The Body-Eater

In New York City last week, television went underground. After filming sections of the Ford Theater's production of Subway Express in the I.R.T. subway between Chambers Street and Pennsylvania Station, Producer Winston O'Keefe moved nearly 100 actors, technicians and camera crewmen up to The Bronx for a telecast from an isolated subway car in the I.R.T. Jerome Avenue yard.

Since O'Keefe's basic staff of ten can be quickly and efficiently expanded, almost nothing on Ford Theater (alternate Fridays, 9 p.m. E.D.T., CBS-TV) is left to chance. Nobody gets lost in what O'Keefe calls "the departmentalization of a network which has to service all network shows."

Possibly because Producer O'Keefe and 37-year-old Director Marc Daniels have solid theater backgrounds, all Ford shows are adapted from Broadway plays. "In the theater a show is rehearsed four weeks," says O'Keefe. "We run half as long, and we spend two weeks. You can't do a good job in less." Besides high salaries (top: $2,000 per show), O'Keefe supplies such creature comforts for actors as cots during rest periods. He hires understudies for every part, but has not had to use one yet. Refinements of this kind have encouraged such stars as Fredric March, Eva Le Gallienne, Lilli Palmer and Judy Holliday to make their TV debuts on Ford Theater.

O'Keefe favors fantasies like On Borrowed Time and dramas like The Silver Cord. "What we need are strong, straight, logical dramatic issues. If a man is grappling with his problems, the camera can go right in and get it."

Farce, he believes, is not so good: "Take a man slipping on a banana peel--you've got to see the expression on his face. The TV camera misses that. Farce happens across the room and the camera always gets it too late." It is the same with acting: "It has to be small--you can't project as you would on the stage. And positions can be every bit as important as lines. If an actor is six inches off base, he may be out of the camera's eye."

Ford Theater began in 1948 as a once-a-month show; last year it switched to once a fortnight, and plans are being made to put it on weekly in the fall, which means that the program will need two complete production units. With the pressure rising, 39-year-old Producer O'Keefe is afraid that television is improving faster than human beings. "TV is fun, exciting," he says, "but it's a real body-eater. It's the first thing that's ever made me feel my years."

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