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Title

The Men with the Magic Fingers

Plot

A turn-of the-century tale of romance and tragedy where a circus owner sculpts a fortune teller out of wax and falls in love with his own creation. Held captive in his world of make-believe, his poor wife has no other recourse but to question his sanity.

Episode

0500

Air Dates

  • First Run - July 22, 1976
  • Repeat - October 20, 1976

Actors

Writer

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Rating

80
62     18


5 Responses to Episode 0500

A turn of the century circus owner creates a fortune teller out of wax. convinced that she has come to life, he falls in love with her. Meanwhile, his wife is left to wonder about his sanity.

Lito A.

This is a CBSRMT rewriting/retelling of the story of Pygmalion and his statue. (Fair warning: the link contains the picture of a semi-nude statue, or a nude semi-woman), but this has a bit of a different ending. It begins at the "ending" (before E.G. gets in his final word) of the story...several horrified people are arriving in to the tent of a turn-of-the-century carnival circus barker who, unfortunately, has just killed his wife. The sheriff is summoned and asks the man what happened. (He seems to be dying, but that apparently isn't the case). The man babbles about how he killed his wife, who in turn had previously killed the "Princess of Romany". His wife happened to be the "Princess of Egypt"...an exotic dancer at their travelling carnival who very much loved her husband but was getting increasingly agitated by his ways. What was agitating her the most was that he was spending most of his time with a beautiful life-size doll he created called "The princess of romany"...a sideshow act. He'd rigged up a device to play records of all types of answers in a woman's voice. The "rubes" (or, people who come to the show, I guess) would ask questions regarding their lives and/or their future, and through his control the "Princess of romany" would answer them. He was spending more and more time fixing her up, and the doll was becoming an increasingly vexing situation between his real wife and he. At one point after they had a fight, the Princess of Romany started up a conversation with him about how he was one of the "Men with magic fingers"...men who invented things like autos, airplanes, and that newfangled stuff. She said he really wanted to go seek his destiny. He pretty much said "Yeah, I really do" and carried on a conversation for several minutes before realizing that his doll creation was talking to him...

Elaine Havana

A married couple, performers in a carnival, come into conflict when the husband creates a new act that doesn't involve his wife. Rather, he invests considerable time, effort, and emotion in creating a fortune telling doll. His wife becomes upset because without her husband, her act is suffering, and he appears to be increasingly obsessed with his creation.

Lensuel

A fairly good story about a circus owner and his wife. He married his wife to get her to be an attraction for the circus but at the cost of being ostracized from her family. He moves onto the next attraction that he builds himself and jealously from his wife is shown. One of the results is finding the fine line between genius and insanity.

Alec

I find interesting the photo the actors pick to portray themselves. locked in time. I love them all: young and old alike.

Mark Hartsock


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