 | This article needs additional citations for verification .(August 2017) |
| Genre | Anthology |
|---|---|
| Country of origin | United States |
| Language(s) | English |
| Syndicates | Mutual Broadcasting System |
| Produced by | Family Theater Productions |
| Original release | February 13, 1947 – September 11, 1957 |
| No. of episodes | 540 |
| Website | www |
Family Theater is a weekly half-hour dramatic anthology radio program which aired on the Mutual Broadcasting System in the United States from February 13, 1947, to September 11, 1957.
Family Theater developed from a Rosary prayer program on a local radio station in Albany, New York, started in 1943 by Holy Cross priest Patrick Peyton. On Mother's Day 1945, he produced a similar national radio program on the Mutual Broadcasting System.
In 1947, Peyton formed Family Theater Productions, a film and radio studio extension of the Family Rosary Crusade founded by Peyton to promote family prayer. The program had no commercial sponsor. By agreement with the Mutual network, the radio dramas were nonsectarian but focused on moral problems. Mutual provided the airtime, while Peyton covered production costs through donations.
A total of 482 original episodes were produced. [1] The program featured not only religious stories, but also half-hour adaptations of literary works such as A Tale of Two Cities , Moby-Dick , and Don Quixote .
Peyton and Family Theater Productions continued in radio and expanded into films and television. [2] Peyton arranged for many of Hollywood's stars in film and radio at the time to appear on Family Theater. Throughout its ten-year run, well-known actors and actresses, including James Stewart, Gregory Peck, Dennis Morgan, Irene Dunne, Robert Mitchum, Henry Fonda, Bob Hope, Lucille Ball, Shirley Temple, Natalie Wood, Barbara Whiting, Raymond Burr, Jane Wyatt, Charlton Heston, Lizabeth Scott, Bing Crosby, Jack Benny, Gene Kelly, Kate Smith, William Shatner, and Chuck Connors, appeared as announcers, narrators, or stars. Many donated their services. [1]
Family Theater was broadcast in the United States, Canada, Latin American, Australia, Mozambique, and the Philippines and won a number of industry awards. [1] The motto of Family Theater Productions is "The family that prays together stays together."
In 1951, while the radio version was still on the air, Family Theater moved to television, where it aired in syndication. The spelling of the title was altered to Family Theatre and the series was extended to one hour. Father Peyton also hosted the TV version, which ran for seven years.
One of the TV episodes was "Hill Number One", famous for featuring an early appearance by James Dean as John the Apostle (not John the Baptist, as is commonly thought). It combined a Korean War story with the story of the Crucifixion of Christ. [3]
After Peyton's death in 1992, Family Theater Productions became part of Holy Cross Family Ministries, sponsored by the Congregation of Holy Cross.
Family Theater, now digitally remastered, continues to air in reruns in the United States and many other parts of the world. EWTN, for instance, airs the program on Sunday nights under the name "Family Theater Classic Radio". [4] In addition, the program is available to download or stream on internet services such as the Internet Archive.
The Rosary, also known as the Dominican Rosary, refers to a set of prayers used primarily in the Catholic Church, and to the physical string of knots or beads used to count the component prayers. When referring to the prayer, the word is usually capitalized ; when referring to the prayer beads as an object, it is written with a lower-case initial letter.
Radio drama is a dramatized, purely acoustic performance. With no visual component, radio drama depends on dialogue, music and sound effects to help the listener imagine the characters and story: "It is auditory in the physical dimension but equally powerful as a visual force in the psychological dimension." Radio drama includes plays specifically written for radio, docudrama, dramatized works of fiction, as well as plays originally written for the theatre, including musical theatre, and opera.
CBS Radio Mystery Theater is a radio drama series created by Himan Brown that was broadcast on CBS Radio Network affiliates from 1974 to 1982, and later in the early 2000s was repeated by the NPR satellite feed. In New York City it was not aired by the then all-news WCBS but by its originating station, WOR, which produced and announced it as simply Radio Mystery Theater.
X Minus One is an American half-hour science fiction radio drama series that was broadcast from April 24, 1955, to January 9, 1958, in various timeslots on NBC. Known for high production values in adapting stories from the leading American authors of the era, X Minus One has been described as one of the finest offerings of American radio drama and one of the best science fiction series in any medium.
The Mercury Theatre was an independent repertory theatre company founded in New York City in 1937 by Orson Welles and producer John Houseman. The company produced theatrical presentations, radio programs and motion pictures. The Mercury also released promptbooks and phonographic recordings of four Shakespeare works for use in schools.
Hallmark Hall of Fame, originally called Hallmark Television Playhouse, is an anthology program on American television, sponsored by Hallmark Cards, a Kansas City–based greeting card company. It is the longest-running prime-time series in the history of television; it began airing in 1951 and aired on network television until 2014, with episodes largely limited to one film in a span of several months since the 1980s. Since 1954, all of its productions have been broadcast in color. It was one of the first video productions to telecast in color, a rarity in the 1950s. Many television films have been shown on the program since its debut, though the program began with live telecasts of dramas and then changed to videotaped productions before finally changing to filmed ones.
The Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN) is an American basic cable television network which presents around-the-clock Catholic-themed programming. It is not only the largest Catholic television network in America, but reportedly "the world's largest religious media network", reaching 425 million people in 160 countries, with 11 networks. It was founded by Mother Angelica, in 1980 and began broadcasting on August 15, 1981, from a garage studio at the Our Lady of the Angels Monastery in Irondale, Alabama, which Mother Angelica founded in 1962. She hosted her own show, Mother Angelica Live, until health issues led to her retirement in September 2001. As of 2017, Michael P. Warsaw, who is a consultant to the Vatican's Dicastery for Communications, leads EWTN.
The United States Steel Hour is an anthology series which brought hour-long dramas to television from 1953 to 1963. The television series and the radio program that preceded it were both sponsored by the United States Steel Corporation.
The Chaplet of the Divine Mercy, also called the Divine Mercy Chaplet, is a Catholic devotion to the Divine Mercy, based on the Christological apparitions of Jesus reported by Faustina Kowalska (1905–1938), known as "the Apostle of Mercy". She was a Polish religious sister of the Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy and canonized as a Catholic saint in 2000.
Arch Oboler was an American playwright, screenwriter, novelist, producer, and director who was active in radio, films, theater, and television. He generated much attention with his radio scripts, particularly the horror series Lights Out, and his work in radio remains the outstanding period of his career. Praised as one of broadcasting's top talents, he is regarded today as a key innovator of radio drama. Oboler's personality and ego were larger than life. Radio historian John Dunning wrote, "Few people were ambivalent when it came to Arch Oboler. He was one of those intense personalities who are liked and disliked with equal fire."
Patrick Peyton, CSC, also known as "the Rosary priest", was an Irish-born Catholic priest of the Congregation of Holy Cross, and founder of the Family Rosary Crusade. He popularized the phrases "The family that prays together stays together" and "A world at prayer is a world at peace."
Family Rosary Crusade is a worldwide campaign that eventually became a Catholic movement, which was founded by Patrick Peyton, an Irish-American priest who is being considered for sainthood by the Vatican. The endeavor came to be a personal mission to undertake the promotion of the praying of the Rosary by families as a means to unite them.
The CatholicTV Network, commonly known as CatholicTV, is a Catholic television network based in Watertown, Massachusetts. CatholicTV first launched locally in Boston in 1955, making it the oldest Catholic television network in the United States. Today, it is distributed on cable television systems, internet television, and broadcast stations in sixteen U.S. states and the U.S. Virgin Islands and now worldwide.
Ford Theatre, spelled Ford Theater for the original radio version and known, in full, as The Ford Television Theatre for the TV version, is a radio and television anthology series broadcast in the United States in the 1940s and 1950s. At various times the television series appeared on all three major television networks, while the radio version was broadcast on two separate networks and on two separate coasts. Ford Theatre was named for its sponsor, the Ford Motor Company, which had an earlier success with its concert music series, The Ford Sunday Evening Hour (1934–42).
Rosary-based prayers are Christian prayers recited on a set of rosary beads, among other cords. These prayers recite specific word sequences on the beads that make up the different sections. They may be directed to Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary or God the Father.
The Family Rosary Crusade is a multi-media based ministry in the Philippines. In the 1950s, Reverend Father Fr. Patrick Peyton, CSC came to the Philippines upon the invitation of the Dominican Fathers, or Order of Preachers, to conduct and speak on his worldwide efforts to promote the praying of the Family Rosary all over the world. Father Peyton was warmly welcomed in the Philippines and from thereon, his mission has grown and expanded all over the country. Father Peyton died in 1992, but his mission in the Philippines continues to date with programs airing in various radio and television networks.
James Bertram Reuter was an American Jesuit Catholic priest who lived in the Philippines since he was 22 and taught at Ateneo de Manila University. He was a well-known public figure who was a writer, director and producer in theatre, radio, print and film. He was also a prominent figure in the resistance against the two-decade rule of President Ferdinand Marcos, and played a key role in the 1986 People Power Revolution that overthrew Marcos. He educated and trained students in creative works, inspired by the works of Christ, instilling the importance of prayers most especially the Holy Rosary, working alongside and continuing the mission of the Rev. Patrick Peyton, best known as the "Rosary Priest".
WJTA "Holy Family Radio" is a non-commercial FM broadcasting station with its studio and office located in Glandorf, Ohio with transmitter located near Leipsic in rural Putnam County. WJTA airs programming from the EWTN Global Catholic Radio Network, and transmits at 88.9 mHz on the FM band. It is the first full-time Catholic radio station to come on the air in northwestern Ohio and within the Toledo Diocese...the others being WNOC "Annunciation Radio" licensed in Bowling Green and based in Toledo and WRRO licensed in Edon serving the Bryan area and the corner of the Ohio, Indiana and Michigan state lines.
The MGM Theater of the Air is a one-hour radio dramatic anthology in the United States. It was broadcast on WMGM in New York City and syndicated to other stations via electrical transcription October 14, 1949 – December 7, 1951. It was carried on Mutual January 5-December 27, 1952.
TV Maria is a national Catholic television channel broadcasting from Manila, Philippines. Owned by TV Maria Foundation Philippines, it airs 24 hours a day and is currently available on major and provincial cable and Satellite television operators nationwide, on digital terrestrial television broadcasts via RJ DigiTV's DTT subchannel in Mega Manila and via GNN's DTT subchannel in selected provincial areas, and via online livestreaming.