From The TV IV

Four Star Television was a television production company founded by actors Dick Powell, Charles Boyer, David Niven and Ida Lupino in 1952.

[edit] History

Powell, a veteran Hollywood actor, saw potential in the then-new medium of television and founded Four Star as the vehicle for an anthology TV series he planned to pitch to network executives. His intention was to have himself and three other actors own the studio and the program (thus contributing to the name Four Star). He initially planned to have the show feature himself, Boyer, Joel McCrea and Rosalind Russell, but Russell and McCrea dropped out of the venture before the series began. Niven and Lupino then joined in prior to production to round out the show's cast. Four Star Playhouse was picked up by CBS and made its debut in the fall of 1952, lasting for four seasons until 1956.

Four Star became well known later on for its output of network series, most notably Western shows such as The Rifleman, The Big Valley, Zane Grey Theater, The Westerner and Wanted: Dead or Alive, as well as other shows like Richard Diamond, Private Detective and Burke's Law. The studio and its programs served as the launching pad for the careers of many well-known Hollywood actors such as Lee Majors, Linda Evans, Peter Breck, David Janssen, Steve McQueen, Chuck Connors, Mary Tyler Moore, Robert Culp and Aaron Spelling (who later became an influential television producer in his own right). Four Star also briefly owned the record label Valiant Records (best known as the original label of rock band The Association) until it sold the label to Warner Bros. in 1967.

Powell died at the age of 58 on January 2, 1963, one day after what would be his final appearance on his anthology series The Dick Powell Show, as the result of lymphoma. Four Star went into decline following Powell's death, with its output reduced over the next few years until The Big Valley was its only show still on the air by 1967. The studio was sold in 1968 and renamed as Four Star International, and it survived over the following years mainly on the success of its syndicated reruns, though it did produce a few short-lived first-run syndicated series as well.

Four Star became inactive as a production company in 1975, but the studio's owners revived it in 1984 to produce new shows for syndication. The last shows to be produced by Four Star were the syndicated comedy Mad Movies with the L.A. Connection in 1985, and the game show Liar's Club in 1988-89. Four Star was sold to New World Pictures in 1989 and ceased operations that year. With the subsequent sale of New World to News Corporation in 1997, the Four Star catalogue is now in the hands of News Corp.'s TV distribution unit, 20th Television.

[edit] List of Shows

Title	Format	Network	Years
Four Star Playhouse	Anthology	CBS	1952–56
Dick Powell's Zane Grey Theatre	Western	CBS	1956–61
Richard Diamond, Private Detective	Crime drama	CBS	1957–59
		NBC	1959–60
Trackdown	Western	CBS	1957–59
Black Saddle	Western	NBC	1959–60
Wanted: Dead or Alive	Western	CBS	1958–61
The Rifleman	Western	ABC	1958–63
The Detectives Starring Robert Taylor	Crime drama	ABC	1959–61
		NBC	1961–62
Johnny Ringo	Western	CBS	1959–60
Law of the Plainsman	Western	NBC	1959–60
The Westerner	Western	NBC	1960
The Dick Powell Show	Anthology	NBC	1961–63
Burke's Law (1963)	Crime drama	ABC	1963–66
The Rogues	Crime drama	NBC	1964–65
The Big Valley	Western	ABC	1965–69
Thrill Seekers	Reality	Syndication	1973–74
Mad Movies with the L.A. Connection	Comedy	Syndication	1985
Liar's Club	Game show	Syndication	1988–89

[edit] External link

• Four Star Television tribute website