Hallmark Hall of Fame

Hallmark Hall of Fame
Genre	Anthology
Written by	Robert Hartung Jean Holloway Helene Hanff Gian Carlo Menotti
Directed by	George Schaefer William Corrigan Albert McCleery Kirk Browning Fielder Cook Jeannot Szwarc
Composer(s)	Gian Carlo Menotti Bernard Green Richard Addinsell Jerry Goldsmith
Country of origin	United States
Language(s)	English
No. of seasons	60
No. of episodes	350+ (List of episodes)
Production
Executive producer(s)	George Schaefer Brent Shields
Producer(s)	Maurice Evans Samuel Chotzinoff Phil C. Samuel Robert Hartung
Editor(s)	Henry Batista Robert L. Swanson Sam Gold Richard K. Brockway
Cinematography	Freddie Young
Running time	30–150 minutes
Production company(s)	Hallmark Hall of Fame Productions
Broadcast
Original channel	NBC (1951-1978) CBS (1979-1981, 1982-1989, 1995-2011) PBS (1981) ABC (1989-1995, 2011-present)
Audio format	Monaural Stereo (from 1980)
Original run	December 24, 1951 – present

Hallmark Hall of Fame is an anthology program on American television, sponsored by Hallmark Cards, a Kansas City based greeting card company. The second longest-running television program in the history of television, it has a historically long run, beginning in 1951 and continuing into 2011. From 1954 onward, all of its productions have been shown in color, although color television video productions were extremely rare in 1954. Many television movies have been shown on the program since its debut, though the program began with live telecasts of dramas and then moved into videotaped productions before finally turning to filmed ones.

The series has received eighty Emmy Awards, twenty-four Christopher Awards, eleven Peabody Awards, nine Golden Globes, and four Humanitas Prizes. Once a common practice in American television, it is the last remaining television program where the title contains the name of the sponsor. Unlike other long-running TV series still on the air, it differs in that it only broadcasts occasionally and not on a weekly broadcast programming schedule (as opposed to The Simpsons, Gunsmoke and the news program, 60 Minutes).

Early years

The series debuted on 24 December 1951 on NBC with the first opera written specifically for television, Amahl and the Night Visitors, by Gian Carlo Menotti, starring Chet Allen. 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.

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.

Tod Griffin appeared three times on Hallmark early in his brief acting career, including roles of George Washington in "The Plot to Kidnap General Washington" (1952) and Patrick Henry in "The Farmer from Monticello" (1955).

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 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. Like Hamlet, Macbeth and the other Shakespeare plays presented on Hallmark Hall of Fame were cut (sometimes drastically) to fit the time limits of commercial broadcasting television network. It was left to National Educational Television (NET) and Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) Public television to present nearly complete Shakespeare adaptations on American television in the future.

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) and Robert Louis Stevenson's The Master of Ballantrae (1984). 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, remains the most honored two-hour movie in the history of network television,^{[citation needed]} winning 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.^{[citation needed]} 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,^{[citation needed]} and usually shot for 24 days, compared to 18–20 days for most other TV-movies.^{[citation needed]}

Post-NBC

For nearly three decades, the series ran on NBC, but dropped it in late-1978 due to declining ratings. Since then, the series was seen on CBS from 1979 to 1989 (except for one episode, which was seen on PBS in 1981), then on ABC from 1989 to 1995, then back to CBS from 1995 until 2011, when that network cancelled the series due to low ratings.

On November 27, 2011, Hallmark Hall of Fame returned to ABC with Have a Little Faith, which debuted to very low viewership ratings for the night. The total number of viewers was estimated at 6.5 million, compared to 13.5 million for the Hallmark Hall of Fame presentation of November Christmas on the weekend after Thanksgiving in 2010. All ABC airings of Hallmark Hall of Fame movies end with marginalized credits being played concurrently with the Hallmark Hall of Fame closing promo by then on; as a result, original credits are no longer seen until the DVD is watched and/or the Hallmark Channel reairing.

Encore broadcasts of these ABC episodes will air on Hallmark Channel a week after its initial airing on ABC. These films will also be available for streaming on SpiritClips.com a few days after airing on ABC.

Many recent Hall of Fame movies repeat on the company's Hallmark Channel and Hallmark Movie Channel and are available on home video and DVD, distributed through Hallmark Gold Crown Stores and online at Hallmark Hall of Fame.

Episode list

Main article: List of Hallmark Hall of Fame episodes

Only a small number of Hallmark Hall of Fame programming (considering how long the series has lasted) has been released to VHS and DVD. The 1960 production of the Tempest appeared on VHS, but is not yet on DVD. The 1954 Macbeth has been available on a bootleg DVD, but not on an official one.

External links

• Hallmark Hall of Fame episodes
• Hallmark Hall of Fame at the Internet Movie Database
• Streaming Hallmark Hall of Fame episodes
• Hallmark Hall of Fame at TV.com
• 50 Years of Hallmark Hall of Fame at the UCLA Film and Television Archive