A Place to Experiment

By serving up a smooth blend of Hollywood glamour and surefire drama, Lux Radio Theater has won a weekly radio audience estimated at 30 million. Last week, the tried & true Lux formula was borrowed for a new television series, Your Lucky Strike Theater (Mon. 9:30 p.m. E.S.T, NBC-TV), produced and narrated by Cinemactor Robert Montgomery.

As a starter, the new show offered a glossy version of Somerset Maugham's Malayan melodrama, The Letter. Madeleine Carroll, playing her first TV role, was the unfaithful wife who murders her lover. Though the show had its little flaws, mostly caused by first-night jitters, it was a production of considerable finish and skill. In a medium that could use more good actors, directors and scripts, Theater promised to be a first-rate drawing card. Already programmed are Jane Wyatt in Kitty Foyle, Elliott Nugent in The Male Animal and Producer-Narrator Montgomery himself in Ride the Pink Horse. Budgeted at an estimated $30,000 for each one-hour performance, the Theater is one of television's highest-priced shows.

Montgomery, who had some promising ideas about directing movies (his Lady in the Lake substituted the camera for the hero's eyes), intends to experiment with TV techniques. By spending nine days on rehearsal of each fortnightly Theater show, he hopes to find ample time for experimentation. Says he: "Quite possibly we will find things we can do on TV that cannot be done in the cinema, theater, or radio."

Another big Hollywood name was moving into TV. Bing Crosby Enterprises, Inc. began production last week of ten 26-minute films, including Oscar Wilde's The Canterville Ghost and Edward Everett Hale's The Man Without a Country. The films, to be shown on NBC's Fireside Theater (Tues. 9 p.m. E.S.T.), cost $12,000 apiece, will be made at the rate of one every two days.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.