For Whom the Bell Tolls (Playhouse 90)

Fred Coe was the producer and John Frankenheimer the director. The settings were designed by Walter Scott Herndon. The music was composed and conducted by Eugene Cines.^[1][2]

The program was recorded on videotape and aired on March 12 and 19, 1959, as part of the CBS television series, Playhouse 90. It was staged in New York City to accommodate Jason Robards. It was "television's first three-hour, two-part drama."^[3]

A. E. Hotchner wrote the teleplay as an adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's novel of the same name.^[2] Hotchner was personal friends with Hemingway and later wrote his biography, Papa Hemingway. Hotchner adapted For Whom the Bell Tolls for television with Hemingway's blessing. Hotchner was traveling with Hemingway when Part 2 aired. Hemingway stopped at a "flea-bitten little motel" and watched Part 2 with Hotchner holding the television's "rabbit ears" to maintain the reception.^[4] At the conclusion of the program, Hemingway called Robards and Schell to tell them "how terrific he thought it was."^[4]

Hotchner also later recalled a humorous incident during the filming. Because Robards, Eli Wallach, and Maureen Stapleton were all appearing in Broadway plays, much of the filming was done overnight between 11 p.m. and 3 a.m. Robards and Stapleton were heavy drinkers at the time, and Frankenheimer struggled to keep them sober. On the night they filmed the confrontation between Jordan and Pablo, both Robards and Stapleton were visibly intoxicated. Nehemiah Persoff's character, on the other hand, was supposed to be drunk, but Persoff was not exhibiting the appropriate level of inebriation. An exasperated Frankenheimer exploded: "I got two drunks who should be sober and one guy sober who should be drunk!"^[5] Frankenheimer fed scotch to Persoff and, as CBS executives arrived to watch the filming, they saw "three drunken actors staggering around a cave that reeked of booze, garbling their lines, missing their cues, getting in one another's way, but enjoying themselves as only drunks can."^[5]

The budget blew out from $300,000 to $500,000.^[6]

Nehemiah Persoff won the Sylvania Award for outstanding performance by an actor in a supporting role.^[7] The program also received Sylvania Award nominations as the best dramatic program of the year and for Maria Schell for outstanding performance by an actress in a starring role.^[8]

Associated Press television writer Charles Mercer called it "the finest drama of the current television season." He praised the cast for developing their roles "compellingly and creatively and wrote that the final battle scene was "infused with a clarity and authenticity rarely achieved in the medium."^[9]

UPI television critic William Ewald found the first part stiff, but wrote that the second part was "magnificent", a production with "a splendor, a luster, that turned the 90 minutes into one of TV's most distinguished offerings." He singled out Maria Schell's five-minute, soft-voiced description of the horrors she experienced while a prisoner of the fascists as "one of the most moving scenes I've ever seen on the little tube."^[10]

After watching the first part, Jack Gould of The New York Times called it "one of the television medium's finer accomplishments."^[11] After the second part, Gould described the climactic battle scenes as "a technical tour de force in experimental video production." He also praised the graphic and moving depiction of combat and Frankenheimer's "highly imaginative" direction.^[12]

After watching part one, television critic John Crosby gave a mixed review. He praised the opening scene between Robards and Berghof as a depiction of "true Hemingway characters" in roles that were "concise, hard-bitten, masculine, tight as a fiddle string and yet with an undercurrent of rippling male humor." While he felt the overall production fell short, he called it "an epochal try."^[13]