Cameo Theatre - Story Sources

Story Sources

Cameo Theatre featured adaptations from the short stories of Roald Dahl, Shirley Jackson, Irwin Shaw, and others. The Paley Center for Media detailed the scripting contribution of Ellen M. Violett:

Her first teleplay to be produced was an adaptation of Shirley Jackson’s "short shocker", "The Lottery" for NBC’s sustaining Cameo Theatre in 1950. Created and produced by Albert McCleery, Cameo Theatre was, as described by Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh in The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows, 1946 to Present, “An interesting early experiment in the unique dramatic possibilities of television… produced in the round, using a minimum of props. It made considerable use of closeups and other camera techniques to focus attention on the characterizations of individual actors. High quality scripts were used, both originals and adaptations for television.” Broadcast on June 14, 1950, Violett’s adaptation of “The Lottery” was the fifth episode of Cameo Theatre, and helped McCleery establish his reputation as a television innovator with his Cameo “technique” of no scenery. “The Lottery” episode was awarded the Single Program Award by the National Conference for Community and Justice, for “promotion of mutual tolerance between people of different races and religions,” and thereby caused quite a stir in the middle of the era of blacklisting, especially as it was the subject of articles in both Time and Life magazines. “Without scenery, well-known actors or advance fanfare,” wrote Time in its issue dated June 26, 1950, “Cameo Theater… last week presented one of the most exciting plays ever shown on U.S. television.” Violett’s teleplay was produced again on August 31, 1951, as an episode of Fireside Theatre, starring Margaret Hayes.

Cameo Theatre was notable for developing young writers. Scripter Raphael Hayes recalled entering broadcasting after he left the Army:

I came out and got a job in the WNEW radio station in New York, as what we called a continuity writer, which paid enough, I suppose, to eat. And at that time television was beginning, and I figured why not try it and see what I could do. I had a little story in my head and I wrote it. You know the phrase “throw it over the transom?” That’s what I did–to the slush pile over at NBC. “A Little Night Music,” it was called, and I think it was a Cameo Theatre. And, my God, the telephone rang one day when I was working at WNEW, and I picked up the phone and listened very carefully, and she said, “We want to do your script.” I was stunned. I hung up, and everybody else in the office looked at me with vengeance. That’s where it began, professionally, where I was able to make some money out of the craft. After that happened, I began to figure out that if I did one television script a month, and they paid me at least $500 for that month, I could quit this job and live that way, doing one script a month for things like Cameo Theatre and other things that were around.