CBS Playhouse Season 1, Episode 5: My Father and My Mother

The Glass Menagerie

Story about an African American soldier in Vietnam. It focuses on the past and present of a war-weary GI who, after 20 years of professional soldiering, begins a quest for life. Master Sergeant Olly Winter, winding up a long career, is serving as an advisor in Vietnam. When his platoon is ambushed by the Viet Cong, Olly, the only survivor, sets out on the long trek back to safety. Along the way he picks up company, a young Vietnamese girl, her dog, and an orphaned baby. The girl doesn't understand English, but Olly talks to her--and himself about the wars he's seen, his family, and the life he plans to lead 'If I get out of here alive.'

90 min

The Final War of Olly Winter

When carpenter Peter Schermann needed a home, he built it with his own hands. And the house, like Peter, was strong; solid as a tree. But now he's old, too old. His children have no room for him. Peter winds up in a rest home--where he angrily rebels. He resents being treated as if he were senile or crippled. And he is offended by the empty atmosphere of waiting for death. Loring Mandel's compassionate drama follows Peter's lonely, courageous struggle to find a life in a world that has shut him out.

90 min

Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night

After 15 years of marriage, Michael and Lois Graves have decided to pack it in. No bitterness or tears; just a divorce. Their friends think it's childish. They invite the couple to dinner, where blind to their personal motives, they hope to talk Mike and Lois out of splitting up. What they ultimately do to themselves is quite another story.

90 min

Dear Friends

Ned, a New York magazine editor, tries to escape the responsibilities of his rocky marriage, the neediness of his two teen daughters and especially the agony of putting his autistic son into an institution by thinking back on his boyhood in Massachusetts. As he returns to that life as an adult—walking into scenes of the 1940s with his parents as an adult—he realizes that life always was a challenging proposition. The boomeranging back and forth in time presented Schaefer and Gene Hackman, in his most outstanding TV performance, with enormous demands.

90 min

Secrets

90 min