The Golden Age of Television

For a brief period in the 1950s, a handful of showcase anthology shows turned live theater on television into the vibrant center of original American drama, and this collection highlights eight landmark productions (most just 50 minutes long) from that era. The original Marty (1953), written by Paddy Chayefsky and starring Rod Steiger as the lonely butcher, is the earliest in the group. Rod Serling won Emmy Awards for his dissection of corporate culture in Patterns (1955), his poignant Requiem for a Heavyweight (1956), with Jack Palance as an aging boxer, and the searing show-business drama The Comedian (1957), with Mickey Rooney as a tyrannical TV star. Andy Griffith gained fame in the bumpkin comedy No Time for Sergeants (1955), a young Paul Newman starred in Bang the Drum Slowly (1956), and Julie Harris was pure grace in A Wind From the South (1955). Director John Frankenheimer showed just how intense and visually dynamic live TV theater could be in the original Days of Wine and Roses (1958), a hard-hitting story of alcoholism starring Cliff Robertson. All the programs come from kinescope recordings filmed by the network directly off a TV monitor, and the low-fidelity image and sound are unavoidable; but the narratives are so involving that the surface weaknesses seem inconsequential. DVD extras on this three-disc set include interviews with many of the shows' directors, writers, and cast members (recorded for the 1980s broadcasts on PBS), audio commentaries by four of the directors (recorded in the mid-1990s), and a booklet with essays and notes by TV historian Ron Simon. Highly recommended. Editor's Choice. (S. Axmaker)