Could The Defenders Be Released on DVD? (2 Viewers)

[Carabimero]

I am going to the Paley Center on other business but am going to see if I can find an hour to watch the second season Shatner episode.

 

[Flashgear]

Publicity photo from The Defenders season 3 episode "Yankee Come Home" (May 2, 1964), Richard Kiley guest starred as an American journalist, who after undertaking an unauthorized trip to Communist China, has his US passport revoked...Pilar Seurat seen here with E.G. Marshall and Robert Reed...

Robert Reed with Joan Hackett

Nice autographed photo of Marshall and Reed...

Guest star Leslie Nielsen in the season 4 episode "Death on Wheels" (January 28, 1965)...Nancy Wickwire seen just beyond them...

E.G. Marshall cross examines guest star Conrad Nagel in season two's last episode "The Brother Killers" (May 25, 1963) co-starring Peter Fonda and Jon Voight...

Some more publicity photos of E. G. Marshall, Ed Binns and Dennis Hopper from season three's premiere, "The Weeping Baboon" (Sept. 28, 1963)...

TV Guide, August 22, 1964...

 

[Flashgear]

Look who was cut out of the cover photo that Shout used for season 1 of The Defenders...the gorgeous and supremely talented Lee Grant...as seen in episode 2 of season three's "The Empty Heart" (Oct. 5, 1963)...

Color promo picture with Polly Rowles...

Hard to believe, but among Dell comic books many Movie and TV tie - in titles was The Defenders!
Can't imagine that Reginald Rose, Larry Cohen or Ernest Kinoy supervised the story adaptations, ha, ha...

Reginald Rose, principle writer and co-creator of The Defenders

 

[Flashgear]

The other Plautus Production that received critical acclaim (5 Emmy Noms) and a prestigious cover from TV Guide...The Nurses, Shirl Conway and Zina Bethune on the cover for Dec. 22, 1962...you had to expect the "Ben Casey in Skirts" analogy in it's premiere season...I'm no political activist, but The Nurses should be available on home video and streaming, at least as the important and historic artifact of professional working women of the early '60s that it represents...and a very fine drama also...

Feb. 29, 1964...and yet another "Vast Wasteland" reference...

Zina Bethune with series Co-Star Joseph Campanella and Guest Star Diana Hyland, "The April Thaw of Doctor Mai" (Mar. 30, 1965)...Bethune was only 17 years old when the show started...

Zina Bethune and the ubiquitous Shatner..."A Difference of Years" (Jan. 3, 1963)...I would say so...young Zina isn't quite 18 yet...while the Shat is 31...unhand her you cad...and take it to another planet, maybe...

And inevitably...

 

[JamesSmith]

Love those comic book covers. Wish they could be reprinted.

Jthree

 

[Neil Brock]

While The Nurses is not quite as great as The Defenders, its a very good show in its own right. Whereas The Defenders from the end of season one until the end pretty much every episode is great, The Nurses has the odd clunker here and there. But there are many great ones and quite a few good ones. When Herbert Brodkin, the executive producer was asked if The Nurses was a female version of Dr. Kildare (thank goodness its not), he replied that it was The Defenders in a hospital. The last season with Joseph Campanella and Michael Tolan has a different tone and I really don't care for Tolan very much, but it was still interesting.

 

[Hollywoodaholic]

Such a great series, The Defenders. I'm just now getting through the first season DVD. Stories that are adult and unpredictable and realistic that make the formulaic Perry Mason look laughable.

Now I see why my dad always preferred this series. He was a county attorney in Maryland and I would only rarely have the opportunity to stay up late enough with him to see this show when it first aired (I believe it was on at 10 - it MUST have been considering some of the topics). His job was defending the county against all lawsuits (a cop once sued for getting his ass blown up by an M-80 someone threw in a county building bathroom). Now I see what he saw in this versus the ridiculous theatrics of the last minute confession of every Perry Mason episode. Many deals here happen out of court and in a much more realistic way, and the defenders don't always win, or even WANT to.

Yikes. Just saw the episode where the future President Bartlett confesses to raping an unconscious 5-year old girl. What a way to start your career, young Martin Sheen! But holy crap that was some complex, dark and sophisticated material that you would only find on a cable or HBO show these days. Now I have something else to remember Richard Kiley from around that time other than the Broadway cast recording of "Man of La Mancha." Olivia Soprano, as well! (Nancy Marchand).

Not to get political (well, a bit), but the show was so uber liberal, as well, in its point of view for an early 60's show. Very much a Kennedy era look at the issues of the day; pro prison reform, euthanasia, and right versus might, etc.

Anyway, just had to chime in that, inconsistent though they are, this first season is still light years ahead of so much trivial entertainment of the sixties (that we still love, of course). But this is a very dense entree, not easy souffle. Food for thought. And very complex stories realistically played out. And just about every great New York actor of the day shows up.

Season Two HAS to be released. I'm hooked.

 

[smithbrad]

Just finished the series last night. I enjoyed it. Not quite as much as Naked City, but I'd definitely support another season if it came out. My favorite episode was "Hundred Lives of Harry Simms". Frank Gorshen knocked that one out of the park. I enjoyed it so much i had to watch again before putting the set back on the shelf.

 

[Dan McW]

Zina Bethune and the ubiquitous Shatner..."A Difference of Years" (Jan. 3, 1963)...I would say so...young Zina isn't quite 18 yet...while the Shat is 31...unhand her you cad...and take it to another planet, maybe...

QUOTE]

Shatner, going Where No Man Has Gone Before.

 

[Hollywoodaholic]

Oh, my, "Gideon's Follies." Gimmick casting of former and current Hollywood beauty queens, comedic tone and an improbable whodunnit. Are we sure this wasn't a Burke's Law script, which is where it belongs? A complete mismatch for this show, although it's always fun to see E.G. Marshall squirm uncomfortably. This time he wasn't acting.

 

[Flashgear]

Oh, yes, I too was hoping that Amos Burke would drop into "Gideon's Follies" and elevate the forced wit of the proceedings...though the lovely cast was a plus, (Julie Newmar, Eva Gabor, Gloria DeHaven...Zohra Lampert!!!) I thought that this looked like it was filmed during the company Christmas party...and I needed to be drunk in order to appreciate it...definitely out of character and resolutely defying the essential strengths of what The Defenders was in the process of becoming...a truly great and important drama...

That's not to say that The Defenders couldn't incorporate hilariously delivered rapier sarcasm in the course of it's truly great season 1 episodes..."The Best Defense", "Man With the Concrete Thumb", "The Point Shaver" and "The Hickory Indian" come to mind for me...some very fine and delicious cutting sarcasm delivered by the Prestons and their clientele in those episodes and others...the writing of Reginald Rose, Ernest Kinoy, and others...left me loving the wit of it all...along with the powerful drama of course...

 

[Hollywoodaholic]

The next episode "The Best Defense" completely redeems the show again with an excellent script, Martin Balsam, and a great twist ending in a story that completely upstages the recent "Serial" podcast. This episode alone would have made a great noir film.

One thing I'm noticing watching this series is how much plot is jammed into once episode. There's a trend now in cable television that I have no complaint about, but they are essentially stretching material that would have been in one such episode here into 10-12 episodes. Specifically guilty of this, recently, are The Night Of and Better Call Saul.* Now they wringing more suspense than you would suspect out of a six-minute scene, but if you really examine the arc of the season, it's something that could have been done in one episode of a series around this time such as The Defenders or Maverick. They jammed so much story into one episode.

*I can already tell that the entire season of Better Call Saul is just going to be how the tape recording his brother made takes down Jimmy's practice and has him resorting to Saul. Character-wise, such a slow transformation is more like a novel and fine, but plot-wise over 10 episodes, it's really a stretch.

 

[Jack P]

When Herbert Brodkin, the executive producer was asked if The Nurses was a female version of Dr. Kildare (thank goodness its not), he replied that it was The Defenders in a hospital.

Which is enough to make me pass on it with a clear conscience if it ever was available.

 

[Rodney]

I find it maddening that this wonderful show is not selling better. Quality should be winning out, and we should be getting announcements of seasons sets on a regular basis from Shout Factory.

I guess I should be lucky that I got to enjoy season one, as before this DVD I had never seen The Defenders.

 

[Hollywoodaholic]

Yikes. I'm still working my way through the first season and I get to the episode, "The Iron Man" and it begins with a man leading a very familiar looking rally advocating the authoritarian rule of a strong man ("I alone can fix this"), limiting a free and open election from those pesky voters, and using bullies to shut down dissenters in the crowd. When the figure behind all this is later referred to as the "Infant Fuhrer," I knew I had somehow missed the time travel signpost up ahead and stumbled into "The Precognitive Zone."

 

[Jack P]

Sounds more like the "Cliched Paranoia Zone" that was quite epidemic in that era among writers.

 

[DaveHof3]

An epidemic that has not subsided.

 

[Neil Brock]

Which is enough to make me pass on it with a clear conscience if it ever was available.

I'm sure something along the lines of I Led Three Lives would be more to your liking.

 

[Hollywoodaholic]

Fear of neo-fascism in 1961 was neither cliche or paranoid for those living (some of us) and writing during that post war and hot cold war period. And fear today is still the main tool used to control by potential neo-fascists. That episode not only warns to never let your guard down, but it also shows that even a rabble-rousing neo-fascist "Infant Fuhrer" is worth defending for his first amendment rights. Pretty heavy stuff that demonstrates why American democracy was always great.

 

[Jack P]

I'd sure like to know how it wasn't paranoid because history shows there was no such "threat" of any substance in our society from that quarter, unless somehow the "threat" was supposed to represent those who held the beliefs of those who voted a certain way in 1964, in which case the paranoia becomes self-evident.

The real irony is that by the early 60s it was somehow considered "paranoid" to be concerned about the infiltration of society by those who held beliefs identical to those one might find in an "I Led Three Lives" type of program, yet in the end the ultimate act of violence that took place in that decade in November 1963 wasn't committed by the "neo-fascists" but by someone whose beliefs would have been right at home with the baddies in "I Led Three Lives."