Christmas presentation of the CBS television series, Playhouse 90, featuring Tchaikovsky's ballet performed by the New York City Ballet, choreographed by George Balanchine, and conducted by Robert Irving.
Production
Live 1958 broadcast constraints create accidental avant-garde framing.
Direction
Ralph Nelson adapts proscenium ballet to cramped TV studio with ingenuity.
Acting
Bonnie Bedelia's Clara — earnest, unpolished, genuinely childlike.
Director
Ralph Nelson
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
This broadcast helped popularize Balanchine's Americanized Nutcracker, now an annual tradition at Lincoln Center.
Considered lost for decades until a kinescope surfaced in 2015; most viewers in 1958 saw it once and never again.
US
