num_pages: 278
description: Life magazine recently stated: "With a precocious total of eight successful novels, Gore Vidal, a skilled hand at realism and fantasy, has turned out a fistful of strikingly adventurous television plays." Adventurous they are indeed, as several million viewers will remember with pleasure. Eight of Mr. Vidal's unique plays are printed here in a reading format that is considerably simpler than the published form of the average stage play, and it is a good bet that anyone picking the volume up will find it hard to put down. On paper as on the television screen, these stories have an unusual impact, and their range of subject and tone is extraordinarily wide. Included are Visit to a Small Planet, which Newsweek said "should be a leading candidate for the year's best TV-play awards," and which has since been metamorphosed into a Broadway play; Smoke and Barn Burning adaptations of two of William Faulkner's best stories; The Turn of the Screw, a TV version of Henry James's celebrated psychological ghost tale; and four other original dramas, including the memorably chilling Dark Possession and The Death of Billy the Kid, of which a movie version was released during 1957. Contains a foreword by the author.
language: English
title: Visit to a Small Planet and Other Television Plays
titlecomplete: Visit to a Small Planet and Other Television Plays
ratings_count: 8
publisher: Little, Brown and Company