Seven Things to Know About Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea

1. Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea was nominated for 11 Emmy awards from 1965 to 1967, all in technical categories. It won four Emmys for Special Photographic Effects, Cinematography, and Film & Sound Editing. The show's special effects were supervised by L.B. Abbott, the head of the Special Effects Department at 20th Century-Fox from 1957 to 1970. Abbott was also awarded four Oscars for his special effects work in the movies Doctor Dolittle (1968), Tora! Tora! Tora! (1971), The Poseidon Adventure (1972), and Logan's Run (1976).

Del Monroe as Kowalksi.

2. Del Monroe played the same character in the 1961 theatrical film Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and on the TV series. He was billed as Delbert Monroe in the film and played Seaman Kowski. He shortened his professional name to Del Monroe for the TV series, while his character was renamed Kowalski (sometimes shortened to "Ski"). Although Del Monroe never received a credit in the series' opening, he appeared in 98 episodes from 1964-68. Mark Slade, who later played Blue on The High Chaparral, also appeared as a crewmember in the film and TV series--though his name changed from Smith to Malone and he only appeared in five episodes during the first season.

3. Budget-conscious producer Irwin Allen sometimes reused footage from his movies and shared costumes across his TV series (which included Lost in Space and Time Tunnel). Two of his most famous uses of recycled footage are in the Voyage episodes "The Sky's On Fire" and "Turn Back the Clock." The latter, a first season episode, finds Captain Lee Crane (David Hedison) on an island populated by dinosaurs and a native girl (Vitina Marcus). The dinosaur footage (actually live lizards in "make-up") was lifted from Allen's 1960 theatrical film The Lost World--which starred Hedison and Marcus. The second season episode "The Sky's on Fire" is basically a condensed version of the theatrical film Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1961) with recycled footage of the Seaview and the burning skies.

Admiral Nelson as a werewolf.

4. Admiral Nelson's first name--which is rarely used--is Harriman (or Harry to close friends). He is a four-star admiral, though his rank inexplicably changes to three stars briefly during the first season (surely a continuity error). Nelson has many close encounters with aliens and monsters during the show's run. He transforms into a werewolf in two episodes. In "Werewolf," the second episode of the third season, a fellow scientist infected with lyncanthropy, attacks Nelson--who also becomes a werewolf. Twelve episodes later, in "The Brand of the Beast," Nelson becomes exposed to high levels of radiation and transforms into a wolf-man again. (And, for the record, Captain Lee Crane turned into a werewolf-like creature in the season 4 episode "Man Beast.")

Hedison in "The Human Computer."

5. In a 2013 interview, I asked David Hedison, who plays Captain Crane, to list his favorite episodes: "I thought I did good work in several first season episodes when we had better writing. 'The Saboteur,' where I was brainwashed by the Chinese to kill Admiral Nelson, 'The Enemies' where I went mad and tried to kill the Admiral, 'Mutiny' where Nelson went mad and I had to stop him.  Hmmm...do I sense a pattern here? Another episode I enjoyed was 'The Human Computer.' It was the first episode they let me carry--the episode was me, alone on the Seaview with a Russian saboteur. That was fun to do."

6. Several changes occurred with the debut of the second season of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. Henry Kulky, who played Chief Petty Officer (CPO) Curley Jones, died of a heart attack in February 1965. He was replaced by Terry Becker, who portrayed the submarine's new CPO, Francis Ethelbert Sharkey. The show also switched from black-and-white to color, which was highlighted in the season's first episode "Jonah and the Whale." The plot had Nelson and a Soviet scientist in a diving bell swallowed by a whale! The Seaview received several season 2 upgrades, including a nifty yellow flying sub (I had one of the original model kits). However, the most significant change was an emphasis on science fiction and more fantastical plots. That carried over into the show's final two seasons.

7. Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea was a modest hit for ABC, but it never cracked the year's Top 30 shows in terms of Nielsen ratings. It didn't help that ABC moved it from Monday at 7:30 pm in its first season to Sunday nights for the remainder of its run--opposite perennial hit Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color on NBC. 

The Five Best Giant Squid/Octopus Movies

1. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954) - Walt Disney provided the giant squid with its best role when it attacked the submarine Nautilus during a ferocious storm at sea. As a huge tentacle grabs Captain Nemo (James Mason) and threatens to crush him to death, harpooner Ned Land (Kirk Douglas) arrives just in time to save the day. Director Richard Fleischer initially filmed this fondly-remembered scene at sunset, but was concerned that the wires operating the squid would be visible. Thus, it was shot again, this time during the storm at night. That version appears as an extra on the newest 20,000 Leagues DVD (and it's also on YouTube).

The giant squid attacks the Nautilus in torrential rain.

Bad news for Golden Gate Bridge!

2. It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955) - Special effects wizard Ray Harryhausen introduced the most destructive giant octopus to date with this stop-action animated creature. Due to cost constraints, the title creature had only six tentacles. In his Film Fantasy Scrapbook, Harryhausen noted: "I sometimes wonder if the budget had been cut anymore if we might not have ended up with an undulating tripod." It's not Harryhausen's best work, although the annihilation of the Golden Gate Bridge is memorable. Ray also animated another tentacled underwater creature in 1961's Mysterious Island.

3. Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1961) - Although it rarely gets good reviews, I always enjoy this theatrical prelude to Irwin Allen's TV series. It features a giant squid and a giant octopus. The latter was a live creature and special effects expert L.B. Abbott said that a major challenge was keeping the octopus attached to the cone of the submarine Seaview. It kept letting go and falling to the bottom of the water tank. Apparently, live octopi don't follow directions well!

The Seaview gives this octopus a charge!

4. Reap the Wild Wind (1942) - This rubbery squid may not look very real; indeed, there are times when Ray Milland's character seems to be intentionally wrapping a tentacle around his body. That said, it's pretty impressive when a giant squid gets a plum supporting role in a Cecil D. DeMille movie alongside stars like John Wayne and Milland. Also, with the exception of the 1937 "B" movie Sh! The Octopus, it was the biggest part to date for a squid or octopus.

5. Dangerous When Wet (1953) - Sure, the former musical is famous for Esther Williams' animated underwater number with cat Tom and mouse Jerry. However, the same scene also features a singing purple octopus that serenades Esther in "In My Wildest Dreams." (Fernando Lamas provides the voice.)

Honorable Mentions:  The Little Mermaid (1989), which boasts a sea witch who is part octopus and Tentacles, an awful 1977 Italian film that gets a mention because its cast includes Henry Fonda, Shelley Winters, and John Huston.

Summer of MeTV Classic TV Blogathon: Let's Go on a Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea!

What was the longest-running science fiction TV series of the 1960s? If you answered Star Trek, Lost in Space, or even The Outer Limits, you'd be wrong. That distinction belongs to producer Irwin Allen's Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, which debuted in 1964 and ran for four years.

Richard Basehart as Admiral Nelson.

The show's "star" was the Seaview, a futuristic, atomic-powered submarine designed by Admiral Harriman Nelson. Although Nelson essentially lived aboard his super sub, the vessel's commander was the younger Captain Lee Crane. The relationship between these two men--paternal, respectful, and occasionally at conflict--formed the central core of the series throughout its run. It was enhanced by the casting: film veteran Richard Basehart played Nelson while handsome, likable David Hedison was Crane. The two actors became lifelong friends off-screen.

The episodes from Voyage's first season featured a canny mix of suspense, espionage, and science fiction plots. In “Hotline,” the Seaview’s crew has to disarm a nuclear reactor aboard a Soviet satellite that crashed into the ocean. “No Way Out” finds Nelson and Crane trying to provide safe passage for an uncooperative Communist defector. In “The Sky Is Falling,” Nelson tries to negotiate with apparently-friendly aliens (this was the first of many episodes about extraterrestrials).

Captain Crane looks concerned.

It’s a strong season that benefitted from quality guest stars such as Robert Duvall, George Sanders, Carroll O’Connor, Hurd Hatfield, Everett Sloane, and June Lockhart. Additionally, three episodes were penned by notable film and television scribes: Charles Bennett (Foreign Correspondent, Curse of the Demon); John McGreevey (The Waltons); and the amusingly-named Cordwainer Bird--which was a pseudonym for acclaimed science fiction writer Harlan Ellison.

The colorful Flying Sub.

A modest ratings hit, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea was renewed for a second season—but one that brought changes. Gruff but lovable Chief Curley Jones was nowhere to be seen, because actor Henry Kulky had died from a heart attack at age 55. Terry Becker joined the cast as Chief Sharkey. The realistic mini-sub was replaced by a spiffy, colorful “flying sub.” And most notably, there was a shift toward more science fiction plots, starting with the first episode. Titled “Jonah and the Whale,” it found Nelson and a female Russian scientist literally inside a gigantic whale after the beast swallows their diving bell. (The elaborate, colorful sets for this episode was the subject of a TV Guide article.)

By the third season, the Seaview had become a popular place for strange creatures to visit. The crew had to battle a werewolf (Admiral Nelson no less!), a mummy, a “heat monster,” some “fossil men,” a deadly cloud, a mean mermaid, “wax men,” and Nazis revived from suspended animation. This monster-of-the-week approach wore thin, although Basehart and Hedison still kept the show watchable. Despite placing #63 in the Nielsen ratings for the season, Voyage was renewed for a fourth and final season.

A dinosaur borrowed from The Lost World.

I've chosen not to dwell much on Irwin Allen’s entertaining theatrical film, 1961’s Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, which served as the basis for the series. However, it warrants a mention for two reasons. First, the budget-minded Allen was always looking to get the most out of existing sets and stock footage. So, the TV series’ season 2 episode “The Sky’s on Fire” ripped off the movie’s plot about the Van Allen radiation belt “catching fire” and threatening to scorch the Earth. Likewise, the season 1 episode “Turn Back the Clock” recycled footage from Allen’s 1960 theatrical film The Lost World—which conveniently starred David Hedison. The dinosaur scenes (actually, they were live lizards on miniature sets) from that movie also cropped up in other episodes.

The movie’s other contribution to the TV series was its special effects wizard L.B. Abbott. The head of 20th Century-Fox’s special effects department from 1957-70, Abbott won Academy Awards for Doctor Doolittle (1967), Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970), The Poseidon Adventure (1972), Logan’s Run (1976). He also earned three Emmys for his special effects, one for Allen’s Time Tunnel and two for Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. They were the only Emmys won by Voyage.

A blueprint of the Seaview.

As a youth, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea was my first “favorite TV show.” It also inspired me to write my first fan letter, which yielded a black & white photo of the Seaview and a copy of its blueprint (I wrote about this in an earlier post). I had a model of the Flying Sub and a toy Seaview propelled across my bathtub waters courtesy of a wound-up rubber band. I am not alone in my affection for this show either. You can find all kinds of cool stuff about Voyage at the Irwin Allen News Network and my 2013 interview with David Hedison ranks as one of the Café’s most popular posts.


This post is part of the Classic TV Blog Association’s Summer of MeTV Classic TV Blogathon. Click here to check out the complete blogathon schedule. And don’t forget to set your video recording devices for Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, which airs weekly on MeTV on Sunday at 1:00 a.m.

David Hedison Talks with the Café about Vincent Price, "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea", James Bond, and Love in Italy

David Hedison (photo courtesy
of Diane Kachmar).

Although best known as Captain Lee Crane on the classic TV series Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, actor David Hedison has enjoyed a long, successful career in stage, film, and television. Now 85 (but not looking it!), he remains active making personal appearances and contributing to a book on his 1959-60 spy TV series Five Fingers due out in 2013. Mr. Hedison was gracious enough to take a break from his busy schedule and talk with the Café.

Café:  You studied with Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio and won a Theater World Award for A Month in the Country, directed by Sir Michael Redgrave. What are some of your favorite stage roles and why?

David Hedison: A Phoenix Too Frequent--it was one of the few roles I really thought I grasped and did justice to. I also was fond of what I did in Two Gentlemen of Verona. Of course, A Month in the Country launched my Hollywood career, so that role was probably the most important one I ever did.

Café: In your films, you've worked with actors such as Vincent Price (The Fly), Robert Mitchum (The Enemy Below), and Claude Rains (The Lost World). Who were some of the actors you most enjoyed working with in your movies?

Claude Rains and David Hedison
in The Lost World (1961).

DH: Claude Rains was in two of my films. He was probably the most patient person I have ever met. I must have asked him a thousand questions. He would let me hang out in his dressing room on The Lost World. A wonderful man and a very underrated actor. Vincent Price was a good friend, he would recommend art for me to buy and invite me over and cook wonderful dinners with his then wife, Mary. I miss him very much. When I married Bridget, Vincent and Mary gave us an autographed copy of their now famous cook book. We still use it today.

Café: What prompted you to change your professional name from Al Hedison to David Hedison?

DH: That was NBC's dictate in 1959 when I did a series they bought. I thought it was stupid then, but I was under exclusive contract to 20th Century-Fox and had no say in the final decision. So I became David Hedison and now everyone asks me why. It gets tiresome.

Café: Producer Irwin Allen originally offered you the role of Captain Lee Crane in the film Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, but you declined because of other commitments. You once said you agreed to do the TV series because of the opportunity to work with Richard Basehart. Had you met Richard Basehart prior to Voyage or did you know him only by reputation?

Hedison with Richard Basehart in Voyage.

DH: I had never met him, but I admired Richard's work very much. I got his number from the studio. I called him up, and we agreed to meet at his house. He liked my enthusiasm, we hit it off and we worked really well together. We made the show work. Richard and I had real chemistry. He taught me so much about being camera ready when I needed to be. Television filming is so very fast, we always had to keep moving on. Voyage shot in six days--we filmed at a very fast pace.

Café: You’ve listed as a favorite Voyage episode “The Phantom Strikes” (which guest starred Alfred Ryder as a U-boat commander trying to “take over” Captain Crane). Are there any other episodes that you recall fondly?

Hedison as Captain Lee Crane in "The Human
Computer" from the season 1 DVD set.

DH: I thought I did good work in several first season episodes when we had better writing. "The Saboteur," where I was brainwashed by the Chinese to kill Admiral Nelson, "The Enemies" where I went mad and tried to kill the Admiral, "Mutiny" where Nelson went mad and I had to stop him.  Hmmm...do I sense a pattern here? Another episode I enjoyed was "The Human Computer." It was the first episode they let me carry--the episode was me, alone on the Seaview with a Russian saboteur. That was fun to do. I also enjoyed the fourth season episode where I turned into a werewolf from an experiment gone bad. I ran amuck and destroyed everything.

Café: You worked with Irwin Allen on Voyage, The Lost World, and the made-for-TV movie Adventures of the Queen. What was he like?

DH: Allen was an incredible salesman--he could sell the studio almost anything. Irwin was very good to me. He would always hire me, even though we hardly ever agreed on how I was to the play the role. He wanted me to play a straight, no-nonsense hero. Which I could do, but I never found that kind of role interesting to me as an actor. I prefer to play someone more emotional, more connected, someone with flaws. But I always did whatever job I was hired for and Allen knew he could count on me to show up and do it.

Café: You and your wife Bridget will celebrate your 45th anniversary this year. Congratulations! How did the two of you meet?

DH: I was scouting locations for an independent film I made in Italy in 1968. She was dancing with my location manager--they were at this supper/dance club in Positano, Italy. I knew right away she was the one, but Bridget had to be persuaded to date an actor. I asked her to dance with me that night because it was my birthday...and she said yes. It took another year to persuade Bridget to accept my marriage proposal.

Live and Let Die with Jane Seymour,
Roger Moore, and Hedison.

Café: You’re one of the few actors to appear in multiple James Bond films. How did you come to be cast as Felix Leiter in Let and Let Die (1973) and Licence to Kill (1989)?

DH: Tom Mankiewicz (the screenwriter of Live and Let Die) thought I would be a great Felix Leiter. He set up a meeting for me in London and I got the part. I was supposed to do the film with Sean Connery, but he dropped out and then they cast Roger Moore. That made it very easy for me to do the role as Roger and I had been friends for over a decade at that point. They called me back for Licence to Kill. They had an idea that they wanted to re-use a previous Felix. I was at the Bistro Gardens restaurant in Beverly Hills with my wife. Cubby Broccoli was there with his wife, also having dinner. I waved, but didn't go over. Cubby stopped by my table on the way out--we were friends--we talked a bit and he left. A few weeks later, I got a call in Florida (where I was doing a play with Elizabeth Ashley) and was asked to come back--on my day off--for a meeting with the director in Hollywood. I got the part.

Café: Having worked with Roger Moore and Timothy Dalton, who is your favorite 007?

DH: Roger Moore is a great friend of mine, so that is not a fair question. Roger had his way with the role. That worked for him. Timothy brought his own working style to his take on the role. I was able to work easily with both of them. Roger was less work for me, since I knew him so well. Timothy was very serious about the role and worked hard. We talked and found our relationship and everyone likes what we did in that film. Licence to Kill was very gritty and scores very high in polls among the fans, much more now than it did when it came out.

Jeanne Cooper and Hedison on
The Young and the Restless.

Café: You played Jill Abbott’s father on the long-running daytime drama The Young and the Restless. How would you describe that experience?

DH: I loved working with both ladies. We truly became a family, because all three of us believed in it. Jess (Walton) was lovely, so giving, and Jeanne (Cooper) was so into her role as Katherine Chancellor. It was a real pleasure to go work with them every day.

Café: Are there any current projects or appearances you’d like to share with our readers?

With a fan at Crypticon in 2012
(photo courtesy of Diane Kachmar).

DH: I'm doing a Q &A at a screening of Licence to Kill in Glendale, CA on Tuesday, April 2 at the Alex Theatre. It is the first Q &A in a series of five Bond film screenings that month.


For more information on David Hedison, please visit the web site www.davidhedison.net. You can friend David Hedison on Facebook. Unless otherwise noted,
all photos are courtesy of www.davidhedison.net.

How My First Fan Letter Yielded Childhood Treasures from "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea"

It was inevitable that Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea would become my favorite TV series in 1964. It had two big things going for it: a futuristic submarine and a never-ending variety of monsters. I knew this was a fact because I'd seen the 1961 theatrical film Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and it featured the submarine Seaview, a giant octopus, spies, and--for good measure--a "burning sky." (Cost-conscious producer Irwin Allen recycled all these plot elements into the TV series and even included stock footage of dinosaurs from his 1960 film The Lost World.)

I'm not sure where I heard about people writing fan letters to get autographed photographs, but the idea greatly appealed to me. Having not yet learned how wonderful reference librarians are, I sought guidance from my most reliable source of information outside of our Compton's Encyclopedias (which were of no help in this endeavor). I asked my Dad where I should send my letter.

My father worked for a large Western Electric plant, which had a small library and an enterprising librarian who probably used one of the business indexes to track down the address to 20th Century-Fox. I typed my letter on the family's old Underwood typewriter...and waited for what seemed like years.

Then one day, I discovered a large envelope in the mail containing a small black-and-white photograph of the Seaview and a rough blueprint of its interior. I was ecstatic! Those two items would be displayed in my bedroom for the next three decades (long after my departure); they would become an integral part of show-and-tell at school for the next four years. Today, I still keep them in my box of childhood treasures.

The actual size of my photo is 3" x 2-1/2".

In the TV series, it was the SSNR Seaview, the "SSNR"
standing for Submarine Seaview Nelson Research.

Having always responded well to positive reinforcement, I followed up with another fan letter. This time,  I requested an autographed photo from star Richard Basehart, who sent the picture below (note it was signed with a felt-tip pen vs. a "stamped" signature):

My "friends" at 20th Century-Fox subsequently enrolled me in the Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea Fan Club. I received a membership card (shown at the start of this post) that made me an Honorary Admiral (like thousands of other kids) and the color postcard below:

Left to right: Basehart, David Hedison, Allan Hunt,
Terry Becker, and Bob Dowdell.

As the years passed, my letter-writing interests went in other directions (e.g., trying to convince a local TV  station to keep airing Dark Shadows instead of a local kids show). I did write 20th Century-Fox a few more times and have some nice Batman photos to show for my efforts. 

However, nothing can compare to the joy of my first fan letter and my beloved photo of the Seaview. 

Five Best Science Fiction TV Series of the 1960s

1. Star Trek (1966-69) – Gene Roddenberry’s brainchild is certainly the most successful series in the history of sci fi television, spawning five spin-off TV shows (don’t forget the animated one) and three film series…thus far. That’s pretty good for a TV show that wasn’t a big hit when it first aired. But Trek earns its spot at No. 1 because of the rich futuristic world created by Roddenberry. He may not have originated some of the innovative concepts (e.g., teleportation, a federation of planets), but he wove them together to create a believable future of hope and humanity. And, despite William Shatner’s occasional forays into the hammy side of acting, the cast helped create immensely likable characters that carried some of the weaker episodes.

2. The Outer Limits (1963-65) – Leslie Stevens and Joseph Stefano (who wrote the screenplay for Psycho) were the creative talents behind the best sci fi anthology of the 1960s (maybe of all time). The concept was that each show would stay within the confines of the science fiction genre and feature a “bear”—Stefano’s nickname for a scary monster. The scripts weren’t as consistently strong as The Twilight Zone and the show’s budget often worked against some of the high-end concepts. But when The Outer Limits was good, it was very good—with several classic episodes like “Demon With a Glass Hand”, “Soldier” (both penned by Harlan Ellison), “The Inheritors”, “The Zanti Misfits”, “The Architects of Fear”, and “Z-z-z-z-z”.

3. The Invaders (1966-67) – Larry Cohen (It’s Alive) is credited for creating this series, but it bears a strong resemblance to executive producer Quinn Martin’s earlier hit The Fugitive. The premise of The Invaders is simple: architect David Vincent (Roy Thinnes) learns that aliens are planning to take over the Earth, but no one will believe him. He travels from place to place trying to thwart the aliens and convince people to believe him. It doesn’t help that the aliens glow orange and disappear when they die, thus destroying all evidence (in some episodes, aliens commit suicide to avoid capture). The first season of 17 episodes contains most of the series’ high points. In season 2, Vincent linked up with a group of other alien fighters called “The Believers” and the show faltered a little. But at the top of its game in episodes like “The Mutant” and “The Organization”, The Invaders was quite good.

4. Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1964-68) – Television critics harped on Irwin Allen’s series for its “monster of the week” approach, but that criticism actually applies only to the last two years of the show. During its first two years, Admiral Nelson (Richard Basehart) and the crew of the submarine Seaview battled enemy spies and natural disasters as well as outer space aliens and monstrous denizens of the deep. Even when things got a little silly (e.g., an evil puppeteer), the always reliable Basehart was on hand to lend credibility to the proceedings.

5. Doctor Who (1963-1989, 2005- ) – The longest-running sci fi series in the history of television has evolved from a low-budget serial directed at kids to a sophisticated series aimed at a broad audience. The Doctor is a Time Lord, who travels through time in a machine called the TARDIS (an acronym for Time and Relative Dimensions in Space). When William Hartnell, the actor who originated the role of Doctor Who, decided in leave in 1966, the writers came up with an ingenious revelation: as a time lord, Doctor Who could “regenerate” himself when near death…thus paving the way for the character to be played by another actor. As of 2009, there have been ten Doctor Who’s, with another regeneration scheduled for 2010. (Note: Peter Cushing played Who in two theatrical films.)

Honorable mentions: The Jetsons, Jonny Quest, My Favorite Martian, Lost in Space, and Stingray.

Underrated Performer of the Week: Versatility, Thy Name is Richard Basehart

A nice guy who’s really a homicidal psycho? A soft-hearted clown who consoles the mistreated? An iron-willed, but compassionate, submarine commander? If you needed an actor for any of these roles, you had only to turn to Richard Basehart. During his 37 years in film and television, Basehart quietly displayed his acting versatility—a virtue that attracted acclaimed directors from Samuel Fuller to John Huston to Federico Fellini to Joseph Losey.

Born in 1914, John Richard Basehart grew up in Zanesville, OH, spending some of his childhood in an orphanage because his widowed father was unable to care for all four children (a fifth child died as a baby). Basehart was attracted to acting at an early age, but planned to follow in his father’s footsteps as a newspaper reporter. After a short career in journalism, he realized he couldn’t shake the acting bug. He moved to Philadelphia and then New York, appearing in numerous stage plays. His performance as a dying—but stubborn—Scottish soldier in The Hasty Heart earned him the New York Critics Award for “Most Promising Actor of the Year.” Warner Bros. took notice and signed him to a film contract.

Basehart’s first three films got his screen career off to a fine start. He played a melancholy poet in Repeat Performance (1947), the cult classic about a woman who relives a year over again trying to avert a tragedy the second time around. Basehart next appeared opposite Barbara Stanwyck and Errol Flynn in the entertaining Cry Wolf (though he doesn’t appear until near the climax). His third film earned him his best notices yet as the cold-hearted killer in He Walked By Night (1948), one of the first U.S. films to employ a documentary style to increase realism.

Basehart continued to deliver stellar performances throughout the 1950s. He played a suicidal young man standing on the ledge of a skyscraper in Fourteen Hours (1951). In Tension (1950), he had a rare starring role as a henpecked pharmacist who plots to murder his wife (things don’t work out according to plan…not at all). He got to play the villain again in House on Telegraph Hill (one of my favorite Basehart performances), managing to make an offer of a bedtime glass of orange juice menacing.

Basehart also appeared in his two most famous roles in the 1950s: Ishmael, the “hero” of Moby Dick, in John Huston’s 1956 screen adaptation, and Il Matto (“The Fool”), the clown in Federico Fellini’s classic La Strada (1954)¸ which won an Academy Award for Best Foreign-Language Film. When Fellini was asked why he cast Basehart in the pivotal role of the clown, the great director said it was because of Basehart’s compelling performance in Fourteen Hours.

Basehart gravitated toward television in the early 1960s and, in 1964, signed on to star as Admiral Harriman Nelson in Irwin Allen’s science-fiction TV series Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. Of his role as the stalwart Admiral Nelson, Basehart famously said: “With Shakespeare, there’s more character than an actor can ever plumb. But there’s no greater challenge than making something out of nothing.” (On a personal note: I first became a Basehart fan as a kid watching Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea; in fact, I still have my autographed photo with him as the submarine Seaview’s commander).

When Voyage ended its four-year run, Basehart appeared frequently as a TV series guest star, in made-for-TV movies, and in the occasional theatrical film during the 1970s and early 1980s. Shortly before he died following a series of strokes in 1984, he narrated the closing ceremony of the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles.

Basehart was married three times. His first wife, Stephanie, died of a brain tumor in 1950. He married Valentina Cortese, his House on Telegraph Hill co-star, in 1951; they divorced in 1960. He married Diane Lotery in 1962 and they were together until his death.

(Program note: Fourteen Hours starring Paul Douglas, Richard Basehart, Grace Kelly, and Barbara Bel Geddes airs on TCM this Thursday at 8:00 EST.)