Folks of a certain age are likely to recall the name of John Beresford Tipton, although they might not all be able to place it immediately.
Perhaps this photo might help.
No, the fellow holding the check is not John Beresford Tipton. That’s Marvin Miller playing the role of Michael Anthony who was the executive secretary of the aforementioned gentleman. Every week in the late 1950s Mr. Anthony introduced a new half hour story about someone who was to be the recipient of that week’s check for one million dollars, tax free, the taxes having been paid by the anonymous benefactor.
The show was called appropriately enough The Millionaire, and I recall watching it from time to time, probably in syndication, not during its original airing.
The audience never saw multi-billionaire John Beresford Tipton, only his arm and and his hand as he handed that week’s check to his executive secretary each week at the beginning of the show after chatting briefly about his latest interests.
Then the story followed Anthony as he handed out the check to the unsuspecting victim, uh, I mean recipient, who was to sign a waiver never to reveal the source of the newfound riches. From there we’d see just how the money ruined the recipient’s’ lives. Or sometimes saved them.
The show probably wasn’t as downbeat as I remember it, or it couldn’t possibly have survived six seasons back in the 50s, but I do remember being surprised at how the money always seemed to cause more problems than it solved. But that’s drama, I suppose.
The only actual plot line that I vaguely recall was one where the story didn’t follow the usual template. In that one, Michael Anthony, while on his way to deliver the million dollar check, was struck down by an automobile and the check was knocked out of his briefcase and went fluttering into the wind, where it was picked up by a stray passerby, who didn’t know what to do with it, as it was a cashier’s check that could only be cashed by the person it was made out to.
So the check was passed on to a series of people until it finally made it to a lowly janitor, I think, anyway someone very low on the totem pole of life, who made a great effort to see that it was delivered to the proper person. The episode concluded when Michael Anthony re-appeared, bandaged from head to toe from the car crash, to give the poor janitor his own million dollar check. (I just made that up about the bandages; Mike probably looked as dapper as ever.)
It occurs to me from the vantage point of 60 years, that since Mike was relating these stories as being from the files of John Beresford Tipton, who had been distributing the checks as a sort of experiment in human psychology, that Tipton must have had private investigators following the recipients around to find out how they fared. Probably a pretty large invasion of their privacy.
Alas, the show is not available on DVD, and all I’ve been able to find are pretty poor copies like the ones that are on YouTube. Here’s a somewhat comic (and very predictable) episode from 1956 featuring the ever reliable Betty White: