Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling, who began his TV-writing career for WLWT-TV and WKRC-TV, dug into his knowledge of Cincinnati for a rare comedy script, O'Toole From Moscow, which premiered 68 years ago today on NBC Matinee Theatre.
It aired only once as a live teleplay from NBC's New York studios at 3 p.m. on a Monday afternoon. TV's future Rifleman Chuck Connors starred as a low-level Russian embassy staffer who winds up as an outfielder for the Cincinnati Reds and his befuddled manager, played by Leo Durocher, the future Hall of Fame infielder/manager, making his acting debut.
Cincinnati Post TV columnist Mary Wood thought O'Toole From Moscow was a hit. She called it "the most hilarious comedy Rod Serling has written so far" and a "delightfully fantastic story …"
"It was such a funny play that I hope it will be repeated for a night-time audience so the male baseball fans can share the laughs," Wood wrote on Dec. 13, 1955, in the next evening Post.
NBC never repeated the show, because it was too difficult to do. There was no videotape in 1955, so NBC would have to reassemble the cast and perform O'Toole live again. That rarely happened in the 1950s. I only know of one time it was done — NBC's repeat of Serling's award-winning drama Patterns in 1955 on the Kraft Television Theatre on Feb. 9, four weeks after the original telecast on Jan. 12, 1955, with the original cast.
So unless you were watching the NBC network at 3 p.m. on Dec. 12, 1955, you didn't see the show. And it was largely forgotten until I asked Serling biographer Nick Parisi in 2016 about the title, which had caught my eye researching Serling for a Cincinnati Enquirer story in the late 1980s. Here's a link to our 2019 showperformed by University of Cincinnati College-Conservative of Music students.
Serling drew on his love of baseball for the story set in the 1950s Cold War with Russia, when the Cincinnati baseball club changed its name to the "Redlegs" from "Reds," which had become the headline slang for Communist Russia. Serling, hired by WLW radio and TV after graduating from Yellow Springs' Antioch College in 1950, moved from Springfield Township in late 1954 to Connecticut, to be closer to live TV productions in New York City. The family had relocated to Los Angeles by the time the The Twilight Zone premiered in 1959.
Wood described the plot this way:
"The delightfully fantastic, concerns two members of the Russian legation — one, an ardent baseball fan (Kurt Katch) about to be liquidated, and the other a legation bodyguard (Chuck Connors). Reluctant to return to their motherland, the comrades run away from New York and land in Cincinnati — in the office of the manager of the Cincinnati Reds (Leo Durocher).
"The Reds are at a low ebb — eighth place — until Comrade O'Toole, former bodyguard, joins the team, winning game and game. The glory continues until the boys from the legation catch up with the truant comrades, only to find that Comrade O'Toole has become a new national hero in Russia."
Not much is known about O'Toole, program No. 30 for NBC Matinee Theater, which was "devised and produced" by Albert McCleery, according to the script cover. Laurence Schwab directed, according to Parisi, author of 'Rod Serling: His Life, Work and Imagination' published in 2018
Connor had a very brief career as a Major League Baseball first baseman — one game with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1949 at age 29, and 66 games with the Chicago Cubs as a .238 hitter in 1951
The Internet Movie Database says the cast included John Banner (later Sgt. Schultz in Hogan's Heroes); Kurt Katch (The Mummy's Curse, The Girl In The Kremlin); Dorothy Abbot (Ozzie and Harriet, Dragnet); Renny McEvoy (The Big Valley, Bonanza); Steve Pendleton (Once Upon A Horse, Wyatt Earp); Jack Reitzen (The Untouchables, Adventures of Superman) and Gene Roth (The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Death Valley Days, The Untouchables).
Full disclosure here: In 2018 I rewrote Serling — yes, I rewrote Serling — to adapt the one-hour TV comedy into a radio show, which I helped produce. Richard Hess, former CCM professor, directed eight young talented CCM students.
Anne Serling, daughter of the famed TV writer who died in 1975 at age 50, came to Cincinnati to narrate and host our production. She said her father would be "honored" and "absolutely tickled" by the WVXU revival.
"I am thrilled to be a part of this recording. Even more so after reading the script and recognizing expressions I recall my dad saying that I haven't heard in decades. I thought about how young he was when he wrote O'Toole (age 30), and how his own love of baseball pours through the lines," she said.
In O'Toole From Moscow, Serling references baseball's biggest stars of the 1950s: Reds slugger Ted Kluszewski, Jackie Robinson, Willie Mays, Stan Musial, and Yankees' Yogi Berra and Mickey Mantle.
"I think my dad — for the first time in his life — would have been speechless to know that after all these decades his script has come back to life," Anne Serling told me.
