The series originated on radio in the 1940s as Theatre Guild on the Air. Organized in 1919 to improve the quality of American theater, the Theatre Guild first experimented with radio productions in Theatre Guild Dramas, a CBS series which ran from December 6, 1943 to February 29, 1944.
Actress-playwright Armina Marshall (1895–1991), a co-administrator of the Theatre Guild, headed the Guild's newly created Radio Department, and in 1945, Theatre Guild on the Air embarked on its ambitious plan to bring Broadway theater to radio with leading actors in major productions. It premiered September 9, 1945, on ABC with Burgess Meredith, Henry Daniell and Cecil Humphreys in Wings Over Europe, a play by Robert Nichols and Maurice Browne which the Theatre Guild had staged on Broadway in 1928-29.
Within a year the series drew some 10 to 12 million listeners each week. Presenting both classic and contemporary plays, the program was broadcast for eight years before it became a television series.
Playwrights adapted to radio ranged from Shakespeare and Oscar Wilde to Eugene O'Neill and Tennessee Williams with numerous Broadway and Hollywood actors in the casts, including Ingrid Bergman, Ronald Colman, Bette Davis, Rex Harrison, Helen Hayes, Katharine Hepburn, Gene Kelly, Deborah Kerr, Agnes Moorehead, Basil Rathbone and Mary Sinclair. Even John Gielgud was heard, in his famous role of Hamlet, in an expanded 90-minute broadcast with Dorothy McGuire as Ophelia.Fredric March was also heard in his only performance as Cyrano de Bergerac, a role he played neither onstage or onscreen. The series even featured a rarity - the only radio broadcast of Rodgers and Hammerstein's flop musical, Allegro. The radio series was broadcast until June 7, 1953, when the United States Steel Corporation decided to move its show to television.
Read more about this topic: The United States Steel Hour