CBS Children's Film Festival is a television series of live action films from several countries that were made for children (several of them dubbed into English). Originally a sporadic series airing on Saturday mornings, Sunday afternoons, or weekday afternoons during the summer from 1967, it became a regularly scheduled program in 1971 on the CBS Saturday morning lineup, running one hour with some films apparently edited down to fit the time slot. The program was hosted by 1950s television act Kukla, Fran and Ollie, aka puppeteer Burr Tillstrom and actress Fran Allison.
Kukla, Fran and Ollie were dropped from the series in 1977 and the program was renamed CBS Saturday Film Festival. In 1978 CBS canceled the show in favor of the youth targeted magazine 30 Minutes which was modeled after its adult sister show 60 Minutes. CBS canceled 30 Minutes in 1982 and brought back Saturday Film Festival which ran for two seasons until CBS cancelled it for good in 1984.
Perhaps the most famous "episode" of the series was the 1960 British film Hand in Hand, the story of a deep friendship between two elementary school students, one a Roman Catholic boy and the other a Jewish girl.
In addition to many American and British films, the series also featured motion pictures from Russia, France, Bulgaria, Japan, Sweden, Italy, China, Australia, South Africa, and Czechoslovakia as well as several other countries.
Other films that aired during the series run include the Oscar-winning French film The Red Balloon, Skinny and Fatty from Japan, Digby, the Biggest Dog in the World from Great Britain, Tillie, the Unhappy Hippopotamus from Czechoslovakia, and Mi-Mi, the Lazy Kitten from China.
Screen movie and TV legend Ray Bolger of the MGM classic film The Wizard of Oz even served as narrator for some of the episodes during the show's 1980s run.
Famous quotes containing the words children, film and/or festival:
“I would hope that parents and grown children could be friends. When a friend confides in you that she’s going to do something that you think is most inappropriate, foolhardy or even dangerous, wouldn’t you as a friend say so—in a calm, supportive way? Yet I have to be so careful what I say to my children. I have to walk on eggs to be sure I’m not hurting their feelings or interfering with their lives.”
—Anonymous Parent of Adult Children. Ourselves and Our Children, by Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, ch. 5 (1978)
“Film is more than the twentieth-century art. It’s another part of the twentieth-century mind. It’s the world seen from inside. We’ve come to a certain point in the history of film. If a thing can be filmed, the film is implied in the thing itself. This is where we are. The twentieth century is on film.... You have to ask yourself if there’s anything about us more important than the fact that we’re constantly on film, constantly watching ourselves.”
—Don Delillo (b. 1926)
“Don’t you know there are 200 temperance women in this county who control 200 votes. Why does a woman work for temperance? Because she’s tired of liftin’ that besotted mate of hers off the floor every Saturday night and puttin’ him on the sofa so he won’t catch cold. Tonight we’re for temperance. Help yourself to them cloves and chew them, chew them hard. We’re goin’ to that festival tonight smelling like a hot mince pie.”
—Laurence Stallings (1894–1968)