The Unkindest Cut

17-EPISODE TELEVISION SERIES DEDICATED SPECIFICALLY TO ADAPTATIONS of American-authored short fiction occasioned the happy confluence of two uniquely cherishable homegrown artistic talents: F. Scott Fitzgerald and Joan Micklin Silver. Following three pilots, two seasons aired on PBS in 1977 and 1980 and were executive produced by bibliophile Robert Geller, whose modest ambition was to audiovisually capture the narrative power of a diverse range of tales from the country’s undertapped literary archives. Geller championed “fidelity to the author,” and the show’s humble budgets (about $250,000 per episode) encouraged long stretches of dialogue and discouraged overly fanciful reimaginings, though a few “unfilmable” stories like John Updike’s “The Music School” and Katherine Anne Porter’s “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall” were tackled. Each segment was warmly introduced by either Henry Fonda or Colleen Dewhurst. For the crucial step of source when Fitzgerald was 23—his fourth appearance in that weekly slick and the first time his name made the cover. The pick is in keeping with the program’s avoidance of the always-anthologized signature canon, in this case meaning Fitzgerald’s best-known short works (“Babylon Revisited,” “The Rich Boy,” “Winter Dreams,” etc.). The 45-minute film version screened in the 1976 New York Film Festival prior to its April 1977 PBS airing.