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The Nash Airflyte Theater

US television program

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 16, 2026
Entity authorityQ15072842 ↗
Source-derived summary

The Nash Airflyte Theater is an American dramatic anthology television series that was broadcast from September 21, 1950, through March 15, 1951, on CBS on Thursday evenings. It originated from WCBS-TV in New York City at 10:30 p.m. The show was sponsored by the Nash Motor Co.; the Nash Airflyte was an automobile model produced by the company.

William Gaxton was the program's host. Mike Krich was story editor.

The series featured original teleplays and adaptations of works by famous writers, including Anton Chekhov, O.Henry and Agatha Christie.

The program broadcast the first televised adaptation of a Gilbert and Sullivan musical when it aired Trial by Jury on November 30, 1950, and its December 21, 1950, episode, "Molly Morgan", was the first TV adaptation of a work by John Steinbeck. The December 7, 1950, episode is believed to be Ronald Reagan's first TV credit. The initial TV appearances of Ruth Hussey and David Niven occurred on this program.

Nash Motors ended its sponsorship at a time when other automobile manufacturers were also dropping or reducing their sponsorships of TV programs.

Editorial summary

“The Nash Airflyte Theater” enters the record as uS television program. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Nash, Airflyte and Theater can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA useful identification and reception guide that helps separate the work itself from editions, performances, ownership and later interpretation. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1950, 1951—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Nash, Airflyte and Theater.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“The Nash Airflyte Theater” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Nash, Airflyte and Theater provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q15072842. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1950 and 1951.

Critical limits

Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “The Nash Airflyte Theater”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow The Nash Airflyte Theater primary sources, The Nash Airflyte Theater archive and Nash research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “The Nash Airflyte Theater”?
  2. How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
  3. Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “The Nash Airflyte Theater” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.