The Thirteen Clocks
- Episode aired Dec 29, 1953
- 1h
YOUR RATING
A princess is under a spell from an evil Duke. A valiant prince, a leprechaun and a court spy also play a big role in the rescue.A princess is under a spell from an evil Duke. A valiant prince, a leprechaun and a court spy also play a big role in the rescue.A princess is under a spell from an evil Duke. A valiant prince, a leprechaun and a court spy also play a big role in the rescue.
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Did you know
- TriviaThe only shared credit of actors Basil Rathbone and Cedric Hardwicke, who in the classic Universal Frankenstein franchise, specifically in the separate movies Son of Frankenstein (1939) and The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942), respectively portrayed Wolf Frankenstein and his elder brother Baron Ludwig Frankenstein, the two sons of the original mad scientist in the family, Dr. Henry Frankenstein, as was played by Colin Clive in the two earlier films in the series--Frankenstein (1931) and Bride of Frankenstein (1935), both of which also starred Boris Karloff as Frankenstein's monster, a role for which he returned for a last time in Rathbone's "Son" entry in the saga. In his outing as the doctor's son Ludwig, Hardwicke had also done a bit as the imagined "Ghost" of his father Henry since Clive had died in real life by then. But common to their two films, Rathbone and Hardwicke had each worked with Bela Lugosi playing the character Ygor and both worked also with Lionel Atwill, but in each film with his playing a different character, as he would also for the three movies in the saga after that. Successively after Karloff's three times as the monster, the character would be played in Hardwicke's "Ghost" entry by Lon Chaney Jr., with some voice work provided by Lugosi, and in the next film in the series Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943) by Lugosi totally, while Chaney returned to his Larry Talbot character from The Wolf Man (1941) to enable the meeting of the title. In addition to Karloff returning once more for a different mad scientist role, the character Dracula joined the party for the next two films not played by Lugosi (the original actor from Dracula (1931)), but by John Carradine, in each case with Chaney returning as the Wolf Man, and with the monster in those films being played by Glenn Strange. It was not until the next and last film in that series, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948), where it was Lugosi's Dracula who interacted in a film with Strange's Frankenstein's monster as well as Chaney's Wolf Man, ending the series with big thrills and even bigger laughs.
Featured review
Talent, and comprehension, and sincerity.
Okay, this TV adaptation was produced a long time ago when television was still young and clumsy. It was pretty much like watching a live stage production while somebody chased the actors around with a camera. However, the actors were all top notch. Basil Rathbone was perfection as the cold duke. Roberta Peters, a major opera star, is the enchanted Princess Saralinda who pretty much has only one line that she repeats over and over, but since the line is sung, it's a joy to hear every time she does it. As I said, everybody is a top notch pro. So as far as talent is concerned, they start off with a short novel written by James Thurber, one of the funniest men in American literature. They then assemble a cast of actors who, today, probably could not be afforded for a small production like this. By comprehension, I mean they actually understood the spirit of Thurber's work. While Thurber's writing is often thought of as "light," it was highly intelligent and required intelligence to get it. That leads to sincerity. They didn't play down. They had fun with the action, but they didn't clown it up to appeal to the morons. I don't know what Thurber thought of it, but I believe that if he saw it, he enjoyed it, and like many humorists, he had a hard time enjoying himself.
Details
- Runtime1 hour
- Color
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- Aspect ratio
- 1.33 : 1
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