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Out of Sight 257 “Busby Berkeley will make a comeback,” wrote the Daily Review in September 1954. It reported that Buzz would be directing singer and actor Harry Richman for his show on a local Hollywood TV station. Although Harry had worked with Buzz back in 1930 for Lew Leslie’s International Revue, there was no reteaming despite the announcement. The following month, producers Jack J. Gross and Philip N. Krasne of Gross-Krasne, Inc. signed Buzz to direct three new “telefilms” for their series Big Town. The offer was real, and there was no question of the show’s viability since it had been around since radio. The show bounced around to different networks by the time of Buzz’s involvement. For its fifth season, NBC picked up Big Town, and the show was sponsored by AC Spark Plug. The lead role of Steve Wilson had been played by a few actors, Patrick McVey the most notable. In NBC’s version, Mark Stevens, a B-level actor whose biggest role to date was playing Olivia de Havilland’s husband in 1948’s The Snake Pit, was cast as Wilson. The setting was the newsroom of the fictional “Illustrated Press.” There, like Clark Kent at the Daily Planet, Steve Wilson could be privy to breaking stories of unscrupulous lawbreakers. The established tone was akin to Jack Webb’s Dragnet, with voice-over narration time-stamped to the minute. In the episode “The Lovers,” Buzz’s direction is interesting and erratic. A woman’s murder opens the drama, the weapon seen only in shadow. The assailant smashes it on her head, drops what appears to be a silver candlestick, and exits without being revealed. The de rigueur solving of the murder with false leads and red herrings left Buzz little to do. There was, however, something quite interesting in Buzz’s approach to filming dialogue, as can be seen in three short segments. Each was shot in extremely tight close-up which, after a while, conveys a claustrophobic feeling to the viewer. In one escalating dialogue passage, three actors are filmed this way, and the cutting between the faces makes them 14 258 Buzz almost indistinguishable as their tempers flare. In all, Buzz worked on four episodes of Big Town that aired in late 1954 and early 1955. About two weeks prior to the airing of Buzz’s first episode of Big Town, he was arrested again on a charge of drunkenness. On Sunday, December 12, police found him sleeping on the doorstep of a retail store. They had answered an anonymous complaint about a prowler. The police stated that Buzz was in an “intoxicated condition.” The public report said that the director had $515 in his pockets, $20 of which was used to pay his bail. The next day Buzz received a continuance until the end of the week to answer the charge. He pleaded guilty on December 17 and was fined $50. Ten days later, his episode of Big Town titled “Boys Week” premiered. Either Marjorie Mae Pemberton Berkeley was divorced from her husband in April 1946, as numerous wire stories reported, or she wasn’t. She might have divorced Buzz and remarried him as rumors hinted. Perhaps the divorce proceedings were retracted when the couple had a change of heart. In any event, history repeated itself when, in the February 15, 1956, edition of the New York Times, a story broke with the headline “Film Director Sues 5th Wife for Divorce.” The complaint mentioned “cruelty” but offered no specifics other than that a property settlement had been reached. Their Tijuana wedding date of May 8, 1945, was listed, as was the fact that they had been living apart for a year and a month. The attorney for the plaintiff was Jerry Giesler. On January 21, 1957, Buzz was granted an interlocutory judgment indicating he was entitled to divorce Marge Pemberton. At the trial, he blamed the breakup on three things: the lack of real love, his mother-inlaw , and Kelly, a fox terrier. Buzz told the court that Marge didn’t love him and married him only “out of respect for my professional ability.” In a complaint that flew hypocritically in the face of his own devotion to Gertrude, Buzz charged that Marge constantly kept company with her mother. Marge’s mother also lived at their home part of the time. The damn dog, owned by Buzz’s mother-in-law, had caused seven thousand dollars...

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