The Adventures of Hiram Holliday
| The Adventures of Hiram Holliday | |
|---|---|
Adventure sitcom | |
| Created by | Paul Gallico, based on his novel of the same name |
| Starring | |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Original language | English |
| No. of seasons | 1 |
| No. of episodes | 23 (3 unaired) |
| Production | |
| Producer | California National Productions |
| Original release | |
| Network | NBC |
| Release | October 3, 1956 – February 27, 1957 |
The Adventures of Hiram Holliday is an American
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-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 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
Star Wally Cox was best known for portraying the title role in Mister Peepers, 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
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
The part set in
References
- ^ George Ward, "1925-1939: Premonitions of "The Next War" in Western literature and popular culture", Ch. 3, 6
