Some Changes to O'Hara's Original

Rod Serling, right below
More on 'It'Mental Work,'

the Television Show

By Richard Rabicoff

More on the Bob Hope Chrysler Theater presentation of It's Mental Work, from Internet Movie Database   http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0528190/.


The production was actually December 20, 1963.  It was originally scheduled for November 22, 1963, but postponed due to NBC's coverage of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

My comment:
Among other adaptational travesties, the lawyer Conn in John O'Hara's original (no doubt Jewish) was changed to Vito Conte (no doubt Italian) in the TV script.  Is it possible that Serling thought that having a Jewish shyster would be perceived as anti-Semitic? 

Also the black assistant played by Archie Moore was the recipient of several racial barbs from the Italian.  No doubt the liberal Serling wanted to give the O'Hara added "relevance" by adding a civil rights subtheme.

Richard Rabicoff
Perry Hall, MD 21128

Richard Rabicoff Reports:

O'Hara Sighting: The Atlantic Wednesday, October 28, 2009 8:38 AM Now I know why I love Mad Men.  An article by Benjamin Schwartz in the November Atlantic, 'Mad About Mad Men'  (http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200911/schwarz-mad-men) offers an expansive critique of the show, mixing praise and potshots for various characters and scenes. So many of the kudos for the show--precision of period details, precision of the dialogue--are redolent of O"Hara that you keep expecting JOH to crop up, amid the usual suspects of Cheever, Yates, et al. And toward the end, the miracle occurs: "Today the megamovie is America's most accomplished and vital mass entertainment, so it's fitting that Mad Men, which is the most quintessentially American megamovie made to date, explores a peculiarly American theme and exploits a peculiarly American asset. Leave it to a show that famously employs an unusually high number of women writers to capture—more vividly than anything I've encountered save Norman Mailer's short story "The Language of Men" and, obliquely, John O'Hara's "Graven Image" — the unrelenting, low-level competition and consequent posing, the miscues and jarringness, the monotonous lack of intimacy that characterize a good deal of the conversation among middle-class American males. And leave it to television to enshrine correct Americanese." Now we just need a "megamovie" version of, what? From the Terrace? to show people the original gospel.