Ford Star Jubilee
Ford Star Jubilee is an American anthology series that originally aired monthly on Saturday nights on CBS at 9:00 P.M., E.S.T. from the fall of 1955 to the fall of 1956 (With a summer hiatus). The series was approximately 90 minutes long, broadcast in black-and-white and color, and was typically telecast live. "Ford Star Jubilee" was sponsored by the Ford Motor Company. Format. "Ford Star Jubilee" routinely featured major stars, such as Judy Garland, Betty Grable, Debbie Reynolds, Shirley Jones, Orson Welles, Julie Andrews (at the time that she was preparing for her starring role  in "My Fair Lady" on Broadway), Louis Armstrong, Bing Crosby, Gordon MacRae, Lillian Gish, Charles Laughton, Jack Lemmon, Raymond Massey, Lauren Bacall, Claudette Colbert, Noël Coward, Nat 'King' Cole, Mary Martin, Eddie Fisher, Ella Fitzgerald, and Red Skelton. Instead of the usual live performance staged especially for "Ford Star Jubilee", the final episode on November 3, 1956 was a special, two-hour presentation of the 1939 MGM theatrical Technicolor film "The Wizard of Oz", hosted by Bert Lahr, 10-year-old Liza Minnelli and young Oz expert Justin Schiller. This marked the first time that the film had ever been  shown on television, and the only time that one of the film's actual actors (Lahr) as well as one of the children of the film's star (Judy Garland) hosted it. The broadcast was a ratings smash with a Nielsen rating of 33.9 and an audience share of 53%. Another rare instance of "Ford Star Jubilee" presenting a filmed, rather than live, program was their 1956 musical version of Maxwell Anderson's "High Tor", starring Bing Crosby and Julie Andrews. Music was by Arthur Schwartz, composer of such scores as those for "The Band Wagon" and "Revenge with Music . Crosby, according to sources, had insisted the production be filmed rather than presented live, because he did not feel comfortable acting in a live television musical play. Although it was filmed in color, the musical version of High Tor" has never been released on VHS or DVD.