Family Theater — 1951
50 episodes broadcast in 1951.
January 3, 1951
The Other Wise Man
In 1856 Washington Territory, settler Bill Wyatt takes a stand when a misguided governor tries to force the local Indians onto barren land.
The King Midas legend retooled for Jack Benny as a monarch who cannot stop counting his gold. Hosted by Lucille Ball.
As Helen comes of age with a drinking mother, a kindly janitor's steady presence tests what honoring a parent really means.
The wooden puppet who longs to be a real boy and can't stop telling tall tales, with Mel Blanc as Pinocchio.
Back from a sanitarium after a breakdown, a man discovers there is little home left waiting.
For its fourth birthday, the series paints America in words and music through its homes and its countryside.
Homeless London poet Francis Thompson finds faith, and greatness, after hitting bottom.
In Elizabethan-era Ireland, a savior rises to lift the darkness, in a tale of adventure.
For Easter, Grandpa tells his granddaughter the tale of a little tree that came to know the meaning of the season. Starring Gene Lockhart.
When the pound seizes her beloved dog, a little girl who cannot pay the fee appeals to the mayor for a pardon. Hosted by Charles Coburn.
March 21, 1951
The Passion and Death of Christ
An Easter dramatization of Christ's betrayal and crucifixion.
When a PT boat is crippled off the China coast, its unlikely passenger -- an Army chaplain -- proves his mettle.
A pitcher losing his stuff is taught a new twist by his young daughter -- the prayer ball. Hosted by Gene Kelly.
After six straight rainy Sundays, Peter Bright lifts a gloomy town's spirits by single-handedly inventing a brand-new holiday.
A near-fatal wreck and two mysterious strangers, an old man and one called Peter, draw a broken couple back together.
A brief trip back from America casts the emigrant's old Irish village, and a girl he once left, in fresh light.
A wealthy Englishman with a year to live sets out, with a working-class woman's help, to give his whole fortune away.
An Irish policeman cannot work out why a dogless man renews his dog license year after year.
A newborn's arrival softens and transforms a rough mining camp for the better.
A King Midas riff tailored to Jack Benny's famously gold-loving character.
A false typhoid accusation costs a naturalized Italian-American his job at the meat counter.
An orphan reluctant to leave the only friend she has mirrors the anxieties of the couple about to adopt her. Hosted by Ricardo Montalban.
In his final hours on death row, a condemned man tells how a proudly godless man once wrecked his happy home.
The life and faith of poet Joyce Kilmer, who lived happily on eight dollars a week and a love of verse.
In wartime London, a woman entertaining her fiance's brother is drawn into an inevitable and tragic love affair.
A handful of lost GIs blunder into freeing a small French village from the Germans, a Fourth of July romp.
The son of show-business troupers is set on performing, against the wishes of a mother who knows the fickle business too well.
An old man keeps a house exactly as it was, still waiting for the wife who died forty years ago.
Jimmy Durante leads three penniless drifters across the country in a Pierce Arrow, buying gasoline three gallons at a stop.
As the troopship Dorchester went under, four chaplains gave their life vests to others -- a true story.
A newly elected mayor is caught in a town-splitting controversy over whether to remodel or replace the old courthouse.
A tale of love and hope rooted in the Johnny Appleseed legend.
An Iowa girl who wrote home boasting of Hollywood stardom dreads the visit of the hometown boyfriend she deceived.
A little girl relates a knight-and-princess romance to her separated mother, with the happy ending you would hope for.
In wartime France, a young country girl and a billeted American soldier fall in love amid a broken window and an apple orchard.
A reporter out to expose a famous author of children's fantasies ends up falling in love with him instead.
A professor wagers a skeptical student that a lie told convincingly enough will always be swallowed, then proves it.
A raw country pitcher is targeted by big-city gamblers as his manager tries to lift a last-place club.
Hopelessly lost, a machine-gun crew ends up liberating a fog-bound French village from the Nazis.
The historic voyage of Christopher Columbus, told from the Spanish court of 1491.
A peach farmer prays desperately for rain while others in the valley are hoping for the opposite.
A scarred man weds a woman with a limp; once surgery frees her, he slips away so she might find a handsomer match.
Sterling Holloway narrates the wanderings of a brand-new dollar bill bent on bringing people joy; Susan Hayward hosts.
A made-up tale spun around Notre Dame's Fighting Irish and their coach Knute Rockne.
A stray dog with the uncanny power to see through walls turns up in the lives of a boy and his grandfather.
A grape grower learns from a failed harvest that prayer and patience yield richer returns.
Princess Diane pines for a prince who takes no notice of her, until the king hatches a plan, narrated by William Bendix.
Charles Tazewell's Christmas fantasy of a mute child alive when Jesus was born, narrated by Roddy McDowall.
A blind girl of ten comes to live with three astronomers in their observatory, in a Christmas story hosted by Pat O'Brien.
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