The Fountain of Youth
Original title: Fountain of Youth
- Episode aired Sep 16, 1958
- 27m
IMDb RATING
7.4/10
527
YOUR RATING
A couple is conflicted when they are offered a chance at youth.A couple is conflicted when they are offered a chance at youth.A couple is conflicted when they are offered a chance at youth.
- Awards
- 1 win
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Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaThis was intended as the pilot episode of a TV series for Desilu, consisting of short stories with a sting in the tail, all introduced by Orson Welles. However, Welles was adamant that he "didn't want it to be like Hitchcock" - although the huge success of "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" was probably what inspired the idea. Welles instead planned to narrate each story, weaving in and out of the story and talking directly to the audience as he does in this pilot, thereby having the largest role without actually being a character in the plot. At the end of "The Fountain Of Youth", he actually mentions "next week's story" by name. However, it was never made and the series did not eventuate; Welles may have been compensated, perhaps, by the fact that this pilot did win the Peabody Award that year.
- ConnectionsFeatured in The Greatest Show You Never Saw (1996)
Featured review
The Fountain of Youth was a fascinating "What If?" concerning an Orson Welles television anthology series
Just watched this Orson Welles rarity on YouTube. It was a pilot for a proposed anthology series hosted by Welles in which he narrates with still pictures of the leading characters of a particular episode being displayed before the story proper begins. In this one called "The Fountain of Youth", Scientist Humphrey Baxter (Dan Tobin) falls for a Broadway showgirl named Carolyn Coates (Joi Lansing) but after three years away in Vienna, she takes to someone closer to her own age, a tennis player named Alan Brody (Rick Jason). Not very happy with this turn of events but patient, Humphrey tells the engaged couple of a youth potion that only one of them can take...Quite compelling the way certain parts of the narrative take turns making one wonder how things turn out. I especially loved the way Carolyn looks at the mirror and sees various drawings of how ugly she dreads looking. Certainly could have been as unique a series as Rod Serling's "The Twilight Zone" (a show which almost got Welles to host) and the fact that Welles had plugged the following week's "episode" as "Green Thoughts" makes one think of what we could have gotten had this pilot become a series...
Details
- Release date
- Country of origin
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- Also known as
- The Orson Welles Show
- Filming locations
- Production companies
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
- Runtime27 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 1.33 : 1
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