Fri 8 Jan 2010
A TV Review by Mike Tooney: KRAFT SUSPENSE THEATRE “The Name of the Game”.
Posted by Steve under Reviews , TV mysteries[4] Comments
“The Name of the Game.” An episode of Kraft Suspense Theatre. First air date: 26 December 1963 (Season 1, Episode 10). Jack Kelly, Pat Hingle, Nancy Kovack, B. G. Atwater, Steve Ihnat, Monica Lewis. Story: Fred Finklehoffe; screenplay: Frank Fenton. Director: Sydney Pollack.
Don’t confuse this single show with the later TV series. The name of the game here isn’t fame but winning and losing at gambling, specifically casino craps.
Jack Kelly plays an expert gambler who is down on his luck. Along comes Pat Hingle as an over-eager, impulsive Texas oil millionaire (he says he’s worth $10 million) anxious to beat the house at its own game.
Hingle wants to win $200,000 and split it 50-50. Kelly agrees to team with Hingle as long as he does exactly what Kelly directs him to do. “I don’t tell you how to make oil wells,” Kelly informs him, “and you don’t tell me how to gamble.” Chafing at the restrictions, Hingle reluctantly assents.
Kelly warns his partner that the odds always favor the house and that he may have to pony up at least a million to win that two hundred grand, but Hingle doesn’t seem to care. And thus begins a marathon bout of gambling, with Kelly having to rein in Hingle now and then. Director Sydney Pollack has one long-duration shot from directly over the craps table looking straight downward — a “God’s eye view” of the action.
It’s a long, hard slog but Kelly and Hingle finally do clear two hundred thousand. Hingle, however, is hot to double his winnings. Kelly, reminding his partner of their agreement, says it’s time to quit. He’ll be expecting his hundred grand after Hingle cashes in their chips. Kelly leaves the casino to see a girl he has just met (Nancy Kovack) and hopefully extend their romantic relationship.
But Hingle is angry, accusing Kelly of being a penny-ante gambler and not the “player” Kelly fancies himself to be. Hingle is determined not to give his partner his cut, even if it means a fight ….
But that’s not the end of it. There is a fine little twist in the story near the end where Kelly learns a valuable life lesson in the school of hard knocks.
Although under an hour in length, “The Name of the Game” has a movie “feel” to it. There’s some nice misdirection in the plot, and the performances are uniformly convincing.
Trivia: Knowledgeable sci-fi TV fans will recognize several familiar faces here. Nancy Kovack starred as a temptress in one Star Trek episode. From the same series, B. G. Atwater (later commonly billed as “Barry”) played the founder of the logical Vulcan civilization, and Steve Ihnat was a psychotic starship captain who insisted on being called “Lord” or bad things would happen.
In a minor but memorable bit part, Grace Lee Whitney plays a statuesque blonde whose luck with the dice waxes but rapidly wanes; she had a continuing role as Yeoman Rand on Star Trek. And of course Jack Kelly played the impetuous young executive officer of the deep space cruiser C-57D who is torn to bits by the Id Monster in Forbidden Planet (1956).
January 8th, 2010 at 10:36 pm
Jack Kelly as a gambler, who would have thunk it?
This is a good example of how good many of the KRAFT SUSPENSE THEATRE and other anthology series were, and as you point out excellent cast.
Re Kovacks, she was also Medea in Ray Harryhausen’s JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS, while Atwater’s greatest role was likely the vampire in KOLCHAK, THE NIGHT STALKER. Steve Inhat was one of the busiest actors in Hollywood, probably getting his biggest role as the villain in IN LIKE FLINT.
Frank Fenton who wrote the teleplay probably had his biggest success with the film THE GARDEN OF EVIL with Gary Cooper, Susan Hayward, and Richard Widmark, including writing my favorite line: “If the earth was made of gold men would still die for a handful of dirt.”
January 8th, 2010 at 10:45 pm
I won’t rely on my memory and say anything about the quality of the KRAFT shows, but I remember them as good, and some of them were pilots for other series that came along afterward.
What I enjoy, sometimes even more than the stories in watching old TV shows like this one, is trying to place names with faces I see in them.
Thank goodness for IMDB, though. I’m really not as good at it as I imagine I used to be.
— Steve
January 9th, 2010 at 1:29 am
I have a friend who refers to any actor who appeared on one of the Trek series as “legitimate” actors.
Shortly after this the January 2nd 1964 episode of KRAFT SUSPENSE THEATRE was an adaptation of John D. MacDonald’s only private eye novel, THE DROWNER, with Clu Gulager as the eye, Dan Walsh. The episode was called “The Deep End” and featured Aldo Ray, Tina Louise, Ellen Burstyn, Whit Bissell and Paul Langdon. Seems like the 1963-64 season was a good one.
June 4th, 2010 at 10:46 pm
[…] Kelly (1927-92) previously appeared in “The Name of the Game” (reviewed here). Martha Hyer (b. 1924) was in “Crimson Witness” (reviewed here). Robert Conrad (b. […]