World of Giants

World of Giants.

The scenes which are most vivid for me are the ones in which Arthur Franz carried Marshall Thompson around in a briefcase. Thompson was seated in a little chair inside the case. I remember thinking at the time that was a pretty cool set-up. Thompson could then hop out of the briefcase and do his espionage type work and hop back in before Franz returned to pick him (and the briefcase) up.

Seems that most of the plots had something to do with spying on the deadly red menace (although it was never named as such). But then, this program followed the all-too-real Red Scare of the fifties.

Yeah, Mike, I remember this one. However, I have never seen reference to this show in any form, except here at IMDb. Looks like at least two people saw this show.

For years, I remembered my father and I watching episodes of this series when I was very young. The main titles opened on a blotchy gray and white screen when suddenly something rapidly came out of the distance, and then shattered across the screen. At this point you realized that your POV was looking up and a glass vessel filled with water had fallen down and broken over a sheet of glass. The words:"World of Giants" one at a time, appeared on the screen accompanied by a voiceover saying each word out loud as it appeared. Marshall Thompson was a six inch tall man that apparently took on special jobs for the government, when a full sized man couldn't do the job. Thompson lived in the home of a full sized couple. Their job was to be liaison between the government and Thompson, and also to keep his existance a secret and provide him with a safe place to live between missions. Thompson lived in an appropriately small single story house that existed behind a painting in the couple's home. The painting was hinged at the bottom edge and could fold down to form a shelf, and Thompson's house would slide out of the wall and rest on the back of the painting/shelf. He could then interact with his full sized friends and learn about his next mission. I don't remember much about any specific missions that Thompson went on, but I recall once when a villian discovered Thompson's home and by reaching inside the tiny house, tried to grab Thompson. I seem to remember very convincing effects scenes of the giant hand upsetting furniture and even the bathtub inside Thompson's doll-sized house before the evil doer was waylaid by Thompson's full-sized compatriots. That is about all I remembered about the show. As a teenager, I tried to find referance to this show in any publication on TV or science fiction, but with no luck. I was sure that I remembered the series' title, "World of Giants" and I was also pretty sure that Marshall Thompson, whom I was very familiar with from his later show "Daktari", was the star. I asked my father about the show but he thought I was talking about Irwin Allen's "Land of the Giants", and he proved to have absolutely no recollection of "World of Giants". Over the years I talked to many people interested in science fiction films and TV but not once did I find anyone who remembered this show. Finally in a book called "Fantastic Television", I discovered a single paragraph that mentioned the show. Finally, I knew I had not imagined it, it had existed, and better yet, I had been correct in my memory of the show's title and star! Rather impressive considering I had been about five years old when I had seen the show. To this day, I have never been able to locate any episodes of "World of Giants" either in rerun, video, or DVD. Outside of the "Fantastic Television" book and this very website, I still have never found another person who remembers "World of Giants!" Mike Walters

This is great fun, finding all these comments about a show that, for all of my adult life, I could never find a single person who actually remembered it. Not even any of my own siblings remembered it, and we grew up in the same household, watching television shows at the same time! For years, I asked friends and family if they remembered seeing a show about a miniature government agent (didn't he get that way from a scientific experiment gone awry?) who was carried to his various missions in strapped in a chair in a briefcase. It drove me nuts to never be able to find even one single person who knew of it. I knew that it was impossible for me to have dreamt it up. I was only 4 years old, but there was something about giants that intrigued me as a child, and I'm quite sure it all started with this show. I was absolutely fixated on it, and could hardly wait for the next episode.

I'm amazed at how much detail in the episodes some of the others have relayed here. It was such a long time ago, and there were never any reruns. I really enjoyed how reading those comments jogged the memories. The scenes that always stood out in my mind, start with the very dramatic beginning as the huge letters W ....... O ....... G ....... hit the screen as the powerful voice of the announcer says, "WORLD OF GIANTS", with ever-so dramatic pauses between the words. A couple of scenes that I vividly remember come from being terrified for his life as he was chased by a bumble bee, even inside his miniature house where he ran trying to escape, it chased down the hallways. I don't remember how it resolved, but it seems to me that his friends (the husband and wife team that looked after him, right?) got there in the nick of time. Another scene I remember well is one in which his mission involves swimming up to a round, underwater swimming pool light, and somehow getting inside it to either retrieve a message in a tube-like carrier or to leave one. I'd forgotten about how his house was hidden behind the painting.

I loved this show and it's just been swell, reading the all the comments that have verified what I've wondered about for most of my life, which is whether I'd ever find anyone who could verify that this show really did exist!

GOOD NEWS!! SOMEONE HAS SUBMITTED A PORTION OF AN EPISODE ON YOUTUBE!!! SEARCH WORLD OF GIANTS AND YOU WILL SEE IT!

I have vague memories of this show, but I do remember it. I, too, had searched for information on it and was beginning to question my own memory, until I found something that validated the fact that this show did, in fact, exist.

I distinctly remember Marshall Thompson as the main character, because my dad was always a big Marshall Thompson fan. (He always enjoyed the Daktari series, which I didn't much care for.) It's funny reading what others have to say about this series. My memories, too, are vague but vivid. I remember outdoor scenes from this show, but not what the action entailed. I remembered the suitcase, of course, but forgot about the house behind the painting.

I must be having a mid-life crisis, because I've been searching out things I saw as a small kid. "King of the Rocket Men" and "Cat Women of the Moon" are two other sci-fi curiosities that I have vivid memories of as a kid.

Isn't getting older weird?

I was very young when this series was on television but still remember it. I think that very few people actually saw it since it only lasted for 13 episodes and it was in the days when many areas only had a tiny handful of channels to choose from. I am very fortunate to have one surviving episode of the show on tape. It is "Look Up At a Giant" and I believe it is the pilot episode. I can't say for sure, but I am certain that Irwin Allen got his inspiration for 'Land of the Giants' from this series. It is true early science fiction at its best and would be more well remembered today if it had lasted two seasons instead of just one. I hope it resurface on disc someday but I doubt it will happen.