United States Steel Hour, The

1 9 5 3 – 1 9 6 3 (USA)
251 x 60 minute episodes

The United States Steel Hour was one of America’s most enduring television anthology series and provided some of its most memorable moments of drama and comedy. Perhaps its most famous production was ‘No Time for Sergeants,’ a classic comedy starring Andy Griffith as country hick Will Stockdale drafted into the US Air Force.

The teleplay was a combination of broad farce and dry personality situations and became a Broadway play, a feature movie (also starring Griffith) and an ABC comedy series starring Sammy Jackson.

Other prominent productions of the US Steel Hour were: ‘The Bogey Man’ with Celeste Holm and Robert Preston; ‘Freighter’ with Henry Hull and James Daly; ‘Wish on the Moon’ with Eva Marie Saint; ‘P.O.W.’ with Gary Merrill, Phyllis Kirk, Brian Keith and Richard Kiley; ‘Incident in an Alley’ – a Rod Serling play starring Farley Granger); ‘Flint and Fire’ with Robert Culp and Gloria Vanderbilt; ‘MidSummer’ with Jackie Cooper; ‘Beaver Patrol’ with Walter Slezak; ‘A Wind from the South’ with Julie Harris; ‘The Girl in the Gold Bathtub’ – a comedy with Johnny Carson; ‘Funny Heart’ with Imogene Coca and Jack Klugman; ‘Huck Finn’ with Basil Rathbone and Jack Carson; ‘The Meanest Man in the World’ with Wally Cox, Betsy Palmer and Kenny Delmar; ‘Bang the Drum Slowly’ (pictured at left) with Paul Newman, George Peppard and Albert Salmi; ‘Old Marshals Never Die’ with William Shatner (pictured below); ‘One Red Rose for Christmas’ with Helen Hayes and Patty Duke; and ‘Family Happiness’ with Patty Duke
and Gloria Vanderbilt.

The US Steel Hour was presented only every other week by the Theater Guild because of the elaborate productions.