| Kraft Television Theatre | |
|---|---|
Ed Begley, Everett Sloane and Richard Kiley in Rod Serling's Patterns on Kraft Television Theatre (1955) |
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| Also known as | Kraft Mystery Theatre |
| Genre | Anthology |
| Narrated by | Ed Herlihy (1947-55) Charles Stark (1955) |
| Theme music composer | Norman Cloutier |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Language(s) | English |
| No. of seasons | 11 |
| No. of episodes | 650 |
| Production | |
| Camera setup | Single-camera |
| Running time | 45–48 minutes |
| Production company(s) | J. Walter Thompson Agency Talent Associates |
| Broadcast | |
| Original channel | NBC |
| Picture format | Black-and-white |
| Audio format | Monaural |
| Original run | May 7, 1947 – October 1, 1958 |
Kraft Television Theatre is an American drama/anthology television series that began May 7, 1947 on NBC, airing at 7:30pm on Wednesday evenings until December of that year. In January 1948, it moved to 9pm on Wednesdays, continuing in that timeslot until 1958. Initially produced by the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency, the live hour-long series offered television plays with new stories and new characters each week,[1] in addition to adaptations of such classics as A Christmas Carol and Alice in Wonderland.
Beginning October 1953, ABC added a separate series (also titled Kraft Television Theatre), created to promote Kraft's new Cheez Whiz product. This series ran for sixteen months, telecast on Thursday evenings at 9:30pm, until January 1955.
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A prestige show for NBC, it launched the careers of more than a few actors, directors and playwrights, including future Emmy-winning and Academy Award-nominated actress Hope Lange.[2]
Actors on the series included James Dean, Janet De Gore, Colleen Dewhurst, Anne Francis, Lee Grant, Helen Hayes, Jack Lemmon, Grace Kelly, Jack Klugman, Cloris Leachman, Patrick McVey, Michael Higgins, John Newland, Paul Newman, Leslie Nielsen, Anthony Perkins, Judson Pratt, Lee Remick, George C. Scott, Rod Steiger, Joan Tompkins (her first television role), and Joanne Woodward. Announcers for the show were Ed Herlihy (1947–1955) and Charles Stark (1955).[3] In 1958, young performers Martin Huston and Zina Bethune appeared in "This Property Is Condemned", based on a Tennessee Williams play, the last show of Kraft Television Theatre.[4]
Directors for the series included George Roy Hill, Fielder Cook and Sidney Lumet, and the many contributing writers included Rod Serling and JP Miller. Serling won an Emmy for scripting Patterns (January 12, 1955), the best remembered episode of the series. The drama had such an impact that it made television history by staging a second live encore performance three weeks later and was developed as a feature film, also titled Patterns.
In April 1958, Kraft sold the rights to David Susskind's Talent Associates, which revamped the series as Kraft Mystery Theatre. Under that title, it continued until September 1958. However, this eventually evolved into the 1963 filmed series Kraft Suspense Theatre, which concentrated exclusively on original dramas written for television, not on adaptations.
Between 1947 and 1958, the Kraft Television Theatre presented more than 650 comedies and dramas.[1]
A few episodes of Kraft Television Theatre from 1947 survive as kinescopes, making them among the oldest existing recordings of United States television, and the oldest in the world.