Cliffhangers: “Stop Susan Williams”

In the spring of 1979 NBC premiered an unusual hour-long series consisting of a trio of twenty-minute serials. Each serial, broadcast in “chapters,” ended in a cliffhanger that was resolved in the following week’s episode. NBC had high hopes for the series, which was heavily promoted by the network. Stop Susan Williams starred Susan Anton as an investigative photographer on the trail of her brother’s killers.

On November 29th, 1978, only two months into the new fall season, NBC canceled more than half of its prime time schedule, including every single new series it had premiered in September [1]. Nine new mid-season programs would be introduced during the first two months of 1979; Cliffhangers was one of those nine shows. It would compete with ABC’s powerhouse duo of Happy Days and Laverne and Shirley on Tuesdays at 8PM.

Introduced on Tuesday, February 27th, 1979, Cliffhangers was composed of three separate serials each running twenty minutes in length with different characters and stories. To help sell the novelty of the show, each serial was introduced at various stages of completion: Stop Susan Williams began with Chapter II, The Secret Empire with Chapter III, and The Curse of Dracula far into the story, with Chapter VI. However, the debut installments were all designed to introduce the characters and concepts to viewers; nothing was missed from having not seen the non-existent earlier chapters.

For the first three weeks Cliffhangers was on the air, Stop Susan William was seen first and The Curse of Dracula aired last, while The Secret Empire was stuck in the middle. Beginning with the March 20th episode, Stop Susan Williams and The Curse of Dracula were swapped, leaving The Secret Empire still in the middle.

John J. O’Connor, in a very brief review for The New York Times, pointed out that serials were “only fillers between the main features” and suggested that “the network should concentrate on its features” [2]. The premiere of Cliffhangers ranked 53rd out of 63 programs the week it was broadcast [3]. When NBC’s 1979-1980 fall schedule was released in early May, Cliffhangers had been canceled [4]. Out of 11 completed episodes only ten were broadcast; the final aired episode was seen on May 1st, 1979.

The final chapter of The Curse of Dracula aired during the tenth episode; the eleventh episode would have included the final chapter of Stop Susan Williams and the remaining two chapters of The Secret Empire. Although unseen in the United States, this episode was aired overseas.

Stop Susan Williams starred Susan Anton as the title character, Susan Williams, a photographer for a small newspaper called The Dispatch. Susan was trying to unravel the mystery surrounding the murder of her brother Alan, who had been killed after his car rolled over and dropped down the side of the cliff. The police called it an accident. Susan, however, just couldn’t let go of the idea that her brother had been murdered and that there was a larger conspiracy at work.

In the first chapter, Susan found her brother’s address book in his apartment and nearly died after being forced out onto a window ledge by a mysterious intruder. She fell from the ledge but survived by landing on an awning. It was the first of many brushes with death Susan would encounter during the course of the series. The names and places mentioned in the address book were her only clues but before she could start investigating she had to convince her editor, Bobby Richards (played by Ray Walston), to let her fly around the world. Although skeptical of the supposed conspiracy he agreed to foot the bill after Susan promised that The Dispatch would get an exclusive.

When Cliffhangers was canceled, the final chapter of Stop Susan Williams remained unaired. The ten chapters that were broadcast, along with the unaired eleventh chapter, were later edited into a made-for-TV movie called The Girl Who Saved The World. The telefilm depicted the conclusion of the serial and saw Susan Williams actually save the world.

Note: The following summary of Stop Susan Williams is based on the compilation telefilm The Girl Who Saved The World and may omit scenes from the serialized television version.

Each installment of Stop Susan Williams ended with Susan in some sort of dangerous situation. In the premiere, she traveled to Morocco to meet a man named Jack Schoengarth (played by Michael Swan) who had known her brother in Algiers. He offered to talk but insisted it be somewhere private. Susan returned to her hotel room to take a bath and, while she relaxed oblivious in the tub, someone was able to sneak into her room and release a snake. As the snake edged ever closer to her neck the chapter ended.

Here’s the “snake scene” cliffhanger as seen on Stop Susan Williams and then the full “snake scene” from the telefilm The Girl Who Saved the World:

Thankfully, Jack arrived just in time to save Susan. He then left, telling her to give up her investigation and go home. Instead, she flew to Narobi where she met the man who had tried to kill her with the snake (she had no way of knowing that at the time) and he told her he knew who killed her brother. Believing him was a mistake. He forced her into a pit where she was nearly eaten by a lion. After escaping, she almost fell into a river filled with piranha and later came close to being covered in molten lead.

Susan managed to survive each of these attempts to kill her. Shortly thereafter, she met Olga (played by Melora Marshall), a young woman who had been kidnapped by the those involved in the international conspiracy in order to force her father, Nikolai (played by Than Wyenn) to build a nuclear bomb. With the help of Jack, Susan was able to reunite Olga and Nikolai in Zurich. It was there that the international conspiracy began to take shape. The man in charge was Anthony Korf (played by Albert Paulsen) and the plan involved diamonds, a nuclear bomb, and a peace summit.

Nikolai had stolen enough plutonium to build the nuclear bomb and it had been hidden lead bars that were sent to Maryland where the bomb would be put together and planted at Camp David. It was set to go off at 2:30PM on May 15th. The United States government had been told to deliver a large sum of money in order to avert disaster. But Korf was planning to detonate the bomb regardless of whether or not the money was paid. The real plan was to wrest control of as many nations as possible in the chaos following the explosion.

Susan Anton as Susan Williams

Susan, Jack and Nikolai made their way to a mine below Camp David where they met Susan’s editor, Bobby. As the group entered the mine Bobby pulled a gun and Susan learned that her friend was part of the conspiracy and had killed Alan. He forced them deeper into the mine before trapping them inside. They had less than two hours to find and disarm the nuclear bomb. After Nikolai accidentally set off a booby-trap and was wounded, Susan and Jack found the bomb, which was protected by an electric fence. Using Susan’s rubber shoes, Jack charged through the fence, badly burning his hands in the process.

Susan was thus left alone to deal with the bomb. With Jack communicating with Nikolai and relaying instructions to Susan, they were successful in disarming it. A small secondary explosion, the result of disarming the device, left the mine unstable. Jack went back for Nikolai while Susan escaped to the surface. With the bomb disarmed, the United States military was free to go after the plane carrying the conspirators. Surrounded by several Air Force jets, the plane was forced to turn back, but not before the Anthony Korf began devising another plan.

When Cliffhangers ended in May of 1979, it left Stop Susan Williams with the ultimate cliffhanger – an unaired episode. The final broadcast revealed that Bobby had killed Alan, but it left off with one final cliffhanger. Could Susan and Jack disarm the bomb and stop the conspiracy? The final chapter would have revealed this, but it was never aired.

It wasn’t until The Girl Who Saved The World was edited together that viewers ever learned what happened — at least in the United States. Had Stop Susan Williams aired to completion on NBC, the story would have concluded with Jack and Susan walking down a muddy path, arm in arm, discussing their future plans.

Following the cancellation of Cliffhangers, Susan Anton went on to star in variety series called Presenting Susan Williams. It ran for just four episodes.

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Last Updated August 20th, 2010