Ford Television Theatre, The

1 9 5 2 – 1 9 5 7 (USA)
195 x 30 minute episodes

This anthology series presented dramatisations depicting the plight of people suddenly involved in unexpected and perilous situations. The series was broadcast on NBC on Thursday evenings between October 1952 and June 1956, when it moved to Wednesday evenings on ABC for the final season.

Episodes included “Magic Formula”, the story of a famous movie star (Claudette Colbert) who finds herself trapped in a plane after a crash (with Patric Knowles as her prominent physician husband); “High Adventure”, concerning a woman and her son and their 13-hour wait for the police while marooned in a lonely mountain lodge with a murderer (starring Virginia Carroll and Gordon Gebert), and “Turn Back The Clock” featuring a war veteran (Richard Carlson) who is suffering from amnesia and his attempts to discover who he is.

Guest stars throughout the 195 episodes included Bette Davis, Edward G Robinson, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Shelley Winters, Natalie Wood, Barbara Stanwyck, Maureen O’Sullivan, Anne Francis, Jack Lemmon, Angela Lansbury, Ricardo Montalban, Ida Lupino and Richard Denning.

Ronald Reagan and his future wife Nancy made their first professional appearances in an episode entitled  “The First Born” on 5 February 1953.

The series was sponsored by the Ford Motor Company, hence the title.