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The Brighter Day


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ZoeTate, I do believe this was the show Hall referred to in his interviews. I remember thinking of this when Hal Holbrook discussed how beautiful the speech was at Grayling and Sandra's wedding.

Regarding Bell, he did work under Irna Phillips, who was the show's creator. It's possible he wrote for some of the series as I believe she did have ghostwriters.

Minor point, I believe it was Althea, not Liz, who had the breakdown.

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Murial Williams sounds like a fascinating woman. I don't see that kind of woman being involved in the soaps anymore or even five years ago when there was still a strong soap presence in New York. 'The Brighter Day' seems like it had an interesting talent base.

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Thanks for the super article on Blair Davies. I have several episodes of The Brighter Day and have always been somewhat fascinated by it. It seems to be the red-headed stepchild of Irna Phillips creations, even though it was initially quite popular. One is left to wonder why CBS discarded it so unceremoniously and what might have been had it been treated with more love and respect.

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Thank you so much for reading! I know this stuff has a limited audience so I'm happy when other people enjoy it. Do you know what happened to Blair? His last credit at IMDB is around 1966.

I wonder if the show didn't have any strong voice fighting for it, the way most of the CBS shows in this era did. It may have been seen as old-fashioned or warmed-over. Or perhaps the recasting of key roles caused a problem. The show really could have run for a long time with the right care.

Edited by CarlD2
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Blair died about a decade ago. I remember reading his obituary. He lived somewhere in New York, I believe, and was either in his very late 80's or early 90's. I believe that he retired in the 1970s which is why he has no credits following the ones from 1966. He may have done stage work, too, as he had earlier in his career. I have never thought to check on that. No, I read all of your articles and love them. Please keep posting more when you have the time and inclination!

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Thank you for letting me know. I'm glad he had such a long life. I wish these actors had been interviewed in later years to talk about their shows, or what they could remember of their shows. I think the only person connected to Brighter Day who has spoken about it in recent years is Sam Hall.

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tress - in fact, she turned professional at the ripe age of twelve - her adolescence was anything but haphazard, thanks to two unusually understanding non-professional parents.

 

"Honestly," Mary Linn glows, "my mother and father are the greatest. I know I'm prejudiced, but they really are. They're the type of people to whom I cold always take my problems and discuss them freely. You know, none of this treading lightly until I saw which way the wind was blowing...and then retracting until a better day. In other words, I never had to think in terms of 'campaigning.' Whatever my problem, right then and there was the time to discuss it...clarify it.

 

"I may be wrong, but it occurs to me that this is the very reason I don't make mountains out of molehills. Disappointments, for example, don't become tragedies. I was raised to look at a problem squarely, face and accept the facts, and then proceed accordingly. And - perhaps of equal importance - I was raised not to create problems.

 

"For instance," she explains, "my wanting to become an actress must have presented a problem of sorts to Mother and Dad. Not being theatrical people, what they knew about the theater was only what they gleaned from from newspaper and magazine stories. In a word - 'instability.' Mother and Dad could have made a terrible problem out of this lack of knowledge. But they didn't.

 

"Admittedly, that it was a fact which would have been pretty hard to ignore...since, at the age of six, I wrote, produced and starred in my first play. I can remember it as though it were yesterday. It was a play in pantomime...mostly...and the minor dialogue consisted of handwritten 'yes' and 'no' signs. Just why I thought the signs were more effective than a good nod or shake of the head, escapes me at the moment. It was probably just what I wanted to show off my written vocabulary!...Anyway, from that point on, I had stardust in my eyes. And, within the bounds of normal, everyday living, my folks encouraged me."

 

In the course of growing up, the time came for music lessons. Mary Linns' abilities at the keyboard were such that for a while it seemed she might enter the entertainment field as a pianist rather than as an actress. In fact, for a time she did play the piano on the old Horn and Hardart Children's Hour radio program. It was while she was playing for The Children's Hour that her parents decided dramatic lessons would help her, and it was a teacher at the dramatic school who suggested she take a CBS Radio audition.

 

"Despite the fact that I wrote my own script," Mary Linn laughs, "I passed the audition, and CBS put me on their list of newcomers to be called upon for bit parts. It must have been quite a list, for it was a full year before I heard from them. But the day finally did come. I was twelve - and I was to make my professional radio debut on Our Miss Brooks. And wouldn't you know...the day before rehearsal, I came down with laryngitis! But good!

"Mother must have been beside herself. But, if she was, she didn't let on to me. She just sprayed my throat...and sprayed it...and sprayed it. And, by the time we got to the studio, I had recovered enough to be audible. However, Mother had agreed to do all the talking, except script reading, of course, so that what little voice I had could be saved. Well, after all that, my part turned out to be one short giggle...for $7.50!"

 

Be that as it may, it wasn't long before CBS was calling her for bit parts - and, as Mary Linn explains, "One thing led to another, and you can be sure I never again made a mountain out of a molehill, as I did that first time. I learned to relax and take things as they come."

 

Two years later, during summer vacation, Mary Linn went to Ridgefield, Connecticut, where Alexander Kirkland operated a little theater. In connection with the playhouse, Mr. Kirkland ran a drama school for young hopefuls. In addition to their studies, these apprentices also had the opportunity of doing bit parts in a number of the summer productions. If you were lucky, an agent in the audience might spot you. An agent did spot her, and the result was better roles.

 

"Then, the following year," Mary Linn recalls, "along came what, at fifteen, I thought was the answer to my heart's desire - an opening night on Broadway! Funny, the way things work out...for almost any actor or actress, the really tremendous thrill is a Broadway opening night. I couldn't have been more excited over getting a small part in a play called 'Leaf and Bough.' We opened out of town and, after playing three cities, it became obvious that our stay on Broadway - assuming we ever arrived - would be, shall we say, brief.

 

"To make matters worse, it was Christmas and I was lonely and homesick. This was the first time I had ever been away from the family during a holiday season. Well, we did make it to Broadway...and I must admit that, despite my state of mind, the opening-night thrill was beyond mere words. But...when we closed three nights later...I must also admit I suffered no great depression. I had had my opening-night thrill. But, of even more importance, I was ecstatically happy to be home. Someday, I hope to be on Broadway again."

 

In 1950, Mary Linn was graduated from a New York City high school and, after a family conclave, decided that - even though she wanted to be an actress - she should first complete her education. Bennington College in Vermont seemed to be the perfect answer, since part of the curriculum consisted of "work periods" during which the students actually work in their chosen professions for credits.

 

During her first work period, Mary Linn was lucky enough to pick up a contract for an important role in TV's first daytime serial, The First Hundred Years. It proved to be the end of her college career - and the beginning of a highly successful TV career. "When the time came to return to college," Mary Linn explains, "I just couldn't bear to give up my TV role. At the time we all wondered whether I was doing the right thing. But it was soon clear that the decision had been a good one."

 

Then came 1952. A red-letter, banner year in Mary Linn's young life. Besides walking off with the title role of A Date With Judy, she won the radio role of Babby in The Brighter Day...eventually annexing the TV role, too. And on June 19th, she met a young man a t a party! "Bob Pitofsky made quite an impression on me that first night," she grins. "No matter what I did, I couldn't get him to pay one bit of attention to me. I finally resorted to asking my date about him and was promptly told to relax...Bob was going steady - and, anyway, I looked too young.

 

"Up to this point, looking younger than I was had always been lucky for me. What I mean is, when iI first got the role on Brighter Day, for instance, Babby was supposed to be about fifteen. Well, it's hard to find a fifteen-year-old with as much acting experience as a nineteen-year-old who looks fifteen - as I did. The same thing had been true of Judy."

 

"So, up to the time I met Bob," she says ruefully, "it had never occurred to me to wish I looked a couple of years older! And there didn't seem to be much I could do about it. You know, you are what you are, and that's that. Anyway, if he was seriously dating a girl, that, too, was that. But it didn't stop me from thinking...and, the more I saw him at parties and dances, the more I found myself comparing my own dates with this young man I barely knew.

 

Then, when I least expected it, it happened. Exactly one year to the day after we met, Bob called me for our first date. Believe it or not, we had a miserable time. Everything was wrong. We couldn't, either one of us, be ourselves. By the end of the evening, we were quibbling over everything.

"But Bob, bless him," she beams, "didn't let too much water run under the bridge...and, by the time he called for a second date, we had both settled down to being ourselves. The result was a wedding in September, 1954. Forgive me for saying so, but it was a lovely wedding at the Waldorf-Astoira Hotel and a scrumptious honeymoon in Florida. And, when we came back, we came back to the apartment we're in now. Of course, there wasn't as much furniture as there is now... in fact, there was very little. But Bob and I could come back to our own place, and fix it up bit by bit.

"Neither Bob nor I are very handy around the house, but we do have ideas, and with the help of my aunt - who's a perfectly wonderful decorator - we've wound up with what we think is a really attractive home. We love it and hope all who enter it will love it along with us."

 

Mary Linn has every right in the world to love her attractive five-room apartment across from New York's Central Park. If things like her wall of bookcases in the living room - which open up to reveal four closets hidden behind them - are the envy of New York, it's with justification.

 

"Every once in a while," she admits, "somebody questions why two working people need five rooms...and aren't we foolish to invest so much in permanent renting? I think the idea behind the latter question is: Why make a home out of an apartment? Maybe it's strange to lots of people, but not to me. You see, I was born and raised in a New York apartment. So was Bob. We're not suburbanites. We like the city. Our friends, from childhood up, are here. So, this is our home. As for the five rooms and two baths...Well, someday we hope there will be more of us and, as far as space is concerned, we're ready for that event. And then there's the park right across the street...and that's what city parks are for, isn't it?

 

"So perhaps you can see why I think I'm such a lucky girl. I have the happy blending of two wonderful families near by - mine and Bob's...a husband I love very much...a career that is extremely satisfying - and a future that looks brighter every day. What more is there?"

Edited by DRW50
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Variety reports that the October 24 and 25th 1961 episodes of TBD will feature 4 blind actors,employed as part of a storyline dealing with a woman who shied away from marriage due to her need to devote herself to her blind mother.

The idea to use real life blind actors came from a fan letter in which the writer stated she had seen a blind performer on a local show.and wondered if the show could use them.

Does anyone know what character that was?

Edited by Paul Raven
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