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All Seasons

Season 1

  • S01E01 The Royal Family

    • September 15, 1954
    • CBS

    Comedy about the Cavendishes, a leading and slightly eccentric theatrical family. Their real-life family drama occurs in a Manhattan apartment when the grand matriarch, Fanny Cavendish, learns that her daughter and granddaughter may both be giving up the stage for marriage. Complicating the situation is the arrival of Fanny's son, Tony - a Hollywood matinee idol on the run from a breach-of-promise suit.

  • S01E02 The Man Who Came to Dinner

    • October 13, 1954
    • CBS

    Comedy about what happens to a typical midwestern family when a visiting New York theatre critic slips and breaks his hip leaving their house and is forced to stay there to recouperate. The critic, Sheridan Whiteside, completely disrupts, and unnerves, the family and townspeople. He doesn't shy away from telling people exactly what he thinks of them and how they should live their lives. Further complicating things are visits by his eccentric theatrical friends.

  • S01E03 Panama Hattie

    • November 10, 1954
    • CBS

    Hattie Mahoney is a singer in the Canal Zone in love with a Philadelphia socialite, Nick Bullett. Hattie has to win over Nick's daughter Gerry before she can marry him. She does so with an assist from her sailor pals and foils an attempt to blow up the canal in the bargain. Songs by Cole Porter, music arranged by Buddy Bregman. Songs from the original score included Fresh As A Daisy/Let's Be Buddies-Merman & Wolfe/Make It Another Old Fashioned, Please-Merman. Added were Ridin' High-Merman (from Red, Hot & Blue) and I Love You (from Mexican Hayride).

  • S01E04 The Philadelphia Story

    • December 8, 1954
    • CBS

    Spoiled Philadelphia heiress Tracy Lord throws out her playboy husband C.K. Dexter Haven shortly after their marriage. Two years later, Tracy is about to marry respectable, but dull, George Kittredge. Dexter arrives at the Lord mansion the day before the wedding with Mike Connor and Liz Imbrie, respectively a writer and photographer from a sleazy tabloid, determined to prevent the marriage from taking place.

  • S01E05 Arsenic and Old Lace

    • January 5, 1955
    • CBS

    Comedy that concerns the Brewster sisters, Abby and Martha, who put lonely old men out of their misery by serving them poisoned elderberry wine. Their nephew Teddy buries them in the basement. He thinks he's Teddy Roosevelt and that the bodies are Panama Canal workers that died of yellow fever. Another nephew is Jonathan, an escaped criminal looking for a hideout. He's had plastic surgery to change his looks and now resembles movie actor Boris Karloff. Into this madness comes nephew Mortimer, a drama critic, who tries to set things right.

  • S01E06 The Show-Off

    • February 2, 1955
    • CBS

    Aubrey Piper, only a clerk, pretends to be a railroad executive. He comes into the life of the Fisher family when daughter Amy falls in love with him. The family sees through his stories and can't stand him and his blowhard manner, especially Mrs. Fisher. Aubrey ends up unemployed and walking the street wearing a sandwich sign-the only work he can find. Eventually his luck turns and he helps a friend sell a patent and a deal he worked out at the railroad comes through making him wealthy. He marries Amy and her family comes to accept him and his show-off ways.

  • S01E07 The Guardsman

    • March 2, 1955
    • CBS

    Story concerns a married couple, actors both, where the husband suspects the wife of losing interest in him. To test her love and fidelity he disguises himself as a royal guardsman and attempts to seduce her. All ends happily although he is never quite sure whether or not she saw through his disguise.

  • S01E08 Stage Door

    • April 6, 1955
    • CBS

    Story of aspiring actresses and dancers who live in a theatrical boarding house. Terry Randall is from a well-to-do family and her superior attitude annoys the other girls. Kaye Hamilton is a sweet, unassuming, totally dedicated actress who aspires to one role in particular. Jean Maitland is the streetwise hoofer with a heart of gold who rooms with Terry. After Terry outmaneuvers Kaye for the coveted part Kaye commits suicide, turning the other girls against her and forcing Tracy to do some soul searching. Jean helps Terry to learn a few things about herself and Terry emerges a better person and actress.

  • S01E09 Broadway

    • May 4, 1955
    • CBS

    Dancer Roy Lane and gangster Steve Crandell vie for the affection of chorus girl Billie Moore amidst gangland turf battles, dancing girls, bootleggers and assorted Broadway types.