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The United States Steel Hour: One Red Rose for Christmas (1959)
My Late Cousin, Leonard Moran, Wrote This Telepaly
I remember as a youngster sitting on the living room floor in our Brooklyn, New York cold-water flat watching this show on a blurry little black and white television along with my many Irish-Scotch relatives. We were all gathered to view my cousin's original live teleplay from a New York studio of "One Red Rose for Christmas" starring Helen Hayes and a very young Patty Duke.
After other teleplays, my cousin had a lucrative job offer to go to California as a writer when the live TV scene shifted out of New York, but he refused to leave his Brooklyn, New York roots. He never regretted not moving to California, yet did continue submitting teleplays and storylines to shows that would be filmed on the west coast. He lived out his days writing short stories and journal pieces from his beloved Greenpoint, Brooklyn, New York home, never realizing or perhaps, never really acknowledging, his significant contribution to the 1950s Golden Age of Television.
Route 66: Ten Drops of Water (1960)
After All These Years
I remember my family watching "Route 66" when I was 5 or 6 in Brooklyn, NY. One episode that I vividly remember sent me into torrents of tears because of the picture of a young boy crying over his dead mule. I will never forget that sad black and white image bursting out at us from our pathetically small Emerson TV. My family and I were avid fans of the "Route 66" saga until its end in 1964,
I was 61 when I happened to watch this episode re-running on ME-TV in New York. As if I were that 5-year old again when I first viewed its original viewing, the tears flowed, but this time I knew why ----- because of the show's excellent and original writing, direction and bravura acting.
Bravo to the Golden Age of Television! BTW, my late cousin, Leonard Moran, also from Brooklyn, NY, wrote for the US Alcoa Steel Hour in the late 1950s. One of his original television screenplays, "One Red Rose for Christmas" with Helen Hayes was televised live and included one of the first TV appearances of a very young Patty Duke. It was televised twice on TV and I vaguely remember all our family members gathering around the miniscule black and white television in our tiny Brooklyn, NY apartment (you must remember I was not yet 4 years old) to watch my cousin's play. My cousin went on to write for other New York-based television shows, but when it was obvious that the future money was to made in California and things shifted to the west coast, he refused to leave his native Brooklyn, NY and concentrated on writing short stories instead until his death.