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1953-59, Not Rated
The boon in DVD releases of archival celebrity/personality interviews by TV talk-show hosts continues with the most historic and important yet — Edward R. Murrow’s Person to Person on CBS. Murrow, sitting in an armchair on a studio set and constantly smoking, interviewed guests via remote camera from their homes. There’s a bit of show-biz staginess to it, but the chance now to see and hear such guests as John and Robert Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe, Marlon Brando, Bette Davis and Eleanor Roosevelt, among others, is like walking among ghosts at the Smithsonian Institute. Some of the interviews with couples — Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, Mike Todd and Elizabeth Taylor — are especially charming. The success of Person to Person allowed Murrow maneuvering room to use his other show, the newsier See It Now, to take on Sen. Joe McCarthy, as was chronicled in last year’s Good Night, and Good Luck. (Steven Rosen) Grade: A
This article appears in Nov 8-14, 2006.