Saturday, April 02, 2016

Frank De Felitta, R. I. P.

The New York Times: Frank De Felitta, who wrote “Audrey Rose,” a best-selling horror novel about reincarnation, because, he said, he suspected that his own son might be channeling a dead pianist, died on Tuesday in Los Angeles. He was 94.  

Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.

6 comments:

Kevin R. Tipple said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Mike Doran said...

Mr. Tipple's comment is, of course, supposed to go under the Ronnie Corbett obit.
I subscribe to its sentiments in toto.

That said, this comment is about Frank DeFelitta, who started out in live TV in the '50s.
Some of his scripts were for Tales Of Tomorrow, which aired live on ABC from '51- '53.

My favorite was "The Window", from September of '52.

This the one in which TOT's "live" broadcast of "The Lost Planet" is broken into by an unexplainable picture coming from somewhere in Manhattan.
We're looking at a domestic scene between a brutish drunk husband, his beaten wife, and his drinking buddy.
The show goes back and forth between the window and the ABC New York studio, where the real TOT crew tries to figure out what's going on.
They're all the real guys, while the window drinkers are three then just-getting-to-be-known actors: Frank Maxwell as the drunk, Virginia Vincent as the wife - and Rod Steiger as the buddy.

I don't think ABC released the info that "The Window" was a show - listings from that night say that TOT is showing "The Lost Planet", the fake show.
In other words, this, unlike the Orson Welles "War Of The Worlds" was a genuine hoax. The reveal was held to the very end of the show (they even interrupted a live commercial midway); if ABC got into any trouble for this, I've never seen a report of it.

I've got this on a DVD collection, but I imagine it's online somewhere.

Anyway, Frank DeFelitta wrote the thing, and so I mention it here.

Unknown said...

Very interesting. That show aired a couple of years before we had TV at my house (imagine that, a world where most people didn't even have television, much less cell phones and home computers). I've never heard of the show before, so I'll look around for it.

Kevin R. Tipple said...

Deleted and moved the comment. I have no idea why it kicked to this one. Hopefully, it won't happen again.

Mike Doran said...

Kevin Tipple:

If your confuser is like mine, it often jumps when it's supposed to scroll.
We semi-helpless users can do little but be vigilant as we comment.
All best of luck in the future, for all of us.

And for Bill:

Hope you find Tales Of Tomorrow/"The Window (The Lost Planet)" online, but if you can't, Image Entertainment put out the DVD collection in three volumes; "The Window" is in the third set.

Actually, the whole 3-set is worth tracking down, but that's another story ...

Unknown said...

Yep, it's on YouTube.