Grayson on Night Gallery

[jennifer]

with DS ending put on Night Gallery and saw the Grayson Hall episode
She did look good loved her hair!it might repeat tonight at 6pmET if anyone gets Mystery Ch!
Happy New Year to all! i know i hope for a beter one

jennifer

[Gerard]

I love that episode of Night Gallery; Agnes Moorehead was also fantastic as the neglected, abused victim who achieved her revenge - ironically as a dark shadow!

And it's equally ironic that Sci-Fi also use to carry Night Gallery.  Of course, that one's gone, too.  Make room for some more programs hosted by hokey "psychics" and Beverly Hills 90210 has-beens who........oh, never mind.  Enough of that!

Gerard

[Annie]

Hi Jennifer and Gerard!!  I 've seen Night Gallery
yrs ago i'll have to keep and eye out for that.
               Love Anne ( thanks for the info Jennifer)

[Patti Feinberg]

Okay...when I think of Night Gallery, I think of the movie with Joan Crawford as a blind woman; one where a painting changes and another vignette.

When I put Night Gallery in TVguide dot com, it came up with all this stuff on Mysterye (east?); stuff with Desi Arnaz Jr., Bill Bixby (oooh), etc.

Was this a tv show? When was it on?

Does anyone know the title of the above Grayson Night Gallery?

Thanks,

Patti

[David]

this is a superb episode. Grayson & Rachel Roberts are wonderfully creepy. It was made in '72, and she looks exactly as she did in Night of DS.
Night Gallery is also available in it's entirety through Columbia House Video, on VHS only.

NG is a vastly underated show. I'm glad Mystery Channel and Columbia House have kept it out of the vaults.
Grayson's eps is called  "Certain Shadows on the Wall" if anyone wants to order it

[Gerard]

The made-for-TV movie you're thinking of, Patti, was the pilot (and a very young and nervous 21-year-old Stephen Spielberg directed Joan Crawford in that memorable second story).  The show then became part of an NBC "experiment" called, I do believe but am no longer positively sure, "Three In One".  Over one season, in the same time-slot, three different programs aired; I think one was one of those typical early seventies lawyer shows, there was Night Gallery, and I don't remember the third.  Of the three, only Night Gallery survived because of very good ratings and continued for several more seasons.

One of the most frightening stories, to me, was in the first episode (not the pilot, the first episode of the new series) in which Carl Betz, formerly of The Donna Reed Show and Judd for the Defense, plays a doctor who, through hypnotism, can cause a subject to display all the symptoms of any disease.  With a certain signal, he can snap him out of it, the disease completely gone.  Unfortunately for him, the subject he was using, a handsome young man, was having an affair with Betz's character's wife.  The doctor tries to take the experiment to the extreme and hypnotize the subject into dying.  That works, but when the doctor gives the signal, the young man does not revive and is buried.  Much, much, much later the doctor learns he was giving the wrong signal.  The very-devastated wife learns of this and runs to the mausoleum, throwing open the doors and pounding on the casket with the right reviving signal.  To this day, the final, climactic scene showing what happened in that burial chamber after she was "successful" in "snapping him out of it" still give me shivers.

Gerard

[Mark Rainey]

One of the most frightening stories, to me, was in the first episode (not the pilot, the first episode of the new series) in which Carl Betz, formerly of The Donna Reed Show  and Judd for the Defense, plays a doctor who, through hypnotism, can cause a subject to display all the symptoms of any disease.

That episode is called "The Dead Man," based on a story by Fritz Leiber, one of my favorite horror/fantasy writers. Night Gallery had its share of weaklings, but its best episodes are about as scary as anything I remember from my youth. The episode with Grayson and Agnes Moorehead (aptly titled "Certain Shadows on the Wall") gave me a severe case of the creeps when I first saw it in junior high. Many Night Gallery episodes were based on classic horror fiction by H. P. Lovecraft, Fritz Leiber, Basil Copper, August Derleth, Robert Bloch, Manly Wade Wellman, and others, with varying degrees of success.

There is one episode in particular I'm hoping to catch again one of these days; it's called "There Are No More McBanes," starring Joel Grey, and I haven't seen it since it first aired in the 70s. But there's an image of a demonic creature breaking in through a window, where all you can see are its glowing eyes and claws, that stands out with disturbing clarity.

The show runs on Plex here, but at 5:00 a.m. Friday mornings. Wish they'd put it back to a more normal time.... This is why God made VCRs, I guess, but remembering to set it is a whole nuther story.

--Mark

[Julia99]

Night Gallery and saw the Grayson Hall episode
She did look good loved her hair!

Reportedly the same wig was later used in the 2nd DS movie.  . DC liked it and said he wanted to use it. . he seemed to like her with longer hair. . .

[Gerard]

Night Gallery had its share of weaklings, but its best episodes are about as scary as anything I remember from my youth.

There were, indeed, some incredible shockers on the series.  There was the controversial "earwig" story which has retained, to this day, its power to horrify.  The climactic scene, where the doctor tells the survivor of the hideous bug that bored through his brain:  "It was a female.....and females lay eggs", was an ultimate in fright.

And then Elsa Lanchester in the story about a little old lady who refuses to sell her home to a developer because of her garden; she states that she can grow anything - if she plants a two-by-four, it'll blossom into a tree.  The developer has some thugs try to frighten her by chopping off a couple of her fingers, which she - in a state of shock before she dies - buries them in her garden.  And then the developer goes to the little plot of land to gloat over his victory, only to discover what grew out of those fingers.  I love the final scene, he driven mad, his hair all white, grinning in insanity, blabbering:  "Do you know what grows from little old lady fingers?  Little old ladies!"

There were the very Rod Serlingish stories about people who need to leave the past and memories fondly behind and get on with their lives, like the Emmy-nominated They're Tearing Down Tim Riley's Bar.

And, of course, the many big-name stars who made appearances, like Edward G. Robinson (in what, I think, was one of his last roles before he died) in The Messiah of Mott Street.

Night Gallery was not a Twilight Zone, but it did have many memorable vignettes.  But then, The Twilight Zone had a few bombs, so it all evens out.   

Gerard

[Gothick]

Night Gallery was a wonderful series, although it frequently led to sleepless nights when I watched it as a 13 year old.  I well remember Elsa Lanchester's wonderful turn in Green Fingers--simply superb.  They don't make TV like this anymore.  I still cringe whenever I recall the earwig story.  It was played with such subtlety, and wonderful whispers of the dark secrets of African Witchcraft.

Grayson's episode was filmed, I believe, in early August 1970.  She was given a few days off DS to do this, which is why she disappears for a bit (after being on nearly every day for about 4 weeks!) soon after the return from 1995.  She had to take a redeye flight back from "the Coast" and stumble into the studio to tape an episode the day she came back from doing Night Gallery.  The episode was first shown almost exactly 23 years ago--around Dec. 31, 1970.

She was told that the wig she wore in this had been worn by Rita Hayworth previously--I'm not sure in which film.  I've always thought that she kept that wig and wore it as Carlotta in NoDS but perhaps DC sprang for one of a similar cut.  It certainly did frame her face with an elegant, haunting beauty.

G.

[Julia99]

She was told that the wig she wore in this had been worn by Rita Hayworth previously--I'm not sure in which film.  I've always thought that she kept that wig and wore it as Carlotta in NoDS but perhaps DC sprang for one of a similar cut.  It certainly did frame her face with an elegant, haunting beauty.

You know in that DS Reunion video Matt (her son) appears on .. he does say she owned one of Rita Hayworth's wigs. . . so maybe she got to keep it after the 2nd DS movie. . or had it before. .  . now, where did she get the wig she first wore on DS in '66? hmmm hers or the studios?  Of course I always liked the wig in those Fanzines where she and Edith Tiles (?) were messing with potential hairstyles .. .they flipped it up rather than under.  . . THAT should've been used.. . it looks FABulous.

[Gothick]

Julia darling, I'm pretty sure that G owned the hairpiece she wore for all but the very first of the 1967 episodes.  In the Billy Rose coll. there's a publicity photo from Feb. 1965 (she was snapped by a paparazzi at an antiques fair the day the Oscar nom was announced) and I'm pretty sure she was wearing that hairpiece.  I think she's wearing it, as well, in the UNCLE shows, and in the candid photo of her at Grauman's Chinese theatre around this time ('65-'66).

In her very first episode, she wears a full on wig.  She mentioned wearing an unflattering wig at one point and Mrs Dan Curtis telling her that she should just wear her own hair on the show because it was more attractive.

G.