Wed 24 Feb 2010
A TV Review by Mike Tooney: KRAFT SUSPENSE THEATRE “That Time in Havana.”
Posted by Steve under Reviews , TV mysteries[8] Comments
“That Time in Havana.” An episode of Kraft Suspense Theatre (Season 2, Episode 14). First air date: 11 February 1965. Steve Forrest, Dana Wynter, Victor Jory, Frank Silvera, Val Avery. Teleplay: William Wood. Story: Irving Gaynor Neiman. Director: Alex March.
It’s been six years since Castro’s revolution took over Cuba. An American woman, Anne Palmer (Dana Wynter), has come to Havana to plead for her husband, who has been imprisoned for being a spy against Fidel. But El Jefe won’t see her, and she’s forced to deal with a lower-level functionary, Colonel Velasquez (Val Avery), who seems only to want to molest her. She gets nowhere.
Until she meets Mike Taggart (Steve Forrest), a journalist; with him she’s able to turn up some unpleasant facts about her husband, including that million dollars her husband was trying to retrieve for the Mob when he was arrested. It seems Anne didn’t know the man she married as well as she thought she did…
Despite the title, “That Time in Havana” isn’t a light-hearted caper film, although it could have been played that way, from which it would have greatly benefited. It mostly reminds me of two Humphrey Bogart films: Casablanca (1942) and To Have and Have Not (1944).
In both of those, Bogie spends a lot of time being — or pretending to be — uninvolved with the political turmoil swirling around him; similarly, Dana Wynter’s character cares only about her husband’s plight and is indifferent to politics until she has to make a decision near the end of the story that has political ramifications.
He-man actor Steve Forrest has had a long career. Criminous credits include: Phantom of the Rue Morgue (1954), Rogue Cop (1954), three episodes of The Name of the Game (1969-70), four episodes of Gunsmoke, 36 episodes of S.W.A.T. (1975-76), 15 episodes of Dallas (1986), five appearances on Murder, She Wrote, and 3 on Team Knight Rider (1997-98).
Dana Wynter has the distinction of appearing in one episode of the Colonel March of Scotland Yard TV series (1956, under her German birth name, Dagmar Wynter), the sci-fi thriller Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), The List of Adrian Messenger (1963), one episode of The Wild Wild West (1966), a regular role in the nearly-forgotten spy series The Man Who Never Was (18 episodes, 1966-67), five episodes of The F.B.I., three appearances on Cannon (1973-75), and as Mrs. Ironside in the TV movie The Return of Ironside(1993).
February 25th, 2010 at 1:23 am
And lest we forget Forrest was also the Baron on the ITV series, though he took little from Creasey than the name and the auction house he owned.
February 25th, 2010 at 4:46 pm
Do you know that even though I have the DVD boxed set of the Baron (still in shrinkwrap), I thought that the Steve Forrest who was the star of that was a DIFFERENT Steve Forrest who made all those movies and TV shows here in the US?
Not that it ever occurred to me to think about it, before now.
Looking up Forrest on IMDB, I see that he was the younger brother of Dana Andrews. I can see the resemblance now, but I never knew that.
Two things I didn’t know before!
— Steve
February 25th, 2010 at 7:44 pm
I’m always by Forrest and Andrews like I am by James Arness and Peter Graves or George Sanders and Tom Conway — once someone mentions they are brothers I can see it, but not before then. But then I have the same thing with Olivia De Haviland and Joan Fontaine or Gypsy Rose Lee and her sister.
For that matter is their anyone out there who can see the resemblance between Robert Keith and his son Brian or James MacArthur and Helen Hayes? For that matter Noah Berry Jr. didn’t look much like his Dad or famous uncle Wallace either, and I can’t see anything alike with Jason Robards and his father or Anthony Perkins and his actor Dad.
But then catch THE BIG TRAIL sometime and notice how much Tyrone Power resembled his Dad.
February 25th, 2010 at 9:11 pm
Am I the only one in the group who ever saw THE MAN WHO NEVER WAS series?
February 25th, 2010 at 9:48 pm
I remember seeing it as a network series in the mid-1960s, but besides Robert Lansing and Dana Wynter being the two main stars, and that it was a spy adventure taking place in Europe, that’s all I can tell you.
A quick check on the open market hasn’t revealed anyone offering any of the series for sale, but that doesn’t mean that copies don’t exist. I’d like to know, if they do.
— Steve
February 26th, 2010 at 10:22 am
David — My wife tells me James MacArthur was adopted. Now it makes sense.
February 26th, 2010 at 8:22 pm
Mike
Well, that explains that. He certainly didn’t look like Helen Hayes or Charles MacArthur.
Re THE MAN WHO NEVER WAS, I remember it as an intriguing series, but I had trouble taking it seriously since Dana Wynter had played such a similar role in the Danny Kaye comedy ON THE DOUBLE, in both she plays the wife of a man who has been replaced by double.
It was probably a bit ahead of its time in that it had too much plot and too many soap opera elements for an action series of its period. Today no one would notice since that’s the norm, but then I think it required more investment in time than most viewers were willing to invest.
And to be truthful, despite the fine cast and some nice location shooting, it was awfully dull for a spy series of the time. Ambitious, but maybe a decade or more ahead of the audience, mostly I remember Lansing and Wynter walking around giving the audience long dramatic stares, even longer pauses to make the dialogue seem profound, and knowing looks at each other.
I do recall Wynter and Richard Todd doing an episode of one of the anthology series where they played a husband and wife counter-spy team that had a nice Avengers feel to it though.
February 26th, 2010 at 8:46 pm
James Arness and Peter Graves??
When I was a kid, I remember getting mixed up between Alan Hale and his son. I thought they were the same person and I could not figure out how old he was on “Gilligans Island,” it didn’t make sense. He would have had to have been 100 on that show, Alan Hale Sr. was in movies since the 20s. lol
I want to see this episode now that I have read this review.
–Thanks