William Shatner Movie:

		List Price: $24.99		Label: Image Entertainment Salesrank: 24160 Released: August 26, 2003
		Our Price: $15.77
		Used Price: $16.99
		MPAA Rating: NR (Not Rated) Media: DVD

The Andersonville Trial (Broadway Theatre Archive) Reviews:
Curious about the DVD release of this play.
2008-08-22 - This play, originally telecast on NET's Hollywood Television Theatre in May 1970, truly is a firey one that makes you think of the evils of war, the deplorable conditions P.O.W.s are kept in. Cameron Mitchell and Jack Cassidy do a fantastic job at startling the viewers, especially with their yelling. Even Richard Basehart's Captain Henry Wirz is sometimes guilty of that. The anger and upset in the courtroom really do come across as genuine.

One question, does anyone know if the PBS logo is preserved at the end of the credits? I downloaded the video from Amazon Unbox and it is not there at the end, though it is on the VHS version.

(Not to confuse anybody, this is Barbara's son, David, writing.)

Great Play, Terrible DVD
2007-08-31 - I remembered this play from when it was first on PBS and eagerly bought the DVD. Some of the actors give great performances. Richard Basehart is outstanding. Jack Cassidy shows he can excell in a drama. Cameron Mitchell, in a supporting role, gives a performance of a lifetime. The great weak spot is William Shatner. Still a great play is worth seeing...BUT the DVD is terrible. The sound annoying. Find another way to see this play!

"The real crime is that I chose the losing side."
2007-08-16 - Directed by George C. Scott, and starring Richard Basehart, Cameron Mitchell, Jack Cassidy, William Shatner, Martin Sheen, and Buddy Ebsen in some of their best roles ever, this stunning 1970 production was a shoo-in to win three Emmys and the Peabody Award, with Cassidy also nominated for an Emmy as Best Actor. Filled with the kind of drama that only a real war crimes trial can generate, the play by Saul Levitt focuses on the trial of a German-born Confederate captain who was in charge of the Andersonville Prison in Georgia, where Union soldiers died at the rate of over a hundred men a day during their incarceration in 1864. Living in overcrowded conditions without shelter, shade, clean water, or adequate food, the men became desperate, preferring to risk being shot during escape attempts to living in the squalid and unsanitary conditions of the prison.

Captain Wirz (Richard Basehart in one of his all-time best dramatic roles), was in charge of the prison and is now on trial. His counsel, southern lawyer Otis Baker (Jack Cassidy), is highly skilled at twisting words, and brilliant at forcing the court to consider the rules of wartime engagement and the necessity of following orders. The courtroom battles between Baker and the Union prosecutor, Col. N. P. Chipman (William Shatner, when he was young and hungry for great acting jobs), are memorable for the philosophical complexities of their arguments and the emotions with which they argue their positions. Gen. Lew Wallace (Cameron Mitchell) is hard pressed to keep the two sides in order and arguing relevant legal issues.

Buddy Ebsen, a fine actor who does not deserve to be remembered primarily for "Beverly Hillbillies," is the doctor who worked at the prison for eight months, a man who shows how his compassion gradually became dulled by the horrors of the conditions, until he became inured to the hundreds of deaths he had to certify every day. Michael Burns as James Davidson, a nineteen-year-old Vermont soldier who was incarcerated at Andersonville, shows the traumatic effects of his experiences as he testifies, his role becoming one of the most sympathetic in the entire play.

George C. Scott, as director, gets the finest performances possible from these actors and wrings the play of every moment of drama. The tension is so great that viewers will easily sit through the two-and-a-half hour performance, breathless with anticipation, their emotions soaring with the legal points made by the prosecution and soaring equally with the human feelings engendered by the defense. As Chipman says, "I'd like to believe that I am more of a man than Wirz was to save those men, but am I?" One of the finest productions ever done by Broadway Theatre Archive, this is a performance not to be missed by lovers of theatre and anyone interested in Civil War history. Mary Whipple


When television offered great drama...
2007-06-12 - I remembered watching this broadcast as a kid on television and when I saw the title from Amazon.com, I wondered if it was as good today as I remembered from then... Wow! what a relief to find the program itself has held up over thirty plus years since the original air-date in the early 1970's... plus, the quality of the DVD transfer is so great! If you have an interest in first-rate live theatre, and want to enjoy it in you home theatre, this is a great DVD for an evening's entertainment. The acting is superlative, the writing smart and the directing well-paced. The tale of America's "first war crimes trial" is a little known tale that should be seen by all those interested in contemporary concerns about morality and "civilized" behavior in times of war.

Celebrates Real Acting of Yesteryear
2007-04-27 - When was the last time you saw REAL acting?

I remembered this PBS production vividly as when I saw it, ahem, 37 years ago!! It harkens back to William Shatner's acting on The Twilight Zone, before he became almost a parody of himself (that record album) or a brand name (for Priceline).

Yes, there is real acting here, including a portrayal of post-traumatic stress disorder (before it was an official diagnosis)...the real stars are Cassidy and Shatner, but Shatner really outshines them all. When he comes to conclude that perhaps this really is a sham trial, and that soldiers following orders cannot and should not be put on trial, that the "evidence" against Wirz is flimsy at best (or at least as the trial preparation went). The young Lt. Col. J.A. realizes that he is effectively killing a man for his government as well as a musket ball could. "I was only following orders" is not offered as a defense, as it would years later for equally abhorrent war crimes. Today, "rules of engagement" have replaced direct orders as the ultimate arbiters, making such political prosecutions much easier to mount.

There is no doubt that Andersonville was a horrible place--and place confining humans in a small space will ultimately become a place of disease, demoralization, and desecration. However, the focus of this trial rings as relevant today as it did in the height of the Vietnam War. Can a soldier disobey an order as "immoral"? As John F. Kennedy said of the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, "Victory has many fathers, while defeat is an orphan." One can easily see that in a room full of Generals, Colonels, in their glamorous uniforms, the Victors, one defeated Captain hardly stood a chance of exoneration in a time of bitter conflict and martial law.

No special effects, no camera shifting, no profanity or racial slurs, just excellent acting, and well worth the price of admission.