Shower of Stars

Shower of Stars is typically composed of musical comedy revues with an occasional straight play. It was shown on approximately a monthly basis during its run (1954-1958), and was designed to contrast with the heavy dramatic content of the program with which it shared its timeslot, Climax! Both programs were sponsored by Chrysler Corporation, and both were hosted by William Lundigan. The Chrysler car commercials were often on film, but a few early episodes have the cars in the studio for live broadcast.

Famous entertainers of the era who appeared multiple times on Shower of Stars included Jack Benny, Bob Crosby, Betty Grable, Van Johnson, Shirley MacLaine, Fredric March, Frankie Laine, Ethel Merman, Basil Rathbone, Red Skelton, Mario Lanza, Ed Wynn and Liberace.

March and Rathbone starred as Ebenezer Scrooge and Jacob Marley, respectively, in a 1954 filmed (not live) musical adaptation of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol, with songs by Bernard Herrmann and Maxwell Anderson. This was the first musical version of the story to be televised, and the first in color.^[2] Rathbone would go on to play Scrooge himself, in another TV musical adaptation of the story, the 1956 version of The Stingiest Man in Town.^[2] (Rathbone would again play Scrooge in a 1958 non-musical British half-hour television version of the story, with Fredric March as narrator.) This filmed episode was produced at Desilu Studios and re-ran at Christmas time for all four years the show was on the air, giving the cast & crew time off for the holiday.

The most frequently-appearing artist, however, was Jack Benny, who joined the show as a regular in its second season, he appeared in one role or another in a majority of the program's broadcasts until the end. In episodes he was not scheduled Jack often made joke cameo appearances saying he thought he was in that episode.

The extant episodes of Shower of Stars have survived only in black-and-white kinescopes of the original color broadcasts, which have been lost. The Kinescopes were created to be shown to the Armed Forces on film. The episodes carry no copyright notice and are thus in the public domain in the United States. Several Public Domain VHS & DVD companies have released episodes (see the grid above). The Internet Archive holds seven episodes in its collection.^[3]