''Storyteller'' - ??

About

The antithesis of 2010s television, an early 1950s series in which Marvin Miller would tell us a story. This was a 15-minute series. In this episode, Miller tells us the story of the downfall of Max Shinburn, notorious criminal. This is so low-budget, they didn't do a retake when the camera went out of focus for about 40 seconds. I cannot find any record in newspapers of this series having aired. Yet Miller refers to a previous episode and mentions the subject matter of the next episode. A publication called "Broadcasting" reported in 1953: "Miller-Levin Productions Inc, Hollywood, has started shooting 13 quarter-hour films of Marvin Miller, Story Teller, at Screenscraft Film Enterprises, same city. Irvin B. Levin is producer-director, with Mr. Miller as writer".

Yet strangely, I found this to be an interesting experiment. Marvin Miller is a good story teller, and the story itself is interesting. Actually, the concept of this series (somebody reading a story) had been done before in another country: "Saturday-Night Story" aired from 1948 to 1953 on the BBC in Britain, and the concept didn't end in 1953 either, as "Telestory" aired on ATN-7 in Sydney, Australia from 1961 to 1962. The success of the BBC series suggests the concept was viable under the right conditions.

At the time, 15-minute series usually were 12-13 minutes, so this episode is unusually short.

Human-made No record of this work says a model made it. What this means.

Archive

Internet Archive, in Classic TV

Licence or status

The Internet Archive states none for this item.

Language

English

Subtitles

English

Who can watch

The archive gives no rating. Invisible Network shows it to Teens profiles and older, judged from its collection and subjects. How films are placed