Famous Film Festival was American television's first prime-time movie series. It was aired Sunday nights 7:30-9:00 pm (EST) by ABC during the 1955-56 television season, switching to Saturday nights (7:30-9 pm) during its second and final season, 1956-57.
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In 1955, ABC obtained the rights to broadcast 35 British movie titles. These included The Man in Grey (1943), The Lavender Hill Mob (1951), Odd Man Out (1947), Caesar and Cleopatra (1945), The Red Shoes (1948), and Hamlet (1948). However, many of these, such as Hamlet, ran two full hours or longer, and were either drastically cut to fit a ninety-minute time slot or shown in two installments a week apart. It was not until November 3, 1956, with CBS's first presentation of MGM's The Wizard of Oz (1939), that an uncut film lasting more than ninety minutes was telecast in one evening on a television network.
Unfortunately, all films in this series were broadcast in black-and-white, despite the fact that several of them had been originally photographed and exhibited theatrically in color. Thus, such films as Stairway to Heaven (1946) and The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) would not be seen by American viewers in color until years later when they were released for rental and exhibition by local and independent television stations.
Other British films from J. Arthur Rank Productions obtained at the same time were shown as part of ABC's daytime Afternoon Film Festival, which aired weekdays from 3:00-5:00 pm (ET). This show premiered January 16, 1956 and ended August 2, 1957, replaced by American Bandstand, which introduced Dick Clark to network television audiences and went on to become one of daytime's most popular programs, especially with teenagers.
Season One (1955-1956 Season)
All titles listed below for the series' two seasons were cited from the TV listings of The New York Times via microfilm copies of its backlogged issues, September 1955-May 1957.
The remainder of this first season consisted of reruns of the films above, some of which were repeated twice before the beginning of the second season in October 1956, when the series moved to a new night: Saturdays from 7:30 to 9:00 pm (Eastern Time).
Season Two (1956-1957 Season)
After re-running Tonight at 8:30 on June 8, ABC ceased airing its Famous Film Festival series. Instead, through the summer of 1957, the network used its 7:30-9:00 time-slot on Saturdays to broadcast televised sermons by Billy Graham and then later (beginning July 6) ABC aired Country Music Hayride.