User Reviews

David Niven stars in this installment of "Four Star Playhouse". When the show begins, a super-obnoxious rich guy (George MacReady) arrives with his bride at a crappy tropical island. It turns out that the rich guy owns the rubber business and has come to check up on a doctor (Niven) employed by the company. This is because his resume DIDN'T check out and he intends to fire the doc. Without even giving the guy a chance to explain himself. the rich guy begins throwing his weight about and tells the doctor to pack his bags and go. However, soon Mr. Rich Guy gets ill and the doctor appears to be the only one who can save him.

While this episode is entertaining, one thing really bothered me. The rich guy was amazingly one-dimensional and it was hard to believe this hard- bitten guy was real. Also, it's a minor quibble, but they didn't pronounce the main island of Tahiti (Papeete) correctly...and the folks SHOULD have known how to do this. Not a bad episode but one that isn't particularly outstanding either.

The story set on a tropical island is straightforward,a synonym for some with "corny" and is noteworthy for acknowledging customs of other cultures, possibly with a crack at Christian culture and practice when discussing the bowl shared before administering to a local with coral poison. Some call the executive male "one dimensional", somewhat futuristic now that the 21st Century has recognised the obsessive psychopathic nature of the modern executive. The Closed Captions referred to one character as marijuana, which was not his name, but was indicative of how captioning works, or in this case didn't. I thought a well-executed example of a conventional plot, worth watching to see Niven, and in my opinion worth 6-6.5/10 as cinematic entertainment.

This early entry in the anthology series "Singer Four Star Playhouse" is a perfect example of why the half-hour drama show format was dropped so many decades ago. Nearly 60 years old, "The Island" doesn't play well at all. In fact, the advertisements for Singer Sewing Centers are more entertaining than the main program.

Guest Star (the 3 original alternating regulars of the Playhouse were Dick Powell, Joel McCrea and Charles Boyer) David Niven plays a sort of "defrocked" medical doctor, very sympathetically taking care of the natives and respecting their customs on a remote island.

The owner of the island and the soap company that employs him, George Macready arrives on the island with his bride Dianne Foster, and immediately fires Niven, having researched that he's been hired and is operating under a phony name. Very corny plot device has Macready struck with appendicitis and Niven saving his life. Predictable resolution of the conflict ensues.

With just 26 minutes to work with (including the integrated Singer commercials), the backstory, characterizations, plot developments and changes of hear come way too fast & furious to satisfy. Ironically, the current fad on TV is for hour-long (that means 40 or so minutes of actual show) dramatic series to juggle at least two or maybe three stories at a time, a result of the ADD syndrome of younger viewers who are assumed to be too restless to appreciate linear presentations. Maybe they're ripe for a revival of the short-short format used here.

At any rate, John & Gwen Bagni's screenplay for "The Island" is pure hackwork, a platform that I found embarrassing for such a great talent as Niven. His film career was still going strong in 1952, though hardly at his peak level of top A assignments, but I guess TV was the coming thing at the time, attracting all sorts of big screen talents.

Macready, who has nothing to be ashamed of for his roster of film noir villains over the years, is boring and one-note as the hard-hearted, hissable creep her. The always reliable Dianne Foster is earnest in a painfully underwritten role as his wife. A cheap jungle set in the studio is not much to look at.