The Defender (Studio One)
The pilot for the television series, "The Defenders." The story of Walter and Kenneth Pearson, a father-and-son legal team. Broadcast as two segments of "Studio One," the story relates how the Pearsons defend a young man accused of killing a woman during a robbery attempt.
From the archive
25 Feb and 4 Mar 1957 Directed by: Robert Mulligan Written by: Reginald Rose Ralph Bellamy, William Shatner, Steve McQueen, Martin Balsam, Ed Asner Walter Preston and his son Kenneth, fresh out of law school, defend Joseph Gordon, who is charged with felony murder. Gordon is accused of robbing the apartment of a psychiatrist, Victor Wallach, and strangling his wife. Studio One, presented by Westinghouse, was one of the first of the anthology TV programs. A total of 466 episodes aired on CBS between 1948 and 1958. The program appeared in various time slots before finally settling in on Monday night. Like a number of other 1950s and '60s television shows, Studio One was moved over from radio, where it had started in the mid-1940s. By 1957, live TV was giving way to filmed shows, and the industry was migrating from New York to Los Angeles. The show was renamed Studio One in Hollywood and started airing filmed shows. Westinghouse stopped sponsoring the program and a year later, Studio One was gone. The show was nominated for numerous Emmy Awards throughout its run; it was nominated for Best Dramatic Series every year but won only once in 1952
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The Defender (Studio One) (1957) is hosted by the Internet Archive as a public-domain or openly licensed work, which means its copyright has expired, lapsed, or was released by the rights holder. No signup, no payment and no advertising interrupts playback. Nitrate streams the file directly from the Archive and hosts no video itself.
- Director
- Robert Mulligan
- Starring
- Ralph Bellamy, Martin Balsam, Steve McQueen, Vivian Nathan, William Shatner, Ian Wolfe, David J. Stewart, Russell Hardie
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