Four Star Playhouse: A Place Full of Strangers (Dick Powell)

“A Place Full of Strangers” aired on Four Star Playhouse 60 years ago, on December 8, 1955. It stars Dick Powell and Dina Merrill (making her TV acting debut), with support from Morris Ankrum, Frieda Inescort and Howard McNear. It’s an allegorical tale about the successful class of middle-aged men who’d weathered the Depression and World War II who now had to deal with the pressures of high-powered corporate life in 1950s America. Powell plays a harried businessman who flees his office one day and takes a bus to “the end of the line” where he finds a “Twilight Zone”-style limbo awaiting him. As such it definitely looks forward to such “Twilight Zone” episodes as “Walking Distance” and “A Stop at Willoughby,” although its ultimate message is a lot more reassuring than the bleak morals Rod Serling gave us.