Four Star Playhouse aired on radio from NBC on Sunday nights at 8:00 PM for 13 episodes. Premiere episode was on 1949-07-03 and the final episode was 1949-09-25. The series was primarily an anthology type drama. The shows starred Rosalind Russell, Fred MacMurray, Loretta Young and Robert Cummings.
The series was brought back as Four Star Playhouse as a television anthology series that ran from 1952 to 1956, sponsored in its first bi-weekly season by The Singer Company; Bristol-Myers became an alternate sponsor when it became a weekly series in the fall of 1953. The original premise was that Charles Boyer, Ida Lupino, David Niven, and Dick Powell would take turns starring in episodes. However, several other performers took the lead from time to time, including Ronald Colman and Joan Fontaine.
Blake Edwards was among the writers and directors who contributed to the series. Edwards created the recurring character (eight episodes) of illegal gambling house operator Willie Dante for Dick Powell to play on this series. The character was later revamped and spun off in his own series starring Howard Duff, then-husband of Lupino.
The pilot for Meet McGraw, starring Frank Lovejoy, aired here (under that title, 25 February 1954), as did another episode in which Lovejoy recreated his role of Chicago newspaper reporter Randy Stone, from the radio drama Nightbeat (titled "Search in the Night," 5 November 1953).
Guest stars included Dayton Lummis, as a warden in "Vote of Confidence" and as Whit Lonigan in "A Championship Affair" (both 1954).
Four Star Playhouse s03e13 The Answer.mp4 (Aired: 12/23/1954)
TV
A cynical Hollywood writer returns to his hometown. At a bar he meets a drunken, disillusioned playwright. The writer challenges the playwright to relate his play, which he does, holding the audience rapt in his gripping recital.
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