| No Time for Sergeants | |
| Country: | United States |
| Language: | English |
| Release Date: | October 1, 1954[1] |
| Media Type: | |
No Time for Sergeants is a 1954 best-selling novel by Mac Hyman, which was adapted into a teleplay on The United States Steel Hour, a popular Broadway play and 1958 motion picture, as well as a 1964 television series. The book chronicles the misadventures of a country bumpkin named Will Stockdale who is drafted into the U.S. Army during World War II and assigned to the U.S. Army Air Forces. Hyman was in the Army Air Forces during World War II.
Ira Levin adapted Hyman's novel for a one-hour teleplay that appeared as an episode on The United States Steel Hour television series in 1955. An expanded version appeared on Broadway at the Alvin Theatre later that year. In 1958, a film version was released.
See main article: No Time for Sergeants (United States Steel Hour). Ira Levin's adaptation of the novel appeared live on March 15, 1955, on the anthology series The United States Steel Hour. It starred Andy Griffith as Will Stockdale, Harry Clark as his nemesis and inadvertent mentor Sergeant Orville King, as well as Robert Emhardt, Eddie Le Roy and Alexander Clark. A kinescope recording of the broadcast is available.
An expanded version of the play, written by Ira Levin, opened on Broadway at the Alvin Theatre on October 20, 1955, produced by Maurice Evans and directed by Morton DaCosta. Griffith reprised his role, Myron McCormick played Sgt. King, Roddy McDowall played Will's army buddy Ben, and Don Knotts made his Broadway debut as Corporal Manual Dexterity. Scenic designer Peter Larkin won a Tony Award in 1956, and Andy Griffith was nominated for a Tony for Best Featured Actor. The play ran for a total of 796 performances, closing on September 14, 1957.
See No Time for Sergeants (1958 film)
No Time for Sergeants was filmed and released by Warner Bros. in 1958. The film was directed by Mervyn LeRoy and starred Griffith, McCormick, Knotts, and most of the rest of the original Broadway cast. Warner Bros. contract stars Nick Adams (as Stockdale's fellow draftee Benjamin B. Whitledge) and Murray Hamilton (as Irving S. Blanchard) joined the cast.
| Genre: | Sitcom |
| Composer: | George Duning |
| Country: | United States |
| Language: | English |
| Num Seasons: | 1 |
| Num Episodes: | 34 |
| Runtime: | 30 min |
| Network: | ABC |
No Time for Sergeants came to the small screen in Fall 1964. By this point, Griffith and Knotts were both established as stars of The Andy Griffith Show and were no longer available. The television series No Time for Sergeants starred Sammy Jackson who had had one line in the film version.[2] When Jackson read that Warner Bros. was going to produce a television sitcom version of No Time for Sergeants, he wrote directly to Jack L. Warner, stating that he was the best choice for the role and asked Warner to watch a certain episode of the series Maverick as proof. Ten days later, Jackson was told to come to the studio to test for the role.[2] Jackson won the role over several actors, including the better known Will Hutchins, a Warner Bros. Television contract star who formerly played the sympathetic Sugarfoot and had been in the No Time for Sergeants film.[3]
Unlike Jim Nabors's Gomer Pyle (of The Andy Griffith Show spin-off of the same name, inspired by No Time for Sergeants), Jackson's Stockdale was not unintelligent. He possessed a considerable amount of common sense gained from experience, which he frequently brought to bear during the run of the series.
Part of the William T. Orr-produced stable of Warner Bros. Television programs, the series was produced by George Burns's production company. It preceded Burns' own Wendy and Me sitcom (which starred Burns and Connie Stevens) on ABC's Monday night schedule. However, opposite The Andy Griffith Show, the series headlined by the original star of all the earlier versions of No Time For Sergeants, it was trounced in the ratings and only lasted one season. It was shown in the UK on ITV from 1965 to 1969.
Andy Clyde, formerly of The Real McCoys, had a supporting role in the television series as Grandpa Jim Anderson. Ann McCrea, while appearing as a regular on The Donna Reed Show, was cast as Amelia Taggert in the 1964 episode "O Krupnick, My Krupnick".
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A Dell Four Color Issue 914 comic book version of this story, illustrated by Alex Toth and published in July 1958, follows the movie's narrative. Three follow up issues in the 1960s tied into the short-lived TV series that starred Sammy Jackson.Greg Theakston's Pure Imagination released The Alex Toth Reader, v2 in 2005. The art has been reproduced from the originals by a process that has been come to be known as Theakstonization, a process by which the original comics have the color leached out, leaving only the black and white line art, which then is reproduced to appear exactly as it did at the time of original publication. One of the stories offered is the original movie adaptation.