Family Theater is a weekly half-hour dramatic anthology radio program which aired on the Mutual Broadcasting System in the United States from February 13, 1947, to September 11, 1957.
Family Theater developed from a Rosary prayer program on a local radio station in Albany, New York, started in 1943 by Holy Cross priest Patrick Peyton.
[1] The program featured not only religious stories, but also half-hour adaptations of literary works such as A Tale of Two Cities, Moby-Dick, and Don Quixote.
Throughout its ten-year run, well-known actors and actresses, including James Stewart, Gregory Peck, Dennis Morgan, Dorothy Warenskjold, Irene Dunne, Robert Mitchum, Henry Fonda, Bob Hope, Lucille Ball, Shirley Temple, Natalie Wood, Barbara Whiting, Raymond Burr, Jane Wyatt, Charlton Heston, Lizabeth Scott, Bing Crosby, Jack Benny, Gene Kelly, Kate Smith, William Shatner, and Chuck Connors, appeared as announcers, narrators, or stars.
[1] Family Theater was broadcast in the United States, Canada, Latin American, Australia, Mozambique, and the Philippines and won a number of industry awards.