The Tragedy of Julius Caesar

Alternative title: Julius Caesar
Synopsis: Video recording of a stage play, the first to be presented on the stage of the Folger Theatre in Washington, D.C. The players are from the Amherst College Drama Department under the direction of Curtis Canfield. The recording was transmitted live by NBC.
Language: English
Country: United States
Medium: Television
Transmission details: 3 Apr 1949 at 15:30 (Channel: NBC)
Duration: 90 mins

Director

Garry Simpson

Producer

Owen Davis

Writer

William Shakespeare

Contributor

Curtis Canfield

Cast

Notes: Kenneth Rothwell in Shakespeare on Screen: An International Filmography and Videography (London: Mansell, 1990) notes: the Folger video cassette represents a copy of a blurry Kinescope, of such poor quality that often the picture more resembles a negative than a print’.
General: The Folger Shakespeare Library holds a mimeographed typescript
of the shooting script of the NBC broadcast. Includes (after 1st leaf) the 2-leaf "Remarks to audience by Louis B. Wright ... during the Intermission. (not broadcast)".

This is the first performance presented on the Elizabethan stage of the Folger Shakespeare Library. The broadcast profiles the Folger Library and its founder, Henry Clay Folger, president of Standard Oil.
History: Intermission presentation by Charles W. Cole, President, Amherst College, and Louis B. Wright, Director, Folger Shakespeare Library, on Shakespeare in America, Henry Clay Folger, and the Folger Library.
Reviews: Jack Gould ‘Programs in Review’, New York Times 10 April 1949 X9. Gould believed the production ‘amateurish’ and ‘ill-advised’, ill-suited to the Folger stage. Rothwell, becoming nostalgic at an early point in television history, comments in Shakespeare on Screen `... there is a sense of nostalgia for a lost television era. Those were the last days of the lost dream of high culture for the masses’.

British Universities Film & Video Council