East Side/West Side

I have nurtured a fond memory of George C Scott's performances in East Side/ West Side since I first watched the series over 40 years ago. Although I obviously recall its power through the prism of nostalgia, I would definitely love to see some of the episodes again. I now live in the CBD of an Australian city, nowhere near as animated as the Big Apple of course, but ES/WS has local resonances for what it is like to interact with the homeless and disadvantaged on a daily basis, and to engage in their stories.I have noted somewhere on this site that old episodes have been digitally restored and available somewhere, but I guess I will be unlikely to follow this through, preferring to wait for an archival DVD production.

Apparently , the early nineteen sixties was one of the under appreciated eras of TV history. It may not have been a " Golden age; but at least it was a silver one. It began with Newton Minow lamenting the fact that Television was a vast wasteland, it ( probably ) ended when Slattery's People left the airwaves for good. It was a period of interesting writing and of shows that were socially conscious without ( usually ) being preachy. While some of these programs are never rerun and are not even on DVD( Witness SLattery's People), East Side/West Side was actually rerun about seven years ago on the sadly departed TV network TRIO. Of course, It helped that East Side West Side starred a true legend of acting in George C. Scott. Unlike Slattery's People, which (usually) tried to be pretty optimistic, for all its ironic undercurrents, East Side West Side was gritty, melancholy and frequently downright depressing. I have only seen one full episode. I saw as part of a high school class on "Black America" It was the classic, widely banned, Who Do you Kill, with James Earl Jones. I still remember how well acted and written it was, and how utterly sad. Like Slattery's People, and (maybe) the even more obscure Channing, it deserves to be on DVD.

Beautiful series-- a one-season long experiment that tried to reflect a tumultuous time-period (its single season encompassed JFK's death, the Civil Rights Bill, killings of Civil Rights workers in Alabama, escalation of fighting in Vietnam). George C. Scott played a social worker in Manhattan, Cicely Tyson his secretary, and before they softened the series toward the end toward whimsey, they produced at least three episodes that have stuck in my head for nearly 40 years: 1. social services take-away the child of a prostitute, who was portrayed as a devoted mother-- her grief was seismic; 2. a young black father who loses a baby to a rat's attack gets a weapon and wanders through Harlem looking for someone to kill; 3. a middle-class black couple moving to the suburbs sets off a calculated real-estate stampede, and even the liberal whites who sponsored them finally rebukes them. The second of these episodes was blocked-out in Georgia-- am surprised we got to see the other two; criticism at the time inevitably used the killing word "grim". Actors were drawn from the NY casting-pool, and shooting was done in the streets of the city.

Superb drama series showcasing the young George c. Scott and a Hall of Fame list of guest stars. One characteristic of the series is that the episodes don't conclude with the conflicts neatly resolved. When the episodes conclude we are not told if the little girl went back to school or if the neighborhood was successfully integrated. The feature of unresolved conflict was unique in dramatic tv at the time, and may have contributed to the series low ratings and regrettable cancelation.

I saw one episode of this show during the 1990s at the NYC Museum of TV & Radio. I couldn't even tell you what it was about except that, considering it was done in the early 1960s, it was way ahead of its time. It had to do with a family's trouble facing the fact that it had serious trouble, and featured, I think, a self destructive daughter but it was probably something more shockingly specific. By the 1990s, what was shocking in 1963 almost seemed tame. By the way, who said George C. Scott played a *young* social worker? Did the Great Scott ever play somebody young? Along with other great shows of long ago (such as "Slattery's People"), this is one I wish that somebody would release on video/DVD.