WHAT WOULD BIG BROTHER SAY?--While “1984,” currently...

WHAT WOULD BIG BROTHER SAY?--While “1984,” currently playing at half a dozen theaters in the country, awaits wide release, the original 1956 version of George Orwell’s prophetic novel (first published in 1949) has been shelved and may never again be seen.

Rights to the Columbia Pictures film, which starred Edmond O’Brien and Jan Sterling as lovers of a forbidding future, reverted to the Orwell estate in 1976. The estate has since prohibited the film’s reissue because, said a Columbia spokesman, “the Orwells never liked the movie.”

Released as half of a double bill with “The Gamma People,” the 1956 film wasn’t exactly a hot property for the studio, either. As the Columbia representative noted, “It was considered a minor movie . . . but that doesn’t mean we’re happy to have lost the rights to it. We’ve had literally hundreds of calls, expressing interest to exhibit it theatrically. Good, bad or indifferent, we would have loved to have had it.”

Along with mixed critical notices (in one of the kinder reviews, Newsweek called it “less than Orwell, but more than routine”), the original version had mixed endings. That is, a British version ended with O’Brien yelling “Down With Big Brother!,” as he and Sterling were killed. American audiences saw a brainwashed O’Brien and Sterling deciding to part ways and loyally following Big Brother.