Rear Admiral Ellis M. Zacharias, photographed as a captain sometime between 1939 and 1945.
An anthology series, Behind Closed Doors each week depicted international intrigue and Westerncounterespionage incidents during the Cold War.[1][2]United States NavyCommander Matson both hosts the series and appears as a character in some of its episodes.[1][2]Rear Admiral Ellis M. Zacharias provides comments at the end of each episode.
The episodes of Behind Closed Doors are based on the files of Rear Admiral Ellis M. Zacharias, who served in the United States Navy from 1912 to 1946 and spent a 25-year career in naval intelligence,[1][2] culminating in a tour as the Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence. The title of the series was the same as that of a book he had written, and he served as the technical consultant for the series.[2] His files covered real-life events of the era before the Cold War, so although inspired by real-life pre-Cold War events, the storylines of Behind Closed Doors were updated, relocated, and fictionalized to depict the Cold War period.[2] Zacharias's comments at the end of each episode highlighted the themes and lessons of the episode.[citation needed]
Behind Closed Doors was a Screen Gems production.[3]Sam Gallu was its executive producer, and Sidney Marshall produced the series.[1]
Behind Closed Doors premiered on October 2, 1958, and 26 episodes were produced.[1][2] It aired on NBC on Thursdays at 9:00 p.m. Eastern Time.[1][2] The show was cancelled after a single season, and its last episode was broadcast on April 9, 1959.[1][2]
After British and U.S. intelligence personnel learn that the Soviet ambassador to the United Nations will discuss Soviet nuclear weapons plans during a visit to the Soviet embassy in London, the British secret service asks a staid, mild-mannered British Russian language professor from the University of Oxford to pose as a janitor at the embassy and plant a listening device so that they can collect the information. Guest stars: Reginald Gardiner, Lester Matthews, Tom McKee, Joseph Marievsky, Sam Savitsky, Alexander Akimoff, and Alexander Ramati.
Alternative title "Trouble in Test Cell #10." U.S. intelligence personnel seek the person who sabotaged a new jet engine, causing it to blow up during its final test before it enters mass production. Guest stars: Jacques Aubuchon, James Todd, Sam Buffington, and Bek Nelson.
Clara Koller, a lonely widow who manages the budget for a manufacturing company involved in a secret United States Government project, accepts an invitation to join a friendship club, not realizing that it is a front for enemy agents planning to prey upon her. Guest stars: Judith Evelyn, Denver Pyle, Stewart Bradley, Ruth Terry, John Damler, Ruth Lee, and Maurice Wells.
7
"The Nike Story"
John Peyser
John Hawkins
November 13, 1958 (1958-11-13)
Plans call for the conversion of a military base near Whitfield, Illinois, into a Nike Herculesnuclearsurface-to-air missile site. Some of the citizens of Whitfield oppose the basing of nuclear missiles there, and enemy agents infiltrate the concerned citizens group. When a U.S. military officer is murdered on the base while trying to trap one of the agents, Captain (or Major, according to some sources) John Benson arrives to investigate — and plans to use an open house at the base to capture the entire ring of enemy agents. Guest stars: John Doucette, Ralph Clanton, William Bryant, Angela Greene, and William Quinn.
8
"It Was Learned on High Authority"
John Peyser
Stanley Niss and Herbert Abbott Spiro
November 27, 1958 (1958-11-27)
A group of scientists is scheduled to fly to Cape Canaveral, Florida, and Fred Lang, an enemy agent who works as an engineer on a missile base in Los Angeles, California, receives orders to place a bomb on the scientists' plane. Guest stars: Robert Knapp, Alex Gerry, Jeanne Baird, Dick Rich, Richard S. Davies, and Walter Maslow.
After atomic scientist Andrew Fleming bails out of a malfunctioning airplane over Czechoslovakia and is imprisoned by the communist government there and scheduled to go on trial, Commander Matson enters Czechoslovakia disguised as an art dealer to try to free him — and as the date of Fleming's trial approaches, Matson enlists the aid of Czechoslovakian resistance fighters. Guest stars: Keith Richards, Florence Marly, John Banner, Anatol Winogradoff, Aaron Saxon, and Richard Flato.
After becoming aware of a plot to kill Marshal Tito, the president of Yugoslavia, security forces under the command of General Racz place him under heavy guard, with no outsiders except for sculptor Sarah Fletcher allowed to see him — but U.S. agent Blake Adams, who is among those assigned to guard Tito, learns that the plot nonetheless is to be carried out very soon. Guest stars: Sheldon Laurence, Jeanette Sterke, Ferdy Mayne, Carl Duering, Eric Pohlmann, Carle Jaffe, and Glyn Owen.
Alternative title "Message from Mardenburg." A man named Dr. Haas takes charge of a German fencing society, planning to use its young members for subversive ends. Agent Peter Gebhardt joins the society in an attempt to learn Haas′s plans to overthrow the government of West Germany and install a Nazi regime. Guest stars: Carl Esmond, Richard Jaeckel, and Corey Allen.
15
"The Alkaloid Angle"
John Peyser
Richard Grey
January 22, 1959 (1959-01-22)
After a U.S. agent is killed while investigating of a shipment of hashish to a port in Lebanon — part of a Communist plan to inflame the passions of revolutionary elements in the Middle East through the use of narcotics — agent Robert Hatfield comes out of retirement to work on the case and learns that a traitor has revealed his identity to the Communists. Guest stars: Frank Gerstle, Biff Elliott, Natalia Daryll, Harry Bartell, and Josh Franklyn.
Alan Caillou, Donn Mullally, and Arthur Fitz-Richard
February 12, 1959 (1959-02-12)
After Communists kidnap U.S. agent Anna Sung in Macao, Commander Bennett and local police detective Mike Perrera search for her and discover a Communist plan to infiltrate and capture Quemoy. Guest stars: Robert Richards, Robert H. Harris, Robert Ellenstein, Paul Picerni, and Roberta Haynes.
U.S. agent Nick Blake receives an assignment to find out why a former Soviet official has been released from prison to represent the Soviet Union at a nuclear weapons conference in Geneva, Switzerland, and the Soviets hire an American professional assassin to kill him just as the conference is about to begin. Guest stars: Dennis Patrick, Evy Norlund, Jan Arvan, Gregory Gaye, Wendell Holmes, Frank London, and Frank Richards.
After U.S. agent Douglas Kincaid infiltrates a Communist cell in San Francisco, California, he learns that a former top Soviet official, Feodor Mashay, wishes to defect to the West. Police raid the apartment in which the cell is meeting and arrest the participants, including Kincaid. Kincaid then is "deported" to Yalta in the Soviet Union — all part of a plan to put Kincaid in a position to help Mashay defect. Guest stars: Simon Scott, Chana Eden, Ben Astar, Robert Carricart, Steve Conte, and John Warburton.
23
"The Gamble"
John Peyser
Robert Leslie Bellem and Stanley H. Silverman
March 19, 1959 (1959-03-19)
South Vietnamese Prince Tallat prepares a speech he plans to deliver at a conference in Hue, South Vietnam, of top-level statesmen of free nations of Southeast Asia about how to stop Communist infiltration from North Vietnam, hoping that his speech will turn the Vietnamese people against Communism. Before he can deliver it, however, Communists kidnap him along with his sister, Princess Santha, and demand that he change his speech to instead denounce Westernimperialism — but a U.S. agent helps Tallat and Santha escape. Guest stars: Jeff Richards, Carol Thurston, Lewis Charles, Peter Votrian, Nyra Monsour, Leonard Graves, and Weaver Levy.
24
"Double Agent"
John Peyser
Donn Mullally and Arthur Fitz-Richard
March 26, 1959 (1959-03-26)
A spy working for both the Eastern Bloc and the West is responsible for the shipment of arms to Western sympathizers behind the Iron Curtain, and a British counterintelligence agent tries to track him down. Guest stars: John Sutton, Liam Sullivan, Theodore Marcuse, Violet Rensing, and John Thye.
25
"The Antidote"
Unknown
Unknown
April 2, 1959 (1959-04-02)
After Dr. Paul Matley invents an antidote for radiation poisoning, he and his wife Laura go to a nightclub, where Communist agents poison Laura — and the agents tell Matley that she will die if he does not turn the secret formula for the antidote over to them. Guest stars: John Lupton, Lawrence Dobkin, and Barney Phillips.
26
"Assignment Prague"
John Peyser
Alan Caillou
April 9, 1959 (1959-04-09)
A U.S. agent posing as an American film director who has defected to the Eastern Bloc and been recruited by the Communists to make propaganda films for the Soviet Union is assigned to produce an anti-American film at a studio in Warsaw, Poland. He secretly uses the assignment to compile a documentary film about an anti-Communist uprising in Warsaw that has gone unreported in the West, which he plans to smuggle out of Poland so the United States can show it at the United Nations — but the head of the film project learns that at least some of her staff members are working against the Soviets, and she embarks on an effort to find them. Guest stars: Warren Stevens, Sue England, Berry Kroeger, Patricia Huston, Emil Sitka, and John Conwell.
References
^ abcdefgMcNeil, Alex, Total Television: The Comprehensive Guide to Programming From 1948 to the Present, Fourth Edition, New York: Penguin Books, 1996, ISBN0-14-024916-8, p. 84.
^ abcdefghBrooks, Tim, and Earle Marsh, The Complete Directory to Prime-Time Network and Cable TV Shows, 1946-Present (Sixth Edition), New York: Ballantine Books, 1995, ISBN0-345-39736-3, p. 88.
