Happy Ending

According to the Nielsen ratings, the nation's No. 1 TV drama show is Ford Theater (Thurs. 9:30 p.m., NBC). Filmed in Hollywood by Screen Gems, Inc. (a subsidiary of Columbia Pictures and producer of such TV shows as Father Knows Best, Adventures of Rin Tin Tin and Captain Midnight), Ford Theater is in its third year on TV and attributes its success to 1) the use of Hollywood stars (Thomas Mitchell, Irene Dunne, William Lundigan, Ronald Reagan), 2) its technically perfect films, 3) its plots, which Screen Gems says defensively are of "more interest to audiences throughout the country than certain other series that appeal to more sophisticated viewers."

Sample non-sophisticated plots:

P: In All's Fair in Love, a twelve-year-old girl, using techniques she learned at the movies, prevents her mother and father from getting a divorce.

P: In Sister Veronica, a nun smoothes the tangled marital affairs of a wealthy young couple and reunites the husband with his stern and socially prominent father.

P: In The Bachelor, a young and successful architect is on the point of marrying a "calculating'' divorcee when a sweet young thing from his home town breezes into his apartment--and gets him.

Its rivals claim that Ford's large audience is largely inherited from Dragnet, which precedes Ford's 30-minute show. After leading the field since last April, Ford Theater last week was still in front, but only by a hair's breadth: Ford scored 34.7 in the Nielsen ratings, closely followed by NBC's Kraft TV Theater (which comes on after My Little Margie) with 34.3.

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