''Steve Randall'' (also known as ''Hollywood Off-Beat''
) is an American detective television series starring
Melvyn Douglas
Melvyn Douglas (born Melvyn Edouard Hesselberg, April 5, 1901 – August 4, 1981) was an American actor. Douglas came to prominence in the 1930s as a suave leading man, perhaps best typified by his performance in the romantic comedy ''Ninotchk ...
that ran on the
DuMont Television Network from November 7, 1952, to January 30, 1953, and on
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS, the abbreviation of its former legal name Columbia Broadcasting System, is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainm ...
from June 16, 1953, to August 11, 1953.
Background and premise
The series' concept originated from stories written by Louis Blatz, an attorney. The initial TV adaptation was ''A Hollywood Affair'', starring
Lee J. Cobb
Lee J. Cobb (born Leo Jacoby; December 8, 1911February 11, 1976) was an American actor, known both for film roles and his work on the Broadway stage. He often played arrogant, intimidating and abrasive characters, but he also acted as respectabl ...
and
Adele Jergens. The pilot for that series did not sell, but the producers tried the same concept again with ''Steve Randall''.
Steve Randall is a disbarred attorney who became a private detective in an effort to be reinstated as a lawyer. He handled cases such as blackmail and murder before he was reinstated in the series's final episode.
Cast and production
In addition to Douglas, the program featured
Mary Beth Hughes
Mary Elizabeth Hughes (November 13, 1919 Katz, Ephraim (1979). ''The Film Encyclopedia: The Most Comprehensive Encyclopedia of World Cinema in a Single Volume''. Perigee Books. . P. 586. – August 27, 1995) was an American film, television, a ...
.
Some episodes of the program were broadcast on local stations as ''Hollywood Off Beat'' before it began its network run. The episodes on DuMont were broadcast on Fridays from 8 to 8:30 p.m. Eastern Time.
United Television Programs distributed the show.
Marion Parsonnet was the producer and director.
Sponsors included Swank men's jewelry
and
Dixie Cups.
Episode status
"The Trial" (September 11, 1952) is available for viewing on the
Internet Archive
The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...
. Four episodes (June 12, July 3, August 14, and September 11, 1952) are in the J. Fred MacDonald collection at the
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library ...
.
Critical response
Critic
Jack Gould
John Ludlow Gould (February 5, 1914 – May 24, 1993) was an American journalist and critic, who wrote commentary about television.
Early life and education
Gould was born in New York City into a socially prominent family and attended the Loomi ...
wrote in ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
'' in 1953 that a repeat of an episode was "just as familiar and just as tired" as it had been previously, with "the usual quota of murders, an oomphy siren and tough guys talking out of the side of the mouth."
A capsule review in the trade publication ''
Billboard'' said that Douglas "is adept at lending importance where little or none is due."
As a result, it added, the series "often rises above its material."
Syndicated critic
John Crosby wrote, "As adventure whodunits go, this is a pretty good one."
See also
*
List of programs broadcast by the DuMont Television Network
This is a list of programs broadcast by the DuMont Television Network, which operated in the United States from 1942 to 1956. All regularly scheduled programs which were aired on the DuMont network are listed below, regardless of whether they orig ...
*
List of surviving DuMont Television Network broadcasts
The DuMont Television Network was launched in 1946 and ceased broadcasting in 1956. Allen DuMont, who created the network, preserved most of what it produced in kinescope format. By 1958, however, much of the library had been destroyed to recove ...
References
Bibliography
* David Weinstein, ''The Forgotten Network: DuMont and the Birth of American Television'' (Philadelphia:
Temple University Press
Temple University Press is a university press founded in 1969 that is part of Temple University (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania). It is one of thirteen publishers to participate in the Knowledge Unlatched pilot, a global library consortium approach ...
, 2004) {{ISBN, 1-59213-245-6
External links
"The Trial" on the Internet Archive''Steve Randall'' at IMDB
1952 American television series debuts
1953 American television series endings
Black-and-white American television shows
CBS original programming
DuMont Television Network original programming