the writer, director and cast: It was a brilliant and compelling work... Mr. Miller's dialogue was especially fine, natural, vivid and understated. Miss Laurie's performance was enough to make the flesh crawl, yet it also always elicited deep sympathy. Her interpretation of the young wife just a shade this side of delirium tremens—the flighty dancing around the room, her weakness of character and moments of anxiety and her charm when she was sober—was a superlative accomplishment. Miss Laurie is moving into the forefront of our most gifted young actresses. Mr. Robertson achieved first-rate contrast between the sober man fighting to hold on and the hopeless drunk whose only courage came from the bottle. His scene in the greenhouse, where he tried to find the bottle that he had hidden in the flower pot, was particularly good... John Frankenheimer's direction was magnificent. His every touch implemented the emotional suspense but he never let the proceedings get out of hand or merely become sensational.Old Man (November 20, 1958) was adapted by Horton Foote from William Faulkner's story set during the 1927 Mississippi River flood. Face of a Hero (January 1, 1959), based on the Pierre Boulle novel, starred Jack Lemmon, who took this play to Broadway for a run of 36 performances during October to November 1960. The following year, Frankenheimer began with The Blue Men (January 15, 1959), an Alvin Boretz drama about the trial of a police detective who refused to make an arrest. A. E. Hotchner adapted Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls into a two-part format (March 12 and March 19, 1959). Journey to the Day (April 22, 1960) was a Roger Hirson drama about group therapy. Live to tapePlayhouse 90 began as a live series, making a transition to tape in 1957. Kevin Dowler, writing for the Museum of Broadcast Communications, noted: Its status as a "live" drama was short lived in any case, since the difficulties in mounting a 90-minute production on a weekly basis required the adoption of the recently-developed videotape technology, which was used to record entire shows beforehand from 1957 onward. Both the pressures and the costs of this ambitious production eventually resulted in Playhouse 90 being cut back to alternate weeks, sharing its time slot with The Big Party between 1959 and 1960. The final eight shows were aired irregularly between February and May 1960, with repeats broadcast during the summer