Jess Kirkpatrick

When the Hooterville Cannonball is derailed, Homer Bedloe (Charles Lane) hopes to use the "disaster" as an excuse to put the engine out of commission. In response, the citizens of Hooterville take over the operation of the Cannonball themselves. At first, engineers Charley (Smiley Burnette) and Floyd (Rufe Davis) are delighted--but after a few weeks of suffering the impossible demands of the engine's new "owners", the boys are on the verge of quitting! Virginia Sale, who'd appeared in several earlier episodes as Selma Plout, returns in the role of Maude Blake. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Now posing as "Ed Sanders", Kimble (David Janssen) shows up at an electronics demonstration being held in a shopping mall, where he witnesses security guard Pete Dawes (Howard Da Silva) gunning down a teenage thief. Now Kimble must save an innocent man from being accused of the shooting--but he dares not make a move out of the mall for fear of being arrested. Caught in the middle of this dilemma is camera-store employee Marcia (Lois Nettleton), who has offered to provide Kimble a safe harbor from the authorities. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Using his new camera to the max, Herman (Fred Gwynne) snaps a picture outside a bank, capturing the images of two fleeing bank robbers. As a result, both crooks and cops converge upon the Munster household--and both wish that they hadn't. Featured in the role of a policeman is former Hollywood stuntman Robert Morgan, the husband of Munsters star Yvonne DeCarlo (Morgan had suffered a crippling injury while filming How the West Was Won), whereupon his wife had put her career on hold for two years to nurse him back to health). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Rosemary DeCamp, who would appear in later Petticoat Junction episodes as the Bradley girls' Aunt Helen, is here seen as Emily Mapes, an old school friend of Kate Bradley (Bea Benadaret). Having recently remarried, Emily is convinced that the widowed Kate should take upon herself a second husband. To this end, she enlists the aid of Kate's daughters to round up all the local eligible bachelors--who even by Hooterville and Pixley standards are a sad lot indeed. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A major metropolis has been thrown into panic by a series of bomb threats. Making matters worse, an eccentric artist named James Bellington (Donnelly Rhodes) has shown up at various municipal buildings bearing a variety of ticking packages. In each instance, the contents of the package prove to be harmless, and the authorities are invariably forced to let Bellington go. The question: is Bellington a lunatic who is crying wolf so that he will ultimately be able to plant a real bomb -- or does he have another insidious scheme in mind? Watch for David Carradine at the end of this episode in an unbilled bit role. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A pair of enterprising sharpsters, James and Mabel Johnson (Murvyn Vye, Kathleen Freeman), take the Clampetts to court after a minor traffic accident. Wrapping themselves in bandages, the Johnsons spin a lucid account of how they were seriously injured by the "drunken" Clampett family, while a slick attorney (Dean Harens) prevents the defendants from telling their side of the story. Finally, Jed Clampett, acting as his own attorney, insists that the Judge (Roy Roberts) listen to a few facts, and as a result, Mr. Johnson incurs some real injuries at the hands of his outraged wife. First shown on May 1, 1963, "The Clampetts in Court" was The Beverly Hillbillies' highest-rated episode to date, and would remain the ninth most popular of the series' 274 installments. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Journalist Lawrence Vander (Paul Lambert) is murdered during a weekend retreat for the employees of Space Associates Ltd, a major defense contractor. It turns out that Vander was trying to track down ex-Nazi Max Keinermann, who may be working for Space Associates under an alias.. Accused of the murder is Harlan Merill (Dick Foran), who has a rather unsavory past of his own. Perry Mason (Raymond Burr) dedicates himself to clearing Merrill's name--actually two names, since he is also using an alias--and solving the murder. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The first season of Bonanza came to an end on April 30, 1960, with the episode titled "Death at Dawn." Laurence Mascott's teleplay would seem to have been influenced by the like-vintage TV series The Untouchables, as a gang of 19th century gangsters holds Virginia City in thrall, forcing the citizens to buy protection lest "accidents" befall them. When a store owner is murdered by gang member Perkins (Gregory Walcott), the only witness, the victim's wife Beth (Nancy Deale), is terrorized into silence. Determined to bring Perkins to justice, Ben Cartwright offers Beth safe harbor at the Ponderosa-whereupon gang leader Sam Bryant (Robert Middleton) kidnaps Ben and offers to release him in exchange for Perkins. Featured in the cast are Morgan Woodward (Sheriff Biggs), Wendell Holmes (Judge Scribner), Paul Carr (McNeil), Peter Leeds (Norton), Hugh Sanders (Dr. Brahm), Anthony Joachim (The Hangman) and Jess Kirkpatrick (Kelly). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Wally (Tony Dow) was supposed to take little Chuckie Murdock (Rory Stevens) to buy shoes at the nearby shopping center, but instead the job has been shunted off to Beaver. "Job" is right: Chuckie is a little monster who insists that Beaver grant his every whim -- and to top it off, when time comes to go home, Chuckie has disappeared! As Beaver frantically searches for his missing charge, Ward searches for Beaver to inform him that the situation is not as bleak as it appears. Chuckie's mom is played by Marjorie Reynolds, best remembered as the girl to whom Bing Crosby first sings "White Christmas" in the 1942 movie Holiday Inn. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Don Murray stars as a humble cowboy with aspirations for bigger things. He borrows money from his dance-hall girlfriend Lee Remick to buy a ranch, then dumps Remick in favor of banker's daughter Patricia Owens. Murray runs for political office, and in so doing is compelled to join a posse in search of his best friend Stuart Whitman, who has turned rustler. Anxious not to compromise his climb to the top, Murray stands by in silence as Whitman is lynched. In the end, however, Murray regains his essential decency when he is shot while trying to protect his ex-girlfriend Remick from bullying land baron Richard Egan. Based on a novel by A. B. Guthrie Jr., These Thousand Hills may look and sound like a western, but it has "film noir" written all over it. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

While often regarded as one of America's greatest novelists, William Faulkner produced work that did not always translate well to the screen; it's ironically appropriate that this movie, based on several of Faulkner's short stories, is often regarded as one of the best films based on his work, though not especially accurate to the original source material. Ben Quick (Paul Newman), a sullen but self-confident drifter, arrives in a small Mississippi town where his father had a bad reputation as a firebug. Will Varner (Orson Welles), the town's patriarch, still holds a grudge against Quick's dad, and when the young man decides to stay in town and sharecrop on Varner's land, Will goes out of his way to make his life difficult. However, Will develops a grudging respect for Quick's guts and determination, and he wishes that his weak-willed son Jody (Anthony Franciosa) could be more like him; Jody's wife Eula (Lee Remick) happens to agree. In time, Will gets the idea that Quick might be a good match for his daughter Clara (Joanne Woodward) and a better choice to take over his business dealings than Jody. However, neither Clara nor Quick care to be told what to do, and besides, Clara already has a beau -- though Alan Stewart (Richard Anderson) is even more of a milquetoast than Jody and is led by the nose by his mother (Mabel Albertson). However, sparks begin to fly between Clara and Quick, and when Jody fears he may lose his place as heir of Will's estate, he takes drastic action, trapping his father in a barn, setting it on fire, and planting evidence that would suggest that the blaze was Quick's doing. The Long, Hot Summer was the first film that Newman and Woodward made together, and they got married the same year. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

This heartwarming tale chronicles the friendship between a young Texas girl and her pet calf, which she won at the county fair. When the girl is stricken with polio it is caring for the animal that keeps her strong. Later she enters her beloved pet in the Chicago International Exposition. The heifer wins and the girl is elated until she learns that her cow will be auctioned off and prepared for the slaughterhouse. Fortunately a kindly meat packer intervenes, and girl and bovine are happily reunited. Songs include: "Get Ready with the Ribbon, Judge," "Who Says Animals Don't Cry?" ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

This confusingly-titled science-fiction thriller is both an artifact of its time and a surprisingly forward-looking film, in terms of plot. On the one hand, its plot makes it a kind of 1950's B-movie antecedent to The Andromeda Strain -- on the other, it owes a lot to the popular police procedural films and television shows of the decade or so leading up to its production. The title refers to an advanced US satellite sent into orbit, in part to gather and return samples of material from space. The latter includes a microscopic organism believed to be the same existing on the planet Mars which, so one scientist, Dr. Charles Pommer (Paul Frees), believes, is responsible for that world's red coloration. Pommer, who is permitted to take the sample to his home laboratory, is brilliant and single-minded in his work; but his intellect and ambition, coupled with his unstable personality and chaotic personal life, leads to disaster. He discovers that the organism, which he christens "Blood Rust," can multiply incredibly fast in Earth's environment, and attach itself to (and ultimately consume} any living host creature, including human beings. The alien organism proves his undoing, and he lives just long enough to warn project security chief John Hand (Bill Williams) of the danger -- but the warning comes too late to prevent Pommer's ex-wife (Lyn Thomas) from becoming an unwitting carrier of the organism. It's up to Hand and his assistant, Radigan (Robert Ellis), to find this woman -- whose identity they don't even know at first -- even as she tries (for purely personal reasons) to elude the authorities, not knowing of the danger she presents to herself and the world. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide