“In feature films an actor is fortunate if he can get 40 percent of what he’d like to have into the finished product. In a television series, that percentage has to go down—I would say—to 20 percent, if you want a wild figure. Any kind of emotional involvement is almost nonexistent, and emotionalism is one of the tools of any respectable actor—qualified emotionalism, restrained emotionalism, these are important things. If you happen to be lucky enough to be neurotic and can go to pieces on the spur of the moment and do it four more times, then you should make a fairly good television actor. In a large sense it is not even satisfactory acting.”—George C. Scott, commenting on the CBS cancellation of his series East Side, West Side, quoted in “The Show is Over, But the Actor Is Fuming Still,” TV Guide, July 1964, collected in TV Guide: The First 25 Years, compiled and edited by Jay S. Harris in association with the editors of TV Guide (1978)
If the Oscar-winning actor felt this way in the 1960s, what would he think of TV as a medium now, nearly 50 years since East Side, West Side aired?
As far as network TV was concerned, he’d probably snort sardonically at all the reality shows and think how lucky he’d been. His series—whose daily grind and failure after less than a year led Scott to vow never to do another—had been scheduled because of one of those small windows of opportunity that open up between one media era and another. (In this case, the networks needed urban, character-driven dramas such as this one, The Defenders and The Naked City, to balance or replace violent programs coming in for heavy criticism by pressure groups.)
Critics loved it, but audiences mostly stayed away from this show featuring a social worker and his assistant (Cicely Tyson, in a landmark role at the time for an African-American actress). For several years after the show was canceled, according to an in-depth, perceptive history of the show by Stephen Bowie, its failure had “come to exemplify within the television industry the kind of programming that was too dark, too controversial, too unglamorous, too depressing, or simply too good to catch on with a mainstream audience.”
Scott returned to a network series for Mr. President—a sitcom which ran on Fox from May 1987 to the following April--for the money, he bluntly told the media. As he aged, he found that TV specials provided more congenial vehicles for his talents (e.g., A Christmas Carol, a TV movie on Mussolini) than film. One suspects that he would find cable TV series the best venues today, as have an increasing number of 40+ actors and actresses.
Maybe he’d even get the “percentage” to which he referred in the above quote all the way up to 30 or 35 percent. After all, what can an actor do, if not hope in the face of reason?
If the Oscar-winning actor felt this way in the 1960s, what would he think of TV as a medium now, nearly 50 years since East Side, West Side aired?
As far as network TV was concerned, he’d probably snort sardonically at all the reality shows and think how lucky he’d been. His series—whose daily grind and failure after less than a year led Scott to vow never to do another—had been scheduled because of one of those small windows of opportunity that open up between one media era and another. (In this case, the networks needed urban, character-driven dramas such as this one, The Defenders and The Naked City, to balance or replace violent programs coming in for heavy criticism by pressure groups.)
Critics loved it, but audiences mostly stayed away from this show featuring a social worker and his assistant (Cicely Tyson, in a landmark role at the time for an African-American actress). For several years after the show was canceled, according to an in-depth, perceptive history of the show by Stephen Bowie, its failure had “come to exemplify within the television industry the kind of programming that was too dark, too controversial, too unglamorous, too depressing, or simply too good to catch on with a mainstream audience.”
Scott returned to a network series for Mr. President—a sitcom which ran on Fox from May 1987 to the following April--for the money, he bluntly told the media. As he aged, he found that TV specials provided more congenial vehicles for his talents (e.g., A Christmas Carol, a TV movie on Mussolini) than film. One suspects that he would find cable TV series the best venues today, as have an increasing number of 40+ actors and actresses.
Maybe he’d even get the “percentage” to which he referred in the above quote all the way up to 30 or 35 percent. After all, what can an actor do, if not hope in the face of reason?
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