Sentence of Death / The Night America Trembled

JAMES DEAN starred in "Sentence of Death" in August 1953.

James Dean seen in rare TV appearance

If you are a fan of movie star James Dean, you probably think of “East of Eden,” “Giant” and “Rebel Without A Cause.”
He was an up and coming actor when an automobile accident cut his life short at the tender age of 24.
But before his three career-molding films, Dean did a heck of a lot of television that is largely forgotten.
One of his TV appearances, on “Westinghouse’s Studio One” is available on DVD. “Sentence of Death” has him playing a young man who is unfairly charged and convicted in the murder of a drug store owner.
The show aired live in August 1953. For the uninitiated, “Studio One” and similar programs were presented live. Cavernous studios had various sets assembled and numerous cameras. The director would go from the drug store set to police headquarters to a bar, to an apartment hallway and an apartment.
The lovely Betsy Palmer, long before she starred in the first “Friday the 13th” movie or before she was a regular game show panelist, played a rich society girl who decides for laughs to slum it at a neighborhood drug store.
She orders a ham sandwich and decides to invite her friends to join her. They would all order ham sandwiches and laugh at how the other half lives.
Except while in the phone booth, a man walks into the store, kills the shop owner and steals money from the cash drawer.
The victim’s wife and an elderly couple identify the Dean character as the killer and he is convicted and sentenced to death.
Palmer’s character, at first obnoxious and care-free, gets a conscious when she sees the man she believes did the killing at a bar. It isn’t Dean.
This is a compelling and well-acted presentation. It is available to us today only because someone placed a film camera in front of a television and recorded the program. So the quality isn’t the best, but it is more than viewable.
You wonder how such an undertaking could be so well-executed week after week. It is almost like filming a movie live and watching it as it is put together.
On the same DVD is “The Night America Trembled.”
If you ever wondered how America could misinterpret a radio play about Martians invading Earth for the real thing, this live dramatization will help. It happened in the 1930s in Orson Welles’ “War of the Worlds.”
We see the radio studio, complete with orchestra and actors doing the show. Among the radio actors is a young Ed Asner, later Lou Grant and the voice of the Best Picture nominated “Up.”
John Astin, later to be Gomez Addams on “The Addams Family,” plays a newspaper writer.
The play jumps from the studio to a home where a girl is baby-sitting while being frightened out of her wits by the radio show. We see a bunch of guys listening from a bar. We see a guy at a bus station use all of his money for a ticket to get as far away from the “Martians” as possible.
Each set used, each street scene, had to be constructed. Scene switching had to be timed flawlessly.
What is so sad is that CBS burned many of the films of these programs, called kinescopes, to make more room for other things in the storage areas.
How short-sighted. If you rent these two programs, make sure you watch them with commercials. You will learn about the Westinghouse frost-free refrigerator, which gets rid of the ice and even the evaporating water.
Or check out the new Westinghouse clothes washer, at that time called a “Laundromat.”
I have reviewed other “Studio One” episodes before and they are all tremendous efforts and you will see tons of well-known actors when they were starting out.
Televisions may have been cruder in 1953, but programming was more sophisticated.
STUDIO ONE: SENTENCE OF DEATH / THE NIGHT AMERICA TREMBLED • Filmed in black and white with interactive menus • Suitable for all • 4 stars out of 4

Everybody's Fine

DeNiro learns about family in ‘Everybody’s Fine’

ROBERT DeNIRO and Drew Barrymore in "Everybody's Fine."

I really don’t understand why “Everybody’s Fine” didn’t get for a Best Picture nomination this past year..
This is a heartfelt, emotional slice-of-life picture with Robert DeNiro starring as an aging, retired widower trying to stay in touch with his children.
DeNiro is the mild-mannered every dad whose wife recently died. Their four children are grown and live in far-flung areas of the country. Wife kept the family going and shielded DeNiro’s character, Frank Goode, from the bad stuff.
Frank placed coatings on telephone utility lines in a factory and breathing in the fumes caused lung damage. The telephone theme is used extensively in the film, as three of the children talk amongst themselves.
The film opens with Frank sweeping the floors, doing the dishes, dusting, mowing, all of the domestic chores.
He’s also getting ready for his four children to come for a visit. The grocery store steaks on sale aren’t good enough for his kids. Frank wants something better.
He buys a $600 grill that lets just enough oxygen in to burn the fat on the meat.
He wants a special wine so he asks the clueless clerk what to buy. “We have Italian wines from all over Europe,” the clerk replies.
Ah but slowly each child comes up with a lame excuse for not coming home for the big event.
Each has his or her secret and one of the kids, an artist, is in a Mexican hospital, being held by police on drug charges.
When the kids don’t come to Frank, Frank decides to head out by bus to visit them. His children work hard to make it look like each is successful and everybody is fine, thus the title.
The visits are supposed to be a surprise. He ends up at the apartment of his artist’s son, not knowing he is in bad shape in Mexico. After a couple of days with the son not showing up, he’s off to visit a daughter, played by Kate Beckinsale.
Her character, Amy, is a high-powered advertising executive. She lives in a beautiful house with a moody son and supposedly a driven husband.
Frank wants to say awhile, but Amy offers excuses as to why he cannot and off he goes to the next child, musician Robert, played by Sam Rockwell. He’s one of the most forthright of the children. Frank thinks he’s the conductor of an orchestra. Robert is merely a percussionist. It’s an easy job, less stress, he likes it, he tells Dad. Frank is disappointed but wants to stay a few days. Robert lies and says he’s heading to Europe that night. He just can’t stand the idea of hanging with Dad.
Throughout the film, those buzzing phone lines are a character, as the kids talk amongst themselves, planning how to handle Dad and keep him from knowing about the brother in Mexico.
Drew Barrymore plays Rosie. She lets Dad think she is a successful dancer in Las Vegas. She meets him in a stretch limo and takes him to her supposed huge, elite apartment.
But Frank isn’t stupid. He questions these stories.
This time he decides to cut short the visit and fly home. Frank doesn’t like to fly and a would-be mugger crushed his medication. On the plane, Frank has a heart attack and figures out the truth while talking to his offspring when they were children in a dream sequence while he is in a coma.
We are used to seeing DeNiro in bigger-than-life roles. But he plays the common man very well.
This is an excellent, realistic story about potentially real people and how they conduct their lives.
These are people you can relate to. Great story, great actors. It’s well plotted. Well put together. Well worth pursuing.

EVERYBODY’S FINE
• Runtime: 99 minutes • Rated PG-13, some language • 4 starts out of 4