Adventures Of Hiram Holliday
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''The Adventures of Hiram Holliday'' is an American
adventure An adventure is an exciting experience or undertaking that is typically bold, sometimes risky. Adventures may be activities with danger such as traveling, exploring, skydiving, mountain climbing, scuba diving, river rafting, or other extreme ...
sitcom A sitcom, a portmanteau of situation comedy, or situational comedy, is a genre of comedy centered on a fixed set of characters who mostly carry over from episode to episode. Sitcoms can be contrasted with sketch comedy, where a troupe may use ...
that aired on
NBC The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters are l ...
from October 3, 1956 to February 27, 1957. Starring
Wally Cox Wallace Maynard Cox (December 6, 1924 – February 15, 1973) was an American actor. He began his career as a standup comedian and then became the title character of the popular early U.S. television series ''Mister Peepers'' from 1952 to 19 ...
in the title role, the series is based on the 1939 novel of the same name by
Paul Gallico Paul William Gallico (July 26, 1897 – July 15, 1976) was an American novelist and short story and sports writer.Ivins, Molly,, ''The New York Times'', July 17, 1976. Retrieved Oct. 25, 2020. Many of his works were adapted for motion pictu ...
.


Plot

The series is similar to the book, and focuses on the adventures of a newspaper proofreader who through years of secret practice has gained
James Bond The ''James Bond'' series focuses on a fictional British Secret Service agent created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short-story collections. Since Fleming's death in 1964, eight other authors have ...
-like skills in many forms of physical combat, shooting, and in activities as diverse as rock climbing and scuba diving. The proofreader, Hiram Holliday (Cox), was revealed to be muscular when stripped. 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 actor
Ainslie Pryor James Ainslie Pryor (February 21, 1921 – May 27, 1958) was an American actor. Early years Pryor was born in Memphis, Tennessee, the son of William E. Prior. He graduated from Christian Brothers College and attended Southwestern and VPI. D ...
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. Rapp also served as producer.


Reception and cancellation

NBC canceled the series in early 1957 after 20 of the 23 episodes produced aired. The entire series later ran on the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
from the fall of 1960 to the summer of 1961. In its BBC rerun, ''The Adventures of Hiram Holliday'' was the first US series to be shown five days a week in the same time slot. Star Wally Cox was best known for portraying the title role in ''
Mister Peepers ''Mister Peepers'' is an American sitcom that aired on NBC from July 3, 1952, to June 12, 1955. Overview Wally Cox starred as Robinson J. Peepers, Jefferson City's junior high school science teacher. Others in the cast included Tony Randall a ...
'', 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.


Novel

The original novel was Gallico's first published book. It was published by Grosset and Dunlap on the cusp of
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
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 (and has affairs with several other women), achieves some fame as a foreign correspondent with his newspaper 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 overarching question of would war come to Europe. The book encapsulates Gallico's views and insights at the time of writing, without the hindsight of later events - some of which turned out to be wrong and others were quite accurate. George Ward notes that "It is very evident that the Hiram Holliday saga was written in the direct aftermath of the
Munich Agreement The Munich Agreement ( cs, Mnichovská dohoda; sk, Mníchovská dohoda; german: Münchner Abkommen) was an agreement concluded at Munich on 30 September 1938, by Germany, the United Kingdom, France, and Italy. It provided "cession to Germany ...
. It is clear where Gallico stood about Neville Chamberlain's policies of Appeasement. Holliday (and implicitly, Gallico) believes that the British have become soft and decadent, that they have lost the will to fight. The drunken debauched lord which Holliday sees in a night club is contrasted with the high ideals of Chivalry and the poetry of
Chaucer Geoffrey Chaucer (; – 25 October 1400) was an English poet, author, and civil servant best known for '' The Canterbury Tales''. He has been called the "father of English literature", or, alternatively, the "father of English poetry". He w ...
(...) Where the British have been found wanting, a single plucky and quixotic American attempts to step into the breach".George Ward, "1925-1939: Premonitions of "The Next War" in Western literature and popular culture", Ch. 3, 6 The part set in
Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...
, in the direct aftermath of the
Anschluss The (, or , ), also known as the (, en, Annexation of Austria), was the annexation of the Federal State of Austria into the German Reich on 13 March 1938. The idea of an (a united Austria and Germany that would form a " Greater Germany ...
, depicts sullen Austrians who feel that their country had been invaded and occupied by unsavory foreigners. In this, Gallico - himself of partial Austrian origin - foreshadowed the doctrine of "
Austria — the Nazis' first victim The victim theory (german: Opferthese), encapsulated in the slogan "Austria – the Nazis' first victim", was the ideological basis for Austria under allied occupation (1945–1955) and in the Second Austrian Republic until the 1980s. According ...
" which would become the political cornerstone of the post-war Second Austrian Republic. However, Gallico seems to have expected a post-war Habsburg restoration which failed to materialize.


External links

* *
The original novel



References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Adventures of Hiram Holliday 1956 American television series debuts 1957 American television series endings 1950s American sitcoms American adventure television series Black-and-white American television shows English-language television shows NBC original programming Television shows based on American novels Adaptations of works by Paul Gallico