Although it had its genesis as a radio program, Studio One became the longest running anthology drama series of the "Golden Age of Television," with more than 500 live teleplays on CBS from 1948 through 1958, and earned a reputation as a visual innovator in broadcast storytelling. A product of television's infancy, the series disseminated drama of a high order, bringing classical works and serious "one-off" plays to a wide popular audience, and sowing the seeds for a generation of Hollywood writers and directors to learn their craft on the small screen. While other series were known for psychological realism, Studio One, under its first producer, Worthington Miner, explored the technical and stylistic potentials of the medium.

Worthington Miner thought with his eyes, and focused on a highly inventive, visual mode of storytelling. For him, Studio One existed somewhere between live drama and film. It was a "live performance...