Ford Star Jubilee was a usually live, ninety minute, color anthology series that aired once a month on Saturday nights on CBS

CBS

CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...

 at 9:00 P.M., E.S.T. from the fall of 1955 to the fall of 1956. (However, it did not air at all during the summer of '56.) The series was sponsored by the Ford Motor Company

Ford Motor Company

Ford Motor Company is an American multinational automaker based in Dearborn, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. The automaker was founded by Henry Ford and incorporated on June 16, 1903. In addition to the Ford and Lincoln brands, Ford also owns a small stake in Mazda in Japan and Aston Martin in the UK...

.

Format

Ford Star Jubilee routinely featured major stars, such as Judy Garland

Judy Garland

Judy Garland was an American actress and singer. Through a career that spanned 45 of her 47 years and for her renowned contralto voice, she attained international stardom as an actress in musical and dramatic roles, as a recording artist and on the concert stage...

, Betty Grable

Betty Grable

Elizabeth Ruth "Betty" Grable was an American actress, dancer and singer.Her iconic bathing suit photo made her the number-one pin-up girl of the World War II era. It was later included in the LIFE magazine project "100 Photos that Changed the World"...

, Orson Welles

Orson Welles

George Orson Welles , best known as Orson Welles, was an American film director, actor, theatre director, screenwriter, and producer, who worked extensively in film, theatre, television and radio...

, Julie Andrews

Julie Andrews

Dame Julia Elizabeth Andrews, DBE is an English film and stage actress, singer, and author. She is the recipient of Golden Globe, Emmy, Grammy, BAFTA, People's Choice Award, Theatre World Award, Screen Actors Guild and Academy Award honors...

 (at the time that she was preparing for her starring role in My Fair Lady

My Fair Lady

My Fair Lady is a musical based upon George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion and with book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and music by Frederick Loewe...

on Broadway

Broadway theatre

Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...

), Louis Armstrong

Louis Armstrong

Louis Armstrong , nicknamed Satchmo or Pops, was an American jazz trumpeter and singer from New Orleans, Louisiana....

, Bing Crosby

Bing Crosby

Harry Lillis "Bing" Crosby was an American singer and actor. Crosby's trademark bass-baritone voice made him one of the best-selling recording artists of the 20th century, with over half a billion records in circulation....

, Lillian Gish

Lillian Gish

Lillian Diana Gish was an American stage, screen and television actress whose film acting career spanned 75 years, from 1912 to 1987....

, Charles Laughton

Charles Laughton

Charles Laughton was an English-American stage and film actor, screenwriter, producer and director.-Early life and career:...

, Jack Lemmon

Jack Lemmon

John Uhler "Jack" Lemmon III was an American actor and musician. He starred in more than 60 films including Some Like It Hot, The Apartment, Mister Roberts , Days of Wine and Roses, The Great Race, Irma la Douce, The Odd Couple, Save the Tiger John Uhler "Jack" Lemmon III (February 8, 1925June...

, Raymond Massey

Raymond Massey

Raymond Hart Massey was a Canadian/American actor.-Early life:Massey was born in Toronto, Ontario, the son of Anna , who was born in Illinois, and Chester Daniel Massey, the wealthy owner of the Massey-Ferguson Tractor Company. Massey's family could trace their ancestry back to the American...

, Lauren Bacall

Lauren Bacall

Lauren Bacall is an American film and stage actress and model, known for her distinctive husky voice and sultry looks.She first emerged as leading lady in the Humphrey Bogart film To Have And Have Not and continued on in the film noir genre, with appearances in The Big Sleep and Dark Passage ,...

, Claudette Colbert

Claudette Colbert

Claudette Colbert was a French-born American-based actress of stage and film.Born in Paris, France and raised in New York City, Colbert began her career in Broadway productions during the 1920s, progressing to film with the advent of talking pictures...

, Noel Coward

Noël Coward

Sir Noël Peirce Coward was an English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what Time magazine called "a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise".Born in Teddington, a suburb of London, Coward attended a dance academy...

, Nat 'King' Cole, Mary Martin

Mary Martin

Mary Virginia Martin was an American actress and singer. She originated many roles over her career including Nellie Forbush in South Pacific and Maria in The Sound of Music. She was named a Kennedy Center Honoree in 1989...

, Eddie Fisher

Eddie Fisher (singer)

Edwin Jack "Eddie" Fisher , was an American entertainer. He was one of the world's most famous and successful singers in the 1950s, selling millions of records and hosting his own TV show. His divorce from his first wife, Debbie Reynolds, to marry his best friend's widow, Elizabeth Taylor, garnered...

, Ella Fitzgerald

Ella Fitzgerald

Ella Jane Fitzgerald , also known as the "First Lady of Song" and "Lady Ella," was an American jazz and song vocalist...

, Red Skelton

Red Skelton

Richard Bernard "Red" Skelton was an American comedian who is best known as a top radio and television star from 1937 to 1971. Skelton's show business career began in his teens as a circus clown and went on to vaudeville, Broadway, films, radio, TV, night clubs and casinos, all while pursuing...

 and Debbie Reynolds

Debbie Reynolds

Debbie Reynolds is an American actress, singer, and dancer.She was initially signed at age 16 by Warner Bros., but her career got off to a slow start. When her contract was not renewed, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer gave her a small, but significant part in the film Three Little Words , then signed her to...

.

Instead of the usual performance created especially for Ford Star Jubilee, the final episode on November 3, 1956 was a special, two-hour presentation of the 1939 MGM theatrical Technicolor film The Wizard of Oz

The Wizard of Oz (1939 film)

The Wizard of Oz is a 1939 American musical fantasy film produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It was directed primarily by Victor Fleming. Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolf received credit for the screenplay, but there were uncredited contributions by others. The lyrics for the songs...

, hosted by Bert Lahr

Bert Lahr

Bert Lahr was an American actor and comedian. Lahr is remembered today for his roles as the Cowardly Lion and Kansas farmworker Zeke in The Wizard of Oz, but was also well-known for work in burlesque, vaudeville, and on Broadway.-Early life:Lahr was born in New York City, of German-Jewish heritage...

, 10 year old Liza Minnelli

Liza Minnelli

Liza May Minnelli is an American actress and singer. She is the daughter of singer and actress Judy Garland and film director Vincente Minnelli....

 and young Oz expert Justin Schiller. This marked the first time that the film had ever been shown on television, and the only time that one of the film's actual stars hosted it. The broadcast was a ratings smash, but the film was not shown on TV again until 1959, when it was presented at 6:00 P.M., E.S.T. rather than 9:00 P.M., and this time as a Christmas season special in its own right, not as part of an anthology series. The 1959 telecast was hosted by comedian Red Skelton

Red Skelton

Richard Bernard "Red" Skelton was an American comedian who is best known as a top radio and television star from 1937 to 1971. Skelton's show business career began in his teens as a circus clown and went on to vaudeville, Broadway, films, radio, TV, night clubs and casinos, all while pursuing...

 and his daughter Valentina. This broadcast attracted an even wider audience, because children were able to watch, and thus began the tradition of showing the film annually on television.

Another rare instance of Ford Star Jubilee presenting a filmed, rather than live, program was their 1956 musical version of Maxwell Anderson

Maxwell Anderson

James Maxwell Anderson was an American playwright, author, poet, journalist and lyricist.-Early years:Anderson was born in Atlantic, Pennsylvania, the second of eight children to William Lincoln "Link" Anderson, a Baptist minister, and Charlotte Perrimela Stephenson, both of Scots and Irish descent...

's High Tor

High Tor

High Tor is a 1936 play by Maxwell Anderson. Twenty years after the original production, Anderson adapted it into a television musical with Arthur Schwartz.-Play:...

, starring Bing Crosby and Julie Andrews. Music was by Arthur Schwartz

Arthur Schwartz

Arthur Schwartz was an American composer and film producer.Schwartz supported his legal studies at New York University and postgraduate studies at Columbia University by playing piano before concentrating his talents on vaudeville, Broadway theatre and Hollywood.Among his Broadway musicals are The...

, noted composer of such scores as those for The Band Wagon

The Band Wagon

The Band Wagon is a 1953 musical comedy film that many critics rank, along with Singin' in the Rain, as the finest of the MGM musicals, although it was only a modest box-office success. It tells the story of an aging musical star who hopes a Broadway play will restart his career...

and Revenge with Music

Revenge with Music

Revenge with Music is a musical comedy with book and lyrics by Howard Dietz and music by Arthur Schwartz.This was the first "book" musical by Dietz and Schwartz.-Background and production:...

. Crosby, according to sources, had insisted the production be filmed rather than presented live, because he did not feel comfortable acting in a live television musical play.

Although it was filmed in color, the musical version of High Tor has never been released on VHS or DVD.

Episodes

Episode #	Episode title	Original airdate
1	"The Judy Garland Show"	September 24, 1955
2	"Together With Music"	October 22, 1955
3	"The Caine Mutiny Court Martial"	November 19, 1955
4	"I Hear America Singing"	December 17, 1955
5	"Blithe Spirit Blithe Spirit (play) Blithe Spirit is a comic play written by Noël Coward which takes its title from Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem "To a Skylark" . The play concerns socialite and novelist Charles Condomine, who invites the eccentric medium and clairvoyant, Madame Arcati, to his house to conduct a séance, hoping to... "	January 14, 1956
6	"The Day Lincoln Was Shot"	February 11, 1956
7	"High Tor High Tor High Tor is a 1936 play by Maxwell Anderson. Twenty years after the original production, Anderson adapted it into a television musical with Arthur Schwartz.-Play:... "	March 10, 1956
8	"Twentieth Century"	April 7, 1956
9	"This Happy Breed"	May 5, 1956
10	"A Bell For Adano"	June 2, 1956
11	"You're the Top"	October 6, 1956
12	"The Wizard of Oz The Wizard of Oz (1939 film) The Wizard of Oz is a 1939 American musical fantasy film produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It was directed primarily by Victor Fleming. Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolf received credit for the screenplay, but there were uncredited contributions by others. The lyrics for the songs... "	November 3, 1956

Awards and nominations

Year	Award	Result	Category	Recipient
1956	Primetime Emmy Award Primetime Emmy Award The Primetime Emmy Awards are awards presented by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences in recognition of excellence in American primetime television programming...	Nominated	Best Variety Series Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Variety, Music Or Comedy Series The Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Variety, Music Or Comedy Series is a category in the Primetime Emmy Awards. It is awarded annually to the best variety show or similarly formatted program of the year....	-
			Best Single Program of the Year	-
			Best Musical Contribution	Mary Martin and Noël Coward (For the song "Camarata" in the episode "Together with Music")
			Best Actor - Single Performance	Barry Sullivan Barry Sullivan (actor) Barry Sullivan was an American movie actor who appeared in over 100 movies from the 1930s to the 1980s.Born in New York City, Sullivan fell into acting when in college playing semi-pro football...  (For the role of Defense Attorney Greenwald in the "The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial" episode)
		Won	Best Television Adaptation	Paul Gregory and Franklin J. Schaffner (For the "The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial" episode)
			Best Director - Live Series	Franklin J. Schaffner (For the "The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial" episode)
			Best Actor - Single Performance	Lloyd Nolan Lloyd Nolan Lloyd Benedict Nolan was an American film and television actor.-Biography:Nolan was born in San Francisco, California, the son of Margaret and James Nolan, who was a shoe manufacturer... (For the role of Capt. Queeg in the "The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial" episode)