The High Cost Of A Reputation

I caught The High Cost Of Loving, a 1958 dramatic comedy starring Jose Ferrer and Gena Rowlands.  It's a minor film about a low-level executive, stuck in a rut at his company, who's worried he's about to be let go.

What intrigued me, however, was the cast, which features Richard Deacon, Nancy Kulp, Jim Backus, Edward Platt and Werner Klemperer.  To those of you who are fans of 60s sitcoms, that's Mel Cooley of The Dick Van Dyke Show, Miss Hathaway of The Beverly Hillbillies, Thurston Howell III of Gilligan's Island, Chief of Get Smart and Colonel Klink of Hogan's Heroes.

All of them played characters who were in positions of authority, more or less.  But it was hard to see them as anything but their sitcom incarnations.  This isn't the only 50s film where this happens. Notably, in Rebel Without A Cause you've got Jim Backus and Ed Platt amongst all the brooding. But I've never seen so many in one place.