General Motors Presents – Nostalgia Central

1 9 5 2 – 1 9 6 1 (Canada)
303 x 60 minute episodes

Produced in Toronto for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), this weekly anthology presented standalone one-hour dramas of romance, adventure, and mystery, as well as refreshing comedies.

Initially titled CBC Theatre (1953–1954) and then General Motors Theatre (1954–1958), the series provided a vital launchpad for Canadian talent, fostering early career opportunities for actors and writers – many of whom would become global household names – including early-career performances from William Shatner, Leslie Nielsen, Patrick Macnee, Lorne Greene, Christopher Plummer, James Doohan, Shane Rimmer and Barry Morse.

The series had a notable record for using Canadian material, although the producers – obligated to produce a weekly drama – had to import television scripts from the United States.

In the l958-59 season, twenty-two of the shows were written by Canadians. The following season, the network boasted that seventy per cent of the scripts were to be homegrown.

That season also included dramas from the earlier years of television, such as Murder Story, which Leslie Duncan had originally adapted for television in 1954, and the US writer Reginald Rose’s The Incredible World Of Horace Ford.

Other plays included ‘The Desperate Search’, by Len Peterson; ‘The Discoverers’, by Max Rosenfeld and George Salverson; ‘Love Story – 1910’, by Leslie MacFarlane; ‘The Oddball’, by Bernard Slade; and ‘Shadow Of A Pale Horse’, by Bruce Stewart; as well as adaptations of C.P. Snow’s ‘The New Men’; Somerset Maugham’s ‘The Land Of Promise’; and Ibsen’s ‘Hedda Gabler’.

Regular producers included Ronald Weyman, Leo Orenstein, Melwyn Breen, and Basil Coleman, with less frequent contributions from Paul Almond and Henry Kaplan.

The 1960 season opened with Douglas Rain starring in ‘The Night They Killed Joe Howe’, written by Joseph Schull and produced by Harvey Hart. Comic writer Bernard Slade returned with a play about a marriage agency, ‘Blue Is For Boys’, produced by Melwyn Breen.

Other productions included ‘Friday Deadline’, by Marcel Dube; ‘Kiss Mama Goodbye’, by Paul Wayne; ‘Death Is A Spanish Dancer’, by Wendell Mayes; Melwyn Breen’s adaptation of William Saroyan’s ‘My Heart’s In The Highlands’; James Elward’s ‘Hide Me In The Mountains’, also produced by Breen; ‘Where I Live’, written by Clive Exton and produced by Basil Coleman; Leo Orenstein’s production of ‘The Vigilante’, by Arthur Spinner; and ‘The Long Night’, which brought together writer Joseph Schull and producer Harvey Hart once more.

Writers Charles Israel, Mordecai Richler, Mavor Moore, M. Charles Cohen, John Coulter, and Len Peterson also contributed plays to the series.

Besides Hart, Breen, and Coleman, staff producers included Ronald Weyman, Leo Orenstein, and David Gardner, and freelancers Norman Campbell, George McCowan, and Paul Almond also produced shows for the series.

For the summer of 196l, the end of the series, General Motors presented dramas from the UK series Interplay.

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