The Lady Vanishes
ABC signed Allyn Edwards—and later, the veteran actor Donald Woods—to host each "Afternoon" feature, and on Monday, January 16, 1956, the anthology premiered with Alfred Hitchcock's espionage thriller "The Lady Vanishes" (1938). The next afternoon, the internationally successful war drama "The Cruel Sea" (1953) was telecast. "The Lady Vanishes" had originally premiered in 1944 on WNBT in New York, but for almost all the rest this would be the first time these films were ever aired on American television.