Television’s Lost Classics, Volume One

The golden age of live TV drama was a brief but creatively fertile period that not only gave audiences a wealth of provocative and compelling original dramas but also provided opportunities and exposure for talented writers, directors, and actors to push the envelope on subject matter and dramatic presentation. This collection features two hour-long original TV dramas from the mid-1950s starring John Cassavetes. "Crime in the Streets" (1955), which was presented on The Elgin Hour, is directed by Sidney Lumet from an original teleplay by Reginald Rose (which he later expanded for the big screen). In this story about juvenile delinquency, Cassavetes plays an angry young man in the slums who plans to murder a local businessman, and Robert Preston is a social worker trying to reach the source of his rage and alienation. As social drama it is simplistic but Lumet energizes the drama with his intimate direction. "No Right to Kill" (1956), which aired on the anthology series Climax!, places Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment into the Greenwich Village culture of coffeeshops and starving artists, with Cassavetes as a struggling writer who kills a pawnshop owner. Both pieces are impressively cinematic given the constraints of live TV production of the 1950s and are interesting artifacts of a long-gone era. Both are mastered from kinescope recordings (shot from a TV monitor on 16mm film, which was used in the era before videotape to preserve live TV productions) and feature the commercials from the original broadcast. Extras include a bonus blooper reel featuring outtakes from the vintage TV shows The Defenders and The Nurses. A strong optional purchase. [Note: Television’s Lost Classics, Volume Two is also available.] (S. Axmaker)