Hallmark Hall of Fame (1951)
Hallmark Hall of Fame is an anthology program on American television, sponsored by Hallmark Cards, a Kansas City based greeting card company. The longest-running primetime series in the history of television, it has a historically long run, beginning during 1951 and continuing into 2013. 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 changed to videotaped productions before finally changing 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 such that the title includes the name of the sponsor. Unlike other long-running TV series still on the air, it differs in that it broadcasts only occasionally and not on a weekly broadcast programming schedule.
- Kenneth Blackwell
- Tennyson Flowers
- Richard Friedenberg
Stars:
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Episode 1 - Return of the Native
Release Date: 1994-12-04Adaptation of the classic novel by Thomas Hardy. Eustacia Vye is a willful, passionate enchantress whose desire to escape her lonely rustic life thrusts her into two doomed relationships.
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Episode 2 - The Piano Lesson
Release Date: 1995-02-05Adaptation of the stage play by August Wilson. Set in 1936 Pittsburgh, the story centers on an ornately carved 80-year-old upright piano, a family heirloom co-owned by a proud widow and her forceful brother, Boy Willie. Boy Willie's determination to trade the piano for Mississippi farmland triggers an emotional battle.
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Episode 3 - Redwood Curtain
Release Date: 1995-04-23Adaptation of Wilson's stage play. Geri Riordan is a teenage concert pianist of Vietnamese-American heritage who has been trained by her adoptive father. Sudden personal and professional tumult prompts Geri to visit her understanding aunt, who lives amid a California redwood forest that is also home to a troubled Vietnam veteran.