The Adventures of Hiram Holliday
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The Adventures of Hiram Holliday was a half-hour filmed comedy/adventure series which ran for 20 episodes on NBC from October 3, 1956 to February 27, 1957. Its full 23 episodes later ran on the BBC from the fall of 1960 to the summer of 1961. It was based on a novel by Paul Gallico named Adventures of Hiram Holliday.
The series is similar to the book, and focused on the adventures of a newspaper proofreader who through years of secret practice has gained James Bond-like skills in many forms of physical combat, shooting, and in activities as diverse as rock-climbing and scuba-diving. The proofreader, Hiram Holliday, was played by Wally Cox, who when stripped was revealed to be as muscular as his longtime best friend Marlon Brando had ever been in his heyday. Thus, Cox made a surprisingly convincing action hero.
The starting gimmick of the series was that Holliday had inserted a comma in a news story which saved the publisher a small fortune in a trial. The grateful publisher rewarded Holliday with a trip around the world, which set the scene for him to solve crimes and thwart foreign spies in every port of call he visited. The series was hampered by a low budget which did not permit convincing recreations of the different exotic foreign locations featured in each episode.
Other cast members included Ainslie Pryor, as Holliday's reporter sidekick, Joel Smith; and Sebastian Cabot as a criminal mastermind he repeatedly encountered. There were a number of directors including George Cahan and William Hole, and a number of writers including Philip Rapp and Richard Powell. Philip Rapp also served as producer. Star Wally Cox was best known as Mr. Peepers in an early live NBC sitcom about a mild-mannered junior high school science teacher; it was typecasting he was never able to escape in later years. Hiram Holliday was Cox's last starring role.
In its BBC rerun, The Adventures of Hiram Holliday was the first US series to be "stripped," that is, shown 5 days a week in the same time slot.
[edit] Novel
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It has been suggested that this section be split into a new article entitled Adventures of Hiram Holliday (novel). (Discuss) |
The original novel was Gallico's first published book. It was published by Grosset and Dunlap on the cusp of the Second World War in 1939. In form, the novel is a connected series of adventures, rather akin to short stories which flow into one another.
In the book, Holliday was rewarded with time off and a cash reward which he used to go to Europe. In Europe he fights spies and Nazis, finds his true love, achieves some fame as a foreign correspondent with his paper back in New York, and becomes the man of action he aspired to be. The book has the major themes of the protagonist coming to grips with his own character and destiny, how individuals act when confronted by great evil, and the over-arching question of would war come to Europe? In Gallico's view, war would NOT come, but events would shortly prove him wrong. Unlike the typical adventure story of today, his book has expositions on evil and character, so it is not just "action for action's sake." It also evinces a witty and subtle dark humor. For most Gallico fans, the book does not attain the quality of writing of his later works, but it still is rewarding.
