When Live TV Reinvented Drama

 

Home Viewing Where Anything Might Happen

Amazon Prime surprised me with a pair of fossils now in rotation, both from a so-called “Golden Age” of live television, an era old-timers saw as last gasp for quality before junk dealing became tube norm and drama for cultivated folk gave way to cowboys and retard comedy. Ones who lived it are mostly gone, or past a point of capable recall, leaving others of us with little that survive of the lot, kinescopes dug from depths (at least look it), or nothing at all. Ones I saw this week were The Defender (1957) and The Arena (1956), both earnest and loaded with big head confrontations. Close shooting was an only way to put across strong emotions for 50’s sitters in front of a box nearly small as what breakfast cereals came in. It also disguised paucity of space for drama to be staged. Watching today means making allowance, same as old movies really old on their face. Much of live drama clicked in the day for being different, trying at least to act grown-up, and best of all, free, plus watched in home comfort.

Some imagine all of it was good as Marty, Twelve Angry Men, others that made a leap to feature screens. Those in trenches knew that wasn’t so. One writer of so-called blessed time said ninety-five percent of what he and others wrote was “hack work,” done in continuous pinch, all due yesterday. Anything at least half-baked was ready to serve, though live drama written well enough, provided one forgave crudity of cameras and production, plus flubs when players forgot lines or crew wandered into shots, was fruit of anything-might-happen energy not to be got from ossified movies too canned for anyone’s good or pleasure. Actors also were unlike ripe cheese of many stars on theatre screens. Here were youngsters who’d break rules, fly to pieces, be things a player never dared before. Forget sun-kissed starlets or glamor boys that took elocution, riding, or fencing lessons to make studio grade. These rebels went out of ways to do the unexpected, live TV dealing daily in same. Drama unplugged was like boxing matches popularly telecast where you didn’t know which fighter might kiss the canvas.

Pinnacle was reached by ‘54-55 or so, lasted till a decade end when networks, sponsors, ad agencies, wanted safer bets, as in conventional and easier to manage from office sanctums. Writer/director talent turned loose and emoting live was chancy, the more so when crusaders among them put “serious issues” before viewers, a habit that would date much of what seemed vital then. Live TV, once done and past, was a definition of ephemeral. Networks either junked remains or put them on warehouse shelves no one paid heed to. Inkling of interest in the early 80’s, from stalwart of the medium Sonny Fox, saw a representative group dredged for a PBS series Fox curated, The Golden Age of Television, which made a splash for content so long unseen, plus primitive power much of it still exerted. Fox had to search far/wide for Kinescopes, get permissions to use them, overcome everyone’s assumption that they had seen these dramas before, as indeed they had, except it was movie versions, not the originals from TV (Marty, Twelve Angry Men, Requiem For a Heavyweight). The PBS series was a novelty, but wasn’t followed up. It took home video to mine gold from the Golden Age, but as sales were modest, much of that was brass. Even committed buffs were pressed to get through stuff archaic enough to be carved in caves. Best of revivals was possible when enough artists were above ground to reminisce, latter breathing life into cloudy images to convey what it was like to live-do these shows. Now with most of voices stilled, we are left with artifacts only, like pyramids found but no Egyptians to describe the building of them.

The Defender took place almost entirely in a courtroom, initially in two-parts so it goes 102 minutes. Rough edges abound, a camera at one point lumbering forward, then quickly back from action. Books to celebrate the era are full of actors/crew telling how high pressure it all was, funny in retrospect, but tense to a breaking point when it was day-to-day 50’s reality. Age v. youth is the dominant theme, a murder trial incidental to it. Verbal combatants are vet lawyer Ralph Bellamy and son-defense partner William Shatner. Defendant is “Steven McQueen,” the prosecuting D.A. Martin Balsam. Fireworks are as much between differing styles of acting as contest re guilt/innocence. Reginald Rose, who had written Twelve Angry Men, puts as many curly-cues into this legal showdown as before, his idea to pick societal scabs per habit of NY writers. 50’s TV drama was defined by rules concise enough to jot on a matchbook, leanings predictable as subway stops. Bellamy the rigid Dad is opposed by R. Rose surrogate Shatner, removing all doubt as to who will prevail. McQueen is intense and on the attack for our nerve ends, shouting “Whaddya doin’ ta me?” as if it will be a next catch phrase for disaffected youth. Bellamy got patience tested by Actor’s Studio’ing let loose at his expense, account shared in a 1979 memoir, When The Smoke Hit The Fan. He didn’t name McQueen, but object of aggravation couldn’t have been anyone else. Seems “Steven” mumbled words and even wandered off their live set at one point, leaving Ralph alone with egg on his face. “Method” players were bane of seasoned pros like Bellamy, his cutting loose on them late as the ’79 book a proof he knew phony/baloney where smelling it.

The Arena was written by Rod Serling, him a chef for well heated confrontation scenes, magnified faces hollering at one another to make our at-home heads jangle. Watch The Arena or another Serling drama that was subsequently adapted as a movie (Patterns) to see, better hear, this writer picking fights. No wonder he went over to spooky T. Zone themes later … gave him a chance to cool off. Rod was another, like Jack Webb, who let TV literally work him to death. His standards stayed high, even as he held more cigarettes than pencils and so went Murrow-ways, both well known for intros done w/ fag in hand, a Surgeon General’s best visual argument. The Arena, like all of what was best about live drama, gave actors a chance to really act, proceedings about them and not big skies or extras crowded round. If the 50’s had a stop-gap between legit and movies, it was stories tube-told as they happened, a purity salvaged from stages these players would have preferred working on. So long as the runt medium could use them, they'd be game, TV handing nation-stretch exposure to make a Rod Steiger or Kim Stanley overnight known and wanted. The Arena, plus ones like it, were opportunity too for longtime strut-and-fretters to show what they had always been capable of, but that features seldom let them display. Consider Chester Morris, his performance ace-high here, enriched by good Serling dialogue, a 1956 tour-de-force for Chet, for what had he got from movies that same year? The She-Creature … and nothing else. Enough to make you weep for such an artist (not that he isn’t plenty good in The She-Creature). Wendell Corey excelled also in 1956's The Killer Is Loose, a feature where he was a revelation. Biggest Arena surprise for me was John Cromwell, better known to us as a director, but he could character-act paint off the walls. In short, terrific effort by all, and reason abundant to access this, The Defender, and whatever other of vintage live drama is available at Amazon and elsewhere. Revelation awaits from that Golden Age.