Five Fingers (TV series)

Five Fingers is an NBC adventure/drama series set in Europe during the Cold War loosely based on the 1952 film 5 Fingers, starring James Mason and Danielle Darrieux. It ran from October 3, 1959, to January 9, 1960.

David Hedison starred as Victor Sebastian, an American counterintelligence officer with the code name "Five Fingers". Luciana Paluzzi played Simone Genet, Sebastian's singer client and romantic interest. Paul Burke played Robertson, Sebastian's contact man.^[1]

Five Fingers itself was based on the book Operation Cicero (1950) by L.C. Moyzisch and on the memoirs of Elyesa Bazna (I Was Cicero, 1962). Bazna was something of an antihero in real life (as was his counterpart, Ulysses Diello, in the Hollywood film); the television series transformed the character from a World War II-era mercenary Albanian into a Cold War era heroic American. Sebastian posed as a Communist to gain information on party activities. His public cover was that of a theatrical booking agent for clubs and cafes throughout Europe.^[2]

Episodes and guest stars

Episodes and notable guest stars include:

• "Station Break" (Eva Gabor and Tyler McVey) - October 3, 1959
• "Dossier" (Edgar Bergen) - October 10, 1959
• "The Moment of Truth" (Nehemiah Persoff and Jack Warden) - October 17, 1959
• "The Unknown Town" (Michael J. Pollard) - October 24, 1959
• "The Men with Triangle Heads" - (Alfred Ryder) October 31, 1959
• "The Assassin" (John McGiver) - November 7, 1959
• "The Man Who Got Away" (Arlene Francis) - November 14, 1959
• "The Emerald Curtain" - November 21, 1959
• "The Temple of the Swinging Doll" (Viveca Lindfors, Clu Gulager, Rodolfo Hoyos, Jr., and Sterling Holloway) - November 28, 1959
• "The Final Dream" (Cesare Danova and John Banner) - December 5, 1959
• "Thin Ice" (Peter Lorre, Brett Halsey, and Alan Young) - December 19, 1959
• "Operation Ramrod" (Ray Anthony) - December 26, 1959
• "The Judas Goat" (Frank Dekova) - January 2, 1960
• "The Search for Edvard Stoyan" (Martin Balsam) - January 9, 1960^[3]

Two additional episodes, "A Shot in the Dark" (Neile Adams and Joanna Cook Moore) and "Counterfeit" (Cesar Romero), were unaired.^[4]

Production notes

Martin Manulis and Herbert Bayard Swope, Jr., son of legendary journalist Herbert Bayard Swope, were the producers of Five Fingers.^[1]

Hedison recalls on his website that he was preparing to come to work for the seventeenth episode of the series when he was notified that the program had been cancelled without warning. Five Fingers was particularly popular in Australia, but was not on the air long enough in the United States to attract a sufficient following to survive even a full season.^[5] Interestingly, the series did have a brief syndicated run on local stations in the United States (like KGMB/Honolulu) despite the short number of episodes^[6]

Manulis produced Five Fingers in association with 20th Century Fox Television.^[4] He also produced the CBS sitcom, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis (1959–1963) starring Dwayne Hickman. Five Fingers aired at 9:30 Eastern on Saturdays opposite two half-hour western series, Richard Boone's Have Gun - Will Travel and James Arness's Gunsmoke on CBS and the second half of ABC's The Lawrence Welk Show.^[7]

References

External links

• Five Fingers at the Internet Movie Database