Cracked Actor

David Bowie's Cracked Actor was televised on BBC1 at 10:15 on January 26, 1975, as part of the Omnibus film series.

Created by Alan Yentob, it was filmed in 1974 during a time when Bowie was battling cocaine addiction, and the documentary is renowned for capturing his mental state at that time.

The film portrays Bowie on tour in Los Angeles, combining documentary scenes shot in limousines and hotels with concert footage. Most of the concert footage comes from a performance at the Los Angeles Universal Amphitheatre on September 2, 1974.

It also includes clips from D. A. Pennebaker's concert film "Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars," recorded at London's Hammersmith Odeon on July 4, 1973, along with a few other performances from the tour. "Cracked Actor" is notable for being a source of footage from Bowie's ambitious Diamond Dogs Tour.

The documentary was initially going to be titled "The Collector," inspired by a comment Bowie made to interviewer Russell Harty the previous year, where he described himself as "a collector of accents."

Yentob and his team were assigned to document Bowie's famous Diamond Dogs tour, which was already in progress when they began filming.

Several performances from the tour were featured, including the songs "Space Oddity," "Cracked Actor," "Sweet Thing/Candidate," "Moonage Daydream," "The Width of a Circle," "Aladdin Sane," "Time," "Diamond Dogs," and "John, I'm Only Dancing (Again)."