Episode
number: 206
Network broadcast date: Monday,
May 17, 1965
The
Gandy Walker
Genre: Human interest melodrama
Author: Ian Martin
Production number: 208
Production date: Thursday,
April 22, 1965
Director: Warren Somerville
Producer: not announced
Plotline: At her wits end, the wife of a celebrated folk singer desperately searches for some explanation for her husband’s increasingly bizarre behavior. And when his latest public episode sends her to the hospital, he finally reveals the heartbreaking truth.
Listen: https://archive.org/details/T5project/Theater+Five+650517+206+The+Gandy+Walker.flac
Cast: Bernard Grant, Teri Keane, Guy Sorel, Ed Zimmerman, Mary Jane Higby, Peter Fernandez, Wayne Storm
Notes:
No opening tease in surviving recording; Carl Caruso substitutes for Fred Foy as announcer. The character of Gandy Walker seems based on Woody Guthrie, whose Huntington’s Disease also cost him his folk singing career and ultimately his life. But while Walker talks about his songs as the legacy he’ll leave behind, the only two we hear in the episode are Blue Tail Fly and The Riddle Song, which are both traditional. As for Guthrie, he left hundreds of original folk songs as his legacy, dying on Oct 3, 1967, about a year and a half after the T5 episode was broadcast.