Prime of Life
- Episode aired Feb 13, 1963
- 1h
Flint is ordered to prison to witness the execution of a murderer he helped capture.Flint is ordered to prison to witness the execution of a murderer he helped capture.Flint is ordered to prison to witness the execution of a murderer he helped capture.
Photos
- Warden E. A. Darrell
- (as C.M. Gampel)
- Doctor
- (as Arthur Behrstock)
- Director
- Writer
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaThe guard at the desk tells character Mr. Jasper (played by actor Gene Hackman), "There is a partition to keep the witnesses from photographing the execution with a concealed camera. We can't let pictures like that get out." The guard is referring to the execution of Ruth Snyder in 1928, when news photographer Tom Howard smuggled a camera into the death chamber, and photographed the execution. That photograph appeared on the front cover of the New York Daily News the next morning.
- Quotes
[first lines]
Narrator: In the Naked City, a man can search ten thousand side streets all twenty-two thousand days of his life, and never come face to face with the stranger within himself. Or he can, all of a November night, confront his own, his inner, reality. This confrontation can be more shattering than any bullet. This is a story of Adam Flint, his thoughts and feelings, his secret confrontation, his coming face to face with the question of the value of life, as he attends as a witness, the execution by electricity of a man he helped to arrest.
Feeling far more scared then Hames who's execution he's to whiteness in Sing Sing Prison Det. Flint reviews his life experiences as he's about to experience the taking of Hames' life. An that just about drives the by now paranoid Det. Flint nuts! It's not all that easy to watch a man die right before your eyes even one as murderous and remorseless as Phil Hames. And for the super bleeding heart liberal Det. Flint it's sheer torture for him to say the least.
Before he was to go to Sing Sing to watch Hames die Det Flint went to among other people the doctor,Arthur Behrstock, who delivered him some 32, on September 16, 1930, years ago. Acting hysterical and looking like he's about to loose it the Doc realizes that Det. Flint is under a great amount of stress and advises him to take some sedatives to clam himself down. It wasn't the stress of him knowing how he acted in the maternity ward when he was born that's bugging Det. Flint but how he'll react in the Sing Sing death house watching Phil Hames die.
Despite cracking up for just a brief moment when Hames was lead and strapped into the Sing Sing eclectic chair to be zapped by 2,000 volts of electricity and face his maker Det Flint kept his composure and didn't make a spectacle of himself during the entire execution process. He just stood there watching the man that he arrested face death. A death that Det. Flint himself refrained for handing him when he had Hames, while still holding his gun, in his gun-site the afternoon he arrested him.
P.S Check out a young Gene Hackman as out of town eye witness reporter Mr. Jasper the guy with the extremely sweaty palms who like Det. Flint was also to whiteness Phil Hames execution. The two, Jasper & Flint, weren't anywhere ready to whiteness a man going to his death but that experience made them realize, if they already didn't, how precious life, human or otherwise, is and how inhuman it is to be extinguished. Even for a ruthless mass or serial murderer like the late Phil Hames.
- sol-kay
- May 19, 2013
Details
- Release date
- Country of origin
- Language
- Filming locations
- East 4th St. between 2nd Ave. and Bowery, New York City, New York, USA(Shootout on rooftops above south side of 4th Street.)
- Production companies
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
- Runtime1 hour
- Color
- Aspect ratio
- 1.33 : 1