Turner Classic Movies to Air Early James Dean TV Appearance on September 30

Turner Classic Movies (TCM) will air “Life Sentence,” an episode of the dramatic anthology series Campbell Soundstage from 1953 starring James Dean, tomorrow (September 30) at 8PM ET. The broadcast is timed to coincide with the 70th anniversary of Dean’s death on September 30th, 1955. The episode also stars Georgiann Johnson.

“Life Sentence” originally aired on NBC from 9:30-10PM ET on Friday, October 16th, 1953. It was the second of two episodes of Campbell Soundstage that Dean appeared in. The first, titled “Something for an Empty Briefcase,” aired on Friday, July 17th, 1953.

According to a post to the Association of Moving Image Archivists listserv, “Life Sentence” was long thought lost before turning up in an unusual way:

I wanted to give everybody a heads up about a very special screening on TCM on Tuesday, September 30 at 8pm. An archivist once told my friend “nothing is ever lost. Everything is someplace.” This is a case in point: when prolific TV director Gary Simpson died about fifteen years ago, his daughter donated two kinescopes to the Paley Center for Media of TV shows he had directed in the early ’50s. Since the Paley Center no longer had a transfer machine, they were sent to Iron Mountain where they sat until Gary Simpson’s son wanted to see them and paid to have them transferred by DuArt Lab about 10 years ago. We were shocked to discover one of the programs was not what it said on the NBC canister but was instead the lostest appearance on TV by James Dean, “Campbells Sound Stage: Life Sentence” from November 1953. Documentarians making films about James Dean had been looking for this holy grail since 1953 and when they approached Gary Simpson he said he didn’t have it because the canister had a different title on it so he didn’t know he had it.

This Tuesday, September 30, at 8pm TCM will be showing it in honor of the 70th anniversary of James Dean’s death. It will be the first time that the public will be able to see this TV show outside of the Paley Center in 70 years, in a newly restored print made from the original kinescope.

An excerpt from “Life Sentence” was included in the 3-disc James Dean: The Lost Television Legacy DVD set released in 2015.

Last week, on Thursday, September 25th and Friday, September 26th, TCM presented a special 24-hour programming block celebrating the 60th anniversary of the UCLA Film & Television Archive. It included a 1956 episode of Screen Director’s Playhouse directed by Ida Lupino and a 1958 episode of This Is Your Life featuring Ida Lupino.