In the Golden Age of television, writers became stars - not as big as the actual actors on screen, eg Ward Bond, Lucille Ball, but still names to be reckoned with. I once read Variety weekly from 1954 through this period and was struck by the importance placed on writers, it was like Broadway - Chayefsky was the star, with the phenomenon of Marty, but following were three others who made up "the big four": Reginald Rose, Rod Serling and Gore Vidal. Each became better known for other things (Chayefsky for his screenplays, Rose for The Defenders, Serling for The Twilight Zone, Vidal for his novels), but each gained fame earl yon the basis of a classic television script: Rose's was Twelve Angry Men, Serling's was Patterns and Requiem for a Heavyweight, Vidal's was The Death of Billy the Kid and Visit to a Small Planet. These scripts were made into movies, Broadway shows, and published - hence this volume of Vidal's work. It is accompanied by an introduction and brief chats on each of the plays.
Vidal only got into television in order to make money (sales of his novels had been declining) but he proved a natural - he never wrote down to the medium, was educated so could draw on a lot of topics (originals, history stories, adaptations),was a natural dramatist with a flair for dialogue and construction. The key difference with television plays was its use of the close up and Vidal could write great roles - he was not the best for sweeping visual stories (neither were the other big four, or any major writer to come out of television, for that matter).
The plays:
Dark Possessions - his first effort and it's a strong one, a murder mystery with a split personality twist.
A Sense of Honour - a crazy man sets out to shoot a political boss. An insight into the mind of an assassin, it's very effective and demonstrates the quality of work Vidal put in for the small screen (I wish they'd bring back the anthology).
Summer Pavilion - Vidal reworks The Cherry Orchard - you know, even when he was ripping something off its still ripping off a high quality product
Visitor to a Small Planet - not as much fun as the expanded theatre version (in which the character of Gen Powers gets more time) but still a pleasingly irreverent piece of satire. Frank Tashlin should have directed the film adaptation.
The Death of Billy the Kid - Vidal shows just how versatile he can be by coming up with an excellent Western, a look at the psychopathic Billy the Kid. Vidal had always been fascinated by Billy but not really keen on doing all the research to write a book, so, like William Goldman with Butch Cassidy, finally got his chance with a screenplay.
Smoke and Burn are both short (30 mins) adaptations of William Faulkner stories, who as Vidal admits adapts surprisingly well to the small screen (and make one wish they'd given Vidal the job of turning The Sound and the Fury into a film) - both mysteries of a kind -Smoke is a who-dunnit, Burn is a will-he-do-it-again-it. There's also Turn of the Screw also well done.
The quality of all these works is consistently high and shows Vidal's sure grasp of structure and ability to work in a variety of voices(consider it: Chekhov family drama, satire, western, mysteries) - and make one wish that anthology would come back. You can't believe the writers at the time didn't realise how lucky they were but reading the intros you mostly hear whining about having to do so much. But that's writers, I guess.
NB behind every greater writer of television there was often a great director (who would add to the script rather than change it) - for Chayefksy it was Delbert Mann, for Vidal it was Robert Mulligan. So take a bow, Bob.
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