Nero Wolfe (film)

Nero Wolfe is a 1977 TV film adaptation of Rex Stouts Nero Wolfe novel The Doorbell Rang. Thayer David stars as Nero Wolfe, gourmet, connoisseur and detective genius. Tom Mason costars as Archie Goodwin, Wolfes assistant. Written and directed by Frank D. Gilroy, the madeforTV movie was produced by Paramount Television as a pilot for an ABC television series, but the movie was shelved by the network for more than two years before finally being broadcast December 18, 1979.

In 1976 Paramount Television purchased the rights for the entire set of Nero Wolfe stories for Orson Welles. Paramount paid 200,000 for the TV rights to eight hours of Nero Wolfe. The producers planned to begin with an ABCTV movie and hoped to persuade Welles to continue the role in a miniseries. Frank D. Gilroy was signed to write the television script The Doorbell Rang and direct the TV movie on the assurance that Welles would star, but by April 1977 Welles had bowed out.I was told to discover someone for the role since no other name actors were acceptable to them ABCParamount or to me, Gilroy wrote in his memoir, I Wake Up Screening 1993. After a bicoastal search, which acquainted me with just about every corpulent middleaged actor available, I, close to giving up, encountered Thayer David. No sooner did he start to read than Emmet Lavery, the producer, and I exchanged a look Wed found our man. ........

Source: Wikipedia