[From the Naked City episode “Sweet Prince of Delancey Street,” June 7, 1961.]
Can you identify the actors? One is making his first screen appearance.
“Sweet Prince of Delancey Street” appears as no. 93 on a 1997 TV Guide list of the hundred best television episodes, the only Naked City episode on the list. It’s a great episode, a variation on Hamlet that begins on a terrifying and disorienting note. But there are other Naked City episodes just as good. In truth, there are few episodes of Naked City that are less than compelling.
Making my way through the four seasons of the series confirms for me the Swiss-cheesiness of Steven Berlin Johnson’s claim that television past required little if any “intellectual labor” from a viewer. A Naked City episode (say, “The Deadly Guinea Pig”) can leave its viewer trying to figure out for twenty or thirty minutes what’s going on. Or, as at the end of the episode “The One Marked Hot Gives Cold,” what happened.
Related reading
All Naked City posts (Pinboard)
Monday, January 27, 2014
Naked City mystery guests
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
comments: 7
The first looks like Dustin Hoffmann to me.
I haven't seen this episode but I think these could be Dustin Hoffman and the actor from "How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying"---the name completely escapes me just now...
Yes, it’s Dustin Hoffman, in his first screen appearance (as Lester Stenton). And yes, it’s Robert Morse (now a Mad Man) as Richy Wilkin. Good work, guys.
I was going to guess Dustin Hoffman too...
One of the things I love about Star Trek (1966-1969) is it requires, or at least invites, a lot of intellectual labor on the viewer's (my) part. (If only because of an unintentional "WTF?" factor of some of the episodes, but really far more intentionally than that too.)
Speaking of Star Trek, keep watching the Naked City posts. That’s all I can say for now.
Perhaps, Fresca, except for those episodes that involve the planet of the Nazis, the planet of the Chicago-style gangsters, and, best of all, that episode where Abraham Lincoln "wrastles" Genghis Kahn...(I do however like the two-part "Menagerie," the pilot episode with Gary Lockwood, another called "The Empath," and the one in which Kirk travels back in time and falls in love with a woman named Edith Keeler. Those were unusually interesting and even moving at times.)
ADAIR: Ohgodyes, you're right: those travel-back-to Earth's-history episodes are the WORST of Star Trek!
They are even more brainless than "Spock's Brain,"--the episode where sex kittens in hair-dryer helmets remove Spock's brain. At least that one has the WTF factor.
MICHAEL: I look forward to the Naked City surprise!
Post a Comment