Drama & Anthology · CBS
Hallmark Playhouse
June 10, 1948 – February 1, 1953 · 199 broadcasts
Hallmark Playhouse was Hallmark's prestige literary anthology on CBS, running almost five years from June 10, 1948 to February 1, 1953. Introduced each week by the celebrated novelist James Hilton -- author of Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Lost Horizon, and Random Harvest, all of which the program dramatized -- it adapted a great book or popular story every Sunday, built around a single Hollywood or literary star. Frank Goss announced, Lyn Murray composed and conducted the music, and Dee Engelbach and Bill Gay produced and directed; Jean Holloway and Jack Rubin were among the regular adapters. Over some 200 broadcasts the guest list read like a marquee -- Ronald Colman, Irene Dunne, Joan Fontaine, Jane Wyman, Bob Hope, Tyrone Power, Ethel Barrymore, and dozens more -- while the source material ranged from Austen, Dickens, and Longfellow to Edna Ferber, Sinclair Lewis, and James Thurber. Sponsored by Hallmark Cards ('When you care enough to send the very best'), the show carried a reputation for taste and high production polish, and in 1953 it was reshaped into the long-running Hallmark Hall of Fame.
Collection status:
76 of 199 held (38% complete)
◆ ◆ ◆
Episode Spine
Grouped by year. Jump to the full list below, or open a season on its own page.
- 1948 (29 episodes)
- 1949 (39 episodes)
- 1950 (39 episodes)
- 1951 (52 episodes)
- 1952 (35 episodes)
- 1953 (5 episodes)
1948
Jabez Stone, a down-on-his-luck New Hampshire farmer, sells his soul to Mr. Scratch for seven years of prosperity -- then hires the famed orator Daniel Webster to argue his way out when the devil comes to collect.
A new bride discovers on her honeymoon that the husband she adores is hopelessly devoted to his model trains, and must learn to share him with the railroad.
A traveling businessman falls for a quiet, plainly dressed woman at a New York dinner party, only to find she is a concert pianist who now refuses to touch the keys.
Sorting through the phonograph records of a marriage that is falling apart, Julie Carey relives the joys and heartbreaks she and her husband Roger have shared.
Jane Austen's comedy of manners, as the spirited Elizabeth Bennet spars with the proud Mr. Darcy while her mother schemes to marry off five daughters.
A light comedy about a man caught between his boat and his wife.
A. J. Cronin's idealistic young Dr. Andrew Manson takes his first post in a grim Welsh mining town and sets out to uncover the cause of the miners' persistent cough.
July 29, 1948
Phantom Filly
August 5, 1948
Afterward
Rupert Hughes's sentimental tale of parents who raise six children in a loving home, then watch them scatter -- until one announcement brings the family back together.
On the New York frontier of the Revolution, settlers Gil and Lana Martin defend their farms against raids by Indians and the renegades leading them.
August 26, 1948
State Fair
September 2, 1948
To Mary, with Love
A sweeping love story set in the early days of the Oklahoma Territory, from Edna Ferber's novel.
Host James Hilton's own novel: the shy schoolmaster Mr. Chipping arrives at Brookfield in 1870 and, over a lifetime teaching English boys, finds his one great love.
A gruff old Maine lighthouse keeper rescues and raises a little girl orphaned by a shipwreck off his island.
Bob Hope plays Elmer Kane, a cocky small-town rookie ballplayer from Gallipolis, Ohio, in Ring Lardner's comic baseball yarn.
Sinclair Lewis's restless young scientist Martin Arrowsmith pursues medical research, and love, in a career that stumbles on its way toward the stars.
A woman climbs from poverty in Nevada to wealth and power in New York society, in Louis Bromfield's Mrs. Parkington.
Tim O'Halloran, a young Irish railroad laborer newly arrived in Boston, meets a genuine leprechaun who helps him regain his family's luck and win his sweetheart Kitty.
A ranch boy stakes his hopes on taming a wild young filly named Flicka, and nurses her back from a near-fatal injury.
Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale of eleven brothers turned into swans and the devoted sister who labors to break the spell.
Jack Benny stars in Stephen Leacock's comic sketch about a nervous man hopelessly out of his depth in a bank.
The hardships of a pioneering couple homesteading in the Dakota Territory.
Edna Ferber's tender, bittersweet story of an aging widower trying to fit into the household of his grown children.
How one woman played her part in helping Abraham Lincoln win the Civil War.
A warm Christmas story set at a small tourist court out in the desert.
The tale of how the beloved carol 'Silent Night' was written in an Alpine village in 1818 and carried around the world.
James Hilton introduces his own tale of Shangri-La, the hidden valley of peace, closing with a New Year's message of hope; Herbert Marshall plays Conway.
1949
A wandering ex-newspaperman loosens a political boss's grip on a small American town during the Depression, from Louis Bromfield's story.
A woman badly hurt in a car accident and her domineering husband, in a tale shadowed by the supernatural.
Christopher Morley's story of a spirited woman who takes to the road with a horse-drawn traveling bookshop.
An aged country doctor looks back on a life spent tending his friends and neighbors rather than chasing fame and fortune.
A warm Irish love story that reaches across two generations.
Host James Hilton's own novel: a shell-shocked amnesiac and the woman who loves him through his lost years, with Joan Fontaine.
Edna Ferber's chronicle of a woman's hard-won life on the truck farms of the 19th-century Midwest.
Inheriting a London house, Peter Standish finds an ancestor's diary that carries him back into the 18th century and a love that spans the centuries; David Niven stars.
A dramatization of composer Meredith Willson's early years and his Mason City, Iowa boyhood.
A St. Patrick's Day tale of an illiterate old Irishman and the grandson he adopts, with Barry Fitzgerald.
A brisk dramatization of the frontier marshal's life, with Richard Conte.
The story of Jessie Benton Fremont and her marriage to the explorer and soldier John C. Fremont, with Loretta Young.
A stagestruck small-town girl from Vermont comes to Broadway determined to become a star; Elizabeth Taylor stars.
The true story of a devoted minister making his way in a contentious rural Iowa parish, with George Brent.
A white-collar girl from the poor side of Philadelphia, looked down on by the city's society set, builds a career on her own terms; June Allyson stars.
A girl comes of age in tenement Brooklyn, bound above all to her dreamer of a father; James Dunn reprises his film role.
A Mother's Day story of a devoted mother of seven and the ambitious daughter who comes, in time, to see her mother's true worth; Linda Darnell stars.
James Thurber's tall tale of a struggling ballclub that signs a three-foot 'midget' as its secret weapon, with William Frawley.
A scarred war veteran and a homely young woman, married almost in resignation, gradually find each other beautiful once love takes hold; Richard Widmark stars.
A love story played out along a carnival midway, bridging the gap between the generations; Charles Bickford stars.
The season's last broadcast: an affectionate look at an immigrant who has made America his own, keeping house for a family by day and treasuring his new citizenship; Paul Lukas stars.
September 8, 1949
Yankee from Olympus
September 15, 1949
Anna and the King of Siam
September 22, 1949
So Well Remembered
An eerie tale of a New York artist in a killing heatwave who finds a headstone already carved with his own name; Ronald Colman stars.
Fourteen-year-old Velvet Brown and a young stablehand train her horse Piebald to run in England's Grand National; Roddy McDowall stars.
A love story set on the western frontier.
October 20, 1949
Let the Hurricane Roar
A portrait of a weary small-town doctor, his own fears and pains, on a day that begins with the loss of a colleague; Edmund Gwenn stars.
A retired army colonel returns to his beloved hometown and wages a one-man campaign against City Hall; Charles Coburn stars.
The story of Varina Davis, wife of Confederate president Jefferson Davis; Irene Dunne stars.
A small-town lawyer, once his class's brightest hope, receives a letter that makes him reckon with whether the modest life he chose squandered his promise or honored it; Lew Ayres stars.
Longfellow's Thanksgiving verse tale of the famous romantic triangle in the Plymouth colony; David Niven stars.
The life of a devoted schoolteacher followed across the years; Martha Scott reprises her film role as Ella Bishop.
December 8, 1949
Christopher and Columbus
December 15, 1949
Wedding Morning
A second telling of the Christmas carol's origin, with music director Lyn Murray honored on the air.
December 29, 1949
Father Flanagan
1950
January 5, 1950
The Egg and I
January 12, 1950
The Way West
Jules Verne's unflappable Phileas Fogg wagers he can circle the globe in eighty days; Ronald Colman stars.
January 26, 1950
Green Grass of Wyoming
The great love story of the poets Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning in Victorian England; Ida Lupino stars.
February 9, 1950
Lincoln and the Baltimore Plot
February 16, 1950
April 25th, As Usual
February 23, 1950
Autobiography of Will Rogers
March 2, 1950
The Indestructible Julia
March 9, 1950
Home to the Heritage
March 16, 1950
Three Wishes of Jamie Mcruin
March 23, 1950
Richard Carvel
The life of George Carroll Berryman, a Baptist preacher in turn-of-the-century west Texas, told by his daughter; Charles Bickford stars.
An Easter love story, with Ann Blyth.
April 13, 1950
Appassionata
April 20, 1950
My Sister Eileen
May 4, 1950
Victoria Regina
May 11, 1950
Marmee
May 18, 1950
The Wayfarers
May 25, 1950
Knee Pants
June 1, 1950
The Story of Kansas City
A season-closing docudrama on the founding and growth of Kansas City, staged for the city's centennial, with Jane Wyman and Robert Young.
September 7, 1950
The Story of Tom Edison
September 14, 1950
The Big Build-up
September 21, 1950
West of the Hill
September 28, 1950
The Barefoot Mailman
October 5, 1950
The Story of Florence Nightingale
October 12, 1950
Final Tribute
October 19, 1950
Not Wanted
October 26, 1950
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
November 2, 1950
Mistress of the White House
November 9, 1950
Great Expections
November 16, 1950
Enchanted April
November 23, 1950
Home to Thanksgiving
November 30, 1950
Decater
December 7, 1950
The Third Ingredient
December 14, 1950
The Promise
December 21, 1950
Silent Night
December 28, 1950
Patrick Calls Me Mother
1951
January 4, 1951
The Life of Theodore Roosevelt
Edna Ferber's warm, wry story of the perennial pull between town and country across the generations; Charles Bickford stars.
January 18, 1951
Old Soldiers Never Die
January 25, 1951
The Golden Horde
February 1, 1951
Goodbye Mr. Chips
February 8, 1951
Abraham Lincoln: a Man for the Ages
February 15, 1951
Cinderella
Maxwell Anderson's drama of the Continental army's bleakest hour and Washington's leadership at the turning point of the Revolution; Van Heflin stars.
Booth Tarkington's tale of romance and dueling in an age of powdered wigs and marble palaces; Douglas Fairbanks Jr. stars.
In the tiny town of Shelby, an ordinary young woman named Janey Oliver proves to be the sort of person who quietly gets things done; Rosalind Russell stars.
Charles Ingalls and his family face a Dakota winter that seems as if it will never end, from Laura Ingalls Wilder; Edward Arnold stars.
A New England publisher falls in love with his own wife all over again when one of his authors begins to pursue her; Van Johnson stars.
Frances Parkinson Keyes's bestseller of Beacon Hill Boston, its people drawn with humor and sympathy; Irene Dunne stars.
The pioneers who believed in the automobile when almost no one else did; Robert Cummings stars.
Richard Henry Dana's classic of a young man's voyage around Cape Horn to Mexican California in the age of sail; Edmond O'Brien stars.
Rumer Godden reworks the story Shakespeare told in The Tempest -- a wise recluse and his lovely daughter marooned together on a remote island; Sarah Churchill stars, with a Bernard Herrmann score.
Gladys Hasty Carroll's story of a warm, strong mother still giving to her grown children as the years advance; Ethel Barrymore stars.
May 17, 1951
Benjamin Franklin
May 24, 1951
Scudda Ho, Scudda Hay
May 31, 1951
The Quest of John Chapman
June 7, 1951
Whistling in the Dark
June 14, 1951
True Confession
June 21, 1951
Payment Deferred
June 28, 1951
Double Indemnity
July 5, 1951
Bachelor Mother
July 12, 1951
Front Page
July 19, 1951
Night Must Fall
July 26, 1951
No Time for Comedy
August 2, 1951
A Double Life
August 9, 1951
Petrified Forest
August 16, 1951
Ball of Fire
August 23, 1951
An Inspector Calls
August 30, 1951
Accent on Youth
September 6, 1951
Ladies of the Jury
September 13, 1951
Francis Scott Key
September 20, 1951
The Prisoner of Zenda
September 27, 1951
Web of Destiny
October 4, 1951
Country Lawyer
October 11, 1951
Wild Orchard
October 18, 1951
Cashel Byron's Profession
October 25, 1951
John Adams
November 1, 1951
Evangeline
November 8, 1951
20,000 Leagues Under the Sky
November 15, 1951
Mississippi Bubble
November 22, 1951
Widened Heart
November 29, 1951
Salad Days
December 6, 1951
The Night of the Hayride
December 13, 1951
Story of John Hancock
December 20, 1951
Silent Night
December 27, 1951
Stephen Foster
1952
January 3, 1952
The Camerak Tree
January 10, 1952
Horse and Buggy Doctor
January 17, 1952
Madam Clair
January 24, 1952
James Audubon
January 31, 1952
Westward Ho!
February 7, 1952
Percussion
February 14, 1952
Robert Schumann
February 21, 1952
Powder Mission
February 28, 1952
The Mother of the Groom
March 6, 1952
Man Without a Home
March 13, 1952
This Pleasant Leave
March 20, 1952
Time Remembered
March 27, 1952
Yankee's Doorkeeper
April 3, 1952
Lisa Lilywhite
April 10, 1952
Ben Hur
April 17, 1952
Doubtful Valley
April 24, 1952
Professor
May 1, 1952
Lorna Doone
May 8, 1952
Whistler's Mother
May 15, 1952
Lafayette
May 22, 1952
Marsha Byrnes
May 29, 1952
Lewis and Clark
September 14, 1952
The Pathfinder
September 28, 1952
Nebraska Coast
October 5, 1952
Mansfield Park
October 12, 1952
Young Mr. Disraeli
October 19, 1952
Lady of the Lake
October 26, 1952
Pebble's Boy
November 2, 1952
Daniel Webster
November 9, 1952
Covered Bridge
November 16, 1952
Thunder Shower
November 23, 1952
Standish Outstandish
December 7, 1952
Miracle on Blotter
December 14, 1952
Home for Christmas
Catherine Marshall's tribute to her husband, the Scots-born minister Peter Marshall, who became Chaplain of the U.S. Senate; Lionel Barrymore and Joseph Cotten star.
1953
January 4, 1953
Wave High the Banner
January 11, 1953
January Thaw
January 18, 1953
Forty Odd
January 25, 1953
Big Family
February 1, 1953
Trenton '76
The Story
Hallmark Playhouse was Hallmark's prestige literary anthology on CBS, running almost five years from June 10, 1948 to February 1, 1953. Introduced each week by the celebrated novelist James Hilton -- author of Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Lost Horizon, and Random Harvest, all of which the program dramatized -- it adapted a great book or popular story every Sunday, built around a single Hollywood or literary star. Frank Goss announced, Lyn Murray composed and conducted the music, and Dee Engelbach and Bill Gay produced and directed; Jean Holloway and Jack Rubin were among the regular adapters. Over some 200 broadcasts the guest list read like a marquee -- Ronald Colman, Irene Dunne, Joan Fontaine, Jane Wyman, Bob Hope, Tyrone Power, Ethel Barrymore, and dozens more -- while the source material ranged from Austen, Dickens, and Longfellow to Edna Ferber, Sinclair Lewis, and James Thurber. Sponsored by Hallmark Cards ('When you care enough to send the very best'), the show carried a reputation for taste and high production polish, and in 1953 it was reshaped into the long-running Hallmark Hall of Fame.
Full story — coming soon while it's being curated.
Gallery
Art pending