Camera Three
| Camera Three | |
|---|---|
| Genre | Anthology |
| Written by | Lonne Elder III |
| Directed by | Ivan Cury Merrill Brockway |
| Presented by | James Macandrew |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Original language(s) | English |
| Production | |
| Running time | 45 minutes |
| Release | |
| Original network |
CBS (1956-1979) PBS (1979-1980) |
| Audio format | Monaural |
| Original release | January 22, 1956 – July 10, 1980 |
Camera Three was an American anthology series devoted to the arts. It ran on CBS from March 27, 1955 to January 21, 1979, and moved to PBS in its final year to make way for the then-new CBS News Sunday Morning. The PBS version ran from October 4, 1979 to July 10, 1980.
Camera Three featured programs showcasing drama, ballet, art, music, anything involving fine arts.
One of its most notable presentations was a condensation of Marc Blitzstein's leftist opera The Cradle Will Rock. Presented on November 29, 1964, it was a dramatic demonstration of how far television had come since its early days, in its willingness to present a work that surely would have been banned from the airwaves during the era of Joseph McCarthy.
Camera Three originated as a Saturday afternoon cultural affairs program on WCBS-TV. Robert Herridge, who was producing a low-rated educational series, It's Worth Knowing, for the station approached WCBS-TV's head of public affairs, Clarence Worden, with his idea for "a program where there was no area of human experience we couldn't get into ... an open end kind of show -- an open sesame." Worden signed off on the idea and gave Herridge 45 minutes of time on Saturday afternoons and a $1,400 budget.
The program's name stemmed from a question Worden asked Herridge: "How many cameras are you using?" After Herridge replied "Three," Worden suggested that Camera Three would make "a great title."
Camera Three continued to be produced by WCBS-TV's public affairs department when it moved to the network, but by the early 1960s its budget had been increased to $5,000 a week.
Camera Three is recognized as being the first TV program "to use poetry extensively" and the first "to succeed with dramatizations of classics." The program also broke ground in sensitive areas, such as presenting a sympathetic portrayal of Sacco and Vanzetti and casting a black actor, Earle Hyman, in the role of Othello, rather than having the role played by a white actor in blackface, as was the usual custom at that time.
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