[citation needed] Plays in the first season included You Can't Take It with You (the initial telecast),[2] The Magnificent Ambersons and Our Town.

Actors in these shows included Spring Byington, Charles Dingle, James Dunn, Nina Foch, John Forsythe, Helen Hayes, Wanda Hendrix, Wright King, Otto Kruger, Joan McCracken, Thomas Mitchell, Mildred Natwick, Gene Raymond, Kent Smith and Fredd Wayne.

[3] The series began October 6, 1950, and a month later it came under criticism from the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, which objected to the tie-in between Schlitz and the Pulitzer Prize.

Mrs. D. Leigh Colvin, president of the WCTU, suggested that Columbia should return the $100,000, stating that the program was "a scheme of education for alcoholism which uses American classics as a springboard for beer promotion.

The tie-up... allies the university, its school and the Pulitzer name with programs which are obviously put on by the brewer to promote drinking in the American home.