DuPont Show of the Month, an acclaimed 90-minute television anthology series, aired monthly on CBS from 1957 to 1961. The DuPont Company also sponsored a weekly half-hour anthology drama series hosted by June Allyson

June Allyson

June Allyson was an American film and television actress, popular in the 1940s and 1950s. She was a major MGM contract star. Allyson won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress for her performance in Too Young to Kiss . From 1959–1961, she hosted and occasionally starred in her own CBS anthology...

, The DuPont Show with June Allyson

The DuPont Show with June Allyson

The DuPont Show with June Allyson is an American anthology drama series which aired on CBS from September 21, 1959 to April 3, 1961 with rebroadcasts continuing until June 12, 1961...

(1959-61).

During the Golden Age of Television, DuPont Show of the Month was one of numerous anthology series telecast between 1949 and 1962. Superficially, it resembled Playhouse 90

Playhouse 90

Playhouse 90 is an American television anthology series that was telecast on CBS from 1956 to 1960 for a total of 133 episodes. It originated from CBS Television City in Los Angeles, California...

and other anthologies, but DuPont Show of the Month focused less on contemporary dramas and more on adaptations of literary classics, including Oliver Twist

Oliver Twist

Oliver Twist; or, The Parish Boy's Progress is the second novel by English author Charles Dickens, published by Richard Bentley in 1838. The story is about an orphan Oliver Twist, who endures a miserable existence in a workhouse and then is placed with an undertaker. He escapes and travels to...

, The Prince and the Pauper

The Prince and the Pauper

The Prince and the Pauper is an English-language novel by American author Mark Twain. It was first published in 1881 in Canada before its 1882 publication in the United States. The book represents Twain's first attempt at historical fiction...

, Billy Budd

Billy Budd

Billy Budd is a short novel by Herman Melville.Billy Budd can also refer to:*Billy Budd , a 1962 film produced, directed, and co-written by Peter Ustinov, based on Melville's novel...

, The Prisoner of Zenda

The Prisoner of Zenda

The Prisoner of Zenda is an adventure novel by Anthony Hope, published in 1894. The king of the fictional country of Ruritania is drugged on the eve of his coronation and thus unable to attend his own coronation. Political forces are such that in order for the king to retain his crown his...

, A Tale of Two Cities

A Tale of Two Cities

A Tale of Two Cities is a novel by Charles Dickens, set in London and Paris before and during the French Revolution. With well over 200 million copies sold, it ranks among the most famous works in the history of fictional literature....

and The Count of Monte Cristo

The Count of Monte Cristo

The Count of Monte Cristo is an adventure novel by Alexandre Dumas. It is often considered to be, along with The Three Musketeers, Dumas's most popular work. He completed the work in 1844...

.

Directors and writers

The directors for the series included Sidney Lumet

Sidney Lumet

Sidney Lumet was an American director, producer and screenwriter with over 50 films to his credit. He was nominated for the Academy Award as Best Director for 12 Angry Men , Dog Day Afternoon , Network and The Verdict...

, Ralph Nelson

Ralph Nelson

Ralph Nelson was an American movie and television director, producer, writer, and actor.-Life and career:...

, Alex Segal

Alex Segal

Alex Segal was an American television director, television producer and film director.He directed mostly on television making over 25 productions between his debut as a director on Starring Boris Karloff in 1949 and his death.He directed a few films including Joy in the Morning in 1965.He received...

 and Robert Mulligan

Robert Mulligan

Robert Mulligan was an American film and television director best known as the director of humanistic American dramas, including To Kill A Mockingbird , Summer of '42 , The Other , Same Time, Next Year and The Man in the Moon...

.

DuPont Show of the Month was the first anthology series to stage a television dramatization of Thornton Wilder

Thornton Wilder

Thornton Niven Wilder was an American playwright and novelist. He received three Pulitzer Prizes, one for his novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey and two for his plays Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth, and a National Book Award for his novel The Eighth Day.-Early years:Wilder was born in Madison,...

's only novel, The Bridge of San Luis Rey

The Bridge of San Luis Rey

The Bridge of San Luis Rey is American author Thornton Wilder's second novel, first published in 1927 to worldwide acclaim. It tells the story of several interrelated people who die in the collapse of an Inca rope-fiber suspension bridge in Peru, and the events that lead up to their being on the...

. It also presented original dramas, such as The Lincoln Murder Case. Dale Wasserman

Dale Wasserman

Dale Wasserman was an American playwright. -Early life:Dale Wasserman was born in Rhinelander, Wisconsin, and was orphaned at the age of nine. He lived in a state orphanage and with an older brother in South Dakota before he "hit the rails". He later said:-Career:Wasserman worked in various...

 wrote for the show, and it was Wasserman's I, Don Quixote

I, Don Quixote

I, Don Quixote is a non-musical play written for television, and broadcast on the CBS anthology series DuPont Show of the Month on the evening of November 9, 1959. Written by Dale Wasserman, the play was converted by him ca. 1964 into the libretto for the stage musical Man of La Mancha, with songs...

on this series (November 9, 1959) that eventually was developed six years later into Man of La Mancha

Man of La Mancha

Man of La Mancha is a musical with a book by Dale Wasserman, lyrics by Joe Darion and music by Mitch Leigh. It is adapted from Wasserman's non-musical 1959 teleplay I, Don Quixote, which was in turn inspired by Miguel de Cervantes's seventeenth century masterpiece Don Quixote...

. The plot and much of the dialogue is identical.

Other writers included Sidney Kingsley

Sidney Kingsley

Sidney Kingsley was an American dramatist. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play Men in White in 1934.- Biography :...

 and Terence Rattigan

Terence Rattigan

Sir Terence Mervyn Rattigan CBE was one of England's most popular 20th-century dramatists. His plays are generally set in an upper-middle-class background...

.

Awards and actors

The show was nominated for a total of 12 Emmy Awards. John Gielgud

John Gielgud

Sir Arthur John Gielgud, OM, CH was an English actor, director, and producer. A descendant of the renowned Terry acting family, he achieved early international acclaim for his youthful, emotionally expressive Hamlet which broke box office records on Broadway in 1937...

, Richard Burton

Richard Burton

Richard Burton, CBE was a Welsh actor. He was nominated seven times for an Academy Award, six of which were for Best Actor in a Leading Role , and was a recipient of BAFTA, Golden Globe and Tony Awards for Best Actor. Although never trained as an actor, Burton was, at one time, the highest-paid...

, Lee J. Cobb

Lee J. Cobb

Lee J. Cobb was an American actor. He is best known for his performance in 12 Angry Men his Academy Award-nominated performance in On the Waterfront and one of his last films, The Exorcist...

, Colleen Dewhurst

Colleen Dewhurst

Colleen Rose Dewhurst was a Canadian-American actress known for a while as "the Queen of Off-Broadway." In her autobiography, Dewhurst wrote: "I had moved so quickly from one Off-Broadway production to the next that I was known, at one point, as the 'Queen of Off-Broadway'...

, Eli Wallach

Eli Wallach

Eli Herschel Wallach is an American film, television and stage actor, who gained fame in the late 1950s. For his performance in Baby Doll he won a BAFTA Award for Best Newcomer and a Golden Globe nomination. One of his most famous roles is that of Tuco in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly...

, Hurd Hatfield

Hurd Hatfield

William Rukard Hurd Hatfield was an American actor.-Biography:The son of William Henry Hatfield , an attorney who served as deputy attorney general for New York, and his wife, the former Adele Steele, Hatfield was born in New York City, and was educated at Columbia University before travelling to...

, Judith Anderson

Judith Anderson

Dame Judith Anderson, AC, DBE was an Australian-born American-based actress of stage, film and television. She won two Emmy Awards and a Tony Award and was also nominated for a Grammy Award and an Academy Award.-Early life:...

, Hume Cronyn

Hume Cronyn

Hume Blake Cronyn, OC was a Canadian actor of stage and screen, who enjoyed a long career, often appearing professionally alongside his second wife, Jessica Tandy.-Early life:...

, Maureen O'Hara

Maureen O'Hara

Maureen O'Hara is an Irish film actress and singer. The famously red-headed O'Hara has been noted for playing fiercely passionate heroines with a highly sensible attitude. She often worked with director John Ford and longtime friend John Wayne...

, Michael Rennie

Michael Rennie

Michael Rennie was an English film, television, and stage actor, perhaps best known for his starring role as the space visitor Klaatu in the 1951 classic science fiction film The Day the Earth Stood Still. However, he appeared in over 50 other films since 1936, many with Jean Simmons and other...

, Suzanne Storrs

Suzanne Storrs

Suzanne Storrs was a former Miss Utah and an American television actress who appeared in sixteen different television series between 1954 and 1961, usually as the beautiful leading lady, including Maverick with James Garner , Wanted Dead or Alive with Steve McQueen , Sugarfoot Suzanne Storrs...

, Farley Granger

Farley Granger

Farley Earle Granger was an American actor. In a career spanning several decades, he was perhaps best known for his two collaborations with Alfred Hitchcock, Rope in 1948 and Strangers on a Train in 1951.-Early life:...

, Fritz Weaver

Fritz Weaver

Fritz William Weaver is an American actor and voice actor.-Life and career:Weaver was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the son of Elsa W. and John Carson Weaver. His mother was of Italian descent and his father was a social worker from Pittsburgh. Weaver attended Peabody High School...

, and George C. Scott

George C. Scott

George Campbell Scott was an American stage and film actor, director and producer. He was best known for his stage work, as well as his portrayal of General George S. Patton in the film Patton, and as General Buck Turgidson in Stanley Kubrick's Dr...

 made appearances. Johnny Washbrook

Johnny Washbrook

John "Johnny" Washbrook is a former child actor best known for his role as 12-year-old Ken McLaughlin on the western television series My Friend Flicka, originally broadcast from 1956-1957 on CBS.-My Friend Flicka:...

 of the My Friend Flicka

My Friend Flicka (TV series)

My Friend Flicka is a 39-episode western television series set at the fictitious Goose Bar Ranch in Wyoming at the turn of the 20th century. The program was filmed in color but initially aired in black and white on CBS at 7:30 p.m. Fridays from February 10, 1956, to February 1, 1957. It was a...

TV series appeared as Tom Canty in The Prince and the Pauper.

With its stage cast, DuPont Show of the Month telecast the 1958 Old Vic

Old Vic

The Old Vic is a theatre located just south-east of Waterloo Station in London on the corner of The Cut and Waterloo Road. Established in 1818 as the Royal Coburg Theatre, it was taken over by Emma Cons in 1880 when it was known formally as the Royal Victoria Hall. In 1898, a niece of Cons, Lilian...

 production of William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...

's Hamlet

Hamlet

The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or more simply Hamlet, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601...

immediately following its brief run on Broadway. Sally Benson's Junior Miss

Junior Miss

Junior Miss is a collection of semi-autobiographical stories by Sally Benson first published in The New Yorker. Between 1929 and the end of 1941, the prolific Benson published 99 stories in The New Yorker, some under her pseudonym of Esther Evarts...

, on Broadway from 1941 to 1943 came to television on December 20, 1957 as a production of DuPont Show of the Month. Carol Lynley

Carol Lynley

Carol Lynley is an American actress and former child model.-Life and career:Lynley was born Carole Ann Jones in New York City, the daughter of Frances , a waitress, and Cyril Jones. Her father was Irish and her mother, a native of New England, was of English, Scottish, Welsh, German, and Native...

 had the lead role of Judy Graves with Don Ameche

Don Ameche

Don Ameche was an Academy Award winning American actor with a career spanning almost sixty years.-Personal life:...

 and Joan Bennett

Joan Bennett

Joan Geraldine Bennett was an American stage, film and television actress. Besides acting on the stage, Bennett appeared in more than 70 motion pictures from the era of silent movies well into the sound era...

 as her parents and Susanne Sidney as Fuffy Adams. Others in the cast were Diana Lynn

Diana Lynn

Diana Lynn was an American actress.Born Dolores Marie Loehr in Los Angeles, California, Lynn was considered a child prodigy because of her exceptional abilities as a pianist at an early age, and by the age of 12 was playing with the Los Angeles Junior Symphony Orchestra.-Film career:Dolores Loehr...

, Paul Ford, Jill St. John

Jill St. John

Jill St. John is an American actress. She is best known for her role as Tiffany Case, the lead Bond girl in Diamonds Are Forever.-Early life:...

 and David Wayne

David Wayne

David Wayne was an American actor with a career spanning nearly 50 years.-Early life and career:...

.

DuPont Show of the Month episodes have not been released on VHS and DVD.