The Paper Chase
The Paper Chase
TV Flash files “The Paper Chase” as a desk essential hour — The Paper Chase (1978–1979) on CBS, season 1, episode 1, aired 1978-09-07, 60 min.
From the desk
How this hour is filed
This leaf is S01E01: listed hour 1 of 58 in the The Paper Chase guide, first listed hour of season 1. It aired 1978-09-07 (60 min). No earlier hour is listed in this guide. Next is “The Man Who Would Be King” (S01E02).
Essential hour: “The Paper Chase”. The Paper Chase opens the seminar as a duel. Houseman's Kingsfield already blood-sport Harvard Law; a generation of pre-law kids took notes. Short CBS life, theme already unforgettable.
Catalog log
Broadcast listing — not a TV Flash recap.
James Hart (James Stephens), a farmboy from Minnesota, starts his first year of law school. Being unprepared for his first day of ""Contracts"" he is 'shrouded' by Professor Charles W. Kingsfield, Jr. (John Houseman), pronouncing the hapless Hart as ""dead"" in his class. This means that he will never call on Hart and his part of the class's ""Socratic dialogue will be at an end. Hart finds out that Kingsfield shrouds one student each year and that student remains deceased all year long. Kingsfield is the reason Hart has chosen to come to this school; we are shown a couple of his nightmares now that he is the ""former Mr. Hart"". Another student, Franklin Ford III (Tom FitzSimmons), is organizing a study group and invites Hart to join. The members of the study group decide to have each member do an outline of one of the classes that they can then copy for each member of the group. Hart wants to do the Contracts outline but the others worry that Hart cannot be effective if he is shrouded. In
Viewer FAQ
Where does The Paper Chase sit in the The Paper Chase guide?
S01E01 is listed hour 1 of 58 — first listed hour of season 1, season 1 episode 1.
When did The Paper Chase S01E01 air?
The Paper Chase aired 1978-09-07 and is listed at 60 minutes.
Film first or the series?
Either. The series adapts the novel and 1973 film; Houseman reprises Kingsfield. Television is the Socratic firing squad in weekly form.
In the series
Why this series still plays
John Houseman's Professor Kingsfield turns Harvard Law into blood sport, and a generation of pre-law kids took notes. Short CBS life, long PBS and cable afterlife, unforgettable theme. Campus prestige drama that treats a seminar like a duel: would you survive the Socratic firing squad?
The gaze arrives before the diploma. CBS, 1978–1979: first-year Harvard Law students scramble under the withering look of contracts legend Professor Kingsfield. James Bridges's The Paper Chase, based on the novel and 1973 film, puts John Houseman in an Oscar-to-TV authority figure that terrified a generation of pre-law kids. James Stephens's James T. Hart, Tom Fitzsimmons's Franklin Ford III, James Keane's Willis Bell take the Socratic fire. *Tweed as a silhouette, a seminar as a duel, a theme that is a press…
Filed against
- John Houseman as Professor Charles Kingsfield
John Houseman’s Professor Charles Kingsfield turned The Paper Chase into Socratic blood sport — Harvard Law as a duel, a generation of pre-law kids taking notes, short CBS life and a long PBS and cable afterlife. Unforgettable theme,…
- James Stephens as James T. Hart
James Stephens’s James T. Hart took The Paper Chase’s Socratic firing line as a vocation — Harvard Law, Kingsfield as blood sport, 1970s campus prestige with a theme that outlived the CBS run. Student as the camera’s dare. TV Flash files…
- Tom Fitzsimmons as Franklin Ford III
Tom Fitzsimmons sat the Harvard Law blood sport as Franklin Ford III on The Paper Chase — John Houseman’s Professor Kingsfield turning seminar into duel, a short CBS life with a long PBS and cable afterlife. Pre-law kids took notes; the…
- James Keane as Willis Bell
James Keane’s Willis Bell sat The Paper Chase like a study group with bruises — Harvard Law as blood sport, John Houseman’s Kingsfield firing Socratic rounds, 1970s campus prestige that treated a seminar as a duel. TV Flash files him as…