James Daly — Location: Europe (1954) 🇺🇸

A foreign correspondent tells of ping-pong and red attacks

James Daly, who succeeded Jerome Thor as the star of Foreign Intrigue, also has bowed off the filmed-abroad adventure series, and reportedly for the same reason: a yen for juicier acting plums nearer home.

That’s the official explanation, anyway, although in recent weeks producer-director-writer Sheldon Reynolds has been juggling Foreign Intrigue’s plans for next season. There’s been talk, for instance, that the show’s usual foreign correspondent will be converted into a hotel owner, and it’s possible that a room clerk’s life didn’t appeal to the agile Daly.

Anyway, Gerald Mohr, a “My Friend Irma” alumnus, gets the overseas chore, and Daly will be free to concentrate on live acting stints, which he prefers.

Daly has no regrets. For one thing, he’s scheduled to pay four or five guest visits to Mohr’s Foreign Intrigue hostel. For another, his 39 week-afterweek exposures on the show upped his stock considerably, having had far more impact on video viewers than 116 live TV engagements earlier.

Moreover, he’s indebted to Foreign Intrigue for treasured memories of fun, hard work and excitement during the filming of the series “on location” in Sweden, France, Italy and Germany.

“I took the job in the first place because I wanted to see Europe,” he says. “Also, my wife and I have always wanted our kids to learn that there are other children in the world who don’t necessarily speak English.” With their three daughters, aged 11, 8 and 5, the Dalys established semi-permanent residence first in Paris, then in Stockholm, headquarters for the Intrigue company abroad. “The kids learned to speak French so fluently that often I can’t understand them.”

Although acting before TV cameras in many of the capitals of Europe may sound like a glamorous way to earn a living, Daly says it soon became a job like any other. “Things got pretty routine after a while. That’s why I volunteered to do any action stunts myself whenever possible. Taking part in a fight or diving into cold water to rescue somebody, instead of relying on a double, presented a challenge.”

He discounted, however, the lurid tales put out by over zealous press agents about how dangerous such work is. “I understand they’ve been saying I took too many chances by doing that stuff because the foreign actors in the show had never been taught how to pull their punches. Well, I never had an accident. Not even a black eye.”

Because of the action called for by Intrigue scripts, Daly had to keep in good physical condition. He became a constant visitor at a Stockholm steam bath. He recalls sitting there one day, minding his own business, when the man next to him suddenly broke into his reverie by asking, “What do you think is the future of the steam bath in America?” Completely stymied by the question, Jim just looked at the man. It turned out that the stranger was a manufacturer of portable steam baths with ideas about exporting them.

A prized appliance in the home the Dalys rented in the suburbs of Stockholm was an automatic washer. It seems that virtually every Swedish family does its own wash, so the laundries, probably in order to survive, charge somewhat higher prices than they do in this country. “We had no idea of that,” Daly said with a grin. “When we first moved to Stockholm, we sent out one week’s wash. Nothing out of the ordinary — just a week’s laundry for a family of five. We got a bill for $65.”

Despite the high cost of keeping the family in clean clothes, Jim found living in Sweden almost as exciting as working there. About a week before they moved into their new home, he was doing an Intrigue scene about a block away from the house. “The script called for me to drive a truck down the street. Naturally, everybody in the neighborhood gathered around to watch us work. I was a neighborhood character even before we moved in.”

The Daly children soon made friends with their young neighbors. Because Jim installed a ping-pong table in the basement, the Daly home became the neighborhood gathering place. The adults, however, were far more reserved. One night, Daly recalls, the kids were playing in the basement and his doorbell rang. It was the father of one of the neighborhood boys, calling to take his son home. Anxious to make friends, Jim introduced himself and invited the caller inside to meet his wife. They got quite a jolt when they asked the man his name and he answered, “Charles Lindbergh.” Turned out “Lindbergh” is almost as rare in Sweden as “Jones” is in this country.

Most of the supporting players in each Intrigue episode are recruited from on-the-spot performers. In Sweden, this means getting them from the Royal Dramatic Academy. “Acting with foreign players presents no problem at all,” says Daly. “A good actor is a good actor, no matter what country he’s from.”

Officials in all countries which have served as Intrigue locales have been very cooperative, says Daly, and with good reason. The program spends American dollars and lures American tourists. As was to be expected, Stockholm’s Communist newspaper kept blasting the Intrigue troupe in its editorials, claiming the American actors were “exploiting” Sweden and the rest of Europe.

Jim’s final comment on Europe: “You can see more pretty girls in one block in the United States than you can on an entire street in Europe.”

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Daly’s children learned to speak French too well

James Daly strides along Paris street as Foreign Intrigue cameras turn. Show stresses real European locales.

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Daly reminisces with wife, Hope, about fun abroad. Three daughters went along.

Collection: TV Guide (Pittsburgh), 14 August 1954