Shower of Stars is an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 variety television series

Variety show

A variety show, also known as variety arts or variety entertainment, is an entertainment made up of a variety of acts, especially musical performances and sketch comedy, and normally introduced by a compère or host. Other types of acts include magic, animal and circus acts, acrobatics, juggling...

 broadcast in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 from 1954 to 1958 by CBS

CBS

CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...

. The series was also known as Chrysler Shower of Stars. Unusually at the time for CBS, the series was telecast in color.

Overview

Shower of Stars was typically composed of musical comedy revues with an occasional straight play. It was shown on approximately a monthly basis during its run (1954-1958), and was designed to contrast with the heavy drama

Drama

Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. The term comes from a Greek word meaning "action" , which is derived from "to do","to act" . The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a...

tic content of the program with which it shared its timeslot, Climax! Both programs were sponsored by Chrysler Corporation

Chrysler

Chrysler Group LLC is a multinational automaker headquartered in Auburn Hills, Michigan, USA. Chrysler was first organized as the Chrysler Corporation in 1925....

, and both were hosted by William Lundigan

William Lundigan

William Lundigan was an American film actor. His films include Dodge City , The Fighting 69th , The Sea Hawk , Santa Fe Trail , Dishonored Lady , Pinky , Love Nest with Marilyn Monroe, The House on Telegraph Hill , I'd Climb the Highest Mountain and Inferno...

.

Famous entertainers of the era who appeared multiple times on Shower of Stars included Jack Benny

Jack Benny

Jack Benny was an American comedian, vaudevillian, and actor for radio, television, and film...

, Bob Crosby

Bob Crosby

George Robert "Bob" Crosby was an American dixieland bandleader and vocalist, best known for his group the Bob-Cats.-Family:...

, Betty Grable

Betty Grable

Elizabeth Ruth "Betty" Grable was an American actress, dancer and singer.Her iconic bathing suit photo made her the number-one pin-up girl of the World War II era. It was later included in the LIFE magazine project "100 Photos that Changed the World"...

, Van Johnson

Van Johnson

Van Johnson was an American film and television actor and dancer who was a major star at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios during and after World War II....

, Shirley MacLaine

Shirley MacLaine

Shirley MacLaine is an American film and theater actress, singer, dancer, activist and author, well-known for her beliefs in new age spirituality and reincarnation. She has written a large number of autobiographical works, many dealing with her spiritual beliefs as well as her Hollywood career...

, Fredric March

Fredric March

Fredric March was an American stage and film actor. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1932 for Dr. Jekyll and Mr...

, Frankie Laine

Frankie Laine

Frankie Laine, born Francesco Paolo LoVecchio , was a successful American singer, songwriter, and actor whose career spanned 75 years, from his first concerts in 1930 with a marathon dance company to his final performance of "That's My Desire" in 2005...

, Ethel Merman

Ethel Merman

Ethel Merman was an American actress and singer. Known primarily for her powerful voice and roles in musical theatre, she has been called "the undisputed First Lady of the musical comedy stage." Among the many standards introduced by Merman in Broadway musicals are "I Got Rhythm", "Everything's...

, Basil Rathbone

Basil Rathbone

Sir Basil Rathbone, KBE, MC, Kt was an English actor. He rose to prominence in England as a Shakespearean stage actor and went on to appear in over 70 films, primarily costume dramas, swashbucklers, and, occasionally, horror films...

, Red Skelton

Red Skelton

Richard Bernard "Red" Skelton was an American comedian who is best known as a top radio and television star from 1937 to 1971. Skelton's show business career began in his teens as a circus clown and went on to vaudeville, Broadway, films, radio, TV, night clubs and casinos, all while pursuing...

, Mario Lanza

Mario Lanza

right|thumb|[[MGM]] still, circa 1949Mario Lanza was an American tenor and Hollywood movie star of the late 1940s and the 1950s. The son of Italian emigrants, he began studying to be a professional singer at the age of 16....

 and Ed Wynn

Ed Wynn

Ed Wynn was a popular American comedian and actor noted for his Perfect Fool comedy character, his pioneering radio show of the 1930s, and his later career as a dramatic actor....

. March and Rathbone were starred as Ebenezer Scrooge

Ebenezer Scrooge

Ebenezer Scrooge is the principal character in Charles Dickens's 1843 novel, A Christmas Carol. At the beginning of the novel, Scrooge is a cold-hearted, tight-fisted and greedy man, who despises Christmas and all things which give people happiness...

 and Jacob Marley

Jacob Marley

Jacob Marley is a fictional character who appears in Charles Dickens' 1843 novella A Christmas Carol.- Relationship with Scrooge:In life, Marley was the business partner of Ebenezer Scrooge. As teenagers, both men had been apprenticed in business and met as clerks in another business...

, respectively, in a 1954 music

Music

Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...

al adaptation of Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens

Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...

's A Christmas Carol

A Christmas Carol

A Christmas Carol is a novella by English author Charles Dickens first published by Chapman & Hall on 17 December 1843. The story tells of sour and stingy Ebenezer Scrooge's ideological, ethical, and emotional transformation after the supernatural visits of Jacob Marley and the Ghosts of...

, with songs by Bernard Herrmann

Bernard Herrmann

Bernard Herrmann was an American composer noted for his work in motion pictures.An Academy Award-winner , Herrmann is particularly known for his collaborations with director Alfred Hitchcock, most famously Psycho, North by Northwest, The Man Who Knew Too Much, and Vertigo...

 and Maxwell Anderson

Maxwell Anderson

James Maxwell Anderson was an American playwright, author, poet, journalist and lyricist.-Early years:Anderson was born in Atlantic, Pennsylvania, the second of eight children to William Lincoln "Link" Anderson, a Baptist minister, and Charlotte Perrimela Stephenson, both of Scots and Irish descent...

. This was the first musical version of the story to be televised, and the first in color. Rathbone would go on to play Scrooge himself, in another TV musical adaptation of the story, the 1956 version of The Stingiest Man in Town. (Rathbone would again play Scrooge in a 1958 non-musical British half-hour television version of the story, with ironically enough, Fredric March as narrator.) The most frequently-appearing artist, however, was Jack Benny

Jack Benny

Jack Benny was an American comedian, vaudevillian, and actor for radio, television, and film...

, who appeared in one role or another in a majority of the program's broadcasts.

Awards and nominations

Year	Result	Award	Category	Recipient	Episode
1955	Nominated	Emmy Award Emmy Award An Emmy Award, often referred to simply as the Emmy, is a television production award, similar in nature to the Peabody Awards but more focused on entertainment, and is considered the television equivalent to the Academy Awards and the Grammy Awards .A majority of Emmys are presented in various...	Best Scoring of a Dramatic or Variety Program	Gordon Jenkins Gordon Jenkins Gordon Hill Jenkins was an American arranger, composer and pianist who was an influential figure in popular music in the 1940s and 1950s, renowned for his lush string arrangements...	-
	Nominated	Emmy Award	Best Original Music Composed for TV	Bernard Herrmann Bernard Herrmann Bernard Herrmann was an American composer noted for his work in motion pictures.An Academy Award-winner , Herrmann is particularly known for his collaborations with director Alfred Hitchcock, most famously Psycho, North by Northwest, The Man Who Knew Too Much, and Vertigo...	"A Christmas Carol"
	Nominated	Emmy Award	Best Individual Program of the Year	-	"A Christmas Carol"
	Nominated	Emmy Award	Best Art Direction of a Live Show	Robert Tyler Lee	-
	Nominated	Emmy Award	Best Actor in a Single Performance	Fredric March Fredric March Fredric March was an American stage and film actor. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1932 for Dr. Jekyll and Mr...	"A Christmas Carol"
	Won	Emmy Award	Best Art Direction of a Filmed Show	Ralph Berger & Albert M. Pyke	"A Christmas Carol"
1956	Nominated	Emmy Award	Best Variety Series	-	-