Family Theater: A Tale of Two Cities

Family Theater presents Robert Ryan and Hans Conry. From Hollywood, the mutual network in cooperation with your family theater brings you Hans Conry as Sidney Carton, in Charles Dickens' classic, The Tale of Two Cities. To introduce the drama, your host and narrator, Robert Ryan.

Thank you, Gene Baker. Herewith, we bring you the tragic yet triumphant story of a man, Sidney Carton. A man of gold and promise who'd wasted every opportunity. This was Sidney Carton.

He hated life, its people, and himself. So he drank, drank to forget, to numb the dull pangs of remorse. His disheveled, tipsy figure was a source of mystery in London legal circles. To all appearances, he was an errand boy and flunking for the honorable Stryver, a rising young barrister.

But the truth was he was Stryver's mind, the brilliant legal strategist who engineered Stryver's quick success. It was in 1780 that a young Frenchman, Charles Darnay, went on trial at the old Bailey. The charge was treason, transmitting military information to the American rebel, George Washington.

The completely innocent Darnay retained the Stryver's Council, who as always, appeared before the bar accompanied by his apparent flunky, Sydney Carton. Throughout the opening morning, Carton seemed far more interested in the movements of a fly upon a ceiling and in anything taking place in court.

Even when court recessed, he remained indifferent. Sydney, the honorable Stryver. And let's follow the crowd out and have lunch. I'm rickin' glass to the pretty witness, you know? Who's pretty? You picked your ass cold, doctor's daughter, Lucy Minnet.

She pretty. A man alive, she had the whole court gogalide. I have a mind to marry her myself. She's in love with Darnay, he with her. Well, not that they know it, yet. But they'll be married.