Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse

Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse

Release Date:  11/24/1958
Country of Release:  USA
Length:  60 minutes
MPAA: 
Medium:  Video
Genre:  DRA
Release Message:  It's 1958 and Pete Jenson (William Bendix) has a vivid dream of being in a hotel in Honolulu on what he later finds out is December 6, 1941, the day before Pearl Harbor.
Description:  It's 1958 and Pete Jenson (William Bendix) is seeing a psychiatrist (Martin Balsam) and telling him of the same dream he's been having for about a week. It's in a hotel in Honolulu on what he later finds out is December 6, 1941, the day before Pearl Harbor. He tells both a newspaper publisher and a Navy ensign about his predictions but gets rebuffed both times. He wakes up just as the planes are coming. I'll stop there and just say Bendix is mostly good in his role and provides some good humor in his scenes with Jesse White as a bartender. Balsam also is compelling as the psychiatrist especially when he proposes a theory of what would happen if someone actually came back in time and died in the past. Though some of what he says may be partly contradicted by the ending with Jensen's picture at his bar, this was still a nearly excellent outing for the premise. The version I saw on YouTube had something that was missing that I read about in the book. It was Desi Arnaz' explanation of what just happened: "We wonder if Pete Jenson did go back in time or if he ever existed. My personal answer is that the doctor had seen Jenson's picture sometime before and had a dream. Any of you out there have any other answers? Let me know." One critic at the time was so mad at that "explanation" he simply wrote, "GO HOME, DESI!"