6.4 /10 1 Votes
4.6/10 TV Original language(s) English No. of episodes 20 Producer(s) Roy Huggins Final episode date 3 September 1957 Number of episodes 20 | 8.2/10 IMDb Genre Anthology No. of seasons 2 Executive producer(s) William T. Orr First episode date 18 September 1956 Number of seasons 2 Predecessor Warner Bros. Presents | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Network American Broadcasting Company Similar Warner Bros Presents, Mister Roberts, Hank, Room for One More, The Roaring 20's | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Conflict is a 1956 to 1957 ABC television series that was a successor to the earlier Warner Brothers Presents. Although Conflict assumed the same time slot as its predecessor, the two do not share the same format. Where Warner Brothers Presents had been a wheel series, Conflict was a fully anthology series. However, since Cheyenne and Conflict alternated the Tuesday 7:30 P.M. time slot, the net effect was that of a proper wheel series—even though Cheyenne and Conflict were not under the same umbrella title.
The name change was imposed upon its production company, Warner Brothers, by ABC executives who believed that "conflict" was the missing element in Casablanca and King's Row from Warner Brothers Presents.
Actor James Garner caught producer Roy Huggins' attention with a comedic performance as a gambler in a role not specifically written to be comical in the series' sixth episode, a time travel scenario entitled Man from 1997, leading Huggins to cast Garner as the lead the following year in his television series Maverick, according to Huggins' Archive of American Television interview. In the episode, Charles Ruggles portrays an elderly time-traveling librarian from the future attempting to retrieve a 1997 almanac that he mistakenly left 41 years before it is supposed to exist.
The series does not fit neatly into standard American television seasons, technically superseding Warner Brothers Presents after Casablanca concluded its run in April 1956 and apparently providing at least one week of new material at the beginning of the 1957 season, before Sugarfoot, starring Will Hutchins, replaced it. Hutchins was also cast in three episodes of Conflict, including his screen debut as Ed Masters in "The Magic Brew" (October 16, 1956).