''Celanese Theatre'' is an
anthology television series
An anthology series is a radio, television, video game or film series that spans different genres and presents a different story and a different set of characters in each different episode, season, segment, or short. These usually have a ...
which aired from October 3, 1951, to June 25, 1952, on
ABC
ABC are the first three letters of the Latin script known as the alphabet.
ABC or abc may also refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Broadcasting
* American Broadcasting Company, a commercial U.S. TV broadcaster
** Disney–ABC Television ...
.
Concept
The series arose from the Playwrights' Repertory Theater of Television with its focus on adapting stage plays to television.
Produced by the
Celanese Corporation
Celanese Corporation, formerly known as Hoechst Celanese, is an American technology and specialty materials company headquartered in Irving, Texas. A Fortune 500 corporation, the company is the world’s leading producer of acetic acid, produc ...
and the
William Morris Agency
The William Morris Agency (WMA) was a Hollywood-based talent agency. It represented some of the best known 20th-century entertainers in film, television, and music. During its 109-year tenure it came to be regarded as the "first great talent a ...
, it featured plays by
Maxwell Anderson
James Maxwell Anderson (December 15, 1888 – February 28, 1959) was an American playwright, author, poet, journalist, and lyricist.
Background
Anderson was born on December 15, 1888, in Atlantic, Pennsylvania, the second of eight children to ...
,
Philip Barry
Philip Jerome Quinn Barry (June 18, 1896 – December 3, 1949) was an American dramatist best known for his plays ''Holiday (play), Holiday'' (1928) and ''The Philadelphia Story (play), The Philadelphia Story'' (1939), which were both made into ...
,
Rachel Crothers
Rachel Crothers (December 12, 1878 – July 5, 1958) was an American playwright and theater director known for her well-crafted plays that often dealt with feminist themes. Among theater historians, she is generally recognized as "the most succes ...
,
Eugene O'Neill
Eugene Gladstone O'Neill (October 16, 1888 – November 27, 1953) was an American playwright and Nobel laureate in literature. His poetically titled plays were among the first to introduce into the U.S. the drama techniques of realism, earlier ...
,
S. N. Behrman,
Elmer Rice
Elmer Rice (born Elmer Leopold Reizenstein, September 28, 1892 – May 8, 1967) was an American playwright. He is best known for his plays ''The Adding Machine'' (1923) and his Pulitzer Prize-winning drama of New York tenement life, '' Street Sce ...
,
John Van Druten
John William Van Druten (1 June 190119 December 1957) was an English playwright and theatre director. He began his career in London, and later moved to America, becoming a U.S. citizen. He was known for his plays of witty and urbane observation ...
,
Sidney Howard
Sidney Coe Howard (June 26, 1891 – August 23, 1939) was an American playwright, dramatist and screenwriter. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1925 and a posthumous Academy Award in 1940 for the screenplay for ''Gone with the Wind''. ...
,
Paul Osborn
Paul Osborn (September 4, 1901 – May 12, 1988) was an American playwright and screenwriter. Osborn's original plays are '' The Vinegar Tree'', ''Oliver Oliver'', and ''Morning's at Seven'' and among his several successful adaptations, ''On Borr ...
, and
Robert E. Sherwood
Robert Emmet Sherwood (April 4, 1896 – November 14, 1955) was an American playwright and screenwriter.
He is the author of '' Waterloo Bridge, Idiot's Delight, Abe Lincoln in Illinois, Rebecca, There Shall Be No Night, The Best Years of Our ...
. The program's first production was O'Neill's ''
Ah, Wilderness!
''Ah, Wilderness!'' is a comedy by American playwright Eugene O'Neill that premiered on Broadway at the Guild Theatre on October 2, 1933. It differs from a typical O'Neill play in its happy ending for the central character, and depiction of a ...
.''
Schedule
''Celanese Theatre'' aired as a 60-minute program on Wednesdays at 10 p.m. ET. Beginning on January 9, 1952, the show aired in a 30-minute version which ran from 10 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. ET. The show alternated with ''
Pulitzer Prize Playhouse
''Pulitzer Prize Playhouse'' is an American television anthology drama series which offered adaptations of Pulitzer Prize-winning plays, novels, and stories. The distinguished journalist Elmer Davis was the host and narrator of this 1950-1952 A ...
''.
For two months beginning in October, ''Celanese Theatre'' alternated with ''King's Crossroads'', which was a "movie series".
Recognition
''Celanese Theatre'' was nominated for
Primetime Emmy
The Primetime Emmy Awards, or Primetime Emmys, are part of the extensive range of Emmy Awards for artistic and technical merit for the American television industry. Bestowed by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (ATAS), the Primetime ...
awards as Outstanding Drama Series in 1952 and 1953. It won the
Peabody Award
The George Foster Peabody Awards (or simply Peabody Awards or the Peabodys) program, named for the American businessman and philanthropist George Peabody, honor the most powerful, enlightening, and invigorating stories in television, radio, and ...
in 1951, with the comment "For the first time, Celanese Theatre fused the realism and vitality of the theatre at its best with inventive camera and production techniques, revealing the limitless potentialities of television to project great drama into the American home."
Cancellation
The program ended when officials at the Celanese company concluded that it cost too much, despite positive recognition by critics and awards organizations. On August 12, 1952, Milton R. Bass wrote in ''
The Berkshire Eagle
''The Berkshire Eagle'' is an American daily newspaper published in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and covering all of Berkshire County, as well as four New York communities near Pittsfield. It is considered a newspaper of record for Berkshire Cou ...
'': "It has been impossible for the network to sell the program because no other sponsor wants to pay for a program called ''Celanese Theatre''. Any other name would mean nothing to the public and all those awards and huzzahs are absolutely down the drain."
[ ]
Notable Guest Stars
*
Jean-Pierre Aumont
Jean-Pierre Aumont (born Jean-Pierre Philippe Salomons; 5 January 1911 – 30 January 2001) was a French actor, and holder of the Légion d'Honneur and the Croix de guerre 1939–1945, Croix de Guerre for his World War II military service.
Ea ...
*
Richard Burton
Richard Burton (; born Richard Walter Jenkins Jr.; 10 November 1925 – 5 August 1984) was a Welsh actor. Noted for his baritone voice, Burton established himself as a formidable Shakespearean actor in the 1950s, and he gave a memorable pe ...
*
Wendell Corey
Wendell Reid Corey (March 20, 1914 – November 8, 1968) was an American actor and politician. He was President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and was a board member of the Screen Actors Guild.
Biography Early years
Corey was ...
*
Helen Craig
Helen Craig (born 30 August 1934) is an English children's book illustrator and writer. She is best known for creating the Angelina Ballerina series of children's books with writer Katharine Holabird.
Craig was born in London, evacuated duri ...
*
Melvyn Douglas
Melvyn Douglas (born Melvyn Edouard Hesselberg, April 5, 1901 – August 4, 1981) was an American actor. Douglas came to prominence in the 1930s as a suave leading man, perhaps best typified by his performance in the romantic comedy ''Ninotchka ...
*
Mildred Dunnock
Mildred Dorothy Dunnock (January 25, 1901 – July 5, 1991) was an American stage and screen actress. She was twice nominated for an Academy Award: first ''Death of a Salesman'' in 1951, then '' Baby Doll'' in 1956.
Early life
Born in Baltimor ...
*
Ann Dvorak
Ann Dvorak (born Anna McKim; August 2, 1911 – December 10, 1979) was an American stage and film actress.
Asked how to pronounce her adopted surname, she told ''The Literary Digest'' in 1936: "My fake name is properly pronounced ''vor'shack ...
*
Lillian Gish
Lillian Diana Gish (October 14, 1893February 27, 1993) was an American actress, director, and screenwriter. Her film-acting career spanned 75 years, from 1912, in silent film shorts, to 1987. Gish was called the "First Lady of American Cinema", ...
*
Coleen Gray
Coleen Gray (born Doris Bernice Jensen; October 23, 1922 – August 3, 2015) was an American actress. She was best known for her roles in the films '' Nightmare Alley'' (1947), '' Red River'' (1948), and Stanley Kubrick's '' The Killing'' ...
*
June Havoc
June Havoc (born Ellen Evangeline Hovick; November 8, 1912 – March 28, 2010) was a Canadian American actress, dancer, stage director and memoirist.
Havoc was a child vaudeville performer under the tutelage of her mother Rose Thompson Hovick, ...
*
Kim Hunter
Kim Hunter (born Janet Cole; November 11, 1922 – September 11, 2002) was an American theatre, film, and television actress. She achieved prominence for portraying Stella Kowalski in the original production of Tennessee Williams' ''A Streetcar N ...
*
Ruth Hussey
Ruth Carol Hussey (October 30, 1911 – April 19, 2005) was an American actress best known for her Academy Award-nominated role as photographer Elizabeth Imbrie in '' The Philadelphia Story''.
Early life
Hussey was born in Providence, Rhode I ...
*
Jack Klugman
Jack Klugman (April 27, 1922 – December 24, 2012) was an American actor of stage, film, and television.
He began his career in 1950 and started television and film work with roles in ''12 Angry Men'' (1957) and '' Cry Terror!'' (1958). D ...
*
Veronica Lake
Constance Frances Marie Ockelman (November 14, 1922 – July 7, 1973), known professionally as Veronica Lake, was an American film, stage, and television actress. Lake was best known for her femme fatale roles in film noirs with Alan Ladd ...
*
Karl Malden
Karl Malden (born Mladen George Sekulovich; March 22, 1912 – July 1, 2009) was an American actor. He was primarily a character actor, who according to Robert Berkvist, "for more than 60 years brought an intelligent intensity and a homespun aut ...
*
Roddy McDowall
Roderick Andrew Anthony Jude McDowall (17 September 1928 – 4 October 1998) was a British actor, photographer and film director. He began his acting career as a child in England, and then in the United States, in ''How Green Was My Valley'' (1 ...
*
Burgess Meredith
Oliver Burgess Meredith (November 16, 1907 – September 9, 1997) was an American actor and filmmaker whose career encompassed theater, film, and television.
Active for more than six decades, Meredith has been called "a virtuosic actor" and "on ...
*
Thomas Mitchell
*
Ralph Morgan
Raphael Kuhner Wuppermann (July 6, 1883 – June 11, 1956), known professionally as Ralph Morgan, was a Hollywood stage and film character actor, and the older brother of Frank Morgan.
Early life
Morgan was born in New York City, the eig ...
*
David Niven
James David Graham Niven (; 1 March 1910 – 29 July 1983) was a British actor, soldier, memoirist, and novelist. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance as Major Pollock in ''Separate Tables'' (1958). Niven's other roles ...
*
Mickey Rooney
Mickey Rooney (born Joseph Yule Jr.; other pseudonym Mickey Maguire; September 23, 1920 – April 6, 2014) was an American actor. In a career spanning nine decades, he appeared in more than 300 films and was among the last surviving stars of the ...
*
Robert Stack
Robert Stack (born Charles Langford Modini Stack; January 13, 1919 – May 14, 2003) was an American actor. Known for his deep voice and commanding presence, he appeared in over forty feature films. He starred in the highly successful ABC telev ...
*
Robert Sterling
Robert Sterling (born William Sterling Hart; November 13, 1917 – May 30, 2006) was an American actor. He was best known for starring in the television series '' Topper'' (1953–1955).
In 1960, Sterling was honored with a star on the Hollywoo ...
See also
*
1951-52 United States network television schedule
References
External links
*{{IMDb title, 0043183
''Celanese Theatre'' at CTVA with episode listfinal episode 'On Borrowed Time' (originally aired June 25, 1952)
American Broadcasting Company original programming
1951 American television series debuts
1952 American television series endings
Black-and-white American television shows
1950s American anthology television series
Television series based on plays
Peabody Award-winning television programs