Hallmark Hall of Fame - Early Years

Early Years

The series is the direct descendant of two old-time radio dramatic anthologies sponsored previously by Hallmark: Radio Reader's Digest, adapting stories from the popular magazine (though the magazine never sponsored the show); and, its successor, The Hallmark Playhouse, which premiered on CBS in 1948. The Hallmark Playhouse shifted to more serious literature from all genres. The Hallmark Hall of Fame debuted on 24 December 1951 on NBC television with the first opera written specifically for television, Amahl and the Night Visitors, by Gian Carlo Menotti, starring Chet Allen and Rosemary Kuhlmann. It was the first time a major corporation developed a television project specifically as a means of promoting its products to the viewing public. The program was such a success that it was restaged by Hallmark several times over a period of fifteen years. Amahl was also staged by other NBC television anthologies. Hallmark also transformed its radio Hallmark Playhouse into a Hallmark Hall of Fame format---this time, featuring stories of pioneers from all walk of Americana---from 1953 through 1955.

Early productions included some of the classical works of Shakespeare: Hamlet, Richard II, The Taming of the Shrew, Macbeth and The Tempest. Biographical subjects were very eclectic, ranging from Florence Nightingale to Father Flanagan to Joan of Arc. Popular Broadway plays such as Harvey, Dial M for Murder, and Kiss Me, Kate were made available to a mass audience, most of them with casts that had not appeared in the film versions released to theatres. In a few cases, the actors repeated their original Broadway roles. Noted actors such as Richard Burton, Alfred Lunt, Lynn Fontanne, Maurice Evans, Katharine Cornell, Julie Harris, Laurence Olivier and Peter Ustinov all made what were then extremely rare television appearances in these plays.

Two different productions of Hamlet have aired on the Hallmark Hall of Fame, one starring Maurice Evans (1953) and the other starring Richard Chamberlain (1970). Neither one was more than two hours long. Evans and actress Judith Anderson brought their famous stage Macbeth to the Hallmark Hall of Fame on two separate occasions, each time with a different supporting cast. The first version (1954) was telecast live from NBC Studios; the second (1960) was filmed on location in Scotland and released to movie theatres in Europe after being telecast in the U.S. The Richard Chamberlain version of Hamlet, which was also telecast in England on ITV Saturday Night Theatre, won five Emmys when telecast on the Hallmark Hall of Fame, out of a total of thirteen nominations. It may have set a record for the most-nominated Shakespeare production to ever be presented on television.

Hamlet, Macbeth and the other Shakespeare plays presented on Hallmark Hall of Fame were cut (sometimes drastically) to fit the time limits of a standard film or of the Hallmark Hall of Fame itself, which in the 1950's ,'60's and '70's never ran longer than two hours and frequently even less. It was left to National Educational Television (NET) and Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) to be the pioneers in presenting nearly complete Shakespeare productions on American television.

After a few decades Hallmark Hall of Fame began to offer original material, such as Aunt Mary (1979) and Thursday's Child (1983), although its lineup still primarily consisted of expensive-looking Masterpiece Theatre-style adaptations of American and European literary classics, such as John Steinbeck's The Winter of Our Discontent (1983), Robert Louis Stevenson's The Master of Ballantrae (1984), and Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities (1980), Oliver Twist (1982), and A Christmas Carol (1984). A Tale of Two Cities was the first Hallmark production (and to date, one of the very few) to run three hours. The late 1980s saw productions such as Foxfire (1987), My Name is Bill W. (1989), Sarah, Plain and Tall (1991), O Pioneers! (1992), To Dance With the White Dog (1993), The Piano Lesson (1995), and What the Deaf Man Heard (1997). One installment, Promise (1986), starring James Garner and James Woods, won five Emmys, two Golden Globes, a Peabody award, a Humanitas Prize, and a Christopher Award.

Through the 1980s and 1990s, Hallmark Hall of Fame films often had twice the budget of other network films. Hallmark movies also ran (in some cases) approximately 10–15 minutes longer (or up to 110 minutes minus commercials) because Hallmark Cards fully sponsored the films and took fewer commercial breaks. Unlike most network movies of the period, Hallmark always filmed on location, and usually shot for 24 days, compared to 18–20 days for most other TV-movies.