The Great Adventure (American TV series)

• STARRING Lee Marvin
• NARRATED BY Van Heflin: "The year nineteen-o-seven is a good one for the farmers of the Great California Valley. Most of them are immigrants from Italy, Greece and Turkey. For these new Americans this year brings a bumper crop and a rich harvest. Now, with the hard work over, it is time to celebrate."
  "For people of the California Valley this is a memorable year. The year they've been waiting for. The chance to pay their debts, to put money in the bank. The world's market stirred by unforeseen events came a demand that drove the price of raisins from five to six to eight and finally to ten cents a pound laid on the dock in San Francisco."
  "News traveled fast throughout the valley and by midday two more farmers joined Misok Bedrozian on his way to the Embarcadero in San Francisco. Now there are six, all willing to risk their hopes, even their lives, rather than submit to the oppression they'd left the Old World to escape."
  "Now there are five and, always hanging over them, the threat of the railroad."
  "Now there are four. They pass through parched country covered with sun-scorched grass, then along slopes of manzanita and mesquite which rose toward the Gabilan Mountains and the dangers of Pacheco Pass."
  "Now there are three. Before them the Coastal Plains. Another two days, it passed through Gilroy, Morgan Hill, San Jose. Now that the farmers along the way, they have become a symbol of all the dreams that brought them from all over the world to California."
  "It has taken them almost two weeks to cover the distance from Fresno to South San Francisco, but now they can feel the breezes coming in off the ocean. Just one more day and they will discharge their crops from the dock of the Embarcadero."
  "Now there is one. Just one to face the vast power of the railroad concentrated in San Francisco."
  "Because of Misok Bedrozian, California's Governor-elect Hiram Johnson finally established the principle that in cases involving the public service, the state had not only the right, but the obligation to protect the people's interest. It happened because one small obstinate group of Americans refused to accept an authority they considered unjust."
• Announcer: "Before previewing next week's Great Adventure, here is Gerald Gough, a teacher and member of the National Education Association, with a postscript on tonight's story."
  Gerald Gough: "One man against many. One single wagon got through and even the six that started were so few, so small a force, but Misok Bedrozian had the most powerful force in the world, a belief, the miracle of an idea and the conviction to carry it out against whatever odds. In our country, one man can stand up for his rights and start a chain reaction. Maybe at the beginning he acts just for himself, but often one man's problem becomes everyone's concern. Misok Bedrozian's victory turned out to be not just his, but his whole state's. He learned the lesson of faith in one's convictions. Justice which we prize is not just learned, it is earned and earning it can be The Great Adventure."
• Starring Lee Marvin
• Featuring Gene Lyons        Ellen Madison        Wright King
• and Arthur Batanides as Pouliades        Richard X. Slattery as Tucker
• Emile Genest as Mueller        Celia Lovsky as Mairik        Melville Ruick as Ed Bailey        Fredd Wayne as Cuddy
• Al Ruscio as Fennucci        Michael Hinn as Tompkins        Walter Koenig as Cy
• with John Pickard.....Teel        Robert Nash...Crowley        Harry Fleer...Railroad Official        Ted Jordan...First Guard        Jim Berringer...Loren

• NARRATED BY Van Heflin: "Seventeen-seventy-six. The war for freedom which had begun so gloriously at Lexington and Concord has become a desperate struggle for survival. Washington's beleaguered army is reeling back from a defeat at Brooklyn Heights and for the lonely patriots who have tried to aid him, retribution is swift and often terrible."
• STARRING Jeremy Slate
• Nancy Malone
• Torin Thatcher
• CO–STARRING John Anderson        Sean McClory
  "Harlem Heights on the island of Manhattan, seventeen-seventy-six. General Washington's exhausted troops are licking the wounds of a half-dozen defeats. Nothing but a miracle it seems can save the remnants of the tattered Continental Army."
  "But seventeen-seventy-six was a time of miracles and for one unknown captain in Washington's army it was a moment of destiny."
  "By a circuitous route Nathan Hale is brought to a lonely cove on the shores of Long Island behind the British lines. He's unfamiliar with the territory in which he's about to move. He's totally inexperienced in the art of espionage and he has been told that he has only a few brief days in which to get the information that may save the Continental Army."
  "Major Jerome Hardwick had never been more wrong. Through five more bloody years of war, the name of Nathan Hale was to echo and re-echo in the ears of British soldiers who were to die on American soil. His name became a rallying cry for Colonial troops and the words he is reputed to have spoken a moment before he died are part of the heritage of a nation of two hundred million people — 'My only regret is that I have but one life to give for my country.'"
• Announcer: "Before previewing next week's Great Adventure, here is Gerald Gough, a teacher and member of the National Education Association, with a postscript on tonight's story."
  Gerald Gough: "Spy? The word has a distasteful ring to it. Intelligence — that word sounds more respectable — decidedly acceptable. Until our own century armies marched into battle in precise formation. The art of war was pursued according to set rules. Spying did exist, but it was officially ignored and thought of as despicable and infamous. Nathan Hale, as you have just seen, was promptly rejected by his friends when he volunteered to spy to serve his country. Today we know that most governments are engaged officially and extensively in gathering intelligence. Nathan Hale had to act against the ethics and emotions of his time. He is remembered because he knew that a man must be guided by his own convictions and his own sense of duty and not by the opinions of others."
• Starring Jeremy Slate
• Nancy Malone
• Co-starring John Anderson        Sean McClory
• FEATURING John Kellogg as Winthrop        Sandy Kenyon as Captain James        Maxwell Reed as Major Hardwick        Douglas Henderson as Captain Hull        Nora Marlowe as Widow Chich        Dorothy Adams as Mrs. Woodhaven        Michael Fox as Samuel        I. Stanford Jolley as Jethro        Peter Mamakos as Dekker        Sam Edwards as Crawford
• Hal Baylor as Wilson        Tommy Alexander as Daniel Pierce        Arthur Gould Porter as Guard        Gil Perkins as Officer        Arvid Nelson as Man        Roy Dean as Soldier        Noel Drayton as Officer        Jon Drury as Guard        Richard Lupino as Corporal

Note: Torin Thatcher's name, billed third in the opening credits, does not appear in the end credits.

• NARRATED BY Van Heflin: "Dorchester County, Maryland"
  "How much is one human being worth to another? In eighteen-fifty, a slave has only one sure route to freedom... and that is... escape."
• STARRING Ruby Dee
• Brock Peters
• Ossie Davis
• GUEST STAR Ethel Waters
  "PHILADELPHIA 1850"
  "As feeling mounted against slavery, so did the exodus of slaves escaping North. An organization was formed to aid them... composed mainly of Quakers, abolitionists and escaped slaves. It was known as the Underground Railroad and its members used common railroad terms to mask their activities. Those who actually went into the South, risking their lives to fill a train with passengers, as they were called, were known as conductors."
  "All her life, Harriet was subject to strange, sudden spells of some moments... a direct result of a head wound she'd received as a child when she was thirteen years old... the scar on her forehead remained. It became a symbol of strength to the many who were to recognize her by it and call her... Moses... and the uncontrollable sudden spells of catatonic sleep remained from which she would awake unaffected hours later as if nothing had happened."
  "For one day and one night, Harriet's party had the luxury of riding a wagon North."
  "More than once, their path crossed that of bounty hunters, headed South... with recaptured runaways."
  "Three days later, exhausted, desperate, sick, they were in Wilmington, the last of the Underground Railroad stations. Thomas Garrett, a Quaker, had been tried and convicted in eighteen forty-four for breaking laws covering fugitive slaves. Now he was station master on the last and the most dangerous leg of their journey... the crossing into Pennsylvania... to freedom."
  "Harriet Tubman returned nineteen times into Maryland between eighteen fifty and eighteen sixty, personally conducting over three hundred souls out of bondage. During these years, her legend grew. Rewards totaling over forty thousand dollars were offered for her capture... dead or alive. Known as the Moses of her people, she died on March tenth, nineteen thirteen. Her epitaph reads, 'With implicit trust in God, she braved every danger and overcame every obstacle with all she possessed extraordinary foresight and judgment so that she truthfully said, on my Underground Railroad, I never run my train off the track and I never lost a passenger'."
• Starring Ruby Dee
• Brock Peters
• Ossie Davis
• Guest Star Ethel Waters
• Featuring Mimi Dillard as Tillie        Roy Barcroft as Dr. Anthony Thompson        Isabelle Cooley as Lydia        Betty Harford as Elizabeth        Gloria Calomee as Mary Ann        Richard O'Brian as Tarry        Stephen Lander as Quaker Boy        Robert Bice as Garrett
• Bill Walker as Old Ben        Charles Hradilac as Zimmer        Davis Roberts as Paul        Rupert Crosse as William Still        Owen Bush as Auctioneer        Bill Couch as Bounty Hunter        Napoleon Whiting as Free Negro        Jacque Shelton as Officer on the Bridge

Uncredited: Bill Coontz as inspector

• Narrator Russell Johnson: "The year — eighteen fifty-eight. The place — a small spring near Titusville, Pennsylvania."
  "But, to these two promoters, the problem is — what to do with the world. Here, on the other hand, is a man who knows what to do with the world but... he has problems of his own."
  "And here, an irate passenger who could not know she had just changed history."
• STARRING Richard Kiley
• Maggie McNamara
• ALSO STARRING Wallace Ford
  "Titusville — northwest corner of Pennsylvania — population... one hundred and twenty-five. One general store... one livery stable... one hotel... and the bubbling spring."
  "By the waters of the Titusville spring, Edwin Drake sat and wrote his report — an inspired amateur rendering an opinion to the world."
  "In May of eighteen fifty-eight, the main industries of Titusville were lumbering, farming and shopping beaver and skunk. In the evening, though, there was light entertainment."
  "The colonel got his shovels, his picks, his spikes and, by late June, Edwin Drake had begun his well."
  "August, eighteen fifty-eight. The hand-dug well was down fifteen feet. The pump was set up, the sun was high, it was close to noon."
  "The salt well drillers of Tarentum drilled by kicking down. Brine would rise to the surface in the narrow hole they drilled and, by evaporation, they would secure salt. It was September, eighteen fifty-eight, when Drake came to Tarentum. He looked around... he asked questions... and he got an idea."
  "By November, the steam boiler had arrived and, because he had begun to feel the pinch of money, Drake had written to his company in New Haven, 'Funds... everything is cost more than I expected... I will need more funds'."
  "Poverty was something these mountain people could understand. But the jeering... the mockery... all stopped. Here, in the back woods, nobody laughed at a man who was poor. Billy Robinson, proprietor of the American Hotel, invited Drake to a free drink on the house... he was willing to extend credit, too. December became January, January changed to February and still no answers came from the company in New Haven in reply to his continuous pleading for funds. Then it was late March... and spring was in the air. A country dance was held to greet it."
  "On May nineteenth, eighteen fifty-nine, Uncle Billy Smith, the driller, arrived. And, in May, one year after Drake first came to Titusville, actual drilling began. The bore was ten feet down."
  "In July, eighteen fifty-nine, the pipe arrived. It was driven through the quicksand and, at thirty-one feet..."
  "Slowly, steadily, the drill pounded... three feet a day. Outside, the heat of summer blazed. On the twenty-seventh of August, the drill was down to sixty-nine feet..."
  "He drilled the first oil well... he invented the idea of driving pipes through sand and clay to protect the drilling hole. He was the founder of an industry... an industry whose progress was so rapid... so immense that, in a short time, there was no room in it anymore for this dreamer... but he didn't care — he had had his great adventure — he had done what no man had done before."
• Starring Richard Kiley
• Maggie McNamara
• Also Starring Wallace Ford
• Featuring John Alderson as Billy Robinson        Whit Bissell as Silliman       Walter Brooke as Townsend        Howard Caine as Pitchman        James Callahan as Josh        Sandy Kenyon as Fletcher        Ken Lynch as Brown        Woodrow Parfrey as Bissel        Guy Raymond as Wilson        Ian Wolfe as Brewer
• Rayford Barnes as Eben        Al Cavens as Townsman;       Noel Drayton as Johnson        Craig Duncan as Farmer        John Garwood as Idler        Jim Halferty as Sammy Smith        Kim Hector as Boy        Charles Perry as Townsman        Naomi Perry as Woman
• Uncredited cast members: Barry Kelley (Hughes); Kid Chissell, Tom Kennedy, Jack Perkins, Max Wagner (townsmen at Billy Robinson's during brawling)

Starring Earl Holliman, Julie Sommars, Collin Wilcox

• The episode includes the Locust Plague of 1874.

• Narrator Russell Johnson: "For four years, the Indians of the Plains were forced to live under a poorly administered, often corrupt, reservation system. Against privation and hunger, some of the chiefs have rebelled. Now, the Army has been ordered to stop the new violence and arbitrarily to punish the leaders."
• STARRING Paul Burke
• Ivan Dixon
• ALSO STARRING Antoinette Bower
• CO–STARRING Valentin De Vargas        Denver Pyle        John Marley
  "Fort Sill, Indian Territory — a dusty, primitive world made up of mountains, dry riverbeds, blazing sun, hostile Indians. This is headquarters for the officers and men of the Fourth and Tenth Cavalry, Major General Davidson commanding. His visitor, on special mission from Fort Leavenworth, Kansas — Captain Richard H. Pratt."
  "On a spring morning in eighteen-seventy-five, three separate worlds begin a journey together — the world of Indians, of the Negroes and of the white man — across the empty and silent plains."
  "The prison train journeyed from sunup to sundown. All through that first day, Captain Pratt could not forget the sound of the Indian women."
  "Within two weeks, the prison train reached General Miles' command at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas... a rich country... anything... anything could grow in this land."
  "In the darkness of the early morning, the prisoners were loaded onto a battered old prison car... iron on their legs and now... iron around them. Across the prairies toward Florida. They had been accustomed to the high, dry plains and now their bodies rebelled against the damp heat of the Southeastern states."
  "Summer, eighteen-seventy-five... Fort Marion, Saint Augustine, Florida, once the old Spanish fortress of San Marco. Here, Captain Pratt brought his prisoners. Behind stone walls twelve feet thick, where the temperature was ninety degrees, in a short time, three had died."
  "And so it began. Within four years, the captain would bring his prisoners to an abandoned military barracks in Pennsylvania and founded the Carlisle Indian School. Twenty-five years later, as General Richard H. Pratt, he saw an entire reservation school system built on his model. Here, in Fort Marion, it began. He gave the Indians a way to survive. Here, he gave them life."
• Announcer: "Before previewing next week's Great Adventure, here is Gerald Gough, a teacher and member of the National Education Association, with a postscript on tonight's story."
  Gerald Gough: "During his twenty-five years at the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania, Richard Pratt taught five thousand students representing more than seventy Indian tribes. From Carlisle came famous people, such as Jim Thorpe. Thorpe is regarded by many as the greatest athlete of all time. Hundreds of less famous but equally important young men and women return to their tribes from Carlisle to help their people. Although its football team played and beat the greatest colleges in America, Carlisle was really not a college — it was a training school. It granted no degrees. When it closed its doors in nineteen-eighteen, it left a job only partly done... a job that still remains to be completed. But the work of Richard Pratt was the start of a Great Adventure."
• Starring Paul Burke
• Ivan Dixon
• Also Starring Antoinette Bower
• Co-Starring Valentin De Vargas as Okahatan        Denver Pyle as General Miles        John Marley as Grey Beard
• with Curt Conway as General Grierson        John Duke as Running Dog        Eddie Little Sky as Lean Bear        Rockne Tarkington as Corporal Banks
• and Iron Eyes Cody as Iron Eyes        Earl Hammond as Captain        Vernett Allen as Cook        Davis Roberts as Trooper        Lenny Geer as Man        Naomi Perry as Screaming Woman        Jacque Shelton as Captain Gibson

• STARRING Jack Klugman
• Torin Thatcher
• CO–STARRING James Westerfield        Walter Burke        Parley Baer
• Narrator Russell Johnson: "John Brown of Osawatomie with two sons and sixteen friends seized the United States arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia on the night of October sixteen, eighteen fifty nine and there are those who say the Civil War began that evening."
  "For to seize hostages and bring them along with their slaves. This was the keystone of the whole audacious scheme. The old man wanted some illustrious names to call attention to his crusade and this one had one of the most illustrious names in all America."
  "It was twelve o'clock. For an hour and a half, the arsenal had been in the undisputed possession of the old man. Not a shot had been fired, not a voice raised in alarm. Across the street from the arsenal, in the lobby of the Wager House, the desk clerk went about his duties, unaware the town had fallen into enemy hands. While at the other end of the combination hotel lobby and station waiting room, a dozing baggage master was equally unmindful. So was Patrick Higgins when he came to relieve the night watchman."
  "The first man to fall in John Brown's war to free the slaves was Shepherd Hayward, a free Negro. Other were not to be long in following."
  "By first light, Harpers Ferry was divided into two warring camps. The invaders held the arsenal and all of its works. The defenders had established their command post in the lobby of the Wager Hotel. In between, lay no man's land already stained with the blood of Shepherd Hayward."
  "Across the street, the citizenry of Harpers Ferry were getting ready to take their town back from the apparent madmen who had seized it during the night."
  "The fighting continued throughout the night and the bar in the Wager Hotel remained open, doing the best single night's business it had done since New Year's Eve five years before."
  "In the opposing camp, there was less merriment... less to be merry about... fewer to be merry. The old man had marched blithely into Harpers Ferry twenty four hours before, with an army of eighteen. Where were those eighteen a day and a night later? Dangerfield Newby... dead, Stewart Taylor... dead, John Kegi... dead, Leary... dead, Thompson... dead, Stevens, Anderson, Leeman... dead, dead, dead... and Oliver Brown... dying."
  "Watson Brown... dead... Oliver Brown... dead... Dauphin Thompson... dead... John Brown... captured."
  "At the request of Governor Wise, troops from the nearby Fort Lee were dispatched to Charles Town to guard against any attempt by Northern abolitionists to swoop down and rescue the prisoner."
  "The verdict was guilty... the sentence was death. The convicted man was asked if he had anything to say... Old Brown had something to say..."
  "And it was done... they hanged the old man on December second, eighteen fifty nine and that was the day his soul commenced its march from Charles Town, Virginia. It marched on and on and on through Fort Sumter, Gettysburg, Antietam, Appomattox. There are those who say it marches still."
• Announcer: "Before previewing next week's Great Adventure, here is Gerald Gough, a teacher and member of the National Education Association, with a postscript on tonight's story."
  Gerald Gough: "Lincoln said that John Brown fancied himself commissioned by heaven. In this belief, Brown was not alone. The mob that murdered Elijah P. Lovejoy, an abolitionist editor in Illinois, believed that their cause was ordained by God, too. The congressman who assaulted sharp tongued Senator Charles Sumner right in the Senate after Sumner made a bitter anti-slavery speech, also believed that his violence was righteous. John Brown's act, as much as those of any man of his time, added fuel to the flames of controversy which led inevitably to the Civil War. He was a man whose insistence that only his way was right helped push other men to bitter extremes on both sides. John Brown at Harpers Ferry reminds us that he who takes the law into his own hands... destroys it."
• Starring Jack Klugman
• Torin Thatcher
• Co-Starring James Westerfield as Attorney Green        Walter Burke as Higgins        Parley Baer as Beckham
• Featuring Russell Horton as Hoyt        Les Brown, Jr. as Oliver Brown
• Alan Baxter as Judge        James Beck as Watson Brown        Ashley Cowan as Clerk        Joel Fluellen as Newby        Nelson Olmsted as Harding        John Wesley as Copeland        Jordan Whitfield as Servant        Ward Wood as Coppoc

Note: Nine years earlier, Jordan "Smoki" Whitfield, who plays a servant testifying at John Brown's trial, portrayed Dangerfield Newby (Joel Fluellen's role here) in the 1955 film about John Brown's raid, Seven Angry Men.