Kraft Television Theatre is an American drama

Dramatic programming

Dramatic programming in the UK, or television drama and television drama series in the US, is television program content that is scripted and fictional along the lines of √a traditional drama. This excludes, for example, sports television, television news, reality show and game shows, stand-up...

/anthology television series that began May 7, 1947 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...

, airing at 7:30pm on Wednesday evenings until December of that year. In January 1948, it moved to 9pm on Wednesdays, continuing in that timeslot until 1958. Initially produced by the J. Walter Thompson

JWT

JWT is one of the largest advertising agencies in the United States and the fourth-largest in the world. It is one of the key companies of Sir Martin Sorrell's WPP Group and is headquartered in New York. The global agency is led by Worldwide Chairman and Global CEO Bob Jeffrey who took over the...

 advertising agency, the live hour-long series offered television plays with new stories and new characters each week, in addition to adaptations of such classics as A Christmas Carol

A Christmas Carol

A Christmas Carol is a novella by English author Charles Dickens first published by Chapman & Hall on 17 December 1843. The story tells of sour and stingy Ebenezer Scrooge's ideological, ethical, and emotional transformation after the supernatural visits of Jacob Marley and the Ghosts of...

and Alice in Wonderland.

Beginning October 1953, ABC

American Broadcasting Company

The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...

 added a separate series (also titled Kraft Television Theatre), created to promote Kraft

Kraft Foods

Kraft Foods Inc. is an American confectionery, food and beverage conglomerate. It markets many brands in more than 170 countries. 12 of its brands annually earn more than $1 billion worldwide: Cadbury, Jacobs, Kraft, LU, Maxwell House, Milka, Nabisco, Oscar Mayer, Philadelphia, Trident, Tang...

's new Cheez Whiz

Cheez Whiz

Cheez Whiz is a thick processed cheese sauce or spread sold by Kraft Foods. It was developed by a team led by food scientist Edwin Traisman and was first marketed in 1953....

 product. This series ran for sixteen months, telecast on Thursday evenings at 9:30pm, until January 1955.

Background

A prestige show for NBC, it launched the careers of more than a few actors, directors and playwrights, including future Emmy

Emmy Award

An Emmy Award, often referred to simply as the Emmy, is a television production award, similar in nature to the Peabody Awards but more focused on entertainment, and is considered the television equivalent to the Academy Awards and the Grammy Awards .A majority of Emmys are presented in various...

-winning and Academy Award-nominated actress Hope Lange

Hope Lange

Hope Elise Ross Lange was an American stage, film, and television actress.- Early life :Lange was born into a theatrical family in Redding, Connecticut...

.

Actors on the series included James Dean

James Dean

James Byron Dean was an American film actor. He is a cultural icon, best embodied in the title of his most celebrated film, Rebel Without a Cause , in which he starred as troubled Los Angeles teenager Jim Stark...

, Janet De Gore

Janet De Gore

Janet De Gore is a former actress best known for her supporting roles on two television series, The Law and Mr. Jones on ABC and The Real McCoys, renamed The McCoys in its last season on CBS . In The Law and Mr...

, 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'...

, Anne Francis

Anne Francis

Anne Lloyd Francis was an American actress, best known for her role in the science fiction film classic Forbidden Planet , and as the female private detective in the television series Honey West . She won a Golden Globe and was nominated for an Emmy award for her role in Honey West...

, Lee Grant

Lee Grant

Lee Grant is an American stage, film and television actress, and film director. She was blacklisted for 12 years from film work beginning in the mid-1950s, but worked in the theatre, and would eventually win the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance as Felicia Carp in the...

, Helen Hayes

Helen Hayes

Helen Hayes Brown was an American actress whose career spanned almost 70 years. She eventually garnered the nickname "First Lady of the American Theatre" and was one of twelve people who have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony Award...

, 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...

, Grace Kelly

Grace Kelly

Grace Patricia Kelly was an American actress who, in April 1956, married Rainier III, Prince of Monaco, to become Princess consort of Monaco, styled as Her Serene Highness The Princess of Monaco, and commonly referred to as Princess Grace.After embarking on an acting career in 1950, at the age of...

, Jack Klugman

Jack Klugman

Jacob Joachim "Jack" Klugman is an American stage, film and television actor known for his roles in sitcoms, movies, and television and on Broadway...

, Cloris Leachman

Cloris Leachman

Cloris Leachman is an American actress of stage, film and television. She has won eight Primetime Emmy Awards—more than any other performer—and one Daytime Emmy Award...

, Patrick McVey

Patrick McVey

Patrick McVey was an American actor who starred in three television series between 1950 and 1961, Big Town, Boots and Saddles, and Manhunt.-Early life and career:...

, Michael Higgins, John Newland

John Newland

John Newland was an American director, actor, television producer, and screenwriter.-Early life and career:...

, Paul Newman

Paul Newman

Paul Leonard Newman was an American actor, film director, entrepreneur, humanitarian, professional racing driver and auto racing enthusiast...

, Leslie Nielsen

Leslie Nielsen

Leslie William Nielsen, OC was a Canadian and naturalized American actor and comedian. Nielsen appeared in more than one hundred films and 1,500 television programs over the span of his career, portraying more than 220 characters...

, Anthony Perkins

Anthony Perkins

Anthony Perkins was an American actor, best known for his Oscar-nominated role in Friendly Persuasion and as Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho , and its three sequels.-Early life:...

, Judson Pratt

Judson Pratt

Judson Pratt was an American actor whose longest continuing work was in thirteen episodes of ABC's Walt Disney Presents and NBC's Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color. A native of Hingham in Plymouth County, Massachusetts, Pratt appeared in numerous television westerns and drama series from...

, Lee Remick

Lee Remick

Lee Ann Remick was an American film and television actress. Among her best-known films are Anatomy of a Murder , Days of Wine and Roses , and The Omen .-Early life:...

, 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...

, Rod Steiger

Rod Steiger

Rodney Stephen "Rod" Steiger was an Academy Award-winning American actor known for his performances in such films as On the Waterfront, The Big Knife, Oklahoma!, The Harder They Fall, Across the Bridge, The Pawnbroker, Doctor Zhivago, In the Heat of the Night, and Waterloo as well as the...

, Joan Tompkins

Joan Tompkins

Joan Tompkins, legally known as Joan Swenson was an American actress of television, film, radio, and stage, who co-founded with her husband, Karl Swenson, an acting company in Beverly Hills, California...

 (her first television role), and Joanne Woodward

Joanne Woodward

Joanne Gignilliat Trimmier Woodward is an American actress, television and theatrical producer, and widow of Paul Newman...

. Announcers for the show were Ed Herlihy

Ed Herlihy

Edward Joseph "Ed" Herlihy was an American newsreel narrator for Universal-International. His voice was heard in countless films on every subject, making him one of the best-known voices in broadcast history...

 (1947–1955) and Charles Stark (1955). In 1958, young performers Martin Huston

Martin Huston

Martin W. Huston, also known as Marty Huston , was an American actor of primarily television and stage....

 and Zina Bethune

Zina Bethune

Zina Bethune is an American actress, dancer and choreographer.Bethune started formal ballet training at age 6 at George Balanchine's School of American Ballet. By age 14 she was dancing with the New York City Ballet...

 appeared in "This Property Is Condemned", based on a Tennessee Williams

Tennessee Williams

Thomas Lanier "Tennessee" Williams III was an American writer who worked principally as a playwright in the American theater. He also wrote short stories, novels, poetry, essays, screenplays and a volume of memoirs...

 play, the last show of Kraft Television Theatre.

Directors for the series included George Roy Hill, Fielder Cook and 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...

, and the many contributing writers included Rod Serling

Rod Serling

Rodman Edward "Rod" Serling was an American screenwriter, novelist, television producer, and narrator best known for his live television dramas of the 1950s and his science fiction anthology TV series, The Twilight Zone. Serling was active in politics, both on and off the screen and helped form...

 and JP Miller

JP Miller

James Pinckney Miller , known to friends and associates by the nickname Pappy, wrote under the name JP Miller. He was a leading playwright during the Golden Age of Television, receiving three Emmy nominations...

. Serling won an Emmy

Emmy Award

An Emmy Award, often referred to simply as the Emmy, is a television production award, similar in nature to the Peabody Awards but more focused on entertainment, and is considered the television equivalent to the Academy Awards and the Grammy Awards .A majority of Emmys are presented in various...

 for scripting Patterns (January 12, 1955), the best remembered episode of the series. The drama had such an impact that it made television history by staging a second live encore performance three weeks later and was developed as a feature film, also titled Patterns

Patterns (film)

Patterns is a feature film starring Van Heflin, Everett Sloane, and Ed Begley. Directed by Fielder Cook, it was released March 27, 1956. The screenplay by Rod Serling was an adaptation of his teleplay Patterns originally telecast January 12, 1955 on the Kraft Television Theatre, which starred...

.

In April 1958, Kraft sold the rights to David Susskind

David Susskind

David Susskind was a producer of TV, movies, and stage plays and also a pioneer TV talk show host.-Personal:...

's Talent Associates, which revamped the series as Kraft Mystery Theatre. Under that title, it continued until September 1958. However, this eventually evolved into the 1963 filmed series Kraft Suspense Theatre

Kraft Suspense Theatre

Kraft Suspense Theatre, an anthology series, was telecast from 1963 to 1965 on NBC. Sponsored by Kraft Foods, it was seen three weeks out of every four and was pre-empted for Perry Como's Kraft Music Hall specials once monthly...

, which concentrated exclusively on original dramas written for television, not on adaptations.

Between 1947 and 1958, the Kraft Television Theatre presented more than 650 comedies and dramas.

Episode status

A few episodes of Kraft Television Theatre from 1947 survive as kinescopes, making them among the oldest existing recordings of United States television, and the oldest in the world.