American Playhouse Season 2 Episodes

Episode 1

The Skin of Our Teeth

Tue, Jan 18, 1983113 mins

A production of Thornton Wilder's Pulitzer-winning play about mankind's triumph over chaos, which wildly altered dramatic conventions in freely shifting between modern-day New Jersey and the Ice Age--the Antrobus family pets are dinosaurs--and having characters speak directly to the audience and criticize the way their own dialogues were written.

Episode 2

Miss Lonelyhearts

Tue, Jan 25, 198356 mins

A young Depression-era reporter is assigned to write his newspaper's advice column on the insistence of his mocking editor. Unhappy in the demeaning assignment, he begins to take an interest in one of the readers sending letters.

Episode 3

Family Business

Tue, Feb 1, 1983

Isaiah Stern is a wealthy, but dying, toy manufacturer. Once more Stern has gathered together his grown sons to once more revise his will. Three of the four boys are used to these idiosyncratic changes, and have come to accept them: the fourth son , a married psychologist, is heavily in debt and doesn't like his thin share of the pie, which sparks a confrontation. The remaining sons, are a bachelor who runs the family store, an indecisive sort who still lives at home, and daddy's favorite, a closet homosexual.

Episode 4

Keeping On

Tue, Feb 8, 198375 mins

A low-key 90-minute drama about unionizing a small southern mill town, a process which affects the whole town, not only the textile workers.

Episode 5

The Files on Jill Hatch: Part I

Tue, Feb 15, 198355 mins

Part 1 of 3: The story deals with the marriage of a black American soldier and a white British woman. Spanning four decades and two decades with drama also introduces their rebellious daughter, Jill, who eventually becomes civil rights activist. Beginning in the war-torn England of the 1940 where the couple meet and fall in love.

Episode 6

The Files on Jill Hatch: Part II

Tue, Feb 22, 1983

Episode 7

The Files on Jill Hatch: Part III

Tue, Mar 1, 1983

Episode 8

For Us the Living: The Medgar Evers Story

Tue, Mar 22, 198390 mins

This movie traces the life of Medgar Evers, the former insurance salesman turned field secretary for the NAACP, who was instrumental in organizing boycotts against discriminating southern white merchants and the desegregation of the University of Mississippi. Although Evers truly believed that the Constitution included the rights within for each American citizen, no matter what color or class, his battle for equality would shockingly conclude with his assassination at the hand of white supremacist Byron De La Beckwith on June 12, 1963.

Episode 9

Verse Person Singular

Tue, Mar 29, 1983

Actor Richard Kiley takes on the personae of thirteen different characters as he reads his favorite poems written in the first-person.

Episode 10

Until She Talks

Tue, Apr 5, 1983

The story of a young woman who is imprisoned for refusing to testify before a grand jury; the program uses dialogue from courtroom transcripts and is based on the experiences of individuals jailed for their refusal to testify.

Episode 11

Wings

Tue, Apr 26, 1983

Former aviatrix Emily Stilson suffers a stroke and is plunged into a world of disorientation and grief. Memories flood in between painful attempts to re-learn the basic functions of everyday life.

Episode 12

The Rothko Conspiracy

Tue, May 3, 1983

A drama based on the fight over the estate of artist Mark Rothko, who killed himself in 1970.