Arch Oboler's Comedy Theater was an early American comedy television program. It aired on ABC for six episodes from September 23 to November 4, 1949. It was an anthology series of sorts, with each episode featuring a different set of characters. At least one episode consisted of three unrelated comedy segments. At least some of the episodes exist as kinescope recordings, [1] representing early examples of television comedy.
Bwana Devil is a 1952 American adventure B movie written, directed, and produced by Arch Oboler, and starring Robert Stack, Barbara Britton, and Nigel Bruce. Bwana Devil is based on the true story of the Tsavo maneaters and filmed with the Natural Vision 3D system. The film is notable for sparking the first 3D film craze in the motion picture industry, as well as for being the first feature-length 3D film in color and the first 3D sound feature in English.
Lights Out is an American old-time radio program devoted mostly to horror and the supernatural.
Louis Dilman Merrill was an American actor, who worked primarily in radio from the 1930s through the 1950s.
Todd Holland is an American film and television director and producer. He directed over 50 episodes of The Larry Sanders Show, for which he received an Emmy, and 26 episodes of Malcolm in the Middle, for which he received two Emmy Awards. His feature films include The Wizard (1989), Krippendorf's Tribe (1998), Firehouse Dog (2007), and had also directed the TV movie Monster High: The Movie (2022) and its 2023 sequel.
It Pays to Be Ignorant was a 1942–1951 radio comedy show which maintained its popularity during a nine-year run on three networks for such sponsors as Philip Morris, Chrysler, and DeSoto. The series was a spoof on the academic discourse on such authoritative panel series as Quiz Kids and Information Please. At the same time, the beginning of the program parodied the popular quiz show Doctor I.Q. With announcers Ken Roberts and Dick Stark. The program was broadcast on Mutual from June 25, 1942 to February 28, 1944, on CBS from February 25, 1944 to September 27, 1950 and finally on NBC from July 4, 1951 to September 26, 1951. The series typically aired as a summer replacement.
Kraft Television Theatre is an American anthology drama television series running from 1947 to 1958. It began May 7, 1947 on NBC, airing at 7:30pm on Wednesday evenings until December of that year. It first promoted MacLaren's Imperial Cheese, which was advertised nowhere else. In January 1948, it moved to 9pm on Wednesdays, continuing in that timeslot until 1958. Initially produced by the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency, the live hour-long series offered television plays with new stories and new characters each week, in addition to adaptations of such classics as A Christmas Carol and Alice in Wonderland. The program was broadcast live from Studio 8-H at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, currently the home of Saturday Night Live.
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."
Arch Oboler's Plays is a radio anthology series written, produced and directed by Arch Oboler. Minus a sponsor, it ran for one year, airing Saturday evenings on NBC from March 25, 1939, to March 23, 1940, and revived five years later on Mutual for a sustaining summer run from April 5, 1945, to October 11, 1945.
An anthology series is a written series, radio, television, film, or video game series that presents a different story and a different set of characters in each different episode, season, segment, or short. These usually have a different cast in each episode, but several series in the past, such as Four Star Playhouse, employed a permanent troupe of character actors who would appear in a different drama each week. Some anthology series, such as Studio One, began on radio and then expanded to television.
Frederick Hayden Hughs Coe was an American television producer and director most famous for The Goodyear Television Playhouse/The Philco Television Playhouse in 1948-1955 and Playhouse 90 from 1957 to 1959. Among the live TV dramas he produced were Marty and The Trip to Bountiful for Goodyear/Philco, Peter Pan for Producers' Showcase, and Days of Wine and Roses for Playhouse 90.
The Colgate Comedy Hour is an American comedy-musical variety series that aired live on the NBC network from 1950 to 1955. The show featured many notable comedians and entertainers of the era as guest stars. Many of the scripts of the series are archived at the UCLA Library in their Special Collections.
Randall Park is an American actor. He is best known for his role as Louis Huang in the ABC sitcom Fresh Off the Boat (2015–2020), for which he was nominated for the Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Actor in a Comedy Series in 2016.
The Ruggles is an early American family-oriented situation comedy series broadcast live on ABC. Episodes were recorded on kinescope, and some of them survive in the UCLA Film and Television Archive. The series began October 23, 1949 — a couple of weeks after the radio hit The Life of Riley had moved to television on NBC — and ended on June 19, 1952. The Ruggles was also one of the first shows to originate from Hollywood rather than New York City, where most radio programs had been produced. It aired in New York City via kinescope beginning November 3, 1949.
Bruce Bilson is an American film director and television director. He is most notable for his work as a regular director on the spy spoof Get Smart. He won the 1967–1968 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing for a Comedy Series for the third season Get Smart episode "Maxwell Smart, Private Eye".
The Bigelow Theatre is an American anthology series originally broadcast on CBS Television and on the DuMont Television Network.
Nasim Pedrad is an American actress and comedian. Pedrad was a cast member on the NBC sketch comedy and variety series Saturday Night Live from 2009 to 2014. She later went on to star in the Fox sitcoms Mulaney (2014–2015) and New Girl (2015–2018), the Fox horror comedy series Scream Queens (2015), and the TBS science fiction comedy series People of Earth (2017) and 2019 movie Aladdin. Pedrad also created, produces, and stars in the TBS/The Roku Channel sitcom Chad (2021–present).
Archibald Winchester "Arch" Johnson was an American actor who appeared on Broadway and in more than 100 television programs.
Everyman's Theater was a 30-minute old-time radio dramatic series. Its 26 episodes were broadcast on NBC from October 4, 1940, through March 28, 1941.
The filmography of Hugh O'Brian comprises both film and television roles. In a career spanning nearly seven decades, he has appeared in overall fifty-three feature films, sixteen television movies and forty-six series.
Night of the Auk is a 1956 Broadway drama in three acts written by Arch Oboler. It is a science fiction drama in blank verse about space travelers returning to Earth after the first Moon landing. The play was based on Oboler's radio play Rocket from Manhattan, which aired as part of Arch Oboler's Plays in September 1945. Night of the Auk was published in book form in 1958.