Letter to Loretta (1953)
Letter to Loretta is an American anthology drama series telecast on NBC from September 1953 to June 1961 for a total of 165 episodes. The filmed show was hosted by Loretta Young who also played the lead in various episodes. Letter to Loretta was sponsored by Procter & Gamble from 1953 through 1960. The final season's sponsor was Warner-Lambert's Listerine.
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Episode 1 - Trial Run
Release Date: 1953-09-20The first episode of the series, explaining the letter anthology format. A shop girl is courted by a man whose family looks down upon her, so she feigns crassness to teach them a lesson. One of a few episodes with a laugh track.
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Episode 2 - The Mirror
Release Date: 1953-09-27A spoiled and selfish woman goes without her husband to a vacation home and is tormented by a woman escaped from a mental institution which makes her confront her own mental challenges.
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Episode 3 - Prisoner at One O'Clock
Release Date: 1953-10-04A young man is accused of murder in a small Western town, but the sheriff's wife believes him innocent, while the townspeople form a mob to storm the jail.
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Episode 4 - Girl on a Flagpole
Release Date: 1953-10-11A teacher publicly opposes a candidate, only to be romanced by him, much to the chagrin of her boyfriend.
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Episode 5 - Turn of the Card
Release Date: 1953-10-18A shipboard con artist falls for his mark.
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Episode 6 - Earthquake
Release Date: 1953-10-25A man using an iron lung who has lost hope regains his will through the efforts of his wife to keep him breathing when an earthquake causes a power failure.
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Episode 7 - The One That Got Away
Release Date: 1953-11-01The glowing, tiresome reminisces of a wife and mother about her now-famous former beau and his devotion to her comes to a head.
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Episode 8 - Kid Stuff
Release Date: 1953-11-08Two widowed parents fall in love but feel their relationship might be hampered by their lively young children.
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Episode 9 - The Bronte Story
Release Date: 1953-11-15Charlotte Bronte struggles to cope with her controlling and oppressive father even as it interferes with her courtship with and marriage to Arthur Nicholls.
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Episode 10 - Thanksgiving in Beaver Run
Release Date: 1953-11-22The kidnapping of a boy by young toughs takes an unexpected turn when one of the hoodlums befriends the boy.
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Episode 11 - Love Story
Release Date: 1953-11-29An aspiring actress falls in love with a clown and marries him, but then she's ashamed to be publicly associated with him.
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Episode 12 - Laughing Boy
Release Date: 1953-12-06Glass-jawed Walter Stone attempts to rescue Kay Coughlin from a purse snatcher, but he gets hurt instead. Kay nurses him back to health and asks Walter to help her get her boyfriend jealous to goad him into proposing.
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Episode 13 - The Faith of Chata
Release Date: 1953-12-13A little girl in a Mexican village falls desperately ill and places her faith in God through her patron saint, regardless of whether she survives or not.
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Episode 14 - The Night My Father Came Home
Release Date: 1953-12-20Charming holiday story about a small boy who frequents a postal station, chatting incessantly with a disillusioned laborer.
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Episode 15 - Hotel Irritant
Release Date: 1953-12-27Corporate hotel snoop Sally Webster creates unpleasant situations in a hotel to test its operation while becoming impressed with the character and ambition of hotel clerk Newton Ralston.
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Episode 16 - Inga
Release Date: 1954-01-03Indomitable Inga Helborg convinces a bank president to conditionally reverse the foreclosure of the family farm and takes labor from the prison farm by which both actions she successfully demonstrates her resolute and trusting nature.
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Episode 17 - Lady Killer
Release Date: 1954-01-10A mystery writer discovers she is marked for death.
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Episode 18 - Secret Answer
Release Date: 1954-01-17A spirited wife challenges the stodgy attitudes of researcher husband by refusing to respond to one of his survey questions: "If you had it to do all over again, would you marry the same person?"
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Episode 19 - Big Little Lie
Release Date: 1954-01-24Beverly Washburn plays a lonely schoolgirl whose decision to start a rumor about her mother turns into classroom blackmail. Jeannette Nolan portrays her stern Aunt.
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Episode 20 - The Hollywood Story
Release Date: 1954-01-31Madge Mason based on her prowess as a local actress in a small Iowa town goes to Hollywood and meets with only modest success but when it appears she is on verge of major success she has second thoughts about the price of fame.
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Episode 21 - A Family Out of Us
Release Date: 1954-02-07The son of an affluent couple, whose father has little time for him, joins the Cub Scouts.
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Episode 22 - Act of Faith
Release Date: 1954-02-14Eddie Albert plays a mild-mannered soul whose happy marriage to an earthy woman seems to be coming to an end.
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Episode 23 - The New York Story
Release Date: 1954-02-28A glamorous mother and wife who dallies with other men's attention takes her own husband and son for granted. Clever opening schoolroom sequence in which the moms comment in theirs heads about each other. The climax in which the woman's mind races with impending terror about her son's lateness might seem melodramatic, but it's all too real for many of us who worry about loved ones. Mabel Albertson of "Bewitched" and so many other series plays the PTA spokesperson.
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Episode 24 - Nobody's Boy
Release Date: 1954-03-07Fictionalized story of a Chicago juvenile delinquent who meets Jack Robbins, founder of the BBR, a boy's club that still exists today. A familiar face in one scene is the ubiquitous Argentina Brunetti, to whom Dean Martin sang "That's Amore" in "The Caddy." At the end of the story, Young introduces actor Chick Chandler and the real-life Jack Robbins.
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Episode 25 - The Count of Ten
Release Date: 1954-03-14Tiger Tipton retired from a successful boxing career at his wife's insistence. Now broke from her expensive medical care, he arranges one last fight with the champ, but he can't let his wife find out.
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Episode 26 - The Clara Schumann Story
Release Date: 1954-03-21The great composer and his concert pianist wife, whose seemingly idyllic marriage descends into mental breakdown.
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Episode 27 - Son, This is Your Father
Release Date: 1954-03-28Flashbacks tell the story of a charming but irresponsible ex-husband who re-enters the lives of his wife and son. The father/son relationship is similar to that of Gloria's son and her first husband on the series, "Modern Family." In this episode, Young's character's name is "Ginger," a decade before her co-star, Alan Hale Jr., addressed Tina Louise by the name on "Gilligan's Island."
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Episode 28 - The First Man to Ask Her
Release Date: 1954-04-04Offbeat comic tale of a sheltered young woman whose house is turned upside down by an eccentric lady, her cowboy son -- and his horse. Jock Mahoney makes the first of his many appearances in the series, playing nephew "Andy" to Frances Bavier, who would ironically play Aunt Bee to Andy Griffith less than a decade later.
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Episode 29 - Man's Estate
Release Date: 1954-04-11Profile of a teenager who wants to be treated as an adult.
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Episode 30 - Forest Ranger
Release Date: 1954-04-18A forest ranger's wife unknowing allows into her house an escaped convict who seeks revenge on her husband.
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Episode 31 - The Enchanted Schoolteacher
Release Date: 1954-04-25A near-sighted, reclusive teacher is romanced by the father of her shyest pupil and discovers what she's been missing.
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Episode 32 - The Judgment
Release Date: 1954-05-02A woman is plagued by guilt when her politician husband killed a pedestrian in a car accident. Instead of taking responsibility, he was elated to see someone else arrested and blamed for it.
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Episode 33 - Oh, My Aching Heart
Release Date: 1954-05-09Nora is hired as a secretary under the condition that she disguise herself to be old and unattractive, so as not to distract her boss. When her boss has need to drop in to Nora's home, he is taken with the young lady he finds there, who claims to be Nora's sister.
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Episode 34 - Dear Midge
Release Date: 1954-05-16Midge is an unmarried social worker with an overactive imagination, including having a curmudgeonly fairy to guide her. Her fairy gets her into sticky situations, and she is afraid of making a poor impression on her attractive neighbor.
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Episode 35 - Something Always Happens
Release Date: 1954-05-23A young widow's beau won't marry her until he establishes some financial capital, so she deceives him into believing he won a $5000 raffle.
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Episode 36 - Lady in Wet Paint
Release Date: 1954-05-30A new teacher in a remote Native American community struggles to get children out of work and into school, and she ends up instigating a strike against the local farmer who employs most of the natives.