NBC Sunday Showcase

NBC Sunday Showcase was a series of hour-long specials telecast in color on NBC during the 1959-60 season. The flexible anthology format varied weekly from comedies and science fiction to musicals and historical dramas. The recent introduction of videotape made repeats possible, and two 1959 dramas (Murder and the Android and What Makes Sammy Run?) had repeats in 1960.

On the heels of his Broadway hits The Pajama Game and Damn Yankees, Richard Adler composed the opening Sunday Showcase theme music, titled "Sunday Drive" (a.k.a. "Sunday Showcase Theme").

For the September 20, 1959 premiere, John Frankenheimer directed S. Lee Pogostin's People Kill People Sometimes with Zina Bethune, Geraldine Page, Jason Robards and George C. Scott.

During the next two weeks, Larry Blyden had the title role in an adaptation of Budd Schulberg's 1941 novel What Makes Sammy Run?. The two-parter was directed by Delbert Mann with music by Irwin Bazelon. The lost reel of this production was found in 2004:

On October 11, 1959, Joan Crawford, Helen Hayes, Bob Hope, Mary Martin and Eleanor Roosevelt were seen in A Tribute to Eleanor Roosevelt on Her Diamond Jubilee.

For the October 18 telecast of Murder and the Android, Alfred Bester scripted a teleplay adaptation of his cyber-crime story "Fondly Fahrenheit," first published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (August 1954). The science fiction tale of a rampaging robot took place in the year 2359 amid futuristic sets designed by Ted Cooper. Produced by Robert Alan Aurthur with a cast of Kevin McCarthy, Rip Torn, Suzanne Pleshette and Telly Savalas, the drama was reviewed by radio-television critic John Crosby in his syndicated column:

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