Highway to the Stars

{{Short description|Early TV soap opera}}

{{for|the road in Pennsylvania|Pennsylvania Route 44}}

{{Use mdy dates|date=March 2025}}

{{Infobox television

| image =

| caption =

| alt_name =

| genre = Soap opera

| creator =

| writer = Bob Wald

| director =

| creative_director =

| developer =

| presenter =

| starring = Patricia Jones

| voices =

| narrated =

| theme_music_composer =

| opentheme =

| endtheme =

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| country = United States

| language = English

| num_seasons =

| num_episodes =

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| executive_producer =

| producer =

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| cinematography =

| runtime = 30 minutes

| channel = DuMont

| first_aired = {{start date|1947|8}}

| last_aired = {{end date|1947|10}}

}}

Highway to the Stars was an early American live television soap opera, which was broadcast on New York City station WABD, flagship station of the DuMont Television Network, from August to October 1947, at which point it was replaced with Look Upon a Star, itself eventually replaced with Camera Headlines in January 1948.{{cite web|url=https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3428168 |title=Highway to the Stars (TV Series 1947– ) - IMDb |publisher=imdb.com|access-date=2015-07-08}}

Patricia Jones played the lead role, and also starred in the NBC series Martin Kane, Private Eye (1951). Highway to the Stars aired on Tuesdays at 7:30pm ET, not Thursdays as stated in Billboard. Like many other local series on WABD, it may have been considered eligible to be picked up as a network series.

Premise

The premise was described by Billboard as "the travails of a corn-bred gal warbler [singer] trying to make good in the big town".{{cite book|title=Billboard|date=16 August 1947|publisher=Nielsen Business Media, Inc.|issn=0006-2510|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=lQwEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PT14|access-date=2015-07-08}}

Episode status

As with most DuMont series, no episodes are known to exist. Methods to record live television, such as kinescopes were only just becoming available by the time the series ended. The network probably thought there was no need to record the series in the first place, given that it aired on a single station only, though a couple kinescopes do remain of WABD's local programming of the following year (1948).

See also

Bibliography

  • David Weinstein, The Forgotten Network: DuMont and the Birth of American Television (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2004) {{ISBN|1-59213-245-6}}
  • Alex McNeil, Total Television, Fourth edition (New York: Penguin Books, 1980) {{ISBN|0-14-024916-8}}
  • Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh, The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network TV Shows, Third edition (New York: Ballantine Books, 1964) {{ISBN|0-345-31864-1}}

References

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