Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! This Thursday, I will be reviewing Darke of the Night, which aired its only episode on the DuMont Network in 1955. The show can be found on YouTube!
This week’s pilot originally aired as a part of the Studio 57 anthology show.
Episode 1.1 “Who’s Been Sitting In My Chair?”
(Dir by David Butler, originally aired on September 10th, 1955)
Johnny Darke (Jack Carson) is the hippest and coolest DJ in all of New York City .… or, at least, he’s as hip and cool as anyone could have been in 1955. All through the night, he spins records and talks to “the ghosts” who are listening. His station manager (Joseph Kearns) tells him that his sponsor doesn’t like it when Johnny talks about ghosts, but no one tells Johnny Darke what to do.
Johnny knows that a woman has been entering his apartment while he’s at the studio, but he doesn’t know why. (What I don’t know is why Johnny doesn’t just lock his door.) Johnny suspects that the woman is Margaret Canady (Jocelyn Brando), who lived in the apartment before Johnny moved in. Margaret’s boyfriend, Vincent Marsh (H.M. Wynant), is on death row for murder, but as Johnny learns about the case, he sees it as a story about two people who love each other as opposed to a woman who fell in love with a killer.
When Vincent breaks out of prison, he steals a guard’s gun and tells the guard that he’s going to use it to kill Margaret. (That was nice of him.) The police come down to the radio station and ask Johnny if he knows where to find Margaret. Johnny says that Margaret is probably at his apartment. After the police leave (and, strangely, do not immediately head over to Johnny’s apartment), Johnny calls his place and Margaret answers the phone. Apparently, Margaret’s not very good at secretly breaking into places.
When Johnny hears Vincent arrive over the phone, he hops over to his microphone and gives a cryptic message to “the ghost in the big brown chair” that the ghost who has just arrived is not in love with her. Then Johnny goes to his apartment and talks Vincent down.
This was a pilot for a series that would have featured Johnny Darke getting involved in the lives of his listeners. Jack Carson is likable as Johnny, which almost makes up for the fact that the story itself makes absolutely no sense. Why doesn’t Johnny just lock up his apartment before he heads to work? The implication is that Margaret is sneaking into the apartment to wait for Vincent to return, but there’s also a scene where it’s revealed that she’s secretly living with the building’s landlady. That scene is never followed up on. As I already mentioned, the biggest plot hole is that the police don’t immediately head over to Johnny’s apartment when they hear that Margaret is there. If they’re so determined to catch Vincent and they know that Vincent is planning on killing Margaret, why does it take them so long to actually go to the apartment? It seems like that should have been their priority.
Interestingly enough, the pilot ends with Jack Carson stepping out of character and offering up some statistics on the value of records purchased in 1957 ($4,000,000 worth) and the number of radio stations in the country. Carson explains that DJs are everywhere and every DJ has a million stories that could be adapted for Darke of the Night. He then brings on two actual DJs, Peter Potter and Al Jarvis. Both Potter and Jarvis endorse the idea of a weekly television series about a DJ.
It’s odd but, in its way, kind of touching. Jack Carson just seems so earnest and sincere about his desire to star as a radio DJ! Unfortunately, it didn’t happen for him. The pilot aired as part of the Studio 57 anthology series and that was that. Carson may not have gotten to play a DJ on a weekly basis, but two years later he co-starred in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof with Paul Newman and Elizabeth Taylor. Carson passed away in 1963 at the far too young age of 52, but he’ll live forever wherever classic movies are appreciated.
