50-YEAR OLD TV DRAMA STARRING PRE-BOND CONNERY DISCOVERED

A 1961 BBC dramatization of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, starring Sean Connery and Claire Bloom, that was long believed to have been lost has turned up in the BBC’s archives and will soon be issued on DVD, the London Daily Telegraph reported today (Wednesday). The newspaper indicated that the discovery shines a light on the thousands of uncatalogued videos piled up in BBC storage facilities. BBC commercial executive Nick Lee told the newspaper, “All the Sean Connery fans out there would absolutely love it.” The Telegraph reports that the 31-year-old Connery, who appeared in the drama one year before starring in his first James Bond movie, “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.” Richard Jones, managing director of Simply Home Entertainment, which plans to issue the drama on DVD commented, “There may well be a number of programs that have been deemed to be lost that will be recovered.”