Along with variety shows, situation comedies and soap operas, the early years of network television included prestige programs whose objective was to democratize culture–not by dumbing down but by exposure to an unprecedented mass audience. One of the finest of those programs, CBS’ “Omnibus,” boasted modernist graphics through the credits, inventive staging and a revolving cast of significant guest stars. Although Alistair Cooke might have been chosen as host in part for his cultivated English accent, his brief introductions were informative and insightful.
The Oct. 18, 1953 “Omnibus” broadcast of King Lear (just released on the DVD “Omnibus: King Lear”) starred Orson Welles in his first appearance on American television, the medium where he would live out his final years. In his preface, Cooke spoke of how easy it was to abbreviate Shakespeare’s sprawling play for TV without losing a single thread of the main story. According to Cooke, Elizabethan theatergoers expected to be entertained for a full four hours, forcing the invention of the subplot to give the main actors a breather as well as padding out the performance. Omnibus cut the subplots.
More than half obscured under fierce makeup and a beard, Welles was a towering Lear amid the shadowy black and white of early television. He gave a rich performance of rage and pathos in a tragedy that audiences in past centuries, under the spell of the Enlightenment, found unruly and morbid. As Cooke said, the pessimism and betrayal of King Lear spoke to the condition of humanity in an age that had just witnessed Auschwitz and Hiroshima.
