Family Theater: The Bishop's Candlesticks

Family Theatre presents William Mundigan, Ray Collins and Frank Lovejoy. From Hollywood, the mutual network in cooperation with Family Theatre Incorporated brings you Victor Hugo's great classic, The Bishop's Candle Sticks. With Ray Collins as the Bishop and Frank Lovejoy as Jean Valjean.

We'll introduce the drama, your host and narrator, William Mundigan. Thank you, Jean. Tonight your family theatre brings to you Victor Hugo's classic, The Bishop's Candle Sticks. The tale of one of fiction's most famous criminals, Jean-Val Jean, and his strange encounter with a man of God.

For stealing a loaf of bread to feed his sister's starving family, Jean-Val Jean was sentenced by a French court of the middle 19th century to the dreaded galleys. For attempting to escape, his imprisonment was lengthened to 19 years. 19 years chained to a hard plank in the dark hold of a galle ship.

And then suddenly Jean Valjean was free, free to blink his weakened eyes and the bright glare of the sun, free to roam the streets and villages, a stranger to his native land, trying to build a new life on the yellow passport of an ex-convict, a yellow passport that branded him guilty without but he's raising a hand that shut endless doors in his face and drove him weary unto death

from one hostile town to another. And so Valjean came late one afternoon to the village of Denece. It was a small place, like small towns all over the world. Nothing unusual could happen without all of its citizen relearning of it very quickly.

George the baker it was. We saw the unkempt stranger first. There he was sniffing around the back of my shop. It's suspicious looking fellow, with a stick as big as my arm. Victor the blacksmith helped the news on its way.