[3] The New York Times' Jack Gould wrote that it was "an evening of superb theater....The delicate delineation of the loneliness of the frustrated Wingfield family was brought to television with lean beauty and eloquence.
The Paley Center for Media's research manager Jane Klain had received numerous requests to watch this version over the years.
That began a search in which Klain contacted the estate of telecast co-producer David Susskind, CBS, the Library of Congress, Xerox, Elia Kazan who was married to Barbara Loden and various archives.
She contacted the archivists at the University of Southern California's Cinematic Arts Library who found several quadruplex videotapes, one of which was damaged, containing six hours of raw takes.
Los Angeles-based preservationist Dan Wingate restored the damaged reel and matched the audio with the corresponding takes to complete the project by early-November 2016.