The Fountain of Youth

The Fountain of Youth is a 1956 television pilot directed by Orson Welles for a proposed Desilu Productions anthology series that was never produced. Based on a short story by John Collier, the short film narrated onscreen by Welles stars Dan Tobin, Joi Lansing and Rick Jason. The Fountain of Youth was televised once, on September 16, 1958, on NBC's Colgate Theatre. It received the prestigious Peabody Award for 1958, the only unsold television pilot ever to be so honored. Production The Fountain of Youth is a 1956 television pilot for an anthology series that was never produced. It was broadcast once, on September 16, 1958, on NBC's Colgate Theatre. The short film was written and directed by Orson Welles, based on the short story "Youth from Vienna" by John Collier. Joi Lansing and Rick Jason star as a narcissistic couple faced with an irresistible temptation concocted by a scientist (Dan Tobin). Welles himself is also much in evidence as onscreen narrator. "It was intended to inaugurate a series of short stories Welles would narrate and direct in the First Person Singular style of his Mercury Theatre on the Air and Campbell Playhouse radio series, but with his innovative radio techniques adapted for the visual intimacy of the newer medium," wrote Welles biographer Joseph McBride. "Welles described it to me as his only 'film conceived for the box'. The vaudeville-show tone and blackout style, suited to the 1920s setting, lend unsettling dark humor to this fable about human vanity … As the faintly sinister host, Welles is so ubiquitous a presence, sometimes even mouthing the characters words, that he becomes their puppet master, darkly amused by their self-destructive foibles." Desi Arnaz conceived the series and proposed that Welles host and narrate every episode — combining his gift for storytelling with the intimacy of television. "When I made my deal with Orson for the pilot, I was trying to develop an anthology series which would include The Fountain of Youth," Arnaz wrote, "and the kind of stories Edgar Allan Poe is famous for, like 'The Pit and the Pendulum'." Working with Desilu art director Claudio Guzmán, Welles used an innovative process of stills and live action, Arnaz recalled: