FORGOTTEN TELEVISION: CAVALCADE OF AMERICA (1952-1955)

CAVALCADE OF AMERICA (1952-1955) – This terrific 30-minute anthology series dramatized real-life events in U.S. history from the Revolutionary War onward. Sometimes fictional works appropriate for the series would be presented as well. Even if you don’t want to watch the show you can just pick out historical names below and look them up online.

STANDOUT EPISODES: 1952-1953

POOR RICHARD – Benjamin Franklin and John Adams surreptitiously delay pretended negotiations with General William Howe for an American surrender just to help buy time for General George Washington’s withdrawal from New York. Starring Dabbs Greer, Alan Napier and Henry Brandon.

ALL’S WELL WITH LYDIA – Lydia Darragh, a Quaker widow living in Philadelphia, obtains information about an imminent British attack and risks her life to get that information to General Washington. Thus prepared, Washington and his troops manage to hold on against the Redcoats at White Marsh from December 5th-8th, 1777. Howe, Cornwallis and their Hessian ally Knyphausen are forced to retreat back to Philadelphia. Ruth Warrick of Citizen Kane plays Lydia.  With Reginald Denny.

THE MAN WHO TOOK A CHANCE – Inventor and entrepreneur Eli Whitney (Richard Denning) pioneers interchangeable parts in muskets to keep Americans armed and ready against any European encroachment long after the Revolutionary War.

A ROMANCE TO REMEMBER – Young writer Nathaniel Hawthorne (Dan O’Herlihy of Twin Peaks) is fought over by two sisters – Elizabeth and Sophia Peabody (Fay Baker and Helen Westcott).

WHAT GOD HATH WROUGHT – Samuel Morse (Eduard Franz) invents the telegraph, then must fight hard for recognition.

NO GREATER LOVE – Clara Louise Maass serves as a nurse during the Spanish-American War in 1898 and afterward lets herself be used as a human guinea pig in the search for a Yellow Fever cure in a Havana hospital. Stars Mary Anderson. 

IN THIS CRISIS – John Honeyman (Tom Tully), one of George Washington’s spies during the Revolutionary War, poses as a Tory to bring him crucial intelligence regarding the Hessians. With John Hoyt. 

THE ARROW AND THE BOW – Andrew Johnson (Sean McClory) rises from indentured servitude to the Senate to Vice President and – after Abe Lincoln’s assassination – president. With FRANCES BAVIER and Elena Verdugo.

NEW SALEM STORY – A dramatization of young Abraham Lincoln’s romance with Ann Rutledge. Starring James Griffith and actress Jeff Donnell.

THE INDOMITABLE BLACKSMITH – In 1830, Vermont blacksmith Thomas Davenport invents the first working electric motor, but at the cost of his blacksmithing business.

THE GINGERBREAD MAN – In 1776, German baker Christopher Ludwick arrives in Philadelphia and manages to convince 123 Hessian soldiers to desert from the British and join Washington’s army.

NIGHT STRIKE – American naval hero John Paul Jones, played by the Amazing Colossal Glenn Langan, raids Whitehaven, England in 1778. With James Best.

PIRATE’S CHOICE – Pirate Jean Lafitte (William Bishop) decides to help General Andrew Jackson (Morris Ankrum) fight the British during their campaign to take New Orleans in January of 1815, the final clash of the War of 1812.

THE TENDERFOOT – Future President Theodore Roosevelt’s (Tom Bown) transformational sabbatical out west in 1886 ultimately results in him enduring a blizzard to capture 3 Dakota outlaws. His faith in himself restored, he returns to New York politics. Also stars LEE VAN CLEEF and Edgar Buchanan. 

STANDOUT EPISODES: 1953-1954

THE STOLEN GENERAL – In British-held Rhode Island during the Revolutionary War, female American spy Dorothea Meadows pretends to be interested in British General Prescott. She lures him to a supposed rendezvous, where America’s Colonel Barton ambushes him. BARBARA BILLINGSLEY plays the slinky Dorothea Meadows.

BREAKFAST AT NANCY’S – Amanda Blake, Miss Kitty herself, stars as Revolutionary War heroine Nancy Hart of Georgia. Nancy regularly conceals American messengers under the floorboards of her cabin. When a Redcoat gets wise to the current messenger under the floorboards Nancy uses a combination of cunning and violence to save him.

SUNSET AT APPOMMATOX – In 1865, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrenders to Union General Ulysses S. Grant. This dramatization is based on 14 eyewitness accounts of the meeting.

A TIME TO GROW – America makes the Louisiana Purchase from France in 1803. Stacy Keach is a cast member.

TIGER’S TAIL – In 1870s New York, political cartoonist Thomas Nast continues satirizing the corrupt Democrat Mayor Boss Tweed in the face of Tweed’s threats and slanders against him. Ultimately, Boss Tweed goes down.   

THE LAST WILL OF DANIEL WEBSTER – As former Senator and Secretary of State Daniel Webster lies on his deathbed, his spirits are kept up by family and friends praising him for his many accomplishments. 

MAJOR PAULINE – During the Civil War, actress Pauline Cushman serves the North as a spy behind Confederate lines.

BETRAYAL – Dan O’Herlihy portrays American Benedict Arnold as he plots to betray the United States by turning over to them the fortress at West Point during the Revolutionary War. 

THE RIDERS OF THE PONY EXPRESS – From April 1860 to October 1861, the Pony Express served to convey news and much more from Missouri to California and back. FOR MY LOOK AT SEVERAL PONY EXPRESS RIDERS CLICK HERE.

MR. PEALE’S DINOSAUR – In 1794, artist and Revolutionary War veteran Charles Willson Peale (Lowell Gilmore) risks his career and more in his obsession to excavate and reconstruct a fossilized Mastodon. He intends the incredible find for the Philadelphia Museum.

G FOR GOLDBERGER – American physician Joseph Goldberger devotes much of his career to proving the links between poverty and disease, especially the disease pellagra in the World War One era south.

SMYRNA INCIDENT – Hungarian Martin Koszta flees Hapsburg Austria-Hungary following his participation in one of the Revolutions of 1848. He becomes an American and a few years later the American Consul in Smyrna and the Charge d’Affairs at Constantinople guaranteed him safe travel to Turkey on personal business. However, Austrian agents arrested Koszta, whose release was demanded by the U.S. Ultimately, American naval Captain Duncan Ingraham secured his release by threatening to open fire on 3 Austrian naval ships ported at Smyrna.

THE PLUME OF HONOR – When the Marquis de Lafayette is languishing in an Austrian prison in 1794, American medical student Francis Huger seeks co-conspirators in a plot to help Lafayette escape as thanks for his Revolutionary War service to America.

MARGIN OF VICTORY – The Culper Ring, part of George Washington’s espionage network during the Revolutionary War, mount an operation to deceive the British into thinking Washington is about to attack New York to distract them from the very real arrival of America’s allied French forces in Rhode Island.

THE ABSENT HOST – As the British army rampages through Virginia in 1781, Jack Jouett aka “the Paul Revere of the South” rides 40 miles to reach Virginia Governor Thomas Jefferson. He warns Jefferson to evacuate before a British cavalry unit sent to capture him arrives.

DUEL AT THE OK CORRAL – Despite the title, this episode does a quick overview of Wyatt Earp’s law enforcement career from Dodge City, KS to Tombstone, AZ. Starring Lee Van Cleef, Harry Morgan, Kenneth Tobey, Lyle Talbot and the OTHER Keith Richards.

THE SPLENDID DREAM – Leo G. Carroll of Man from U.N.C.L.E. fame plays William Penn as his dream of a land with religious freedom spurs him to found Pennsylvania in the New World. “Open Channel D!” Also starring an actor named Leonard Nudie.

YOUNG ANDY JACKSON – Billy Gray, future costar of Father Knows Best, portrays Andrew Jackson from age 13 to 14 as he serves as a militiaman against the British during the Revolutionary War. He ultimately becomes a POW.

ESCAPE – Carl Shurz, another participant in the Revolutions of 1848, winds up having to flee Prussia in 1849. He ultimately comes to America where he fights in the U.S. Civil War on the Union side, is elected Senator and becomes Secretary of the Interior for President Rutherford B. Hayes.

RIDDLE OF THE SEAS – U.S. Navy Lieutenant Matthew Fontaine Maury goes on to found the United States Weather Bureau in the 1800s.

CRAZY JUDAH – In pre-Civil War America, Theodore Judah works tirelessly to promote the need for a trans-continental railroad but ultimately dies before he can see that dream come to fruition.

A STRANGE JOURNEY – George Merchant, a soldier in the American rebel army during the Revolutionary War, gets captured by the British in Quebec and winds up in England as a POW. A Brit who sympathizes with the American cause helps him escape and sees him off to the U.S. carrying crucial papers for John Hancock of America’s Continental Congress.

THE PAPER SWORD – The tale of San Francisco newspaper man James King (Patrick O’Neal) who crusades for honest government during the 1850s. Corruption and crime are rampant as the Gold Rush rages. San Francisco Board of Supervisors member James Casey assassinates him in 1856. Also starring HUGH BEAUMONT.

SPINDLETOP – Austrian mining engineer Anthony Lucas comes to America and makes the first big Texas oil strike near Spindletop in 1901.

MOONLIGHT SCHOOL – Kentucky teacher Cora Wilson Stewart establishes nighttime Adult Education there in 1911. Stars Emlen Davies, Lon Chaney Jr. and Gloria Talbot.

THE SKIPPER’S LADY – Nineteen-year-old Mary Ann Brown Patten (Sally Brophy) accompanies her husband Joshua, captain of the clipper ship Neptune’s Car, on a voyage from New York to San Francisco in 1856. When her husband falls ill along the way, Mary takes over as the captain since Joshua had taught her a great deal about his trade. She puts down an attempted mutiny and overcomes other hardships to get her ship to San Francisco. 

  STANDOUT EPISODES: 1954-1955

THE FORGE – Eliphalet Remington II (George Nader) devises the first of his rifles and founds the storied Remington empire.

MOONLIGHT WITNESS – Lawyer Abraham Lincoln’s preparations for his Senatorial campaign debate with Stephen Douglas are interrupted by the need to defend an old friend’s son from a murder charge.

MOUNTAIN MAN – In the 1820s, James Ohio Pattie writes about his travels to Mexican California, his efforts to fight smallpox there and his successful liberation of Americans imprisoned in San Diego.

AMERICAN THANKSGIVING – A look at how Americans celebrated Thanksgiving from the Washington presidency through the Lincoln presidency.

ORDEAL IN BURMA – In 1824, American medical missionaries Adoniram and Ann Judson care for the afflicted and work for peace during the British-Burmese War.

A MEDAL FOR MISS WALKER – During the U.S. Civil War, civilian Dr. Mary Walker serves bravely caring for Union Army wounded. After the war she is awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. Starring Maura Murphy, Roy Rogers, DENNIS HOPPER and DeForest Kelley! 

A MESSAGE FROM GARCIA – Donald Murphy plays American Lt. Andrew S. Rowan as he makes his way through 1890s Cuba to deliver the U.S. pledge of aid to General Garcia’s rebels against the Spanish Empire if war breaks out. Rowan also delivers Garcia’s reply back to the Americans.

PETTICOAT DOCTOR – The story of English-American Elizabeth Blackwell, who became the first woman to earn an MD in the U.S. in 1849. Her subsequent medical career included service as a Union doctor during the Civil War.

THE SHIP THAT SHOOK THE WORLD – The clash of the ironclad vessels the Monitor and the Merrimack during the U.S. Civil War.

THE GIFT OF DR. MINOT – During the 1920s, American physician George Minot neglects his own health as he works to effect a cure for pernicious anemia. In the end, he wins a Nobel Prize for Medicine for his efforts.

STAY ON, STRANGER – In 1916 Mrs. Alice Lloyd from Boston begins a school for poverty-stricken children in Kentucky despite local opposition.

THE PALMETTO CONSPIRACY – Allan Pinkerton and his National Detective Agency thwart a Confederate States of America plot to assassinate President-Elect Abraham Lincoln in 1861.

THE RESCUE OF DR. BEANES – During the War of 1812, Baltimore lawyer Francis Scott Key goes behind British lines to rescue Dr. William Beanes, who had been taken prisoner during the Burning of Washington DC. This leads to Key’s own capture and his eventual inspiration to write the lyrics to The Star Spangled-Banner.

FOR MORE FORGOTTEN TELEVISION CLICK HERE.