December Bride - Overview

Overview

December Bride centered around the adventures of Lily Ruskin, a spry widow who was not in fact a "December bride" but very much desired to become one, if the right man would come along. Aiding Lily in her search for this prospective suitor were her daughter, Ruth Henshaw, played by Frances Rafferty, and her son-in-law Matt Henshaw, portrayed by Dean Miller, and her close friend and peer, Hilda Crocker, the role of character actress Verna Felton. A next door neighbor, Pete Porter, played by Harry Morgan, was frequently seen. Married miserably himself, according to his constant complaints about his unseen wife, Gladys, he also envied Matt's positive relationship with Lily, as he despised his own mother-in-law.

First-run episodes of December Bride aired for five seasons, beginning in 1954 and ending in 1959, sponsored by General Foods' Instant Maxwell House Coffee. During the first four seasons, the program was not shown in the summer, supplanted by "summer replacement" series, but in its final year, repeat episodes were run in its time slot during the summer months. On March 26, 1959, as the program wound down, Rory Calhoun, star of CBS's western series, The Texan appeared as himself in the episode "Rory Calhoun, The Texan".

December Bride was sufficiently popular that even after its production had ceased, CBS used repeat episodes to fill slots in its prime time programming. In July 1960, December Bride repeats were used to fill in for the second half of the Friday 9 p.m. Eastern timeslot vacated by Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse, running until the beginning of the fall 1960 schedule, and again as a temporary replacement on Thursday nights in April 1961. Additionally, repeats of the program were shown on CBS as a daytime program from October 1959 until March 1961. The Pete Porter character became so popular that he and Gladys were spun off into their own series, Pete and Gladys, shortly after the end the broadcast of first-run episodes of December Bride.