A Circle of Talent in the Era of Live American Television

Marlon Brando, Paul Newman, Sidney Poitier

While yet appearing in his most iconic performance as the brutish yet clearly discerning Stanley Kowalski of Tennessee Williams’ celebrated A Streetcar Named Desire (affording the playwright his first Pulitzer Prize), Marlon Brando, the quintessential method actor, took a brief hiatus to co-star in the “Actors’ Studio” production of Henry Kane’s short story “I’m No Hero,” opposite another Actors’ Studio alumnus Harry Bellaver, airing on January 9, 1949 via CBS. Kane’s tale of what actually does not constitute hero worship, first appeared in the Saturday Evening Post in 1947. It was yet a further unusual turn for Brando, whose Broadway credits had already included his debut as Nels, the eldest son of a Norwegian immigrant family in turn-of-the-century San Francisco in John Van Druten’s I Remember Mama; Sage McRae in Maxwell Anderson’s allegorical Truckline Cafe; Eugene Marchbanks in George Bernard Shaw’s often revised 1903 Candida, and David in Ben Hecht’s A Flag Is Born, under the aegis of the American League for a Free Palestine. I’m No Hero would constitute Brando’s only television performance until appearing as a Nazi Advocate in the 1979 production of Alex Haley’s Roots II. Incidentally, like most television “Actors’ Studio” teleplays, only made possibly permanent by way of kinescopes (there was no commercial videotaping until Bing Crosby Productions saw to that innovation in 1956) I’m No Hero was long thought lost until yours truly, well, found an avenue to “resurrect” it.

Left: Paul Newman as the deeply troubled and doubltess sexually conflicted William Bonney alias "Billy the Kid," in Leslie Stevens' 1958 film transcription of Gore Vidal's teleplay "The Death of Billy the Kid." Also pictured is James Congdon as Charlie Boudre, one of a tandem of accomplices with whom he seeks to avenge the murder of his mentor, the introspective ranch proprietor Turnstall.

Certainly one of the most axiomatic of video roles for the late, great Paul Newman, was his turn as William Bonney, alias “Billy the Kid” in Gore Vidal’s much nuanced dramatization of incidents in the life of the likely falsely maligned gunman, “The Death of Billy the Kid,” airing via NBC’s “Philco Television Playhouse” on July 24, 1955. In an impressive cast that included Jason Robards, Jr., Frank Overton, Michael Strong, and Michael Conrad (later of Hill Street Blues fame), Newman herein would lay claim to the brooding Marlon Brando mantle. When filmed by Warner Brothers in 1958 as The Left-Handed Gun, Newman again shone as the introspective Bonney, with an underlying homosexual element, as Bonney avenges the homicide of his Good Samaritan, the rancher Turnstall. For Newman, as well as his for Joanne Woodward, Newman’s fellow live television drama veteran and spouse from 1958 through his death last year, the affiliation with literary lion Vidal was long and steadfast. It made Newman’s impersonation of Bonney, as crafted by Vidal, the more revelatory.

Above:

Martin Balsam as the prejudiced mobster Charles Malik, Don Murray as the racially unencumbered Army AWOL veteran Axel North, and Sidney Poitier as the often free and easy but now clearly vexed dock worker Tommy Tyler in Robert Alan Aurthur's potent teleplay "A Man Is Ten Feet Tall," airing via NBC's "Philco Television Playhouse" on October 2, 1955

For the trailblazing Sidney Poitier, whose friendship with both Brando and Newman remained ever strong, particularly on any of their several shared social crusades over the decades, certainly one of his most potent live television performances was as the dock worker who maintains an unbridled relationship with an Army man gone AWOL, oblivious to their racial differences in Robert Alan Aurthur’s A Man Is Ten Feet Tall airing as part of NBC’s “Philco Television Playhouse” on October 2, 1955. Don Murray was cast as the racially unencumbered Axel North, and a counterpart to the prejudiced mobster Charles Malik, portrayed by Martin Balsam. Poitier would repeat his role as Tommy Tyler in the 1957 MGM cinematic version of the teleplay, Edge of the City, supremely directed by another veteran of the live television era, Martin Ritt. Therein the Cleveland, Ohio raised Ruby Dee portrayed Tyler’s more level-headed wife, Lucy, a role not too remote from Dee’s Lena, the long suffering wife of Sidney Poitier’s Walter Lee Younger in Daniel Petrie’s superb 1961 screen transcription of Lorraine Hansberry’s 1959 stage classic A Raisin in the Sun.

Significantly, too, A Raisin in the Sun’s screen director, the late Daniel Petrie, whose own live television credits dated back to 1949’s Stud’s Place, a showcase for the talents of later Pulitzer Prize winner Studs Turkel (he won for his 1984 nonfiction account of the World War II homefront, The Good War), would also direct Sally Field’s breakthrough television role as the title character of Sybil. Based on Flora Rheta Shreiber’s account of a young woman bearing sixteen distinct personalities, the 1976 telefeature was awarded multiple Emmys, including one for Field of course, with a nod to Joanne Woodward as the psychiatrist who finds Sybil’s “mirror in the mind” to successfully treat her.

Thus did the family of talent weaned in the era of live television drama, from Brando to Newman to Vidal to Poitier to Dee to Petrie and to Woodward, come truly full circle. And through the efforts of preservation groups like the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and Koch Vision’s “Archive of American Television,” this is a family of talent whose seminal television work is well worth the price of archiving.

A true lifetime "Circle of Friends." Just above, Paul Newman, Barbra Streisand, and Sidney Poitier team together to establish their own First Artists Production Company in 1969. At top, Marlon Brando, Paul Newman, and fellow actor Anthony Franciosa unite in protest over racial discrimination in Gadsden, Alabama, 1963.

Larry James Gianakos is currently on a national promotional tour at Barnes & Nobles Booksellers in major U.S. cities. "Studio One Anthology", "Resurrection of an Era" a review of television dramas that ran on CBS from 1948-1958 is Mr. Gianakos's latest compilation.