Explore TV Series

Beat the Clock is a game show hosted by Bud Collyer that ran on CBS from 1950 to 1958 and ABC from 1958 to 1961.

Orson Welles' Sketch Book is a series of six short television commentaries by Orson Welles for the BBC in 1955. Written and directed by Welles, the 15-minute episodes present the filmmaker's commentaries on a range of subjects. Welles frequently draws from his own experiences and often illustrates the episodes with his own sketches.

The programme ran on BBC in 1952-53, returning in '55 after a hiatus. "Before Your Very Eyes" featured comic monologues and simple skits, of the sort which had been popular in English music hall between the wars. Askey was ably assisted by Dickie Henderson, soon to become a major comedian in his own right.

General Electric Theater is an American anthology series hosted by Ronald Reagan that was broadcast on CBS radio and television. The series was sponsored by General Electric's Department of Public Relations.

See It Now is an American newsmagazine and documentary series broadcast by CBS from 1951 to 1958. It was created by Edward R. Murrow and Fred W. Friendly, Murrow being the host of the show. From 1952 to 1957, See It Now won four Emmy Awards and was nominated three other times. It also won a 1952 Peabody Award, which cited its

The Man From Blackhawk is a Western television series starring Robert Rockwell that aired on the ABC television network from October 9, 1959, until September 9, 1960. The series was created by Academy Award winning screenwriter Stirling Silliphant.

On the Spot was the first television series made specifically for TV by the National Film Board of Canada, and aired on CBC Television from 1953 to 1955. Each episode reported on a different aspect of life in Canada and was introduced with the line "The National Film Board’s up-to-the-minute report of what’s happening somewhere in Canada”. The series was originated by Bernard Devlin, with Robert Anderson as executive producer.

Mickey Mouse Club serial starring Mouseketeer Darlene Gillespie.

An eight part BBC miniseries about the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This was notable as being the first production featuring an actor depicting Jesus.

The Frank Sinatra Show was an American musical variety series hosted by Frank Sinatra from 1950 to 1952. The series aired on CBS. As with many variety shows of the time, the show was broadcast live and was recorded via kinescope. Some episodes were 30 minutes long while others were 60 minutes.

Our Miss Pemberton is a British television programme which aired on the BBC from 1957 to 1958. A drama, it was about life in a small town. All 56 episodes were broadcast live and no telerecordings appear to have survived, leaving them lost.

Captain David Grief is an American action/adventure series that aired in syndication from October 1957, to 1960. The program was based on a series of Jack London short-stories centered around the South Seas tradesman and adventurer David Grief.

The Pride of the Family was a half-hour situation comedy starring Paul Hartman, Fay Wray, Natalie Wood, and Robert Hyatt, which aired for forty episodes on ABC in the 1953–1954 season. Hartman portrays Albie Morrison, the father and error-prone head of the household, about whom most of the episodes are centered. Albie works in the advertising section of his local newspaper, and he often has new ideas that go awry in the workplace as well as failed handyman activities at home. Wray, remembered in particularly from her role in the horror film King Kong, plays Albie's wife, Catherine. Natalie Wood is the 15-year-old daughter, Ann, and "Bobby" Hyatt is the 14-year-old son, Junior Morrison. Larry J. Blake appeared fourteen times in the role of "Frank". Hartman's Albie Morrison lacks the good judgment and wisdom exercised by the fictitious insurance agent James Anderson, Sr., the role of Robert Young on the long-running Father Knows Best, which premiered the following season on CBS. Billboard described Hartman's lead role as "average"; indeed the series attempted to present the "average family." Guest stars included Tol Avery, Barbara Billingsley, Douglas Fowley, Frank Ferguson, Lyle Talbot, Steven Terrell, and Joey D. Vieira.

Mr. District Attorney is a popular radio crime drama which aired on NBC and ABC from April 3, 1939 to June 13, 1952. The series focused on a crusading D.A., initially known only as "Mister District Attorney," or "Chief", and was later translated to television. On television the D.A. had a name, Paul Garrett, and the radio version picked up this name in the final years when David Brian played the role. A key figure in the dramas was the D.A.'s secretary, Edith Miller.

Set in the near future against the background of a British space programme, the story of the first crewed flight into space, supervised by Professor Bernard Quatermass of the British Experimental Rocket Group.

Mackenzie's Raiders is an American Western television series starring Richard Carlson that aired thirty-nine episodes in syndication from 1958 to 1959. The series was narrated by Art Gilmore.

This French TV series from the 1950s and 60s explored historical events using dramatic reenactments, bringing history to life for its viewers.

Love Story is an early American television program which was broadcast on the now defunct DuMont Television Network.

Noggin the Nog is a popular British children's character. Noggin himself is a simple, kind and unassuming King of the Northmen in a roughly Viking-age setting, with various fantastic elements such as dragons, flying machines and talking birds.

Colonel Humphrey Flack is an American sitcom which ran Wednesdays at 9pm ET from October 7, 1953 to July 2, 1954 on the DuMont Television Network, then revived from 1958 to 1959 for first-run syndication. The series also aired under the titles The Fabulous Fraud, The Adventures of Colonel Flack, and The Imposter.

Ex-private eye Shannon works his way into New York mob operations, reporting his findings to the District Attorney's office through Asst. D. A. Bonacorsi.

Professor Bernard Quatermass of the British Experimental Rocket Group is sought to examine strange meteorite showers. His investigations lead to his uncovering a conspiracy involving alien infiltration at the highest levels of the British Government. As even some of Quatermass's closest colleagues fall victim to the alien influence, he is forced to use his own unsafe rocket prototype, which recently caused a nuclear disaster at an Australian testing range, to prevent the aliens from taking over mankind.

The Black Brigand' (1956) - starred William Devlin as Carl the White King, Laidman Browne as Don Rogano and Anthony Newlands played Fernando. Carl the White King was a Macchiavelian figure who ruled the country with cruelty and oppression. Don Fernando, exiled from court, was a Robin Hood/ Zorro type figure who redressed ordinary people's grievances, but whose identity was unknown to the King. Series is believed to be lost.

O.S.S. was a Buckeye Productions and Associated Television co-produced wartime television drama series. It ran for 26 half-hour monochrome episodes during the 1957-1958 season and was distributed by ITC Entertainment and networked in the United States by ABC. The series followed the adventures of Frank Hawthorne, an agent with the American Office of Strategic Services, who operated behind Nazi lines in occupied France.

Life With Father is an American sitcom that aired on CBS from November 1953 to July 1955. The series centers on the patriarch of an upper-middle-class New York household family. It was the first live color program for network TV to originate in Hollywood.

Anthology series based on the short stories of O. Henry.

The Ford Show is an American variety program, starring singer and folk humorist Tennessee Ernie Ford, which aired on NBC on Thursday evenings from October 4, 1956 to June 29, 1961. Beginning in September 1958, the show began to be telecast in color. Ford first gained attention as the host of Hometown Jamboree in Los Angeles. In 1954, he hosted a brief revival of Kay Kyser's Kollege of Musical Knowledge, a quiz show on NBC. His subsequent The Ford Show was frequently among the Top 20 programs.

Inspector Paul Derek is based in Nairobi, Kenya but travels throughout the colonial territory solving crimes. The nature of the bad behavior is often unique to the African locale. The phone number at the office is 1356.

A diplomatic courier travels to exotic locales, where danger (and women) seem ever present.

The Perry Como Show was a musical-comedy variety program hosted by Perry Como.

Northwest Passage is a 26-episode half-hour adventure television series produced by Metro Goldwyn Mayer about Major Robert Rogers during the time of the French and Indian War. The show derived its title and the main characters Rogers, Towne, and Marriner from the 1937 novel of the same name by Kenneth Roberts, and from the 1940 MGM feature film based on the novel. The scope of the novel was much broader than that of the series, and the second half of the book included an historically based attempt by Rogers to find a water route through North America as a "passage" to the Pacific Ocean. This attempt, lending its name to the novel and used by Roberts as a metaphor for the questing human spirit, is referenced in the first episode. One of the earlier series telecast in color, Northwest Passage aired new episodes on NBC from September 14, 1958, to March 13, 1959. Keith Larsen played the lead role; Buddy Ebsen, later the star of CBS's The Beverly Hillbillies and Barnaby Jones, appeared as Sergeant Hunk Marriner, and Don Burnett co-starred as Ensign Langdon Towne.

The Ernie Kovacs Show is an American comedy show hosted by comedian Ernie Kovacs, first shown in Philadelphia during the early 50s, then nationally. The show appeared in many versions and formats, including daytime, prime-time, late-night, talk show, comedy, and as a summer replacement series. The Ernie Kovacs Show was one of only six TV shows broadcast on all four U.S. television networks during the Golden Age of Television, the others being The Original Amateur Hour, Pantomime Quiz, Down You Go, The Arthur Murray Party, and Tom Corbett, Space Cadet.

The New Adventures of Charlie Chan is a British-American crime drama series that aired in the United States in syndicated television from June 1957, to 1958. The first five episodes were made by Vision Productions in the United States, before production switched to the United Kingdom under ITC Entertainment and Television Programs of America.

The Gallery of Madame Liu-Tsong was an American television series which aired on the now defunct DuMont Television Network. It starred Chinese American silent film and talkie star Anna May Wong, who played a detective in a role written specifically for her. The Gallery of Madame Liu Tsong was the first U.S. television series starring an Asian-American series lead.

Starr and Company is a BBC television drama series aired in 1958. It was a soap opera, aired twice a week, Monday and Thursday. 77 episodes were made. The series was set in a buoy-making firm established by retired naval engineer Joseph Starr in the fictional town of Sullbridge in South East England.

The Campbell Playhouse is a live CBS radio drama series directed by and starring Orson Welles. Produced by John Houseman, it was a sponsored continuation of The Mercury Theatre on the Air. The series offered 60-minute adaptations of classic plays and novels, plus some adaptations of popular motion pictures. After the departure of Welles at the end of the second season, The Campbell Playhouse changed format as a 30-minute weekly series that ran for one season. The Campbell Playhouse is also the title of an NBC television series later called Campbell Soundstage and Campbell Summer Soundstage.

The Halls of Ivy is an NBC radio sitcom that ran from 1950-1952. It was created by Fibber McGee & Molly co-creator/writer Don Quinn before being adapted into a CBS television comedy produced by ITC Entertainment and Television Programs of America. British husband-and-wife actors Ronald Colman and Benita Hume starred in both versions of the show. Quinn developed the show after he had decided to leave Fibber McGee & Molly in the hands of his protégé Phil Leslie. The Halls of Ivy's audition program featured radio veteran Gale Gordon and Edna Best in the roles that ultimately went to the Colmans, who demonstrated a flair for radio comedy during the late 1940s recurring roles on The Jack Benny Program.

This public affairs talk show is a thoughtful excursion into the world of ideas across politics, media, technology, the arts, and all realms of civic life. First broadcast in 1956, it explores challenges of the digital age, American politics and emerging issues.

The Court of Last Resort is an American television dramatized court show which aired on the NBC from 1957 through 1958. It was co-produced by Erle Stanley Gardner's Paisano Productions, which also brought forth the long-running hit television program, Perry Mason on CBS. Its approach to dealing with potential miscarriages of justice in an entirely extra-judicial format was adopted by the BBC series Rough Justice in the 1980s.

The Bell System Science Series consists of nine television specials made for the AT&T Corporation that were originally broadcast in color between 1956 and 1964. Marcel LaFollette has described them as "specials that combined clever story lines, sophisticated animation, veteran character actors, films of natural phenomena, interviews with scientists, and precise explanation of scientific and technical concepts — all in the pursuit of better public understanding of science.

A team of scientists search for the origin and purpose of a mysterious capsule found on a building site.

Rod Brown of the Rocket Rangers was a 30-minute, weekly CBS-TV network outer space adventure series, broadcast live Saturdays from April 18, 1953 to May 29, 1954. Set in 2153 and all-too-obviously inspired by Tom Corbett, Space Cadet, the series depicted the adventures of fearless Rocket Rangers, who operated from Omega Base, piloting their nuclear-powered space ship Beta throughout the solar system, to battle crime and the weird menace of extraterrestrial life-forms. The three Rangers were curly-haired Rod Brown, prickly Frank Boyd and obese Wilber Wormser. Their immediate superior was Commander Swift. Director George Gould had also been the director of ABC's Tom Corbett from 1950 to 1952, and he carried with him to CBS several of the writers for that pioneering series, plus its basic concepts, plus the major special effect, an amplifier producing travelling mattes. The very close similarity between Rod Brown and Tom Corbett generated at least one lawsuit, which seems to have resulted in the Rod Brown kinescopes never being rebroadcast. Rod Brown's adventures had a sponsor, Jell-O Instant Pudding. However, there are very few premiums or toys associated with the series, as compared to its rival live space adventure series such as Captain Video, Space Patrol, and Tom Corbett, Space Cadet. A Rocket Ranger membership card and a Rocket Ranger Squadron Charter have been observed. In addition, plaid flannel shirts for young boys, featuring a solid-color flannel placket silkscreened with the Rocket Ranger title, space ship, and spaceman, were also available.

Charlesworth at Large is a British crime television series which originally aired on the BBC in 1958. Wensley Pithey revived his role as Detective Superintendent Charlesworth of Scotland Yard which he had played in two previous series.

This short-lived French TV series from 1950 features police investigations tinged with astrology. In nine episodes of about ten minutes each, in a humorous style, a duo of private detectives investigates a series of murders involving a marriage agency.

Boots and Saddles is an American Western television series created by Robert A. Cinader which aired in syndication from 1957 to 1958.

American Anthology

Life with the Lyons is a British radio and television domestic sitcom dating from the 1950s.

The Huntley-Brinkley Report was the NBC television network's flagship evening news program from October 29, 1956, until July 31, 1970. It was anchored by Chet Huntley in New York City, and David Brinkley in Washington, D.C. It succeeded the Camel News Caravan, anchored by John Cameron Swayze. The program ran for 15 minutes at its inception but expanded to 30 minutes on September 9, 1963, exactly a week after CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite did so. It was developed and produced initially by Reuven Frank. Frank left the program in 1962 to produce documentaries but returned to the program the following year when it expanded to 30 minutes. He was succeeded as executive producer in 1965 by Robert "Shad" Northshield and in 1969 by Wallace Westfeldt.