Lewis Freedman

The story of J. Edgar Hoover, head of the FBI from 1924-1972, following his racket-busting days through his reign under eight US presidents.

A dramatization of the 1865 war-crimes trial of Henry Wirz, commandant of the notorious Confederate POW camp at Andersonville, Georgia.

Set in ancient Japan, Rashomon follows the aftermath of a bandit’s attack on a warrior and his wife, as the bandit, the wife, the husband, and a woodcutter each offer different versions of what happened. Directed for "Play of the Week" by Sidney Lumet, the production uses the story’s shifting testimonies to examine truth, self-image, violence, and moral uncertainty.

Is a sensitive and mysterious poet really an IRA gunman in hiding? Set in a Dublin tenement in the 1920s, this was the first part of Sean O'Casey's celebrated "Dublin Trilogy." Equal parts comedy and tragedy, this classic play is brilliantly performed by a stellar cast.

Theodore Hickman, a hardware salesman, makes by-yearly visits to Harry Hope's 1910-era waterfront bar for his periodical drinking binges. But on this visit he has decided to try to save the bar's patrons from their "lying pipe dreams."

From an Ingmar Bergman script. Previously produced for Swedish Television as "Reservatet" and for the BBC as "The Lie" (both 1970). In this Emmy award winning American version for CBS’s reboot of Playhouse 90, an American couple is trapped in their marriage and way of life. Locked up in their bourgeois inferno.

Theodore Hickman, a hardware salesman, makes semi-annual visits to Harry Hope's 1910-era waterfront bar for his periodical drinking binges. But on this visit he has decided to try to save the bar's patrons from their "lying pipe dreams."

A perceptive and funny study about the fantasies, inhibitions and dreams of two frustrated and lonely middle-class matrons who set up competing lemonade stands along a jammed highway. This short play incorporates comedy and tragedy, a touch of the bizarre, and ultimately, a sincere compassion in both women.

Produced in 1968 for New York's WNET public television station and filmed by Gunnar Fischer, host Lewis Freedman visits director Ingmar Bergman during the production of SHAME. They discuss some of Bergman's major works leading up to SHAME as well as the just-released HOUR OF THE WOLF.

The story is set during the South American Wars of Independence. Simón Bolivar, the liberator, has escaped from Spanish custody with the aid of an idealistic Spanish officer, Captain Montserrat. The Spanish commander, Colonel Izquierdo ('left' in Spanish), threatens Montserrat with torture to find out where Bolivar can be recaptured.

A humble and long-suffering New York waiter finally turns the tables on a regular, insufferable customer who delights in pestering him about the service. Based on the playwright’s personal experiences as a waiter at a resort in the Catskill Mountains.

Famed playwright Henrik Ibsen tells the tale of a master builder in the twilight of his career who reaches for love in response to his work's demise.

Mercurial, hard-drinking poet Hugh Saunders (Sir Anthony Hopkins) awaits his fortieth birthday, trying to preserve his art and his marriage against the temptations of celebrity and addiction.

Racial tensions come out of the woodwork when an upper-class white couple puts their suburban home on the market and the listing draws a pair of equally well-to-do African American buyers from Harlem. Fielder Cook directs this Broadway staging of playwright Arkady Leokum's exploration of lingering racial prejudice in 1970s America.

In this acclaimed production of John Steinbeck's classic morality tale, award-winning actress Colleen Dewhurst stars as Mordeen, a wife driven to desperate measures to give her aging circus performer husband a child. Dana Elcar, Donald Madden and Tony Award winner Myron McCormick round out the talented cast of this televised Broadway Theatre Archive production, produced by Lewis Freedman and Henry Weinstein.

Real-life couple Eli Wallach and Anne Jackson star in this 1971 television adaptation of Murray Schisgal's moving play, in which married law student Paul Cunningham takes a job as a typist for an ad agency, where he meets lonely spinster Sylvia. Through a series of flashbacks and flash-forwards, the story of their relationship and developing romance unfolds. Emmy Award winner Glenn Jordan directs this volume from the Broadway Theater Archive.

This omnibus release consists of three playlets filmed and aired during television's Golden Age, and starring some of the legends of film and television. The collection originally ran as a two-hour segment on December 14, 1959, on the anthology series The Play of the Week, broadcast locally in New York City via the independent radio station WNTA. Each "tale" in the anthology was adapted from a single tale by the inimitable Sholom Aleichem, regarded by many as the "Yiddish Mark Twain". Included are: "A Tale of Chelm" starring Zero Mostel and Nancy Walker in the story of a bookseller attempting to buy a goat; "Bontche Schweig" about a poor man (Jack Gilford) whose recent arrival in Heaven makes the angels cry; and "The High School" about a Jewish merchant (Morris Carnovsky) persuaded by his wife (Gertrude Berg) to let their son attend a particular high school despite the enforcement of quotas for Jewish students.

During the course of one night, two strangers, a lonely waif and a prodigal poet, form an unexpected connection.

In pursuance of a lucrative government contract, a private company hires its first Black female employee to comply with government regulations concerning equal economic opportunity.

A performance based on Stanisław Wyspiański’s dramatic epic poem, first presented at Teatr Laboratorium, Wrocław, Poland, October 10, 1962. Filmed in 1968.