Four Star Playhouse (TV Series) Detective's Holiday (1954) User Reviews

Always the job

[bkoganbing · 7/10 · 3 August 2015]

Long before he was a big name director for feature films Blake Edwards was undergoing an apprenticeship on the Four Star Playhouse. Here he directs the number one star of the Four Star partnership Dick Powell in a drama about a police detective on holiday. But he can't escape from the job.

Powell is renting a cabin on a lake from Dick Foran and his wife Joan Camden. Camden is Foran's second wife and stepmother to his boys Tiger Fafara and Chris Olsen. Powell thinks she's possibly the driver of a getaway vehicle in a holdup from a few years back.

But then he comes down with a serious illness. And it's Camden who nurses him back to health. Now he has a real critical decision to make.

A fine dramatic piece about a man having to choose between his conscience and his job. His choice? Well you might want to reference the John Garfield classic, They Made Me A Criminal.

Well done.

[planktonrules · 8/10 · 1 April 2014]

This episode of "Four Star Playhouse" is directed by Blake Edwards and stars Dick Powell. Powell plays Dave Robinson--a very tired detective who is in need to a long rest. So, he heads into the mountains to do some fishing and relaxing. He stays with a nice family and everything is going great. However, due to some odd things the family says, the detective in him wonders if perhaps the missus is actually a wanted woman. Before he can take any action, Dave becomes deathly ill--and the same woman he might be ready to arrest nurses him back to health. Once he's better, he has a choice...but what will that be?

This show is nice because it offers an interesting moral dilemma--the law or the spirit of the law. Because it starred Powell and was directed by Edwards, you know that it will be a quality production throughout. Well worth seeing.

A Detective's Choice

[gordonl56 · 7/10 · 27 September 2012]

DETECTIVE'S HOLIDAY –1954 This is an episode from "Four Star Playhouse". This series ran for 130 episodes between 1952 and 1956.

Powell is a Police detective who needs a holiday. He is feeling run down and could use some time off. He arranges with a newlywed couple, Dick Foran and Joan Camden, to rent a room at their backwoods cabin.

A couple of days go by and Powell can't shake that feeling he knows Camden from somewhere. It was from a wanted poster he finally remembers. A woman a lot like Camden was seen in a car used at a liquor store hold-up 3 years ago.

Just to make sure, he drives to the local village to use the phone. He calls his partner, Barney Phillips, in L.A. Send me the photo from the case he tells Phillips. He has him mail it to Ralph Moody, the local doctor, whom Powell knows from past fishing trips.

The next afternoon, while out hunting with Foran, Powell collapses. Foran hauls him back to the cabin. He then drives over to fetch Moody the doc.

Moody checks on the unconscious Powell. He tells Foran and Camden he has a high fever from a case of influenza. He is too sick to move down to a hospital. Camden volunteers to watch over him.

For the next few days, Powell is racked by the vicious fever and comes close to dying. The fever finally breaks and Powell slowly recovers his strength. The doc, Moody, tells him he owes her life to Camden's nursing.

Moody then hands Powell the envelope Phillips had sent. Needless to say the photo matches Camden. Powell decides there is no need to send Camden to jail. She is obviously not the person she had been. He pockets the photo and packs to return to LA.

The director here is Blake Edwards of Peter Gunn and The Pink Panther fame. The d of p is George Diskant. His work includes, DESPERATE, BEWARE MY LOVELY, RIFFRAFF, THEY LIVE BY NIGHT, PORT OF NEW YORK, BETWEEN MIDNIGHT AND DAWN, THE RACKET, ON DANGEROUS GROUND and THE NARROW MARGIN. (b/w)

It's a matter of morals.

[mark.waltz · 6/10 · 3 February 2021]

What's a detective to do when he discovers while on vacation that someone he has run into is a wanted criminal? That's the case for Dick Powell in this Four Star Playhouse episode where he discovers that the blonde Joan Camden is the driver in a robbery from several years before and is now married to Dick Foran, the man sharing a cabin with him, and stepmother to his children. Powell goes about investigating the details of the case, but when he comes down with a fever, he finds him at her mercy as his life is now in her hands and she knows that he knows who she is.

There are two people at moral odds here with Powell caught between doing his job and breaking up a family and Camden who could easily not give Powell the medical treatment that he needs to survive. Camden emphasizes her character's nervousness over being exposed while Powell debates all of the aspects of the situation. A good script filled with ethical decision making issues is aided by good performances, and everything gets to be tied up neatly in a way that satisfied the ideals of justice.

A Detective's Dilemma

[dougdoepke · 19 September 2020]

The series excels here by setting up a non-formulaic plot and an unpredictable outcome for the conformist 1950's. Dave's (Powell) a detective on much needed vacation, so he goes to stay with a secluded couple and their kids on a far-away mountain. His friend, the doc (Moody) has sent him there since he knows the couple. Trouble is Dave recognizes wife Doris (Camden) as a possible fugitive from a botched robbery, but remains a friendly guest anyway. (Catch how well Camden and Powell execute that subtle recognition scene along with comparable editing and direction.) Still and all, it's a happy family, while Doris appears a dutiful wife and mother. Plus she faithfully attends Dave while he recovers from a bout of pneumonia. So what will Dave do. On one hand is her apparent criminal background and the demands of the law; on the other is her apparently reformed family life and the morality of mercy.

All in all, the entry's an unusual set-up for its time and one that remains as relevant today as yesterday. It's also one that distinguishes the series and is well worth catching up with.