Matinee Theater
October 22, 1944 – April 8, 1945 · 25 broadcasts
CBS built this Sunday-afternoon half-hour around one man, and then rebuilt it around him again. It started in July 1944 as Dangerously Yours, a Vicks-sponsored run of swashbuckling romances starring Victor Jory -- the screen villain of Gone with the Wind, cast against type as a leading man. Listeners liked Jory more than they liked the formula, and wrote in asking for stories that had nothing to do with dangerous living. So on 22 October 1944 CBS widened the format and renamed the programme Matinee Theater, and for twenty-five weeks Jory played whatever the wider brief allowed. What it allowed was a remarkable spread for a half-hour: Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre, Rebecca and Random Harvest, Alfred Noyes's ballad The Highwayman, a Stephen Foster biography, a Christmas miracle play, and a doomed Habsburg romance at Mayerling. Gertrude Warner was the usual leading lady; Jean Holloway did most of the adapting; Mark Warnow conducted. Toward the end Jory simply read the candidate titles on the air and let the audience pick the next week's play. Twenty-two of the twenty-five broadcasts survive. The series ended on 8 April 1945 by going back to a script from its own first month.
Episode Spine
Grouped by year. Jump to the full list below, or open a season on its own page.
1944
1945
CBS built this Sunday-afternoon half-hour around one man, and then rebuilt it around him again. It started in July 1944 as Dangerously Yours, a Vicks-sponsored run of swashbuckling romances starring Victor Jory -- the screen villain of Gone with the Wind, cast against type as a leading man. Listeners liked Jory more than they liked the formula, and wrote in asking for stories that had nothing to do with dangerous living. So on 22 October 1944 CBS widened the format and renamed the programme Matinee Theater, and for twenty-five weeks Jory played whatever the wider brief allowed. What it allowed was a remarkable spread for a half-hour: Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre, Rebecca and Random Harvest, Alfred Noyes's ballad The Highwayman, a Stephen Foster biography, a Christmas miracle play, and a doomed Habsburg romance at Mayerling. Gertrude Warner was the usual leading lady; Jean Holloway did most of the adapting; Mark Warnow conducted. Toward the end Jory simply read the candidate titles on the air and let the audience pick the next week's play. Twenty-two of the twenty-five broadcasts survive. The series ended on 8 April 1945 by going back to a script from its own first month.