It is about as cinematic as an episode of The Andy Griffith Show. There had been some talk along the way of releasing High Tor theatrically instead, but this would surely have been a mistake, as the look of the production is very drab, and projecting it on a movie screen (which is how I myself saw it) only draws attention to the inadequate budget. It was rehearsed and filmed in 1955 before Julie Andrews, then 20, went into rehearsal for the original Broadway production of My Fair Lady, which opened just five days after High Tor was broadcast. The show's score was released that year on Decca Records.įirst, to correct some errors in the prior reviews, this production was not broadcast live but shot on film and edited as any film would be. Schaffner-all of whom had previously worked on both live and filmed shows-it was broadcast on March 10, 1956, to lukewarm reviews. Shot in November of 1955 by cinematographer Lester Shorr and directors James Neilson and Franklin J. In the end the show's budget reached $450,000, making it the most expensive TV production up to that time (Crosby himself was reported to have been paid $375,000). He reached a deal with CBS that would result in his covering the additional expense of shooting the production on film, and any associated costs. CBS wanted to shoot it on videotape, as it normally did with live shows, but Crosby didn't want that. Desilu Studios-formerly the RKO Pictures lot-was across the street from the Paramount lot, and an agreement was reached to shoot the production there. His production office was on the Paramount Pictures lot in Hollywood, and he did not want to use the CBS studio in Hollywood nor the New York studio for the shooting. Crosby was not comfortable with doing live television-especially 90 minutes of it nonstop-and insisted that the production be filmed. decided to adapt the play as a musical fantasy, with music composed by Arthur Schwartz and lyrics by Anderson, and starring Bing Crosby. In mid-1954 CBS Chairman William Paley approached Anderson about producing the play for his newly planned live-action, 90-minute anthology series, Ford Star Jubilee (1955). Playwright Maxwell Anderson first considered a musical adaptation of "High Tor" for television in 1949.
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