The Old Gold Comedy Theater — 1944

A broke Manhattan couple come apart over a stranger's gift of $700, and the wife heads south toward a quick divorce, a smitten millionaire and his alarmingly predatory sister. Claudette Colbert and Robert Young open the series in Preston Sturges's farce.

Two radio writers whose daytime serial has gone stale go hunting for real people to borrow from -- and one of them moves in with a family he cannot help falling for. Dick Powell, Victor Moore and Rosemary DeCamp.

A mild university professor is sent to New York to retrieve a wayward cousin and returns instead with a nightclub singer he has married on three days' acquaintance, and no nerve at all to tell his very proper family. Lee Bowman and Linda Darnell.

A newly discharged soldier turns up to do one odd job for a rich and thoroughly rattled household, and ends by running the place -- handyman, referee and confidant to every unhappy person under the roof. Joseph Cotten, from Booth Tarkington.

A painter who cannot pay his bills takes work as secretary to a formidable woman advertising executive; chasing a tobacco account together takes care of the rest. Susan Hayward and John Hodiak.

A sidewalk artist wishes a neighbour good luck, her luck promptly turns, and she proposes they split a sweepstakes ticket. He agrees -- with a condition attached that her fiance likes not at all. Herbert Marshall, Jane Wyman and Sheldon Leonard.

Fired from the department store the day before Christmas, a shopgirl picks up an abandoned baby and finds nobody will believe it isn't hers -- least of all the owner's son, who sets out to make an honest mother of her. Brenda Marshall and Louis Hayward.

A producer with no money barricades his entire company in a hotel and bluffs, stalls and stage-manages his way toward a backer before the management works out that nobody can settle the bill. Jack Oakie, Stuart Erwin and Donald McBride.