Marc Merson

Doc Hollywood

After leaving Washington D.C. hospital, plastic surgeon Ben Stone heads for California, where a lucrative practice in Beverly Hills awaits. After a car accident, he's sentenced to perform as the community's general practitioner.

The Rules of Marriage

A seemingly perfect marriage disintegrates, as both husband and wife become involved in a series of affairs.

Marriage Is Alive and Well

A talented wedding photographer, at a crossroads with his own marriage, reflects on tales of past clients and the hope, adversity and romance that holy matrimony brings. Starring as the photographer, football great Joe Namath narrates the unconventional tales of three couples: Judd Hirsch and Melinda Dillon as a twosome who have married and divorced multiple times and who are on the verge of repeating their mistake; an anxious newlywed who prefers the "freedom" that living together allows; and Jack Albertson as an aging comedian who wants to marry his much younger secretary despite the disapproval of his son.

Leadbelly

The life of Blues and folk singer Huddie Leadbetter, nicknamed Leadbelly is recounted. Covering the good times and bad from his 20s to 40s. Much of that time was spent on chain gangs in the south. Even in prison he became well known for the songs he had composed and sung during and before the time he spent there.

The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

Singer is a deaf-mute whose small world brings him in contact with a young girl, Mick, who cherishes a seemingly hopeless dream of becoming a concert pianist. At first hostile, Mick soon becomes friends with Singer, hoping to enlarge his small world. Three other central characters come to Singer for help also, each of them seeing in him a powerful force.

The Love Song of Barney Kempinski

On his wedding day, in the few remaining hours of his bachelorhood, Barney Kempinski goes off to tour the city and sing his song to life, love and the city of New York.

Androcles and the Lion

The story of Androcles, the simple-hearted Christian tailor whose friendship with a lion saves himself and his friends from martyrdom in the Roman Colosseum.

The Iceman Cometh

Theodore Hickman, a hardware salesman, makes by-yearly visits to Harry Hope's 1910-era waterfront bar for his periodical drinking binges. But on this visit he has decided to try to save the bar's patrons from their "lying pipe dreams."

Two by Saroyan: 'Once Around the Block' and 'My Heart's in the Highlands'

Two plays by William Saroyan portraying writers stymied, inspired, frustrated, excited, listful, wistful, slothful, awed, unnerved, perhaps corrupted and perplexed by the promise and let-down writing holds for them.

The World of Sholom Aleichem

This omnibus release consists of three playlets filmed and aired during television's Golden Age, and starring some of the legends of film and television. The collection originally ran as a two-hour segment on December 14, 1959, on the anthology series The Play of the Week, broadcast locally in New York City via the independent radio station WNTA. Each "tale" in the anthology was adapted from a single tale by the inimitable Sholom Aleichem, regarded by many as the "Yiddish Mark Twain". Included are: "A Tale of Chelm" starring Zero Mostel and Nancy Walker in the story of a bookseller attempting to buy a goat; "Bontche Schweig" about a poor man (Jack Gilford) whose recent arrival in Heaven makes the angels cry; and "The High School" about a Jewish merchant (Morris Carnovsky) persuaded by his wife (Gertrude Berg) to let their son attend a particular high school despite the enforcement of quotas for Jewish students.

Burning Bright

In this acclaimed production of John Steinbeck's classic morality tale, award-winning actress Colleen Dewhurst stars as Mordeen, a wife driven to desperate measures to give her aging circus performer husband a child. Dana Elcar, Donald Madden and Tony Award winner Myron McCormick round out the talented cast of this televised Broadway Theatre Archive production, produced by Lewis Freedman and Henry Weinstein.