Manifest Your Sex Conscious with the World of Giants

Good morning everyone,

Today’s review will look back at a forgotten TV series from the 1950s. This post will analyze the black and white “World of Giants” (WOG) produced by Ziv Television Programs. This series aroused great interest in me due to its inclusion of Allison Hayes, star of 1958’s “Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman,” in one episode. That meant that not only did Allison play a giantess on the “big screen” (ergo in a movie shown in public theaters), but she also played a role alongside a miniature man on the “small screen” (ergo on TV in private homes). She portrayed a giant woman towering over normal men and a normal woman towering over a tiny man. Allison covered two important aspects of macrophilia. What a treat!

For years sites such as IMDb reported that Allison Hayes had appeared in a WOG episode, but it was not available to watch. The only place where the footage still existed was at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. What secrets did the university’s Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research hold? Did Allison interact with the tiny agent on a film reel stored on a dusty shelf? I was excited at the possibilities! Although this was a 1950s TV show. So, I moderated my expectations. I did not picture the small man hiding within her cleavage. WOG wasn’t a 2000s TV show!

Still, it was fun to imagine what had appeared in the episode even if a diminutive secret agent was most likely not placed inside Allison’s top. Interested people such as myself finally got that footage after ClassicFix released the series on Blu-Ray and DVD last November.

Let’s back up and cover the basics before we delve too deep into the show and Allison’s appearance. First off, it would be an unforgivable sin if I did not credit a person whose painstaking work was invaluable. Thus, I must take a moment and thank Taedis for the stellar research of the World of Giants! Now, onto the basics.

As already mentioned, Ziv Television Programs produced the show. They made a total of thirteen half-hour episodes centered upon a special agent called Mel Hunter, played by Marshall Thompson, who was exposed to experimental rocket fuel before the series began during a mission “behind the Iron Curtain” at a “secret missile launching site.” (SIDE NOTE: During my service in the United States Air Force, NCOs and officers strongly emphasized the difference between a missile and a rocket. In contrast, WOG seemed to use the terms interchangeably.) During an experiment one of the rockets blew up and the explosion exposed Mel to a new type of fuel. This incident eventually shrank Mel after his return to the United States from a tall six feet two inches to a tiny six inches tall in less than a month’s time. WOG never showed the actual shrinking process, but the actors repeatedly referenced it.

WOG detailed Mel’s effort to continue working as a government agent thwarting various enemy spies. Normal-sized friend Bill Winter, played by Arthur Franz, and later on (beginning in episode 5 “Gambling Story”) their secretary Dorothy Brown, played by Marcia Henderson, assisted Mel. The “Bureau,” a stand-in for the real-world Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), employed the trio.

There was no overarching plot arc and there were no reappearing villains. Instead, this followed the “monster of the week” trope with animals and spies substituting for monsters.

Robert Kinoshita served as Set Designer and oversaw the creation of numerous props. Oversized props made for World of Giants included acorns, an aluminum bottle cap, an ashtray, an attache case (used to discreetly carry Mel in public), books, a clothespin, a coat hanger, a desktop paper organizer, a fire extinguisher, matches, an office waste basket, paper clips, a pencil, a razor blade, a rotary-dial telephone, rubber bands, a typewriter, etc. According to an article published in the September 1, 1958 edition of the New York Daily News, the six-foot tall and “complete to the last detail” typewriter from Teeth of the Watchdog cost $50,000. That cost was given in 1958 dollars and when adjusted for inflation is the equivalent of more than half a million in 2024 dollars. That was a lot of money! The props looked great, but their exorbitant cost exceeded the budget and contributed to the show’s cancellation.

WOG’s set crew built sets complete with giant curtains, desks, flower beds, electrical wall outlets, gopher holes, power cords, refrigerator interiors, thorny rose bushes, trellis, and window frames!

Significant money and work was done to make so many props and that is one of the largest selling points. Even today it would be expensive to construct so many practical effects.

Additionally, the optical effects were reasonably well-done. Those optical effects enabled Mel to battle a cat, a dog, an opossum, and a squirrel.

William Alland replaced Otto Land as the producer after episode 4 and commissioned new scripts. As a result, the show used animals less frequently. That suited me just fine as I did not need an entire season going down a presumably extensive list of small animals and planets which posed a deadly threat to Mel. Alland shelved scripts with beavers, a monkey (a King Kong to Mel), and a Venus flytrap.

Additionally, Alland probably was responsible for the addition of Marcia Henderson as Ms. Dorothy Brown. The shelved scripts did not include her character. Furthermore, Arthur Franz and frequent WOG episode director Nathan Juran (a.k.a. Nathan Hertz director of Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman, another connection to that seminal film!) previously worked with Henderson in the series “Crossroads.” So, those two men also may have suggested Henderson’s hiring. Unfortunately, to the best of my knowledge, there is no documentation concerning her casting. Personally, I welcomed the addition as she livened up the show and gave the leads more to discuss than the current mission.

The producer possibly had an ulterior motive to stress that the two leads were definitely not gay because they had a female romantic interest. (SIDE NOTE: A similar decision was made in 1956 to introduce Batwoman into the Batman comics. Check out Fear of a Gay Batman Brought Batwoman to Life for more details.) Ziv Television Programs also demonstrated a sensitivity to filming scenes which could “make the audience sex conscious” or emasculate Mel in the following paragraph taken from a July 1958 memo:

Alland also hired David S. Horsley as director of photography. Horsley already had over 20 years of experience in special effects and was part of the team which brought Dr. Pretorious’s little homunculi to life in 1935’s “Bride of Frankenstein.” In my opinion, the matte technique used for optical effects improved under Horsley’s supervision.

Overall, episode 8 “Pool” was my favorite. Not only because of Allison Hayes, but also because the counter-espionage plot was fairly involved. Bill and Mel traveled to Miami and had to break into a secure location while avoiding capture. It was not just the normal two leads, but also three other Bureau agents, Ms. Brown and two new male agents, all working together to foil the bad guys.

Furthermore, Mel unplugged an electronic eye and depressed a foot switch to unlock a gate and enable Bill to infiltrate a secure compound. Afterward Mel restored the power leaving the guard unaware that anything had happened. That was cool and felt like something spies would do. There was also a brief scene in which Bill and Dorothy were kissing inside the cab of a panel truck and Mel jokingly says “Put me in the middle!” The world’s first MmF love scene? Maybe! 😉

Now that I have covered the positives, what were the negatives? As previously mentioned, Ziv Television did not want to emasculate Mel. So they tried to avoid scenes in which Mel was close to people’s hands and no one ever holds him. (SIDE NOTE: Mel was close to Bill’s hands when he cut his rope bonds in episode 10 “The Smugglers.”) Additionally, in the universe of WOG the Bureau kept Mel’s existence a secret. Therefore, Allison never interacted with Mel nor even knew of his existence despite the fact that he repeatedly swam in her pool! It wasn’t until the final episode, “Panic in 3-B,” that someone besides a Bureau employee or one of Mel’s friends showed an awareness of his shrunken nature. Panic in 3B featured eastern Europeans trying to kidnap Mel to learn how he shrank. It was another fun episode that could have led to tiny-on-tiny action in the future if both sides deployed their own shrunken agents, but unfortunately the series ended there and then.

Also a negative, it was often unclear what our protagonists had achieved once they completed their missions. A typical mission required Bill and Mel to infiltrate a spy ring in the nation’s capital to learn the names and locations of foreign agents. Presumably, those foreign agents were up to no good, but I would have appreciated if I understood the “so what.” Were those foreign agents going to thaw Alaska or sink Hawaii or steal candy from babies? I didn’t know and thus I did not know what Bill and Mel achieved by learning the identities of those foreign agents. That vague uncertainty was present throughout the entire series.

In fact, Ziv Television made spy plots vague on purpose. In the book “Citizen Spy” by Michael Kackman, the author noted that Ziv Television had already created two other spy series, “I Led Three Lives” and “The Man Called X,” before WOG. In those programs the company took pains to avoid presenting countries like Germany in either an unfavorable fashion (which might upset German-Americans in cities such as Cincinnati, Milwaukee, or St. Louis) or in a favorable fashion (which might upset “large liberal sections” of the U.S.). Thus, a senior Ziv executive urged “extreme caution and care” in a 1955 memo.

Similarly, production company Screen Gems which created the spy series “Behind Closed Doors” in 1958 faced pushback from NBC, the network which aired the series, and from the U.S. Government. Screen Gems based Behind Closed Doors on a book by retired Rear Admiral Zacharias, the former deputy director of Naval Intelligence. The show had a documentary feel even though episode plots were fictional. However, NBC advised Screen Gems to avoid specific details. For instance, they requested that Screen Gems replace references to “Russians” with “Communists.”

Therefore, WOG kept the details vague to avoid hurting their appeal in domestic and international markets and to keep from possibly inflaming political tensions during the Cold War. Accordingly, WOG made references to the Red Chinese and the Iron Curtain, but they were not the direct antagonists.

A potential solution could have been the creation of a fictional organization like “SPECTRE” in the James Bond franchise. WOG could have had their own version of SPECTRE to blackmail NATO with nuclear bombs like 1965’s “Thunderball” or conduct some other devious plot. Instead WOG used generic villains with ambiguous goals and the result was less impactful conclusions.

Lastly, the quality faltered in overseas stories. In actuality the production filmed all the scenes in Los Angeles (LA). This fact would not have been a problem if the crew had exerted more effort to simulate foreign locations such as the Caribbean and Hong Kong. Unfortunately, they did not succeed in making the locations feel authentic.

Viewers unfamiliar with Chinese may not notice that the sign was upside-down, but they may notice the fake Chinese briefly spoken by one actor. The production crew should have dedicated some money (enough for local bus fare or gas in their car) to visit LA’s Chinatown and ask someone to record a few Cantonese words and make sure the set designer put the sign right side up.

Despite the negatives, this was a decent show which improved in presentation and story as it progressed. However, circumstances doomed World of Giants before it ever aired. The original plan was to televise the show on Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) from 8 to 8:30PM on Wednesdays. However, later on CBS gave the 8 to 9PM time slot to a dramatic series called “Pursuit.” (NOTE: Val Adams reported that information in an article for the August 14, 1958 edition of the New York Times, seen at right.)

According to Taedis’s research, the reels sat unused for awhile and did not air in 1959 as originally planned. (NOTE: Therefore, the air dates and episode order on IMDb and Wikipedia were erroneous as of this writing.) Australian TV aired World of Giants before syndication in the U.S. It ran in Sydney on Tuesday nights and in Melbourne on Thursdays. Presumably, the networks shuffled film prints between those two cities in a practice called “the bicycle chain.” World of Giants also aired in Hong Kong during the summer of 1960. American syndication began in 1961, but only on a limited basis.

Accordingly, Marshall Thompson’s obituary in the May 28, 1992 edition of the New York Times did not mention World of Giants. That obituary associated Thompson with the more successful Daktari which aired on CBS from January 1966 to January 1969. Additionally, the New York Times named several of his films. However, the writer was either not aware of World of Giants or deemed it unimportant.

I disagree and recommend World of Giants. The DVD is selling for $20 and the Blu-Ray edition is less than $38 as of this writing. That’s a reasonable price for over six hours of a six-inch government agent battling enemy spies and the occasional opossum.

By the way, for those of you who watch the first episode, what do you think of the ending scene when a telephone is ringing and Bill says “I’ll get it Mel“? That was unnecessary in my humble opinion. What was the alternative? Would six-inch tall Mel drop to the floor, race across the carpet, climb up the table, pick up the heavy receiver, and answer the phone? Mel did not reply and no one laughed. So, I presume it was normally routine dialogue that unintentionally became humorous when viewers considered Mel’s predicament. What do you think?

That’s it for today folks. Tune in next time for an All Request Hour when There She Grows will examine a number of requested size stories. Until then keep growing and secure your own spot in the World Of Giants!

This review was written by SolomonG and is protected under Fair Use copyright law.

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