Barbara Stanwyck Show, The

1 9 6 0 – 1 9 6 1 (USA)
37 x 30 minute episodes

Hollywood leading lady Barbara Stanwyck hosted this anthology of original 30-minute teleplays and starred in all but four of them. The four were pilots for possible series and starred Lloyd Nolan (‘The Seventh Miracle’), Milton Berle (‘Dear Charlie’), Peggy Cass (‘Call Me Annie’) and Andy Devine (‘Big Jake’). None of them made it.

The dramas in which Miss Stanwyck appeared tended to be on the serious side. She played everything from reporter Nellie Bly to a nuclear physicist to an embezzler to a Barbary Coast saloon-keeper to a corporate executive and didn’t try to play girlish roles or darken her rapidly greying hair.

Three of her shows were pilots for a proposed new series of her own, in which she would star as Josephine Little – an American adventuress running an import-export business in exotic Hong Kong.

The original pilot was aired on 14 November 1960 as ‘The Miraculous Journey of Tadpole Chan’ and established the character of Little. Viewers were requested to write to the network if they liked the idea, and the response was strong enough to result in two other episodes in January and March. The Josephine Little series never went into full production, however.

Stanwyck was awarded the Emmy for Best Actress in 1961 and the greatest popular success of her television career still lay ahead, in The Big Valley.

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