Sidney Lumet describes his work on “Tragedy in a Temporary Town,” and discusses the power of live television, especially during the blacklisting period of the 1950s.
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TRANSCRIPT
Tragedy in a Temporary Town, yeah.
Tragedy in a Temporary Town is about one of those communities that have been put up around the construction project in which the houses were trailer homes and about the insecurity of life there I got a plan, and I want to tell it to you. Me and the boys been talking outside there, right men?
Alright: number one - we put guards around the whole area nobody getting in or out until we're finished.
Number two - we get a list of every man's name in the place over 15 years old and we get up a committee that we questioned each guy have two men of yours, Fisher, and two others.
We find this guy in a couple hours, and then we got some plans too.
Alright that's enough now.
Well I don't know, you know, if we can just go on out. Well, we're gonna stop. Look, I tell ya' Red, you gotta call the police you can't run things like this - who can't? - You can't. I mean this kind of stuff is dangerous, taking over the law this was a live show the climax took place in this outdoor field it's at night which we did so that we could light it by just putting up simulated automobile headlights with him in the middle and Lloyd Bridges who was playing lead flipped out on air he got so involved so intense about it he said, 'you sons-of-bitches you...' with tears coursing down his face and it was terrific acting but it was disastrous live television because of the language he was using. I never saw what went out on the air i was in the control room hey come on and get me pigs, come on I'll strike one of you bitches across the face just look at yourselves, don't it make you creep with shame?
you mob of dirty six cold pigs and all of a sudden your the law.
Well let me tell you something every time the pigs like you mob together to become your own law you crawl one step closer to the cliff that's what you did to him Someone will do that to you, and it will be your fault you hear? It'll be your fault because you started it rolling and here's the beauty part when some other pigs come for you sometime it might not be because you did something wrong it might be for no reason at all blacklisting was creeping in and as we know from our recent past we are capable of a very strong right wing in this country and it was pervasive all-pervasive. Television had it tougher even than movies.
