User Reviews

This story begins when Dr.Martin Eaton returns from the Civil War in 1865 to his home in Hambledon, Pennsylvania.

His fiancée, Marjorie Farmington has unexpectedly married another - Adrian Ferrier. In 1866, Eaton marries Flora Bumpstead; they have no children, but Marjorie has two son, Jonathan and Harold.

Martin Eaton's new sister-in-law, Hilda resembles Marjorie, and Martin, smitten,becomes romantically involved with Hilda, who bears their daughter, Mavis, in 1877.

Adrian Ferrier dies of complications from appendicitis, and at the reading of his father's will, Jonathan Ferrier finds that Adrian was a very rich, corrupt man. Jonathan decides to become a doctor.

The riverboat containing Martin Eaton's gambler brother Jerome and Jerome's wife, Hilda, explodes. All perish, though their daughter Mavis survives; Martin and his wife adopt her.

Dr. Jonathan Ferrier establishes his practice in Hambledon, and becomes a crusading doctor.

A rich German immigrant, Peter Heger, installs his wife and daughter Jenny on an island mansion. Heger, a patient of Ferrier's, is told that he is suffering from uremia, and commits suicide.

Ferrier brings charges against Dr. Jim Spaulding who causes a patient's death through unsanitary practices. With his attorney friend, Howard Best, they pursue a lawsuit against Spaulding, who loses his medical license.

After service in the Spanish-American War, Jonathan Ferrier marries Mavis Eaton. Regretfully, she proves petulant, greedy, and not maternal.

Harold Ferrier and the widow Heger marry because she wants to have a good time with a bon vivant. However, she has a serious heart condition.

At the 1900 New Year's celebration, Harold Ferrier and his sister-in-law Mavis leave the party for an illicit tryst.

Harold's wife dies, and a condition of the will forces him to live on the island 7 months of the year.

Mavis informs Harold she is pregnant by him, and wants an abortion. After her illegal operation, Mavis begins to hemorrhage and flees to her father, bearing one of Jonathan's scalpels.

In Philadelphia Jonathan meets a former patient, Mrs. Zachary Robeson, and they indulge in a tryst. At their hotel, Jonathan receives a telegram that Mavis died of her bungled abortion.

Back in Hambledon, Jonathan is arrested for Mavis's murder, and his friend Howard Best wants to impugn Mavis's reputation in court, and wants Jonathan to testify.

The trial is held in Philadelphia, and Howard Best puts on an impassioned defense. Martin Eaton blames Jonathan for Mavis's death, but Mrs. Robeson is Jonathan's airtight alibi and he is acquitted, Eaton collapses, partially paralyzed from a stroke, and refuses to see Ferrier.

Ferrier's friendship with Best becomes strained when he tells Best that his daughter is dying of leukemia. Best goes berserk with grief, and must be restrained after threatening to kill Ferrier.

Later, the parish priest Father McNulty goes to Ferrier and entreats forgiveness for the Bests after their daughter dies.

Jonas Witherby, the owner of a gunpowder factory marries the town prostitute Priscilla for her money.

At the 4th of July celebration, Senator Kenton Campion presents a dynamic speech, bellowing about "Manifest Destiny",justifying our invading foreign countries "for their own good." He also prates about a "covenant with God."

After seeing his father in Washington, D.C. with a prostitute and realizing his amorality, Francis Campion (the Senator's son)botches a suicide by hanging, and father McNulty brings Dr. Ferrier to minister to the boy. Ferrier tongue lashes the father, who resolves (with Jonas Witherby) to destroy Ferrier.

They induce a Mrs. Edna Bemish from Scranton to go to Ferrier's office and cause a disturbance, claiming that he aborted her.

Also, young women without bills come into his office and pay large amounts of cash, to confirm Ferrier's supposed abortionist status.

The town madam, who is worried about Priscilla, asks Ferrier to go to her home. He finds that Jonas has addicted her to opium after embezzling her money, Jonathan takes her home and his mother ministers to her.

Witherby and Campion each give Dr. Louis Hedler (head of St. Hilda's Hospital)$10,000 if he will, in return, call a board meeting to revoke Ferrier's medical license. Witherby also visits Martin Eaton, who refuses to capitulate, despite threats of exposure concerning Mavis's true paternity.

Howard Best, Father McNulty, and Dr.Hedler confer over Ferrier's defense. Best goes to Scranton and talks to the police chief who tells him that Edna Bemish (Campion's girlfriend) could not have had an abortion, being sterile from a youthful abortion performed in Scranton.

Hedler sees that Martin Eaton wants to believe Jonathan guilty, but confesses his own secret to Hedler, and before dying, gives Hedler a written deposition stating that a Dr. Brickerman aborted Mavis, using Jonathan's scalpel to implicate him.

Ferrier goes on drunken rampages of his home and his office. Best, the priest, and Hedler find him, slap him into sensibility, and give him the copy of Martin's exonerative testimony. The medical hearing against Ferrier is canceled, and Dr. Brickerman is fired.

Jonas Witherby's unsafe munitions plant is on strike. A storm occurs, and Witherby is in the plant when it blows up. Priscilla Witherby is left a rich widow.

Jonathan finds out about Harold and Mavis's treachery, and rows to the island during the storm. A fight ensues between brothers on the mansion staircase, and Jenny Heger intervenes.

At the end, the opportunist Harold goes to see the widow Witherby about marriage.

Jonathan's mother tells him to go to Jenny Heger and court her, seeing, in retrospective, herself dancing with the man she should have married - Martin Eaton...

All performances were excellent, but the three outstanding ones were those of David Birney (Jonathan Ferrier), an actor of electrifying intensity; J.D. Cannon (Kenton Campion), whose portrayal of the demonic Senator was spellbinding; and Barry Brown (Howard Best), who invested the part with the deep emotionality of his soul.

A must-see mini-series.

"Testimony of Two Men" was an important production in its day. It (and "The Captains and the Kings"--from another work by maven of historical, inter-generational, soap operaish novels, Taylor Caldwell) was among the first works of "Operation Prime Time" which provided productions to be aired by local stations independently of their networks.

This early miniseries has an impressive cast comprised of shopworn but genuine movie stars (including Ray Milland, Ralph Bellamy, dancer Dan Daley and child star Margaret O'Brien) and familiar television faces (including Randolph Mantooth from "Emergency"; William Shatner from "Star Trek" and John de Lancie who went on to be Q in "Star Trek: the Next Generation"; and the father on "Happy Days" Tom Bosley, whose pleasant voice narrates).

Other familiar faces of the time belonged to Leonard Frey as a flamboyant art critic; Theodore Bikel as an immigrant who found the American Dream; J.D. Cannon as a senator (one of his best performances) and Cameron Mitchell as an old Civil Warrior (Federal) who knows the difference between true patriotism and sloganeering jingoism for political purposes.

Heading the cast is David Birney as the idealistic young doctor, who steps on toes as he is devoted to radical new medical procedures (such as washing his hands before and not smoking cigars during operations).

The bad guys are easily identifiable. They are businessmen, hypocritical politicians and clergy, people of the older generation who won't change their ways and young artistic types who put self-interest above the good of others or the community. The good guys include prostitutes with hearts of gold, members of the older generation who take against their peers and earnest youngsters--doctors, rare honest lawyers, or genuinely compassionate members of the clergy (Mantooth).

Heading the amazing cast is . . . David Birney. Birney was good at what he did, but he was hardly strong enough as an actor to carry a three-part, six-hour miniseries practically single-handedly. While a good match for Shatner and Steve Forrest, cagier actors like Ray Milland, as the delightfully wicked gunpowder maker, and J. D. Cannon's mealymouthed senator, act rings around him.

Furthermore, Birney's character, while medically forward-looking, is prickly, self-righteous and intolerant of disagreement. He's one of the "old school" in waiting: radical when young but so devoted to his methods when he gets old himself he'll probably be considered archly conservative. His character may be a great healer (we keep being told he is) but he brings unhappiness to everyone he meets on a personal level; he even forgets himself so far as to nearly commit a rape, which turned my stomach.

The turn of the twentieth century ambiance looks good but the history is on the level of "Apart from that, how did you enjoy the play, Mrs. Lincoln?" Truly amazing innovations and inventions of the post-Civil War period that changed the world (telephones, electric lights, phonographs and "horseless carriages") are mentioned casually, as are great personages of the period--none of whom, fortunately, appear; we are in a hermetically-sealed fictional world and the miniseries is better for not parading before the viewer a lot of genuinely important historical persons.

The historical background also reminds us that, the upheaval after Oswald's assassination of Kennedy notwithstanding--if one was born precisely one hundred years before I was, in 1861, by the first year of the twentieth century one would have seen three assassinated presidents (all Republican, of course, so who's counting?).

An impressive achievement in 1977, especially in helping undermining of the three major networks who had a stranglehold on televised entertainment, today "Testimony of Two Men" comes off as . . . well, a bit pointless.

With a truly impressive cast (like its sister production, "The Captains and the Kings") and some impressive production values (though the Civil War looks more of a skirmish and relies on a knowledge of American history to fill in gaps--good luck in the twenty-first century!), it nevertheless boils down to a truncated soap opera. And it may be difficult for the casual viewer to keep up with who is whose illicit offspring. "Testimony of Two Men" suffers from a genuinely hard-to-like, self-righteous hero who spends less time in the OR than fighting tedious and repetitive conspiracies against him made up of more polished actors who were leading men in the movies when they were BIG.

I may be perhaps biased against it because I personally never liked medical shows. I found "Testimony of Two Men" worth watching for its historical importance alone ("Operation Prime Time" breaking free of the big networks), and found it comfortable viewing from long-familiar faces. "Testimony of Two Men" is best watched in one, long go on a rainy afternoon, and it's a lot easier than trying to pick one's way through Taylor Caldwell's pretentious novel.