YouTube recommended the 1966 CBS production of Death of a Salesman, and they were right. I watched the first 25 minutes during the workday yesterday and the rest after work. Almost all the things I want to see: color videotape, and in this case, not a blurry, mushy copy of a copy of a copy, but a sharp color close-to-first-generation videotape; Arthur Miller adapted his own play for the 2-hour block, and the NY Times TV critic said the cuts weren't obvious and made the play even better by tightening it up; the lead roles were played by the original actors from the 1949 production, Lee J. Cobb and Martha Dunnock, and now that they were in their fifties instead of their thirties, it fit better with the ages of the characters. The network even relaxed its censorship guidelines to permit several four-letter words. I just got the impression that they wanted to get as close as possible to The Definitive Version of DoaS for the ages. And 56 years later, I'm glad they did.
9 1/2 stars out of 10. There were glimpses of a boom microphone at the top of the screen, kind of a hallmark of live television productions in that era. Wish they'd included the original Xerox commercials, and there was one bit of probably unintentional humor -- it certainly broke the realistic mood -- when the owner of the business played a recording of his children for Willy Loman, and one of the voices was basically Rocky the Flying Squirrel reciting the U.S. capitals. Well, June Foray was already in the cast in a small role as a woman of easy virtue, so you can see the thought process. Finally, the kind of acting that would have been perfect for the stage, where the audience can be a couple of hundred feet away, seemed too hot for television and its closeups. That's a long paragraph to explain a half-a-star ding, and probably too long.
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