurrent dream in which he takes a journey through the heavens. The dream obsesses him, but Clarice, a pretty woman with whom he falls in love, forces him back to reality. At the end, Mr. Arcularis regains consciousness to find Clarice, his nurse, bending over him to say he is all right.
- S03E34
A Secret Island
A vicious woman is determined to see her niece wed for money and social position instead of for love.
- S03E35
The Visitors
A young boy's disappearance when his mother remarries leads to a mystery when he is found and has forgotten who he is.
- S03E36
Justice and Mr. Pleznik
The story of a naturalized immigrant's first experience with jury duty.
- S03E37
Rescue
The grim and true story taken from the pages of the Louisville Courier-Journal is told. The story goes that Collins had entered the sandstone cavern in Cave City, Kentucky in an attempt to find another entrance to the famed Mammoth Cave. A six-ton rock fell on his leg, trapping him in the sand 120 feet undergroun. Miller was assigned to cover the rescue. Miller risked his life man times to reach the man who died before rescue could come.
- S03E38
The Adventures of Hiram Holliday
Hiram Holliday is a copy-writer for a major newspaper. One day, he saves his paper a fortune in a libel case, because of his meticulous work.
- S03E39
The Fast Dollar
A humorous tale of life in a small town and its impact on a would-be confidence man.
- S03E40
Operation: Airlift
The story of the Berlin airlift, when the Western Allies organized the Berlin Airlift to carry supplies to the people in West Berlin. The success of the airlift humilated the Soviets claiming that such a thing would never work.
- S03E41
Dr. Hudson's Secret Journal
Widower Dr. Hudson lives with his daughter and housekeeper and keeps his medical practice success by using the Good book as guidance.
- S03E42
The Plot
An old recluse retires after three decades of a successful writing career to live an isolated and luxurious existence.
- S03E43
Case History
A sleuthing psychiatrist probes a murder in his fiancee's home and stirs up a hornet's nest with his future in-laws.
- S03E44
I Want to March
The year is 1915 and the suffragettes cause a stir in the home of a zoology professor as his wife takes up the banner of "women's rights".
- S03E45
Pretend I Am a Stranger
The story of a British soldier and his buddy's widow as the two grow closer in their grief.
- S03E46
Television Story
A covetous young actress' career means more to her than marriage to a middle-aged actor who turns to TV after a successful career in other facets of show business only to find that his wife influences his work there.
- S03E47
The Return
An amnesia victim is told by his alleged stepfather that he is heir to a fortune. When his so-called family greet him with reserve, however he gets busy to iron out the unreal problem.
- S03E48
Ephraim Tutt's Clean Hands
Lawyer Tutt refuses to cross the street for a $5 million account, but goes clear to Pottsville to draw up a will for Jim Lawton, staying there until he successfully contests a claim to a woman's farm, proving to his assistant that more is gained through the reading of law books than from beating up the opposition.
- S03E49
Come Alive
An arrogant woman whose self-centered tactics cause endless grief for her secretary, husband, sister and anyone who comes into contact with her.
- S03E50
Night at the Vulcan
When an actor is murdered backstage, the cast of the production become the suspects, seems the actor had plenty of enemies.
- S03E51
This Time Next Year
Every year the ghost of Ulysses S. Grant appears at Grant's Tomb.
- S03E52
Women of Intrigue
In this tale of Communist intrigue set in England, a man who works for the foreign office disappears.
- S03E53
The Wayward Season
A composer's reaction to his daughter's marriage to a middle-aged man brings changes in his own life.
- S03E54
The Spur
After the assasination of President Lincoln, John Wilkes Booth leapt to the stage below, his spur became entangled in the American flag draping the balcony causing Booth to break his leg. The story unfolds to the events leading up to his madness and ultimate betrayal to his country.
- S03E55
By-Line for Murder
A bitter assistant foreign editor of a London newspaper commits murder in the newspaper office after being passed over yet again for a promotion.
- S03E56
A Requiem for a Model
After buying a very used car, a writer uncovers some very unusual items under one of the seat cushions. The story of the vehicle's former owners is told via flashbacks.
More from the 1950s.