Make Me Laugh / Clean Kills and Other Trophies

Make Me Laugh: Jackie Slater, a struggling comedian, is dying to make his audiences laugh…but he consistently bombs on stage. A mysterious man claiming to be a miracle-performing guru offers to work wonders for Jackie: anything Jackie says will bring his audiences to nearly uncontrollable laughter. While this boosts Jackie’s career to incredible heights, he finds it to be a hollow victory. He decides to leave comedy and take up dramatic acting, but his attempts at pathos only bring about more laughter. Can he ever again bring someone to tears?

written by Rod Serling
directed by Steven Spielberg
music by Robert Prince / series theme by Gil Melle

Cast: Godfrey Cambridge (Jackie Slater), Tom Bosley (Jules Kettleman), Jackie Vernon (Chatterje), Al Lewis (Mishkin), Sidney Clute (David Garrick), John J. Fox (Heckler), Gene R. Kearney (2nd Bartender), Tony Russel (Director), Sonny Klein (1st Bartender), Michael Hart (Miss Wilson), Georgia Schmidt (Flower Lady), Sid Rushakoff (1st Laugher), Don Melvoin (2nd Laugher)

Notes: Steven Spielberg returns, racking up his third professional television directing credit (his second was a segment of the Night Gallery pilot movie in late 1969). By the end of 1971, he would go on to direct episodes of such series as The Name Of The Game, The Psychiatrist, Columbo, and Owen Marshall, Counselor At Law, ending the year with his first TV movie directing credit, Duel. Within three years, Spielberg was a movie director and no longer a TV director. Tom Bosley, of Happy Days fame, makes his second Night Gallery appearance here, having also appeared in Night Gallery’s pilot movie.

Clean Kills and Other Trophies: Obsessive big-game hunter Colonel Archie Dittman is unable to keep himself from expressing his disappointment that his son, now 21, does not share his preoccupation with hunting. He threatens to leave his son out of the will unless he can kill a deer. Dittman’s lawyer is aghast, immediately recommending that the junior Dittman take legal action against his father. The day of the hunt comes and goes without a kill…or at least without a death in the animal kingdom.

written by Rod Serling
directed by Walter Doniger
music by Robert Prince

Cast: Raymond Massey (Colonel Archie Dittman), Tom Troupe (Jeffrey Pierce), Barry Brown (Archie Dittman Jr.), Herbert Jefferson Jr. (Tom Mboya)

Notes: Herbert Jefferson Jr. would go on to numerous guest starring roles in the 1970s before landing a regular role in Battlestar Galactica.