Comments on: Arthur Penn and Live Television Drama

By: Arthur Penn: Notes in the Margins « The Classic TV History Blog

Arthur Penn: Notes in the Margins « The Classic TV History Blog — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 15:17:15 +0000

[…] I feel obligated to write something sweeping and substantial about Arthur Penn. In terms of his contributions to television as a medium, he is the most significant of all the recently deceased people mentioned in my last post. But it’s too daunting a task, in part because of the pesky problem of access, which is something that the estimable Jonah Horwitz gets at in his television-oriented Penn obituary. […]

By: Victor Margolin

Victor Margolin — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 17:42:23 +0000

Great piece Jonah. When I was younger I looked forward to those television dramas. There was a moment when a tv drama such as those you describe carried the same cultural cache as the opening of a movie or a play. You are right to call for the release of many of these programs that are now held in archives. There is much we can learn about American culture from viewing this programs.

By: Jon Kraszewski

Jon Kraszewski — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 14:18:56 +0000

Good points–especially about Penn’s break from the Coe style in his films. I think we know so little about the directors of anthology dramas–at least about their work on anthologies as opposed to their work in the film industry, and it sounds like you are doing good work to fill that void.

By: Jonah Horwitz

Jonah Horwitz — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 04:56:01 +0000

Hi Jon, and thanks. Note that in building scenes around long takes and deep focus, the directors of live TV drama were adapting a style already popular in 1940s and 1950s feature filmmaking. But I think you can draw a direct line between the flaunting of those techniques in some CBS shows, like CLIMAX! and STUDIO ONE, and the styles of films like THE TRAIN and even PATTON (directed by John Frankenheimer and Franklin Schaffner, both Worthington Miner proteges).

Penn is a more complex case, since the excesses of MICKEY ONE or BONNIE & CLYDE would seem to have little to do with the self-effacing approach his mentor Fred Coe had advocated.

By: Jon Kraszewski

Jon Kraszewski — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 22:38:45 +0000

Great piece, Jonah! I, too, would love to know more about the work of these great directors on 1950s TV dramas. You make great points about why media history has ignored the TV careers of these directors. I’ve noticed, too, that folks such as Delbert Mann talk about how viewers should not notice a TV director’s style–that the style should appear natural, realistic, and unobtrusive. Thus, even though Mann won an Academy Award for the adaptation of Marty, he even promoted himself as a man in the shadows, so to speak. But as you pointed out, this style of directing is a construct that needs to be studied.

Mann and Schaffner have extensive archives, so for now I hope that more media scholars explore them–since we don’t have public access to most of their TV work.

Also, good points about the long takes and deep focus. Interestingly, Schaffner used the same techniques when he directed film epics. So, in an odd way, the grand visuals of film epics share a visual style with intimate TV dramas.

Jon

By: Josh S.

Josh S. — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 20:44:03 +0000

Nicely written post, Jonah.

By: Lindsay H. Garrison

Lindsay H. Garrison — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 16:25:56 +0000

I really enjoyed this – thanks Jonah. I appreciate you bringing up the often overlooked importance of early television and the difficulties both the public and the academy face in viewing/studying things like Penn’s work in live anthology dramas. I, too, hope that the hard work being done by the Television Academy Foundation as well as archivists and scholars from collections like the Wisconsin Film & Theater Research Center can increase the visibility of such crucial parts of media history.