Newsman Walter Cronkite hosted this long-running New York-based series from CBS (which had originally begun as a radio series) where a reporter with a camera and a microphone was present at some of the most famous historical events throughout history, presenting events as though they were breaking news.
Cronkite was joined by other CBS newsmen, including Bob Trout, Charles Collingwood, Allen Jackson, Don Hollenbeck and Bill Leonard.
The historical events reenacted included the fall of Troy, the assassination of Julius Caesar (with Paul Newman as Marcus Brutus), the Boston Tea Party, the capture of Jesse James (with an unknown James Dean as Robert Ford), the siege of the Alamo, the Salem witch trials, the Gettysburg Address, the Hindenburg disaster, the sinking of the Titanic, Pearl Harbour and the scuttling of the Graf Spee.
Amongst the actors who appeared in the various stories were Rod Steiger, John Cassavetes, Patrick McGoohan, Robert Culp, Leslie Nielsen, Richard Dreyfuss, David Janssen, Fred Gwynne, Joanne Woodward, Ray Walston, Eartha Kitt, Louis Armstrong, DeForest Kelley, and Claude Akins.
The series was revived – this time in colour – in 1971 and 1972.
