The shows are up to 60 years old and some look every bit their age, but there's no taking your eyes off the top-tier episodes of "Studio One: Anthology."
The live CBS show was among the top anthology shows of the 1950s and a pure product of the Golden Age of Television. Broadcast from 1948-58, the show overflowed with stars and soon-to-be stars.
Westinghouse sponsored ("First in nuclear power!"), with sleek spokesmodel Betty Furness educating America about new refrigerators and light bulbs.
Actors in the 17 shows of Koch Entertainment's "
Studio One: Anthology
" alone include Charlton Heston, Elizabeth Montgomery, Sal Mineo, Art Carney, Jack Lemmon, Eva Marie Saint, Theodore Bikel, Lorne Green ... and so on.
Writers include Gore Vidal and Rod Serling (both twice), George Axelrod and the prolific social realist Reginald Rose.
The toplined episode here is the famed live broadcast of "Twelve Angry Men," an original written by Rose for "Studio One." Long thought lost, a kinescope was located in the private collection of a judge who had admired its realistic look at jury deliberations in a murder trial. Henry Fonda turned the Emmy-winning episode into a feature film; the source material lives on today in regional theatrical productions.
Koch and the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences screened "Twelve Angry Men" a few weeks back, with the small-screen drama holding up well on ATAS' big screen, especially the performance of Robert Cummings as the probing juror No. 8.

Afterward, a panel of "Studio One" veterans -- including Jack Klugman, Dick Van Patten and Jayne Meadows -- talked about their experiences in live TV. The elderly stars shared stories of things going wrong before a nationwide audience, and how the actors' split-second improvisations kept things moving along. As much as anything, the casual panel session showed how fragile the memories of this TV era are in the new century.
Meadows talked about all footage of "The Steve Allen Show" deliberately buried at sea, via some sort of network subterfuge. Likewise, much of "Studio One's" output was destroyed. In the DVD set's docu, the actress Cloris Leachman recalls: "The president of CBS told me he was just sick that they all burned."
In 1997, however, a worker found a cache of CBS boxes at an old Westinghouse factory. Inside were hundreds of hours of live TV programming.
The televised plays and adaptations presented here come from kinescopes, basically low-grade films made off the monitor. They suffer from all known forms of video wear, although the mid-'50s material fares reasonably well. Audio is just OK, at best.
My favorite episode in "Studio One: Anthology" is Gore Vidal's "Summer Pavilion," featuring live-TV regular Elizabeth Montgomery (young and striking) and hard-charging Miriam Hopkins. ("All are gone now," Vidal writes in the DVD booklet.) The well-preserved broadcast from 1955 has Vidal name-checking William Faulkner but evoking Tennessee Williams in the tale of a crumbling aristocratic New Orleans family.

"Since we -- so many actors, writers, et al -- all lived in Manhattan, we had access to many stars of film and of theater," Vidal writes. "This went on until live television plays were cut by the networks, generally in favor of game shows which did not appreciably raise the IQs of the national audience."
Another winning DVD episode was "Confessions of a Nervous Man," a clever and satirical reminiscence by George Axelrod of the days before and after the debut of his hit play "The Seven Year Itch." Art Carney is terrific as the jittery playwright. Jacqueline Susann shows up as an interviewer.
"1984" brought George Orwell's authoritarian future to America's TV sets in the age of Joseph McCarthy. Director Paul Nickell recalls "there had been difficulty" over the content. He says the McCarthy parallels were "subconscious" on his part, but "I hope it came through." Ignorance is strength, the sign said. Another good-looking episode, shot with five(!) cameras.
I also enjoyed Shakespeare's "Julius Ceasar," the third staging of the play at "Studio One." Theodore Bikel falls victim to the Ides of March.
The DVD set's extras include the brief documentary about the show, a run-on "Studio One" panel session and an extended interview with director Nickell. In general, the bonus materials sound boomy and muffled. The set comes with a handsome booklet that examines each episode.
("12 Angry Men" photo courtesy of Photofest)
* * * * *
Paramount has rereleased Billy Wilder's "Sunset Boulevard" as part of its "Centennial Collection," building upon the extras from the studio's fine "Special Collectors Edition" of 2002.
Images and sounds on the 2002 DVD were outstanding; there appear to be some minor upgrades here, but I wouldn't swear to it. Most of the minor imperfections I checked on the older disc are repeated on the Centennial version. There appears to be a slight bit more information on sides of the images.
"
Sunset Boulevard: The Centennial Collection
" adds a second disc of extras. The main attraction is the making-of documentary, which adds a good deal of footage to the docu from the older disc. The docu is spread over multiple chapters, adding up to a feature-length effort. The credits list separate crews for 2002 and 2008 interviews, which have been combined. It's a solid and drawn-out documentary, but you do wonder why some of the interviewees are included. Perhaps next time we'll get a fresh look at the classic.
New extras of note include the fine "Mad About the Boy: A Portrait of William Holden," in which his frequent co-star Nancy Olson tells some interesting stories about the famed actor and their professional relationship. "The City of Sunset Boulevard" visits locations used in the film, such as the Alto Nido apartments (still peering over Hollywood). Good stuff -- too bad it runs only 5 minutes. The new DVD booklet is a big step up, with dramatic b&w photos.

Ported over from the 2002
"Sunset Boulevard" DVD is the opening morgue sequence. Silent clips accompany script excerpts in which Joe's body visits the L.A. morgue and makes chat with the local stiffs. Wilder deleted the opening because audiences found it funny. The new DVD short "Recording Sunset Boulevard" visits the sessions for a new soundtrack album that includes the 9-minute cues for the morgue sequence.
Sikov has the film down cold and views it with a great eye -- check out his description of Norma (Gloria Swanson) as a claw-handed Nosferatu in the shot at 20:45. (This is "a monster movie at times," Sikov notes.) Or how he calls attention to former silent actress Norma disdainfully brushing away a boom mike that ruffles her feather during the visit to Stage 18.
Sikov doesn't confuse Wilder with Bergman, and provides plenty of dish, including how William Holden's angry wife called "cut!" on the set when the director playfully let a kissing scene go on far too long, and how there was no love lost between Wilder and fellow director Cecil B. DeMille, who wanted a new car as partial compensation for playing his great self.
And check out Sikov's comment on Holden's hack writer, face down in the pool again in the final scenes, "He's been narrating 'Sunset Boulevard,' but he's understood nothing of what he's experienced."
Other recently released titles in Paramount's Centennial Collection are two Audrey Hepburn classics: "Roman Holiday" and the marvelous lovers-triangle tale "Sabrina."