I agree with the first reviewer of this Studio One episode with Dennis Hopper. I have been a fan of Dennis Hopper since I saw "Easy Rider" when it first came out. This show comes on in south Florida at five or six in the morning and I wasn't going to watch it but when I saw that Dennis Hopper was in it and how young he was, I had to watch it. I found it so engrossing that I watched the entire "play." In regard to the audio, the other reviewer is right; it is very bad; at times it sounds like it was filmed on a beach with heavy, crashing surf. Despite the audio, this episode is worth watching if for no other reason than just to see how fine of an actor, and how "real," Dennis Hopper was ten years before "Easy Rider." (I gave it a nine because of the audio.)
2 Reviews
Whoa, what a show. And, these were live.
KayMack2311 August 2017
Westinghouse's "Studio One" are little gem- er, let's call them diamonds, because I'm tired of seeing the descriptive "gems" so much. Studio One has been airing on the "Decades" network 11pm Pacific. I've been scheduling my evenings around this show. Guys, these shows were LIVE. The audio to the programs is not as good as you'd like, it's muffled and hard to decipher, no closed captioning, keep your ears tuned.
His father died after losing everything in a financial failure, leaving his mother to take in sewing and "Harry" working as a bicycle paper boy earning "sixteen dollars and eighty cents a week> I have five hundred saved up in a box under my bed that I'm saving for when I go away to school" he tells a girl just down for the summer. The "summer girl" from the city, "Harry" confides in her "we used to be 'summer people' too, y'know, just like.. your family.. then the banks failed and dad lost everything and we... we lost all our money." There's a dance. "Please come", she tells him. He spends too much money on a new jacket for the dance, upsetting and concerning his seamstress mother: "I could have taken in one of your father's old jackets! $18 dollars! Harry, that is eighteen dollars out of the only five-hundred dollars that has to last you a WHOLE YEAR while you're away at school!".
The city girl has a birthday party. "Harry" does something just unthinkable and terribly regrettable that could, well probably will- alter his life forever. "Harry" does a very stupid thing that even etiquette books today warn people not to do. A thing that isn't scandalous, it's just using very poor judgment and not thinking.
The character playing his mother says something to him, that is just heartbreaking in the last ten minutes of the show that sums it all up. Don't miss it.
I gotta say, Dennis Hopper is absolutely remarkable in this. It is unbelievable really, just how good he is. What a perfect vehicle this was for him, well, you'll see it if you view this episode. He is so natural and so much the character, he is the character. Very well cast, well acted, everything. You cringe with Hopper, you want to cry with his mother, you are there because you feel just what the director (John Frankenheimer, who being born in 1930 would have made him a young man at only 28 when he directed this, pure genius he was) wants you to feel.
If you get the chance to own a set of these, or download a set off of public domain if available it would be a wise investment. What a change in content we have now in 2017 than the TV audiences had sixty years ago. Imagine this show being on the air prime time now and live to boot.
His father died after losing everything in a financial failure, leaving his mother to take in sewing and "Harry" working as a bicycle paper boy earning "sixteen dollars and eighty cents a week> I have five hundred saved up in a box under my bed that I'm saving for when I go away to school" he tells a girl just down for the summer. The "summer girl" from the city, "Harry" confides in her "we used to be 'summer people' too, y'know, just like.. your family.. then the banks failed and dad lost everything and we... we lost all our money." There's a dance. "Please come", she tells him. He spends too much money on a new jacket for the dance, upsetting and concerning his seamstress mother: "I could have taken in one of your father's old jackets! $18 dollars! Harry, that is eighteen dollars out of the only five-hundred dollars that has to last you a WHOLE YEAR while you're away at school!".
The city girl has a birthday party. "Harry" does something just unthinkable and terribly regrettable that could, well probably will- alter his life forever. "Harry" does a very stupid thing that even etiquette books today warn people not to do. A thing that isn't scandalous, it's just using very poor judgment and not thinking.
The character playing his mother says something to him, that is just heartbreaking in the last ten minutes of the show that sums it all up. Don't miss it.
I gotta say, Dennis Hopper is absolutely remarkable in this. It is unbelievable really, just how good he is. What a perfect vehicle this was for him, well, you'll see it if you view this episode. He is so natural and so much the character, he is the character. Very well cast, well acted, everything. You cringe with Hopper, you want to cry with his mother, you are there because you feel just what the director (John Frankenheimer, who being born in 1930 would have made him a young man at only 28 when he directed this, pure genius he was) wants you to feel.
If you get the chance to own a set of these, or download a set off of public domain if available it would be a wise investment. What a change in content we have now in 2017 than the TV audiences had sixty years ago. Imagine this show being on the air prime time now and live to boot.
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