Kraft Theatre

- Season 11

(1957)

A hobo is arrested as a suspect in a murder. The man confesses to robbing the woman's corpse, but says he's innocent of the killing. Nevertheless, a mob forms and decides to lynch the prisoner.

A Confederate soldier is injured in his escape from a Union prison. He finds refuge in a nearby farmhouse and proceeds to fall in love with a young Yankee woman.

A jobless combat veteran who desires some publicity stages a phony hold-up. Instead of a gun, he uses a pencil and then turns himself into police. For his effort, he's offered a job by his unharmed victim.

As a chef, a GI is a whiz in the kitchen. As a soldier, he's undisciplined and is constantly getting into trouble. His shenanigans bring a gruff general down with him.

Know what this is about? Be the first one to add a plot.

A modern day Romeo and Juliet story of teen love is set against a background of gang violence.

The two contestants on "The Million Dollar Quiz" are placed in their isolation booths, ready to compete for $120,000. As the host prepares to ask the big-money question (about murder), he falls over dead, poisoned during the show.

Effie's the owner of a dive diner who constantly reminisces about her late, great husband Rocco: a gangster sentenced to the chair. Danny's a small-time pickpocket from the old days she's kept on as cook. He's madly in love with Effie and wants to impress her by doing something big. Danny picks the keys off a dining bank truck guard so he can heist the vehicle and its loot once its filled with cash.

A travelling family of country music performers, the Singing Canfields, face a crisis. His daughter Marietta has fallen for a farm boy and wants to settle down and get married. Papa Canfield will not stand for this; not only will he lose his best singer, but also his guitarist. Musician Troy, sure Marietta would one day marry him, decides to take action with his gun.

An emotionally unstable young man brings heartache into the lives of two sisters: one is a dress shop owner and the other a singer.

Sometimes heroes happen by accident. In an Iron Curtain country, a non-political engineer accidental falls into a gutter during a rally. This unplanned mistake leads to him being declared a hero by the underground.

The Polish-American father of three daughters takes great pride in entering the annual polka contest each year with one of the girls. Last year, when his oldest daughter married, the second daughter Theckla danced and won the contest with Papa. However, this year, Theckla is in love, and she refuses to put on the old-country costume and dance.

This is the story of Ariaban, a fourth priest who also saw the star over Bethlehem. He sold all of his belongings to buy gifts for the Christ, but was detained from joining the other wise men because he wanted to care for a dying man. After years of searching, he finally finds his king: dying on the cross.

The networks' battle for ratings causes headaches for TV star Bill Brogan. For seven seasons, his variety hour has been a success. Now he's getting competition from a new young singer airing opposite him on another network. He's forced to jump into publicity fray to keep the upstart from stealing his audience.

A high level government appointee is suspected of espionage.

A respectable businessman is forced back into to a life of criminal activity, something that he thought that he had long since left behind.

A well-liked policeman dreams that he will have a shoot-out with a criminal on a specific day. While walking his beat on that night, he encounters the thug of his dreams.

Joe is on the run from the mob after he confesses his part in a drug ring to the police.

A beautiful woman, staying at an inn, plots the murder of the wife of the man she is in love with. A young girl, also a guest, learns of her plan, but is so fascinated with the older woman that she keeps the deadly secret.

An average citizen witnesses a murder. His family then faces intimidation from the killer.

A nagging wife accuses her shiftless husband of having married her for her money and threatens to kill him. The husband disappears, an unidentifiable body is found, and she's convicted of murder and executed. Several months later, the husband reappears.

A shy girl who lost her immigrant parents is taken in by a stranger, Joe, and nursed back to health. She lost her ability to speak in a concentration camp; Joe helps her to regain her words.

A Japanese and an American soldier find themselves trapped on an island together during World War II. They are both determined to be the victor in a battle to the death.

Bribery and corruption of public officials come into play in this story of underhanded building contractors. A corrupt inspector comes up against one honest contractor.

A disturbed young girl is in a school that is set up to turn troubled kids into well-adjusted, respectable citizens. However, she finds herself locking horns with some adults at the school she is convinced are against her.

A Scotland Yard inspector is assigned to investigate the murder of a young man who, as it turned out, was the fiancée of the inspector's daughter. The inspector, however, has a secret - he is the one who committed the murder.

Todays theme is a Three Plays by Tennessee Williams: Moony's Kid Don't Cry/The Last of My Solid Gold Watches/This Property Is Condemned.

Two young Polish men are arrested by the Communist authorities in Warsaw and thrown in prison, where they spend the next five years. They are never told what their "crimes" were and, in fact, are never tried in court. While in prison they wrote a book, and that is the basis for this episode.

A prizefighter at the end of his career is persuaded to have one more "farewell" fight for some big money. There's only one catch: gangsters are behind the match, and they expect him to take a dive.

A group of shady characters from a mining town wind up stuck in a blizzard with a naive young couple. The situation brings out the best, and worst, in everyone.

The rise and fall of a corrupt politician, who makes his friends richer and retains power by dint of a populist appeal.

Only an assassin's bullet, it seems, will stop Willie Stark.

A drunken mother and lazy, no-good father has made Ciske a troubled, and troublesome, student. A caring and concerned teacher and a handicapped classmate believe that they can help him turn his life around.

During World War I, a beautiful Georgia "belle" finds herself being pursued by four army officers from a nearby base.

Investigating the murder of a young woman named Annie Boone, two homicide detectives are startled to discover that they are getting vastly different descriptions of the girl from people who knew her intimately--her mother says she wasn't very bright but her father says she was brilliant. A male friend describes her as a wild, carefree "party girl" type, but another says she was shy, withdrawn and retiring. The detectives set out to find out exactly who Annie really was.

A television game-show contestant, who has won a lot of money, is scheduled to appear in an episode where he will be given the chance to win the show's $16,000 jackpot. Before the show goes on the air, however, he is found murdered.

A lonely widow is constantly calling the police to report a burglar breaking into her house. The police ignore her complaints until one day she is found murdered.

A teenage girl solves a "whodunit" murder game. Later she visits her uncle on the French Riviera and, buoyed by her success in the murder game, starts looking into a killing that occurred seven years previously, in which the suspects included a butler and a possibly corrupt cop.

A cop is killed on duty, reportedly while breaking up a gambling ring. When the investigation focuses on one particular suspect, the precinct captain wants to immediately charge the man with murder. However, a detective investigating the case begins to suspect that the dead officer wasn't quite as squeaky-clean as he was being made out to be.

A private charter plane carrying two businessmen crashes and kills all aboard. While investigating the crash, police discover that a third passenger never boarded the plane, and begin to suspect that the crash may have not have been an accident after all but a scheme by the third passenger to fake his own death.

A reporter sets out to investigate the murder of a Pulitzer Prize-winning colleague. He discovers that the man wasn't quite as squeaky-clean as was commonly believed: it turns out that he was a blackmailer, and there are more than a few people who had reason to want to see him dead.

Two college students hitching their way back to school. A fierce storm arises, and they take shelter in a local farmer's barn. The next day on the radio they hear that the daughter of the farmer who gave them shelter has been murdered, and the boys are shocked to hear that a description of the killers matches them perfectly.

A wealthy publisher has come to regret his quick marriage to a beautiful woman once he realizes she's cheating on him. He meets a man who can get rid of his "problem", and hires him to kill his wife. Afterwards, however, he changes his mind, and how he must find the would-be assassin before he carries out his assignment.

A tough veteran cop, expecting to be promoted to a supervisor position, is passed over, and finds himself assigned to a homicide by the man who took what he considered to be his job. His new boss warns him against using the brutal tactics he is infamous for, but the cop soon ditches his partner and pays a visit to the suspect in the case, in order to "interrogate" him--alone.

Elderly Aunt Violet lets it be known that she's particularly afraid of one of her heirs, who she thinks is greedy enough to do away with her to get her money. Not long after hiring a new gardener, Violet disappears. Her friends and neighbors suspect that she has been killed by the greedy heir, but her niece Helen decides to search the entire countryside to find out what happened to her aunt.

A loud, obnoxious former football player has alienated his neighbors with his boorish behavior, and also because they know he married his wife for her money. When her dead body washes up on an isolated beach, the husband is arrested and charged with her murder. Although he insists he didn't kill his wife, he refuses to hire the kind of lawyer who could prove it.

An ambitious politician running for governor is informed by his wife that she's leaving him and getting a divorce. He tells her that, in order not to harm his chances in the election, she had better stay with him until after the campaign. When he arrives home one night shortly afterward, he finds his wife fighting with an intruder, and he is then struck on the head and knocked out. When he regains consciousness, he discovers his wife lying on the floor, dead.

A businessman, determined to let nothing stop his rise up the corporate ladder, neglects his wife and, in addition, is having an affair with his secretary. However, in order to keep up appearances, he refuses to give his wife a divorce. Complications ensue.

A new husband takes over his elderly father's hardware store, with the husband running the store and the wife taking care of the father and a somewhat dotty aunt who lives upstairs. However, when the father catches his daughter-in-law in a passionate kiss with another man, she decides it's time to get rid of the old man before he blabs to her husband.

A sophisticated, upper-crust British lawyer turns to a much shadier colleague to clear him when he's charged with murdering a somewhat disreputable woman.

A man on trial for kidnapping and killing a child admits to his lawyer that he wrote ransom notes to the child's parents, but steadfastly denies having any part in the kidnapping or the murder.