By Steve Vertlieb: A rare “live” musical production of the American classic Our Town by Thornton Wilder aired on Producer’s Showcase September 19, 1955 over the NBC Television network. While the video quality of the Kinescope is far from perfect, this deeply sensitive, exquisite early television production features Frank Sinatra, Paul Newman, and Eva Marie Saint, with heartfelt original songs and tender ballads written by Sammy Cahn and James Van Heusen, and musical direction and orchestrations by Nelson Riddle.

Directed by Delbert Mann (Marty, Separate Tables, Middle of the Night), this wonderful program, nearly lost to posterity, cries out for a modern restoration, for it is a powerful historic remnant of the early pioneering years of experimental “live” television production, never again equaled or surpassed by modern technological advancements.

The original songs written by Van Heusen and Cahn are some of their finest, most memorable works. Frank Sinatra had only recently returned from the depths of obscurity to once again claim his rightful reign as, perhaps, the greatest popular singer of the Twentieth Century, while young actors Paul Newman and Eva Marie Saint were only just beginning their substantial careers.

Despite a fine earlier film version starring William Holden and Martha Scott, as well as innumerable stage productions of this modern literary classic, there is a poetic poignancy, and melancholic sincerity in this early, definitive, half- forgotten television masterwork that still tugs tenderly at the heart-strings, and evokes bittersweet tears unequalled with time and technology. Its preservation cries out for restoration, and cherished remembrance.