Kurt Kasznar

Wien, Austria

Biography

Kurt Kasznar (August 12, 1913 – August 6, 1979) was a stage, film, and television actor.Kasznar's first major Broadway appearance was in The Happy Time. (He recreated his role for the film version and earned a Golden Globe nomination for his performance.) He also appeared on Broadway in Barefoot in the Park, Waiting for Godot, Six Characters in Search of an Author, and The Sound of Music, for which he was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Musical. Kasznar appeared in more than 80 films and television shows, and had a regular role in the television series Land of the Giants as "Alexander Fitzhugh". His feature films included Lili, Kiss Me, Kate, The Last Time I Saw Paris, My Sister Eileen, A Farewell to Arms and 55 Days at Peking. Description above from the Wikipedia article  Kurt Kasznar , licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.

Movies

Matinee Theater is an American anthology series that aired on NBC during the Golden Age of Television, from 1955 to 1958. The series, which ran daily in the afternoon, was frequently live. It was produced by Albert McCleery, Darrell Ross, George Cahan and Frank Price with executive producer George Lowther. McCleery had previously produced the live series Cameo Theatre which introduced to television the concept of theater-in-the-round, TV plays staged with minimal sets. Jim Buckley of the Pewter Plough Playhouse recalled: When Al McCleery got back to the States, he originated a most ambitious theatrical TV series for NBC called Matinee Theater: to televise five different stage plays per week live, airing around noon in order to promote color TV to the American housewife as she labored over her ironing. Al was the producer. He hired five directors and five art directors. Richard Bennett, one of our first early presidents of the Pewter Plough Corporation, was one of the directors and I was one of the art directors and, as soon as we were through televising one play, we had lunch and then met to plan next week’s show. That was over 50 years ago, and I’m trying to think; I believe the TV art director is his own set decorator —yes, of course! It had to be, since one of McCleery’s chief claims to favor with the producers was his elimination of the setting per se and simply decorating the scene with a minimum of props. It took a bit of ingenuity.

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Matinee Theater
1955