OVERLOOKED TELEVISION: ICE FROM SPACE

We shot a rocket into the air.
It picked up a hitchhiker; I know not where:
A block of ice
That was not nice,
Freezing things without a care.

On August 8, 1952, Tales of Tomorrow present this little yarn that happened to include a young actor in one of his first film roles, a guy named Paul Newman.  I guess acting didn't work out for him because I heard he eventually go into the salad dressing line.  (Out of the four credited actors in this episode, Newman came in fourth, so that salad dressing fallback was a pretty good idea.)

Edmon Ryan took the lead as Major Dozier. an air force base commander who must deal with a congressional appropriations investigation and that mysterious block of ice brought back by a space probe and that freezes everything around it.  Ryan has nearly a hundred credits on IMDb from1936 to 1970, concentrating mainly on television during the Fifties and Sixties.

Dozier's congressional nemesis, Congressman Burns, was played by Raymond Bailey, best known as Milton Drysdale, the banker on The Beverley Hillbillies.  Bailey also had regular roles on Margie, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, My Sister Eileen.  This episode was Bailey's first television appearance following 13 years of mostly uncredited work in the movies.

Also in the cast was Michael Gorrin.  This was his first television role under that name; as Michael Goldstein he appeared in two films in the late 1930s.

Don Medford directed this and 36 other episodes of Tales of Tomorrow.  Medford had a long career in television, directing multiple episodes of Baretta, Dynasty, The F.B.I., and many other popular shows.  The episode was written by E. H. Frank, who turns out to be a mystery.  This is the only credit Frank has on IMDb and TV.com, so it is possible that Frank was a pseudonym.  Unlike many episodes of Tales of Tomorrow, "Ice from Space" appears not to have been adapted from a previously published story.

Enjoy.

https://archive.org/details/TalesOfTomorrow-IceFromSpace