Long-lost BBC period drama starring Sean Connery rediscovered (available now in USA)

A long-lost BBC period drama, starring Sean Connery just before his breakthrough as James Bond, has been rediscovered in the corporation’s vaults. It was widely believed it no longer existed, reports the Telegraph.

The British public will get the chance to see Connery in an adaptation of one of the great classics of world literature for the first time in 49 years when Anna Karenina comes out on DVD next month.

Update:The Telegraph has withheld some pertinent information from their article, namely that this movie was actually 'rediscovered' two years ago, and has already been released on DVD in the USA since April 2009. Click here to buy now on Amazon.com.The Telegraph and the BBC have not yet responded to inquiries.

The prestigious BBC version of Tolstoy’s heavyweight novel was made in 1961, the year before Connery became an international star in Dr No. And Connery, who is 80 next week, played the dashing Russian count Alexis Vronsky, Anna Karenina’s lover.



It was an ambitious, big-budget drama for its time, made in black and white and lasting about two hours, and it helped establish the BBC’s reputation for quality literary adaptations. It was broadcast once on BBC in November 1961, when Britain had only two television channels, and then the recording was stuck on a shelf to gather dust.

Many hits from the period were lost forever when the BBC reused tapes or simply threw out recordings and it was thought Anna Karenina had suffered a similar fate - a point reiterated in a new biography of Connery out next month, which insists that no recording exists.

But then it was rediscovered - in the BBC’s own archives, where it had lain untouched for almost 50 years. “I just found this in the archive,” said BBC commercial executive Nick Lee. “We thought 'Yeah, all the Sean Connery fans out there would absolutely love it.”

Anna Karenina is widely acknowledged as one of the greatest works of world literature. It was written by Leo Tolstoy, who also wrote War and Peace.

The title role of the ill-fated aristocrat who falls for Vronsky was played by Claire Bloom, one of Britains’s top actresses of the time, a double Bafta-winner, who starred with Chaplin in Limelight and Olivier in Richard III and would later play Lady Marchmain in Brideshead Revisited.

But it is the 31-year-old Connery who was singled out for praise in reviews. He commands the screen as the handsome young officer, with thin moustache and an extensive wardrobe of fancy military uniforms, a man who would make a sane woman sacrifice her family and ultimately herself for love.

The BBC is rather hazy on the details of why this classic adaptation was forgotten for half a century and was thought no longer to exist. But the corporation does have almost a million hours of recordings and millions of photos and documents at 27 stores across the UK, so things can get mislaid.

“I just think perhaps it wasn’t on the radar,” said Lee. “My role here is looking for licensable archive material and trying to get some of these gems out of the archive and one of the best ways we can do that is through a DVD release.” Anna Karenina finally turned up as a video tape in their centre in Brentford.

The BBC has struck a deal with Simply Home Entertainment to bring it out as a commercial DVD release. Richard Jones, the company’s managing director, said they knew Connery had done a version of Anna Karenina for the BBC and first inquired about it three or four years ago.

“We anticipated that it was going to be one of those titles that got wiped in the Seventies. There were a few other things that we mooted at the time and sometimes you don’t get a precise answer back. But then probably about eight or nine months ago the BBC came to us and said 'Look, here it is.’

“At the time television was made for one showing only. When it came to actually filing these and labelling them, you can imagine all the things that might have gone wrong and probably there are examples where they have gone wrong. There may well be a number of programmes that have been deemed to be lost that will be recovered.”

He added that there was a steady demand for early BBC and ITV dramas and other series. “We weren’t sure what the quality was going to be like, but actually it’s very, very good and we are delighted about that.

“Connery looks fantastic. It was only a year before Bond. He’s a very recognisable Sean Connery and was made to play that part, because Vronsky is this strapping, swaggering, virile hero. Claire Bloom had never looked lovelier. She was really the British Audrey Hepburn. There is a real sexual chemistry between the two main characters.”

A commercial DVD release brings money back into the BBC. Connery will receive a payment for the release, but the BBC refused to say how much.

Connery was not a star when it was made and would have been on a standard contract. Once the BBC, the DVD company and the rest of the cast have had their share, the man who made millions as Bond may well be lucky if his cheque runs to three figures.

Thanks to 'Rich' for the update.

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