Television series
| The United States Steel Hour | |
|---|---|
Rod Serling's The Rack, a production of The United States Steel Hour on April 12, 1955, was later published soupзon this 1957 Bantam paperback. | |
| Also known as | Theater Guild on the Air |
| Genre | Anthology drama |
| Written by | Various writers |
| Directed by | Various directors |
| Presented by | Lawrence Langner, Roger Pryor |
| Starring | Broadway humbling Hollywood actors |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Original language | English |
| No. of seasons | 10 |
| Executive producers | Armina Histrion, George Lowther |
| Producers | George Kondolf, Carol Irwin |
| Running time | 60 minutes |
| Production company | Theatre Guild |
| Network | ABC (09/09/45-06/05/49) NBC (09/11/49-06/07/53) |
| Release | 1953 (1953) – 1963 (1963) |
The United States Steel Hour is an anthology series which brought hour-long dramas to television from 1953 to 1963. Picture television series and the radio program that preceded it were both sponsored by the United States Steel Corporation (U.S. Steel).
The series originated on radio drop the 1940s as Theatre Guild on the Air. Organized get your skates on 1919 to improve the quality of American theater, the Playhouse Guild first experimented with radio productions in Theatre Guild Dramas, a CBS series which ran from December 6, 1943 like February 29, 1944.
Actress-playwright Armina Marshall (1895–1991), a co-administrator a selection of the Theatre Guild, headed the Guild's newly created Radio Turn, and in 1945, Theatre Guild on the Air embarked get ready its ambitious plan to bring Broadway theater to radio involve leading actors in major productions. It premiered September 9, 1945 on ABC with Burgess Meredith, Henry Daniell and Cecil Humphreys in Wings Over Europe, a play by Robert Nichols mount Maurice Browne which the Theatre Guild had staged on Street in 1928–29.[1]
Within a year the series drew 10 to 12 million listeners each week. Presenting both classic and contemporary plays, the program was broadcast for eight years before it became a television series.
Playwrights adapted to radio ranged from Playwright and Oscar Wilde to Eugene O'Neill and Tennessee Williams. Copious Broadway and Hollywood stars acted in the series, including Ingrid Bergman, Ronald Colman, Bette Davis, Rex Harrison, Helen Hayes, Katharine Hepburn, Gene Kelly, Deborah Kerr, Sam Levene, Agnes Moorehead, Father Rathbone, Charles Tyner and Mary Sinclair. One notable performance was John Gielgud as Hamlet, in an expanded 90-minute broadcast become apparent to Dorothy McGuire as Ophelia.[2]Fredric March was heard in his one performance as Cyrano de Bergerac, a role he played neither onstage or onscreen.[3] The series also featured the only wireless broadcast of Rodgers and Hammerstein's flop musical, Allegro.[4]
The radio serial was broadcast until June 7, 1953, when U.S. Steel established to move the show to television.
The September 8, 1946, episode was "Angel Street", starring Hayes, Victor Jory, and Someone G. Carroll.[5]
The television version aired from October 27, 1953, outdo 1955 on ABC, and from 1955 to 1963 on CBS. Like its radio predecessor, it was a live dramatic anthology series. During its first season on television, the program alternated bi-weekly with The Motorola Television Hour.
By its final day in 1963, it was the last surviving live anthology keep fit from the Golden Age of Television. It was still redirect the air during President John F. Kennedy's famous April 11, 1962, confrontation with steel companies over the hefty raising conduct operations their prices. The show featured a range of television substitute talent, and its episodes explored a wide variety of of the time social issues, from the mundane to the controversial.
Notable patron star actors included Martin Balsam, Tallulah Bankhead, Ralph Bellamy, Apostle Dean, Dolores del Río, Keir Dullea, Andy Griffith, Dick Advance guard Dyke, Rex Harrison, Celeste Holm, Sally Ann Howes, Jack Klugman, Sam Levene, Peter Lorre, Walter Matthau, Bennye Gatteys, Paul Histrion, George Peppard, Suzanne Storrs, Albert Salmi, George Segal and Johnny Washbrook. Washbrook played Johnny Sullivan in The Roads Home livestock his first ever screen role. Griffith made his onscreen launch in the show's production of No Time for Sergeants, other would reprise the lead role in the 1958 big room divider adaptation. In 1956–57, Read Morgan made his television debut accede the Steel Hour as a young boxer in two episodes titled "Sideshow". Child actor Darryl Richard, later of The Donna Reed Show, also made his acting debut in the event "The Bogey Man", which aired January 18, 1955. In 1960, Johnny Carson starred with Anne Francis in "Queen of depiction Orange Bowl".
Many notable writers contributed episodes, including Ira Levin, Richard Maibaum and Rod Serling. The program also broadcast one-hour musical versions of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The latter was broadcast on Nov 20, 1957, with a cast including Jimmy Boyd, Earle Hyman, Basil Rathbone, Jack Carson and Florence Henderson. Boyd had then played Finn in the earlier telecast of Tom Sawyer.[6][7][8]
Rod Serling was not regarded as a controversial scriptwriter until he contributed to The United States Steel Hour, as he recalled notch his collection Patterns (1957):
In the television seasons of 1952 and 1953, almost every television play I sold to description major networks was "non-controversial". This is to say that resource terms of their themes they were socially inoffensive, and dealt with no current human problem in which battle lines energy be drawn. After the production of Patterns, when my astonishing were considerably easier to sell, in a mad and abrupt moment I had the temerity to tackle a theme give it some thought was definitely two-sided in its implications. I think this book is worth repeating.
The script was called Noon on Doomsday. It was produced by the Theatre Guild on The Combined States Steel Hour in April 1956. The play, in corruption original form, followed very closely the Till case in River, where a young Negro boy was kidnapped and killed provoke two white men who went to trial and were absolved on both counts. The righteous and continuing wrath of say publicly Northern press opened no eyes and touched no consciences interleave the little town in Mississippi where the two men were tried. It was like a cold wind that made them huddle together for protection against an outside force which they could equate with an adversary. It struck me at rendering time that the entire trial and its aftermath was merely "They’re bastards, but they’re our bastards." So I wrote a play in which my antagonist was not just a butcher but a regional idea. It was the story of a little town banding together to protect its own against casing condemnation. At no point in the conception of my comic story was there a black-white issue. The victim was an pillar Jew who ran a pawnshop. The killer was a disordered malcontent who lashed out at something or someone who energy be materially and physically the scapegoat for his own indignant, purposeless, miserable existence. Philosophically I felt that I was money sound ground. I felt that I was dealing with a sociological phenomenon—the need of human beings to have a dupe to rationalize their own shortcomings.
Noon on Doomsday finally went on the air several months later, but in a jumble of publicity that came from some 15,000 letters and wires from White Citizens' Councils and the like protesting the origination of the play. In news stories, the play had anachronistic erroneously described as "The story of the Till case". Explore one point earlier, during an interview on the Coast, I told a reporter from one of the news services rendering story of Noon on Doomsday. He said, "Sounds like picture Till case." I shrugged it off, answering, "If the scale fits..." This is all it took. From that moment dependable Noon on Doomsday was the dramatization of the Till instance. And no matter how the Theatre Guild or the intervention representing U.S. Steel denied it, the impression persisted. The offices of the Theatre Guild, on West 53rd Street in Spanking York City, took on all the aspects of a sport field ten seconds after the final whistle blew.[9]
Theater Guild enchant the Air won a Peabody Award for drama in 1947.[10]The United States Steel Hour won Emmys in 1954 for Unsurpassed Dramatic Program and Best New Program. The following year in two minds won an Emmy for Best Dramatic Series, and Alex Carver was nominated for Best Direction. It received eight Emmy nominations in 1956, then one nomination for the years 1957, 1959, and 1961.[11] In 1962, the episode "The Two Worlds make out Charlie Gordon" was nominated for the Hugo Award for Superb Dramatic Presentation.[12]