Famous Film Festival

Famous Film Festival was American television's first prime-time movie series. It aired Sunday nights 7:30-9:00 pm (EST) on ABC during the 1955-56 television season, switching to Saturday nights (7:30-9 pm) during its second and final season, 1956-57.

In 1955, ABC obtained permission to broadcast 35 British movies, the rights of which were owned by English film mogul J. Arthur Rank. Titles of these included The Man in Grey (1943), The Lavender Hill Mob (1951), Odd Man Out (1947), Caesar and Cleopatra (1945), The Red Shoes (1948), and Hamlet (1948). However, many of these, such as Hamlet, ran two full hours or longer, and were either drastically cut to fit a ninety-minute time slot or shown in two installments a week apart. (It was not until November 3, 1956, with CBS's first presentation of MGM's The Wizard of Oz (1939), that an uncut film lasting more than ninety minutes was telecast in one evening on a television network.)

ABC broadcast all Famous Film entries in black-and-white, despite several of them being photographed and exhibited theatrically in color. Thus, such films as Stairway to Heaven (1946) and The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) would not be seen by American viewers in color until years later when they were released for exhibition by local and independent television stations.

Other British films from J. Arthur Rank Productions obtained at the same time were shown as part of ABC's daytime Afternoon Film Festival, which aired weekdays from 3:00-5:00 pm (ET). This show premiered January 16, 1956 and ended August 2, 1957, replaced by American Bandstand, which introduced Dick Clark to network television audiences and went on to become one of daytime's most popular programs, especially with teenagers.