+ The Prudential Family Hour of Stars ran from 1948 to 1949 and was a program where they featured a wide assortment of dramatic plays with such stars as Humphrey Bogart, Bette Davis and Barbara Stanwyck just to name a few. Initially promoted as a rotating ensemble production featuring six major Hollywood movie stars, the build-up to the premiere also promised that major Hollywood Film Sextet in original dramas, whatever that hoped to convey. It was an ambitious undertaking for the era to be sure. The initial six promised Film stars were: Humphrey Bogart Bette Davis Gregory Peck Ginger Rogers Barbara Stanwyck Robert Taylor A stunning promised line-up to be sure. All six promised actors represented some of Film's most famous and popular names of the era. But managing and scheduling such a prestigious core of feature artists ultimately proved to be--as might be expected-- more like wrangling a herd of cats, even for a sponsor with the deep pockets of The Prudential. The schedule held up about as promised through the first four or five rotations, but soon proved to be all but impossible to sustain beyond The Prudential's initial commitment of twenty-six programs. By the production's twenty-sixth episode: Humphrey Bogart had appeared in his only two productions of the entire run: Destination and Mink Gloves Bette Davis had appeared in only two productions: Time In Boston and Three Hours (with Ray Milland) Gregory Peck had appeared in five productions: the premiere production John Jones Vice President, The Driven Snow, the Christmas production Lullaby of Christmas, The Man on the Third Floor, and Impact--and was never heard again for the remainder of the canon. Ginger Rogers had appeared in four productions: Lady Alice and the Dog Biscuit, The Secret Diary of Mistress Croft, Appointment In Springfield, and The Capture of Kitty Stone and would appear in only one more production, Yo Ho Ho for Emily, for the remainder of the canon. Barbara Stanwyck had appeared in The Flowering Thorn, Moonlight Sonata, and Some Small Nobility and would appear in only one more production, The Storm and the Cypress, for the remainder of the canon. Robert Taylor had appeared in only two productions, Long Way Home and The Asking Price and would never again be heard in the canon. Of course the math didn't quite add up at all. The six promised stars had appeared in only eighteen of the series' first twenty-six productions. The newcomers to the rotating line-up for the first twenty-six weeks were Van Johnson and Ray Milland, who headlined six of the remaining eight productions between them. The other two productions starred Burt Lancaster and Jane Wyman respectively. Not that the listening audience had been cheated in any way: Van Johnson, Ray Milland, Jane Wyman and Burt Lancaster had been fast rising Hollywood Film stars throughout the 1940s. Principal Actors: Gregory Peck, Robert Taylor, Humphrey Bogart, Barbara Stanwyck, Ginger Rogers, Ray Milland, Bette Davis, Robert Taylor, Jane Wyman, Burt Lancaster, Van Johnson, Joseph Cotten, John Lund, Ava Gardner, Richard Widmark, Diana Lynn, Kirk Douglas, Celeste Holm, John Payne, Audrey Trotter, Herbert Marshall, Wanda Hendrix, Edmund Gwenn, Joan Bennett, Victor Jory, John Hodiak, Wendell Corey, Edward Arnold, Jane Powell, William Powell, Irene Dunne, Ronald Colman, Dana Andrews, Loretta Young, James Stewart, Sarah Churchill, Gene Kelly, Frank Lovejoy, John McIntyre, Lurene Tuttle, Barbara Fuller, Paul Frees Click here to read more about Family Hour Of Stars