"Peter Pan" | |
---|---|
Producers' Showcase episode | |
Directed by | Clark Jones |
Written by | Sumner Locke Elliott |
Based on | Peter Pan by Jule Styne, Mark Charlap, Betty Comden, Adolph Green, Carolyn Leigh |
Original air date | March 7, 1955 |
Running time | 90 mins |
Peter Pan is a 1955 American television play that aired as an episode of Producers' Showcase . It was an adaptation of the 1954 stage musical Peter Pan and was the first full-length Broadway production on color TV.
The script was written by Sumner Locke Elliott who had appeared on stage in a production of the play in 1937. [1]
The show attracted a then-record audience of 65-million viewers, the highest ever up to that time for a single television program. [2] [3]
Mary Martin won an Emmy Award for the television production. The show also won an Emmy for Program of the Year.
The musical was restaged live for television (again on Producers' Showcase) on January 9, 1956. [4] Clark Jones returned as director. [5]
NBC claimed the combined audiences for the 1955 and 1956 productions was 125,000,000. [6]
Peter Pan was restaged on December 8, 1960, this time in a slightly longer version with a slightly different cast. Vincent J. Donehue directed. [7]
The 1960 production was intended as a "stand alone" special instead of an episode of an anthology series. Act II was split into two acts, for a total of five acts instead of three, to allow for more commercial breaks.
It was shot at the Ziegfield Theatre and in NBC's color studios in Brooklyn. Cyril Ritchard was performing in Australia on stage in The Pleasure of His Company and NBC paid for him to be flown back to appear in the production. [6]
The special was successful in the ratings. [8]
Variety called it "a wholly delightful two-hour presentation... In spirit, verve, performance and total execution, it was the best of the Pans and, thanks to the wonders of tape, a residual-happy bonanza for years to come." [7]
Vincent J. Donehue received a Director's Guild Award. [9]
The 1960 version was rebroadcast in 1963, 1966 and 1973. [10]
Mary Virginia Martin was an American actress and singer. A muse of Rodgers and Hammerstein, she originated many leading roles on stage over her career, including Nellie Forbush in South Pacific (1949), the title character in Peter Pan (1954), and Maria von Trapp in The Sound of Music (1959). She was named a Kennedy Center Honoree in 1989. She was the mother of actor Larry Hagman.
Juliet Maryon Mills is a British-American actress.
Morris Isaac "Moose" Charlap was an American Broadway composer best known for Peter Pan (1954), for which Carolyn Leigh wrote the lyrics. The idea for the show came from Jerome Robbins, who planned to have a few songs by Charlap and Leigh. It evolved into a full musical, with additional songs by Jule Styne and Betty Comden and Adolph Green. The original run of Peter Pan on Broadway starred Mary Martin as Peter Pan and Cyril Ritchard as Captain Hook.
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.
Cyril Joseph Trimnell-Ritchard, known professionally as Cyril Ritchard, was an Australian stage, screen and television actor, and director. He is best remembered today for his performance as Captain Hook in the Mary Martin musical production of Peter Pan. In 1945, he played Gabriele Eisenstein in Gay Rosalinda at the Palace theatre in London, a version of Strauss's Die Fledermaus by Erich Wolfgang Korngold in which he appeared with Peter Graves. The show was conducted by Richard Tauber and ran for almost a year.
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Vincent Julian Donehue was an American director noted mainly for his theater work, with occasional film and television credits.
Peter Pan is a 1954 musical based on J. M. Barrie's 1904 play Peter Pan and his 1911 novelization of it, Peter and Wendy. The music is mostly by Moose Charlap, with additional music by Jule Styne, and most of the lyrics were written by Carolyn Leigh, with additional lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green.
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Martin Ellyot Manulis was an American television, film, and theatre producer. Manulis was best known for his work in the 1950s producing the CBS Television programs Suspense, Studio One Summer Theatre, Climax!, The Best of Broadway and Playhouse 90. He was the sole producer of the award-winning drama series, Playhouse 90, during its first two seasons from 1956 to 1958.
Producers' Showcase is an American anthology television series that was telecast live during the 1950s in compatible color by NBC. With top talent, the 90-minute episodes, covering a wide variety of genres, aired under the title every fourth Monday at 8 pm ET for three seasons, beginning October 18, 1954. The final episode, the last of 37, was broadcast May 27, 1957.
Dwight Arlington Hemion Jr. was an American television director known mainly for music-themed television programs of the 1960s and 1970s. He held the record for the most Emmy nominations (47), and won 18 times, putting him at the top of his profession throughout the 1960s, 1970s, and well into the 1980s. He also won the Directors Guild of America's top TV award five times, six Ace awards and a Peabody award.
Peter Pan Live! is an American television special that was broadcast by NBC on December 4, 2014. The special featured a live production of the 1954 musical adaptation of Peter Pan, televised from Grumman Studios in Bethpage, New York, starring Allison Williams in the title role and Christopher Walken as Captain Hook.
"Little Moon of Alban" was an American television play broadcast by NBC on March 24, 1958, as part of the television series, Hallmark Hall of Fame. It was written by James Costigan, directed by George Schaefer, and starred Julie Harris and Christopher Plummer.
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Clark Jones was an American television director. He gained acclaim in the early days of television as a director of live programming.