No Time for Sergeants

The full play was in production half a year later. In this first, short version for television, Stockdale leads the live camera through his adventures in the peacetime draft, ending with Sgt. King busted to private.

The skeletal set is dressed for each scene, the camera moves fluidly, a live audience is on to the jokes.

The four movements in three acts are Permanent Barracks Orderly, Classification, the Women’s Air Force, and the Purple Grotto.

Death of a Salesman

Halfway between the writing and the publication of Long Day’s Journey into Night, the play in which O’Neill deals with the Shakespeare cult, Arthur Miller wrote this play, which has so many similarities to it.

This production’s overall concern is to convey the flavor of the original production. Between the execution of Miller’s stage directions with transparent screens, and adroit direction for television, you also get a clear picture of this early experiment in surrealism derived from The Glass Menagerie, which he brought to perfection in After the Fall and improved still further in The Ride Down Mt. Morgan.

The cast list is stunning. Bernie Kopell is Willy Loman’s new boss, and the bit part of the waiter is played by Stanley Adams. Mildred Dunnock takes the cake in an absolutely correct performance for television, while everyone else modulates around Lee J. Cobb showing the great stage actor treading the boards in a grueling performance.