Recall that last month it was reported that 208 episodes of General Electric Theater, all hosted by Ronald Reagan, had been found in the General Electric/NBC Universal archives and restored and were to be presented to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.
Today it seems yet another episode of the series has been found. Titled “The Dark, Dark Hours,” the episode aired on December 12th, 1954. Featured was actor James Dean in one of his later television roles, playing a young man who forces Reagan’s character, a doctor, to treat his friend.
According to John Meroney, writing in The Atlantic, the episode was “unearthed” by scriptwriter/actor Wayne Federman (who currently writes for Late Night with Jimmy Fallon) who is working on a retrospective of Reagan’s television work. Federman edited the 23-minute episode into the following six-minute video:
The Atlantic does not mention where the episode was found but according to this YouTube video, which was posted on April 15th, it “was recently discovered in Europe,” suggesting that has nothing to do with the restoration of the other 208 episodes found in the General Electric/NBC Universal. The episode was mentioned during this evening’s installment of The CBS Evening News; an CBS News article can be found here.
This was during the period when “GENERAL ELECTRIC THEATER” presented both live and filmed presentations (it eventually became a filmed series by 1957), and kinescopes of live episodes weren’t included in the syndicated reissue of the series [‘STAR SHOWCASE”], so this is a rarity, indeed.