"The Plot to Kill Stalin" was an American television play broadcast on September 25, 1958, on the CBS television network. It was the first episode of the third season of the anthology television series Playhouse 90. Delbert Mann was the director, and the cast included Melvyn Douglas as Joseph Stalin, Eli Wallach as Stalin's personal secretary, and Oskar Homolka as Nikita Khrushchev. It was nominated for two Sylvania Television Awards: as the outstanding telecast of 1958 and for Douglas as outstanding actor in a television program.
Melvyn Douglas as Joseph Stalin in "The Plot to Kill Stalin"
Melvyn Douglas was an American actor. Douglas came to prominence in 1929 as a suave leading man, perhaps best typified by his performance in the romantic comedy Ninotchka (1939) with Greta Garbo. Douglas later played mature and fatherly characters, as in his Academy Award-winning performances in Hud (1963) and Being There (1979) and his Academy Award–nominated performance in I Never Sang for My Father (1970). Douglas was one of 24 performers to win the Triple Crown of Acting. In the last few years of his life Douglas appeared in films with supernatural stories involving ghosts, including The Changeling in 1980 and Ghost Story in 1981, his last completed film role.
MGM publicity photo of Douglas, c. 1939
With Greta Garbo in Ninotchka (1939)