Internet Shakespeare Editions

Shakespeare in Performance: Film

Coriolanus (1951, Paul Nickell)

TitleCoriolanus
Year1951
Release LocationsUSA
DirectorPaul Nickell
MediumVideo
Length1 hrs
Play ConnectionsCoriolanus (recording)
SeriesStudio One

Description

A modern dress update, reminiscent of the famous Orson Welles Mercury Theatre Julius Caesar, that moves the action to Mussolini's Italy. Nowadays few directors can stage Coriolanus without remaking Shakespeare's hero into some modern prototype such as General of the Army Douglas MacArthur. (Could the patrician MacArthur ever have stooped to being packaged for the hoi polloi as "Mac" in the way that his fellow West Pointer, Eisenhower, allowed himself to be marketed as "Ike"?) Unlike so many other televised Shakespearean productions from the past, this production is now available on commercial videocassette. In a flurry of nostalgia, it even includes Betty Furness doing her fabled Westinghouse commercials. The producer, perhaps optimistically, estimated that the Studio One program caught an audience of ten million

Description from Shakespeare on Screen : an International Filmography and Videography by Kenneth S. Rothwell and Annabelle Henkin Melzer. ©1990 Kenneth S. Rothwell. Cited by permission. — Added 2008-11-14

Cast Overview

VirgiliaSally Chamberlin
VolumniaJudith Evelyn
CoriolanusRichard Greene
CastTom Poston
SiciniusRichard Purdy
CominiusFrederick Worlock

Production Team and Crew Overview

DirectorPaul Nickell
ProducerWorthington Miner
Adaptor/TranslatorPaul Nickell

Production information courtesy of: Kenneth Rothwell