User Reviews

In the good old days of live TV, there were many of these shows - The U.S. Steel Hour was one, there was Playhouse 90, Schlitz Playhouse, Lux Playhouse, etc. They attracted big stars and were done expensively. In the costume drama "The Thief," the stars are Paul Lukas, Mary Astor, James Dean, Diana Lynn, and Patric Knowles. Pretty impressive.

Dean plays Fernand, a young man in love with the married Marie-Louise Voyson (Lynn) married to Phillipe (Knowles.) When money goes missing, Fernand admits to it, to his father's (Lukas) horror.

Dean doesn't have much to do, but I thought he was good. He's not an angry, rough teen here, but high-class French, and I think he acquits himself well and in period. If he seems awkward, I'm sure it's because of the nerves of live TV or lack of sufficient rehearsal.

As usual there were people who hated working with him; this time it was Paul Lukas. On East of Eden it was Raymond Massey. I'm seeing an older man pattern here.

I'm not sure Dean was really difficult or just liked to press certain people's buttons. I'm convinced that neither he nor Brando had the eccentric personalities they pretended to have. But if they could get away with it and call their self-indulgences the eccentricities of great actors, they would.

I would say if you have a chance, definitely see this and any of Dean's television work. There is so little of him available; these TV shows give more of an idea of the range he could have developed.

When a large sum of money goes missing, married couple Paul Lukas and Mary Astor have no choice but to suspect their wayward son, James Dean. But did he really steal the money? Who is the thief?

It's common knowledge that James Dean only made three movies, but it isn't common knowledge that you can find other performances if you search for them. One hidden television special is "The Thief", broadcasted a few months before East of Eden hit the big screen, and he got fifth billing, on U.S. Steel Hour. It's very hard to imagine him as a young television actor instead of James Dean, the immortal movie star, when you watch this. From the very first scene, he establishes himself in his usual emotional form: Mary Astor asks him a question, and his answer, rather than a simple "no," is a wild flailing of his head followed by the one word written in the script.

Usually, television broadcasts aren't very high quality, which is why for decades, television acting was looked at as inferior to film acting. "The Thief" is the exception to the rule. If all television specials were as good as this one, no one would look down on television. It's well-acted, thoughtful, suspenseful, and sensitive. Patric Knowles is married to Diana Lynn, and his character has to fall from an emotionally great height in a short amount of time. James Dean shines, and once you watch this tv movie, you'll be so glad you've seen a fourth performance from such a great talent. Hats of to U.S. Steel Hour, who managed to make a small-screen broadcast feel like a big-screen film.

A wonderful cast tackles a translated short play by Henri Bernstein in a television production for which, clearly, no expense was spared -- players, set design and costumes are clearly top notch for the era. Unfortunately, the play, while well enough written, concerns itself not with people, but with clichés. It is all so simple and neat that it is not particularly engaging to watch.

Bernstein did not put up happily with critics who were harsh with his works. Well, I have dealt with a lot of writers who react poorly to even constructive criticism, starting with me. Bernstein's works were written for a well-to-do Parisian audience, and people find nothing so fascinating as to see themselves or people like themselves on stage. They assign depth and subtlety that the author did not write to the characters. Does this make poor writing seem better, or is it part of the craft, to leave enough blank spaces to let the audience fill them in, engaging them in the act of creation?

It does mean a lack of universality. Once you offer this work to people who cannot do that filling in, an audience foreign to the original, the work becomes incomprehensible It's why comedy of manners so rarely survives its original audience. It's why this one seems so dull.