Great Scenes from Great Plays
October 1, 1948 – February 25, 1949 · 22 broadcasts
In the autumn of 1948, as television began pulling the mass audience away, the National Council of the Protestant Episcopal Church put a Friday-night half hour on Mutual and did something no one else was doing. Instead of squeezing a whole play into thirty minutes, Great Scenes from Great Plays took about twenty minutes of ONE great work -- a single scene, played close to its written length -- and handed it to a major actor. Walter Hampden introduced and closed every broadcast but the opening one. He missed that one for the best reason: he starred in it, playing Cyrano de Bergerac for the last time in his life, closing out a role he had owned on Broadway since 1923. After that the guest list simply kept arriving: Jane Cowl, Basil Rathbone and Beatrice Straight, Boris Karloff, Gertrude Lawrence, Raymond Massey, Henry Fonda, Jessica Tandy, Ingrid Bergman. The sponsor's own press release called it "a distinctly new departure in religious radio programs" -- no dogma, no prayers, no scripture. Only in the last minutes did a local minister step in, inviting listeners to the eleven o'clock service the following Sunday morning. Twenty-two broadcasts ran between October 1948 and February 1949. A second season was planned and never came.
Episode Spine
Grouped by year. Jump to the full list below, or open a season on its own page.
1948
1949
In the autumn of 1948, as television began pulling the mass audience away, the National Council of the Protestant Episcopal Church put a Friday-night half hour on Mutual and did something no one else was doing. Instead of squeezing a whole play into thirty minutes, Great Scenes from Great Plays took about twenty minutes of ONE great work -- a single scene, played close to its written length -- and handed it to a major actor. Walter Hampden introduced and closed every broadcast but the opening one. He missed that one for the best reason: he starred in it, playing Cyrano de Bergerac for the last time in his life, closing out a role he had owned on Broadway since 1923. After that the guest list simply kept arriving: Jane Cowl, Basil Rathbone and Beatrice Straight, Boris Karloff, Gertrude Lawrence, Raymond Massey, Henry Fonda, Jessica Tandy, Ingrid Bergman. The sponsor's own press release called it "a distinctly new departure in religious radio programs" -- no dogma, no prayers, no scripture. Only in the last minutes did a local minister step in, inviting listeners to the eleven o'clock service the following Sunday morning. Twenty-two broadcasts ran between October 1948 and February 1949. A second season was planned and never came.