Four Star Playhouse: The Gift and The Bad Streak
The Greatest Mother of ‘Em All
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Four Star Playhouse: The Gift and The Bad Streak
Directed by Robert Aldrich.
US, 1954, 16mm, black & white, 60 min.
Print source: UCLA / HFA
Like so many of Hollywood’s postwar directors, Aldrich had his first directing jobs in television. He produced some of his best small-screen work for Four Star Playhouse, which featured a different, complete story every week, starring one of four actors: Charles Boyer, Ida Lupino, David Niven and Dick Powell. The Gift and The Bad Streak both feature Boyer as a father smarting from a damaged relationship with his adult son, allowing Aldrich to hone his skill at directing drama in preparation for the more tangled Oedipal thickets of his Gothic features.
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The Greatest Mother of ‘Em All
Directed by Robert Aldrich.
With Peter Finch, Ann Sothern, Alexandra Hay.
US, 1969, 35mm, color, 20 min.
Print source: UCLA
Aldrich directed this thirty-minute short, in an unsuccessful search for feature-film financing, starring Peter Finch as a broken-down and ill-reputed director living scandalously with a much younger actress. The script was written by Kiss Me Deadly’s screenwriter A.I. Bezzerides.
