Product Review

Jason Robards, Jr. became an overnight star with his indelible performance as the glad-handing, doom-ridden Hickey in the legendary 1956 Circle-in-the-Square revival of Eugene O'Neill's towering masterpiece (first staged in 1939). In his harrowing drama, O'Neill shines a harsh but compassionate spotlight on the failed lives, empty hopes, and perpetual pipe dreams of an assortment of down-and-out denizens of a seedy saloon, set in New York in 1912. Their sad but complacent existences are rattled when Hickey arrives for his annual bender a changed man, forswearing alcohol and preaching a deliverance from, 'the lie of the pipe dream'. As Variety originally wrote, this 'Iceman' was a landmark for the video medium, a reference point for greatness in TV drama. B&W, Originally aired: 1960