The Pittsburgh Press from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania • Page 126

TV Graphic Cover This Week's Leads In Alcoa Presents Series Two of Hollywood's Busiest One Step Beyonc By Fred Remington Press Radio-TV Editor IT was a day shortly before Christmas, and the Southern California sun shone warmly down upon the vast MGM lot in Culver City. Its benign glow was not being felt by one man, however. This was an actor named Paul Richards, prostrate in a mud hole, beneath the wreckage of a car, drenched from a violent, man-made rainstorm. From the comfort of his director's position alongside the camera, John Newland cheerfully called for a harder downpour of rain. A special effects man twisted a valve and a furious torrent rained down upon the dripping actor.

"Give me a couple of good Director Newland called. "Choke a few times," Richards obligingly cried "Help" several times, his voice hoarse and desperate. Allowing his head to slump weakly into the puddle in which he Jay, he breathed in a mouthful of the muddy water and choked genuinely. "Help," he gurgled again. "Great," said Newland.

"Just great." Richards crawled, bedraggled, from the slough. He was shivering despite the underwater heaters which had been operating. He'd been in the water a long time before New-land was fully satisfied with the camera shot and quality of the actor's "Helps." The scene took place in the course of filming 'Twelve Hours To Live." the film which will be seen this Tuesday night as the current "Alcoa Presents" episode. Its two leads, Richards and Jean Allison, are pictured In a scene from it on today's TV-Graphic cover. Like all the stories in this series, it is a fictionalized treatment of an actual experience in the little known area of extra sensory perception or parapsychology.

The secondary title of the series is "One Step Beyond," indicating an Incident outside the normal, accountable course of events. In this story Richards plays a husband who quarrels with his wtfe, drives away in anger and runs his car off the road Into the predicament described above. If you are particularly keen-eyed, you may detect that the car he is seen driving is a Mercury, the one under which he is pinned is a Ford. The earlier portion was filmed before it was found that prop men could not locate an exactly matching wreck. They hope no one will notice.

The wife, played by Jean Allison, experiences a pang of strange certainty concerning her husband's fate and goes out seeking him. During Richards' ordeal in the puddle, Miss Allison was seated comfortably in a trailer which served as her dressing room on the lot. When she saw him emerge from the muck she procured -a cup of hot coffee and hurried to hand it to him. Sympathetically Iwl. ti.lkvo& -rrfl ca )n f-i ilfek fjr- ill This accident scene was staged at MGM studios for this week's Alcoa Presents film, "Twelve Hours to Live." Victim under car is leading man Paul Richards.

Tall man in white shirt is John Newland, director and narrator of series. Film will be seen on Channel 4 Tuesday night at 10 o'clock. she drew close around his shoulders the blanket which someone had provided to ease his shivering. Clearly she was in the full wifely spirit of her role. The faces of Miss Allison and Richards will be immediately familiar from the dozens of TV films In which they have performed In featured roles.

They are representee of a corps of actors and actresses who work steadily, earn handsomely. Yet they never have been tapped for the celebrity status that conies from Identification with a regular highly-rated series, or starring In a major feature film. "In the past six months I haven't had one day off," Richards said recently. "I've been doing television since I grad uated from UCLA in 1950. I went to New York originally and worked there in quite a few live shows "Studio One," "Robert Montgomery Presents," and several others.

"I came back to the Coast in 1952, and the first part I had was in the opening show of the second season of "Dragnet." I played a mentally disturbed man who was going to jump from a bridge. "I was in the very first episode of by the way. A wonderful thing about TV is the variety of roles. On the 'Thin Man' not long ago, for instance, I played a beat generation poet. And over the last year I've played opposite Barbara Stanwyck.

Nancy Kelly and Hedy Lamarr." In terms of earnings, Richards does very well. His minimum fee- for a TV performance is $1000. "I've been eight years building up to that," he reminds you. Miss Allison reports that on the average she works one half-hour TV film every two weeks. "Some pay as low as $350," she says, "and some go as high as $650.

"I like westerns," she went on, "I like to ride a horse." This is fortunate, for she has been cast in 'The Califor nians," "Sugarfoot," "Track-down," "Restless Gun," "Maverick" and several others. In non-western assignments she has been in Squad" and the Mickey Spillane series. She toured with a road com pany of the Paddy Chayefsky play, "Middle of the Night" in the role of an unhappy girl courted by a middle-aged man. V-i: km MM, 1 I A 1 artK lWlil I I After emerging from his mudhole beneath wrecked car, Actor Paul Richards chatted, shivering and chattering, with Press TV Editor Fred Remington who was on lot when scene was filmed. TV Page 6 The Pittsburgh Press, Sunday, February 15, 1959.