Ford Star Jubilee

A dramatization of the trial of Lieutenant Maryk for his role in the Caine mutiny against the paranoiac Captain Queeg.

Musical variety salute to America and her music.

Charles Condomine is a writer living in the English countryside with his second wife Ruth. He's researching a book involving metaphysics and invites a medium, Madame Arcati, to his home for dinner and a seance. The ghost of his first wife Elvira is summoned and she proceeds to wreak havoc with his present wife.

The story begins with President Lincoln at 7 a.m. Friday, April 14, 1865 and ends the next day at 7:22 a.m. when he is pronounced dead by Surgeon General Barnes. In between a number of other related and momentous events of Lincoln's last day are depicted including a meeting with General Grant, his last Cabinet session, the assasins completing their preparations, and the actors and management of Ford's Theatre arranging to receive the Presidential party.

When Oscar Jaffe, a brilliant but eccentric Broadway impresario, boards the 20th Century Limited in Chicago, he makes sure that his compartment adjoins that of the tempestuous movie queen Lily Garland. For the object of his trip is to get Lily's signature on a contract before the train reaches New York. The situation is complicated by the fact that Jaffe's creditors are breathing hot down his neck and a Broadway play with Lily as star can bail him out. In addition, Oscar's interest in Lily was, at one time, more than professional. But now the relationship between the two temperamental artists is something less than cordial.

Noel Coward's salute to the English people shows how an ordinary family lived between the wars. Just after WWI the Gibbons family moves to a nice house in the suburbs. An ordinary sort of life is led by the family through the years with average number of triumphs and disasters until the outbreak of WWII.

US Army Major Joppolo is a civil government administration officer assigned to restore government in a small town in Italy at the end of World War II. He grows to understand that public administration is more than the delivery of services. It also, he discovers, is the fulfillment of the non-tangible needs of the citizenry as well. In this case, before the war the town had had a bell whose ringing provided the markers for the routines and cycles of daily life. Joppolo realizes the importance of reinstalling a bell as a symbol of the restoration of peacetime life in the town. He struggles, successfully, to locate and then obtain a bell from a US Navy ship. Thanks to him, the town is able to return to its antebellum state. Songs by Arthur Schwartz and Howard Dietz included: A Bell for Adano / Fish / I'm Part of You / Okay, Mister Major. A song titled Why Not Surrender was written but not used.

Musical salute to Cole Porter. Songs included: Another Op'nin', Another Show-Entire Cast/Anything Goes-Don Crichton & Dancers/You Do Something to Me-Dorothy Dandridge/In the Still of the Night-Gordon MacRae & Shirley Jones/You're the Top-Peter Lind Hayes & Mary Healy/Let's Do It-Dolores Gray & George Sanders/Night and Day-George Chakiris & Sally Forrest/Thank You So Much, Mrs. Lowsborough Goodby-George Sanders/C'est Magnifique-George Sanders/Blow, Gabriel, Blow-Louis Armstrong/My Heart Belongs to Daddy-Dorothy Dandridge & Dancers Kiss Me Kate Sequence: Always True to You in My Fashion-Dolores Gray /So In Love-Gordon MacRae/I Hate Men-Shirley Jones/Wunderbar-Gordon MacRae & Shirley Jones/Operetta Parody-Peter Lind Hayes & Mary Healy/Medley:I Get a Kick Out of You/Why Can't You Behave/Down in the Depths/Just One of Those Things-Dolores Gray/I Love You-Gordon MacRae/Begin the Beguine-Gordon MacRae with Sally Forrest & George Chakiris/Now You Has Jazz-Bing Crosby & Louis Armstrong/We

The final Ford Star Jubilee was the first television broadcast of the 1939 MGM film The Wizard of Oz. The show was expanded to two hours and Bert Lahr was engaged to host with assistance from 10 year old Liza Minnelli and Justin G. Schiller, a 13 year old Oz expert. CBS paid MGM for the right to show the film twice at $225,000 each airing. The broadcast was a ratings smash. CBS showed it again December 13, 1959 (Red Skelton and his daughter Valentina hosting) in an earlier time slot and it was an even bigger hit. CBS exercised its options ($200,000 each for four more broadcasts) for further airings in what became a TV tradition. Later hosts included Richard Boone and his son Peter (1960), Dick Van Dyke and his children (1961-62), and Danny Kaye (1964-67).