Previously filmed twice in Hollywood, Thornton Wilder's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey was brought to television in this lavish, live, star-studded DuPont Show of the Month adaptation. The story essentially begins at the end -- July 20, 1714 -- when the famous San Luis Rey bridge near Lima, Peru, collapses, plunging five people to their deaths. The victims were the wealthy but embittered Marquess de Montemayor (Judith Anderson); the Marquess's young maid, Pepita (Sandra Whiteside); Uncle Pio (Hume Cronyn), mentor of the celebrated Peruvian actress La Perichole (Viveca Lindfors); Jaime (Miko Oscard), Pio's youthful traveling companion; and Esteban (Steven Hill), a talented young scribe who left behind a twin brother, Manuel (Clifford David). Investigating the tragedy, Captain Alvarado (Theodore Bikel), an intimate of one of the victims, tries to figure out how it came to be that the unfortunate five were all brought together on the same disastrous day. Also in the cast is the celebrated actress/director Eva Le Gallienne as Madre Maria, and Kurt Kaznar, with whom Theodore Bikel would later co-star in the Broadway production The Sound of Music.
by Hal Erickson
synopsis
