The Gates of Heaven

Long-running anthology program sponsored by Hallmark Cards. Beginning in 1951 and continuing into 2019, the series received 80 Emmy Awards, 24 Christopher Awards, 11 Peabody Awards, 9 Golden Globes, and 4 Humanitas Prizes. Early seasons were a weekly live drama, eventually transitioning to videotaped and then filmed productions broadcast as occasional specials.

Three partisans bound by a strong friendship return home after the war, but the clash with everyday reality puts a strain on their bond.

Unemployed Antonio is elated when he finally finds work hanging posters around war-torn Rome. However on his first day, his bicycle—essential to his work—gets stolen. His job is doomed unless he can find the thief. With the help of his son, Antonio combs the city, becoming desperate for justice.

In Spain, during the Napoleonic rule, the French Governor of Andalusia is besieged by the locals who have countless demands and wishes.

When elderly pensioner Umberto Domenico Ferrari returns to his boarding house from a protest calling for a hike in old-age pensions, his landlady demands her 15,000-lire rent by the end of the month or he and his small dog will be turned out onto the street. Unable to get the money in time, Umberto fakes illness to get sent to a hospital, giving his beloved dog to the landlady's pregnant and abandoned maid for temporary safekeeping.

A young widow flees from Rome during WWII and takes her lonely twelve-year-old-daughter to her rural hometown but the horrors of war soon catch up with them.

Two shoeshine boys in postwar Rome, Italy save up to buy a horse, but their involvement as dupes in a burglary lands them in juvenile prison; the experience take a devastating toll on their friendship.

During the bombing of Naples in World War II, a cynical businessman helps a naive prostitute, who spends the next two decades desperate to have him reciprocate her feelings.

The Four Just Men was a 1959 Sapphire Films production for ITC Entertainment. It ran for one season of 39 half-hour monochrome episodes.

In late 19th century France, the Countess Louise, wife of a wealthy general, sells the earrings her husband gave her on their wedding day to pay off her secret debts, then claims to have lost them. Her husband quickly learns of the deceit, which is the beginning of many tragic misunderstandings, all involving the earrings, the general, the countess, and her new lover, the Italian Baron Donati.

After World War II, a woman refuses to believe her husband, missing on the Russian front, is dead. Flashbacks reveal their brief courtship and marriage. Years later, she travels to Russia with his photo, determined to find him. What will she discover?

Three tales of very different women using their sexuality as a means to getting what they want.

A tribute to Naples, this film presents six episodes: a clown exploited by a gangster, a pizza seller losing her husband’s ring, a child's funeral, a gambler beaten by a kid, a prostitute's unusual wedding, and a "wisdom seller" offering advice.

Once upon a time a wise and kind old woman discovers a baby in her cabbage patch. She brings up the child and, when she dies, the boy, Totò, enters an orphanage. Totò leaves the orphanage a happy young man, and looks for work in post-war Milan. He ends up with the homeless and organizes them to build a shanty town in a vacant lot. But when greedy developers threaten the community’s land, Totò will need all the help he can get in order to find an impossible way out.

Mastro Geppetto is a poor carpenter with no wife and no children. The man is very lonely, and when trading a piece of wood with his colleague Mastero Cherry, he decides to build himself a puppet to make him company.

The relationships between a veteran marshal, his bride-to-be, a rookie and his fiancée are severely tested when the young carabiniere is temporarily sent to a distant town.