The series was both hosted and narrated by Thomas Mitchell,[2][3][4] who portrayed the title character,[5] and featured several television and film stars during its run such as Maureen Stapleton, Charles Bronson, DeForest Kelley, Lisa Montell, Otto Kruger, Max Showalter and Ernest Borgnine.
[9] Unseen for decades and largely forgotten, The O. Henry Playhouse has recently received a DVD release.
Classic Flix, a rental and retail site with a home video label,[10] has restored thirty-nine episodes of the series and is releasing them in three installments during 2021-22.
The web site for the DVD release features plot summaries of each episode, along with links to online texts of the original stories so viewers can compare O. Henry's writings and the television adaptations.
[11]Several years before the DVD release Ron Hall, an entrepreneur specializing in public domain video material,[12] related how he received a large collection of original 16mm prints of the series.