Afternoon Film Festival

1956 Trade Advertisement for ABC's Afternoon Film Festival.

Afternoon Film Festival was a series of British theatrical feature-films aired by the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) television network from January 1956 to the summer of 1957 each weekday from 3:00 to 5:00 pm (EST). This anthology was the first (and probably the only) instance of a major over-the-air (non-cable) American television network broadcasting a package of theatrical movies as part of its Monday-through-Friday daytime television programming. Consisting mostly of films from the 1940s and early 50's, Afternoon Film Festival was actually an off-shoot from ABC's prime-time movie series Famous Film Festival, which began in the fall of 1955 on Sunday evenings and featured a package of 35 British titles acquired and leased from J. Arthur Rank Film Distributors in England at a cost of $45,700 each.^[1]

ABC signed Allyn Edwards -- and later, the veteran film actor Donald Woods -- to host each Afternoon feature,^[2] and on Monday, January 16, 1956, the anthology premiered with Alfred Hitchcock's espionage thriller The Lady Vanishes (1938).^[3] The next afternoon, the internationally successful war drama The Cruel Sea (1953) was telecast.^[4] In the case of these two classics, as with the rest of the series, this would be the first time these films were ever aired on American television.

Troubling aspects

Unfortunately, the series suffered from several handicaps that were never overcome. One of ABC's competitors, for example, the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), was featuring its Matinee Theater in the same daily time slot as Festival. This was a timely and interesting series of live one-hour television dramas, often highlighting controversial domestic themes, geared to divert housewives from their daily chores.^[5] Matinee Theater had one other advantage—NBC was broadcasting it in color (a relative novelty at the time), whereas ABC's series of old films were all aired in black-and-white, including those that had originally been shot and exhibited theatrically in color. (In fact, NBC's 1956 presentation of Olivier's Richard III notwithstanding, color films were not broadcast in color on network TV until the 1961-62 season.)^[6]

However, a second disadvantage centered on the Afternoon Film Festival's increased reliance on the limited number of films from the Rank package. This inevitably led to the early re-running of the same films that had debuted just a few weeks before. Thus, the aforementioned The Cruel Sea, which first ran on January 17, 1956, was broadcast again ten days later, the afternoon of Friday, January 27.^[7] Additionally, the films A Run for Your Money (1949) and Always a Bride (1953), which debuted during the first week's telecasts, were both rerun only two weeks later.^[8][9]

But finally, it was the quality of the product itself that appeared problematic. Although the Afternoon Film Festival did provide an outlet for such prestigious British films as The October Man (1947) -- broadcast on June 27, 1957^[10]—and The Way Ahead (1944) -- which premiered on July 8, 1957^[11]—a majority of the films held low-to-moderate critical and popular appeal. These lesser works were represented by entries such as those of The Huggetts series (1948-1949), as well as Stop Press Girl (1949), It's Not Cricket (1949), and The History of Mr. Polly (1949). Indeed, at a meeting of the TV Editorial Advisory Board in the spring of 1956, a questionnaire was distributed to members asking them to respond to ABC's film series and to the notion of networks exhibiting more theatrical films on television in the future. Some of their reactions were less than enthusiastic. In fact, a sizable plurality of respondents expressed concern that "these shows might provide a dumping ground for Grade B, C, and D pictures...television should be more than a fifth-rate movie house."^[12] In the case of Afternoon Film Festival, such an apprehensive sentiment may have been justified.

In September 1956, the Afternoon Film Festival's time-slot was reduced from two hours to 90 minutes; and at mid-season, there followed an announcement from ABC that in all probability the series would be cancelled some time in the near-future.^[13] The paring down of broadcast time to 90 minutes, of course, necessitated heavier editing of films to allow for commercials. The anthology finally came to an end the afternoon of Friday, August 2, 1957, with a repeat telecast of the race-car comedy Genevieve (1953).^[14] The following Monday, the Afternoon Film Festival was replaced by the premiere of Dick Clark's American Bandstand.^[15]

First broadcasts, week by week (1956)

The following list was cited from back issues of The New York Times, archived on microfilm.

     Aqua indicates the premiere of a film.

     White indicates a rebroadcast.

Thus, in the first six weeks of the Afternoon Film Festival's run, 13 out of 30 broadcasts, or almost half, were reruns. During the next few weeks, four out of every five showings were repeat telecasts. This troubling trend continued until late March, when a spate of fresh titles was finally secured:

But the supply of new titles quickly dwindled and again the series had to rely heavily on re-broadcasts. On average, new titles would trickle through to the show's viewers at the pace of roughly one per week. Occasionally, an entry of exceptional quality, such as Powell and Pressburger's 1945 masterpiece I Know Where I'm Going! (telecast March 11, 1957),^[16] would make its bow on the series. Sadly, however, the combined lack of both quantity and quality became the rule and not the exception throughout the Festival's 19-month run.

References

External links

• "Afternoon Film Festival" at TV.com
• "A UK Deluge on American TV": Discussion of "Famous Film Festival" and "Afternoon Film Festival" on ABC-TV at Greenbriar Picture Shows.