Celanese Theatre

- Season 1

(1951)

Story of small-town life in turn-of-the-century America, and a young boy's problems facing adolescence.

Susan Trexel is a wealthy socialite, who while vacationing in Europe undergoes a religious transformation. On her return to America, Susan takes on the task of spreading her new found religious experience with her closest friends - only to drive them crazy. Meanwhile, her husband Barrie, and daughter Blossom yearn for a stable family life. Barrie will even become sober, hoping that Susan will heed her own advice, and save their marriage and family.

Immigrant radical Bartolomeo Romagna is falsely condemned and executed for a payroll robbery. Years later, his son Mio sets out to find the truth of the crime and to bring to account the gangster Trock Estrella.

Old friends Kit Marlowe and Millie Drake adopt contrasting lifestyles: Kit is a single, critically acclaimed author while married Millie writes popular pulp novels.

Successful attorney has his Jewish heritage and poverty-stricken background brought home to him when he learns his wife has been unfaithful.

Playwright Gaylord Esterbrook scores a hit with his first Broadway play, both with the critics and with leading lady Linda Paige. He and Linda are happily married until a patroness of the arts convinces Esterbrook to forget about comedy and concentrate on writing a tragedy. The end result nearly destroys his career and his marriage.

The Farleys are worried when the maverick of the family, Sister Christina, arrives from the nunnery to spend Christmas. They think she may decide to claim, by their father's will, their town house instead of the farm.

An archduke who had been banished from Austria returns to Vienna for a reunion of his old fellow aristocrats and meets up with the former love of his life, who is now married to a psychoanalyst.

A young woman reunites with her estranged father and falls in love with a sailor, but struggles to tell them about her dark past.

A dissolute rich society boy marries a worldly nightclub singer, and she begins to have a wholly unexpected effect on him.

A waitress, a hobo and a bank robber get mixed up at a lonely diner in the desert.

Tom Collier has had a great relationship with Daisy, but when he decides to marry, it is not Daisy whom he asks, it is Cecelia. After the marriage, Tom is bored with the social scene and the obligations of his life. He publishes books that will sell, not books that he wants to write. Even worse, he has his old friend working as a butler and Cecelia wants him fired. When Tom tries to get back together with Daisy to renew the feelings that he once felt, Daisy turns the tables on him and leaves to protect both of them.

Pretty Bobby Halevy loves Rims Rosson, a dreamer and inventor without much going for him. Rims has a scheme of going to Manila to turn hemp into silk and become rich. But when one of her family talks Bobby into tricking Rims into marriage, the real world comes crashing down on the couple.

Twenty-four hours elapse on the stoop of a Hell's Kitchen tenement as a microcosm of the American melting pot interacts with each other during a summer heatwave.

In a small Midwestern town the lives of four sisters are turned upside down when one sister's son brings his fiancée home to meet his eccentric family for the first time.

Tony, a successful but illiterate middle-aged grape farmer, sends the photograph of his handsome young foreman, Joe, instead of his own, hoping to woo and marry Amy, a waitress in a San Francisco restaurant. Through a series of letters, the two become close and Tony invites his "future wife" to visit. When the beautiful, young Amy arrives at Tony's Napa, California ranch she falls for the wrong man thinking that Joe is the wealthy Tony. When Tony tries to win her over in broken English, she is at first furious and then charmed. But Tony breaks his legs while showing ...

An upper middle-class family is ruled by the ancient and churlish matriarch. Her daughters' marriages are all in jeopardy, with affairs and communions with the dead. It's difficult to find any solitude or sanity in the family.

In the fever-stricken areas of Cuba a brave band of scientists, doctors and U. S. Marines fight a losing battle against the deadly plague of 'Yello Jack,' until the great heroic risk taken by an Irish sergeant brings victory.

Mary, a writer working on a novel about a love triangle, is attracted to her publisher. Her suitor Jimmy is determined to break them up; he introduces Mary to the publisher's wife without telling Mary who she is.

Young Pud is orphaned and left in the care of his aged grandparents. The boy and his cantankerous old grandfather become inseparable friends. But Gramps is concerned for his grandson's future and wary of a scheming relative who seeks Pud's custody. One day Mr. Brink--an agent of Death--arrives to take Gramps "to the land where the woodbine twineth." Through a bit of trickery, Gramps confines Mr. Brink, and thus Death, to the top of an old apple tree, giving Gramps extra time to resolve issues about Pud's future.