User Reviews

This episode of "Four Star Playhouse" stars David Niven. While he was wonderful in this an other episodes of the series, this particular episode is very tough to believe as it all rests on the insane and impossible notion of identical cousins! Yes...two people who are related and look EXACTLY alike. This sort of cliché was used a lot in movies (such as "A Stolen Life") and TV (such as in "The Patty Duke Show"), but it is just ridiculous. Cousins and strangers don't look exactly like each other and you have to buy into this in order to life this episode.

Niven plays dual roles--a successful and rather amoral actor as well as his cousin, a struggling actor. The problem is that the struggling actor cannot get roles, as everyone says he looks too much like his famous cousin. In reality, however, he learns that this cousin has worked hard to keep him out of productions because he is actually worried that the cousin will outshine him. So how does the out of work cousin deal with this? See the show if you want to know.

As for me, the show was only mildly interesting because of the silly plot device. Perhaps you will enjoy it more than I did.

A four star rating for Finale, the Four Star Playhouse presentation starring David Niven in dual roles.

Steve Carlyle is a talented but out of work actor. He cannot get any roles in the theatre because he looks too much like his older and more famous cousin. Noted theatre actor Roger Carlyle.

Steve learns that his cousin has fixed it so he would be unemployable. Steve is more talented.

In desperation Steve is thinking about to murder when Roger takes a project to Hollywood where he can play dual roles.

There is an inherent weakness in the story. Not only of identical cousins but Roger can somehow stop all the producers not to take on his cousin.

When you are a star, the producers looks for someone similar who can ride on the same wave.

The ending has a twist but it might be too late for Steve.