Appointment With Adventure

John Cassavetes and his wife, Gena Rowlands, guest starred in separate episodes on CBS' Appointment with Adventure.

Gena Rowlands

Appointment with Adventure is a half-hour adventure/dramatic anthology television series broadcast live on CBS from 1955 to 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? quiz show. It ran opposite The Loretta Young Show on NBC and Life Begins at Eighty, a panel discussion series hosted by Jack Barry on ABC.^[1]​

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, and concluded the new segments on April 1, 1956.^[2]

Selected episodes[edit]

The 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."^[2] Randall also appeared two months earlier in the Appointment with Adventure episode, "Caribbean Cruise."^[2]​

John Cassavetes (1929-1989), the husband of Virginia "Gena" Rowlands (born 1930), appeared with Elizabeth Montgomery, later the star of ABC's Bewitched, and Tina Louise, later of CBS's Gilligan's Island, in the segment "All Through the Night" on February 5, 1956. Montgomery had also appeared in the November 20, 1955, episode "Relative Stranger." John Ericson and Dorothy Malone, later of Peyton Place, appeared on the New Years Day 1956, episode "Mutiny." Jason Robards appeared with Christopher Plummer and Constance Ford in the March 18, 1956, episode entitled "A Thief There Was."^[2]​

The plethora of guests included several other well-known names and some future stars who were beginning their show business, including Philip Abbott, Edie Adams, Gene Barry, Carl Betz (later of The Donna Reed Show), Neville Brand, Patricia Breslin, Geraldine Brooks, Macdonald Carey, James Daly ("A Touch of Christmas" on December 25, 1955), Gloria DeHaven ("The Snow People"), Eva Gabor, James Gregory, Pat Hingle, Henry Hull, Kim Hunter, Henry Jones, Louis Jourdan, Don Keefer, Phyllis Kirk, June Lockhart, Jack Lord, Lin McCarthy (four episodes), Peggy McCay, Biff McGuire (episode entitled "Number Seven, Hangman's Row"), Robert Middleton, Paul Newman, Patrick O'Neal, Patti Page (in "Paris Venture"), Betsy Palmer, Neva Patterson, Mala Powers, and Janice Rule.^[2]

Rod Serling (1924-1975), before his The Twilight Zone series, wrote the episode "The Faithful Pilgrimage, starring Theodore Bikel, which aired on April 17, 1955.^[2]​

Forrest Tucker, later of ABC's F Troop, appeared in the series finale with the unusually titled episode, "Two Falls for Satan."^[2][3]​

References[edit]

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