The Spark

[Forward to the video] "By the summer of 1961, after eight seasons on NBC and over 250 episodes produced, the Loretta Young Show was canceled. Looking toward the future, and with a production crew still in place, Miss Young decided to produce a pilot for a new series of hour-long television specials dealing with pressing family issues of the day. "The Spark" is the result.

No production notes survive and no credits appear in this pilot episode, but one can assume that the same basic crew that worked on the series worked on this pilot.

The writer and director was most likely Richard Morris, who had collaborated as such on many episodes of the original series.

The part of Paul, a young emotionally-disturbed boy, is played by 12-year old Roger Mobley, a popular child actor of the time who had also appeared in the final episode of "The Loretta Young Show" entitled "Not In Our Stars", apparently filmed only weeks earlier.

Most other cast members were familiar to the original series as well.

This pilot never sold, so this program was never broadcast.

We present it for the first time as we believe it was originally viewed in private screening rooms in New York and Los Angeles."