The Goodyear Television Playhouse produced live television dramas from 1951 to 1957 during the "Golden Age of Television

Golden Age of Television

The Golden Age of Television in the United States began sometime in the late 1940s and extended to the late 1950s or early 1960s.-Evolutions of drama on television:...

".

Sponsored by Goodyear

Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company

The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company was founded in 1898 by Frank Seiberling. Goodyear manufactures tires for automobiles, commercial trucks, light trucks, SUVs, race cars, airplanes, farm equipment and heavy earth-mover machinery....

, the hour-long anthology series was telecast Sundays at 9pm on NBC

NBC

The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...

. Goodyear alternated sponsorship with Philco

Philco

Philco, the Philadelphia Storage Battery Company , was a pioneer in early battery, radio, and television production as well as former employer of Philo Farnsworth, inventor of cathode ray tube television...

, and the Philco Television Playhouse was seen on alternate weeks.

In 1955, the title was shortened to The Goodyear Playhouse and it aired on alternate weeks with The Alcoa Hour

The Alcoa Hour

The Alcoa Hour is a live anthology television series sponsored by Alcoa and telecast in the United States from 1955 to 1957. The series was seen Sundays on NBC at 9pm.-Overview:...

. The three series were essentially the same, with the only real difference being the name of the sponsor.

Producer Fred Coe

Fred Coe

Fred Coe , nicknamed Pappy, was a television producer and director most famous for The Philco-Goodyear Television Playhouse in 1948-1955 and Playhouse 90 from 1957 to 1959...

 nurtured and encouraged a group of young, mostly unknown writers that included Robert Alan Aurthur

Robert Alan Aurthur

Robert Alan Aurthur was an American screenwriter, director and TV producer.-Television:In the early years of television, he wrote for Studio One and then moved on to write episodes of Mister Peepers...

, Paddy Chayefsky

Paddy Chayefsky

Sidney Aaron "Paddy" Chayefsky , was an American playwright, screenwriter, and novelist. He is the only person to have won three solo Academy Awards for Best Screenplay....

, Horton Foote

Horton Foote

Albert Horton Foote, Jr. was an American playwright and screenwriter, perhaps best known for his Academy Award-winning screenplays for the 1962 film To Kill a Mockingbird and the 1983 film Tender Mercies, and his notable live television dramas during the Golden Age of Television...

, Howard Richardson

Howard Richardson (playwright)

Howard Dixon Richardson was an American playwright, best known for the 1945 play Dark of the Moon.Born in Spartanburg, South Carolina, Richardson graduated in 1938 from the University of North Carolina and then traveled through Europe , returning to the University of North Carolina in 1940 for his...

, Tad Mosel

Tad Mosel

Tad Mosel was an American playwright and one of the leading dramatists of hour-long teleplay genre for live television during the 1950s. He received the 1961 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play All the Way Home....

 and Gore Vidal

Gore Vidal

Gore Vidal is an American author, playwright, essayist, screenwriter, and political activist. His third novel, The City and the Pillar , outraged mainstream critics as one of the first major American novels to feature unambiguous homosexuality...

. Notable productions included Chayefsky's Marty

Marty

Marty is a 1953 teleplay by Paddy Chayefsky. It was telecast live May 24, 1953, on The Goodyear Television Playhouse with Rod Steiger in the title role and Nancy Marchand, in her television debut, playing opposite him as Clara...

(May 24, 1953) starring Rod Steiger, Chayefsky's The Bachelor Party (1955), Vidal's Visit to Small Planet (1955), Richardson's Ark of Safety and Foote's A Trip to Bountiful.

From 1957 to 1960, it became a taped, half-hour series titled Goodyear Theater, seen on Mondays at 9:30pm.