The Adventures of Hiram Holiday
| The Adventures of Hiram Holliday | |
|---|---|
Wally Cox as Hiram Holliday with Angela Greene, 1957
| |
| Genre | Adventure sitcom |
| Created by | Paul Gallico, based on his novel of the same name |
| Starring |
Wally Cox Ainslie Pryor Thurston Hall Stanley Adams Maureen Hingert Lita Milan |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Original language(s) | English |
| No. of seasons | 1 |
| No. of episodes | 23 (3 unaired) |
| Production | |
| Producer(s) | Philip Rapp |
| Camera setup | Multi-camera |
| Running time | 25 mins. |
| Production company(s) | California National Productions |
| Distributor | NBCUniversal Television Distribution |
| Release | |
| Original network | NBC |
| Picture format | Black-and-white |
| Audio format | Monaural |
| Original release | October 3, 1956 – February 27, 1957 |
The Adventures of Hiram Holliday is an American adventure sitcom that aired on NBC from October 3, 1956 to February 27, 1957. Starring Wally Cox in the title role, the series is based on the 1939 novel of the same name by Paul Gallico.
The series is similar to the book, and focuses on the adventures of a newspaper proofreader who through years of secret practice has gained James Bond-like skills in many forms of physical combat, shooting, and in activities as diverse as rock climbing and scuba diving. The proofreader, Hiram Holliday (Cox), was revealed to be muscular when stripped.
The starting gimmick of the series was that Holliday had inserted a comma in a news story which saved the publisher a small fortune in a trial. The grateful publisher rewarded Holliday with a trip around the world, which set the scene for him to solve crimes and thwart foreign spies in every port of call he visited. The series was hampered by a low budget which did not permit convincing recreations of the different exotic foreign locations featured in each episode.
Other cast members included actor Ainslie Pryor as Holliday's reporter sidekick, Joel Smith, and Sebastian Cabot as a criminal mastermind he repeatedly encountered. There were a number of directors, including George Cahan and William Hole, and a number of writers, including Philip Rapp and Richard Powell. Rapp also served as producer.
NBC canceled the series in early 1957 after 20 of the 23 episodes produced aired. The entire series later ran on the BBC from the fall of 1960 to the summer of 1961. In its BBC rerun, The Adventures of Hiram Holliday was the first US series to be shown five days a week in the same time slot.
Star Wally Cox was best known for portraying the title role in Mister Peepers, an early live NBC sitcom about a mild-mannered junior high school science teacher; it was typecasting he was never able to escape in later years. Hiram Holliday was Cox's last starring role.
The original novel was Gallico's first published book. It was published by Grosset and Dunlap on the cusp of World War II in 1939. In form, the novel is a connected series of adventures, rather akin to short stories which flow into one another.
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