When Television Cared Enough to Air the Very Best : * Retrospective: In ‘Hallmark Hall of Fame’s’ shift toward social issues, classics like Shakespeare have been left in the lurch. UCLA’s Festival of Preservation will screen some of the series’ episodes.

In the 1958 “Hallmark Hall of Fame” production of “Kiss Me, Kate,” Jack Klugman and Harvey Lembeck gave men the musical advice to “Brush Up Your Shakespeare.” The same advice might be given to the “Hall of Fame” series itself.

Although it premiered on Christmas Eve, 1951, with an original work--Gian Carlo Menotti’s opera “Amahl and the Night Visitors”--the series’ early years were marked by an abundance of classic drama, with the plays of Shakespeare standard fare. Not since the 1970 version of “Hamlet” with Richard Chamberlain, however, has “Hall of Fame” televised one of the Bard’s works.

But representatives of Hallmark and UCLA, which tonight launches a series of public screenings at Melnitz Theater--in association with the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences--to mark the 40th anniversary of “Hall of Fame,” argue that the series’ shift to more contemporary themes mirrors the evolution of the medium itself and does not imply diminished value.

“The distinction that Hallmark has consistently made is not solely one of content, but in terms of an insistence on quality and an unwillingness to compromise,” said Robert Rosen, director of UCLA’s Film and Television Archive.

“What they have done at every stage in their use of television has been to challenge the medium,” said Larry Strichman, vice president for miniseries and client specials at CBS. “Challenging the medium at this moment in time is a very different question than it was 20 or 30 or 40 years ago.”

“During the era of live television, you had extraordinarily elaborate and complex live performances,” Rosen said. “Hallmark not only had to deal with the complexity of the theatrical performance and the music and the lighting, (but) they also had to interlace that with a very new and not well-developed television technology.

“Over time, there has been an evolution toward social issues, with the notion of risk-taking at the level of theme, as opposed to established classics or historical biographies. This reflected a society that wanted to deal more with social issues.”

Richard Welsh, the Hallmark consultant charged with finding suitable scripts for the series and serving as a liaison between the company and Hollywood, said that he tries to ensure a blend of programming sources for the series. Last season’s offerings bear him out: “Decoration Day” was an original teleplay, “Sarah, Plain and Tall” was based on an American children’s classic and “Shadow of a Doubt” was a remake of the Hitchcock thriller.

As for Shakespeare, he said, abridging the Bard’s plays to fit them into a two-hour time slot no longer goes down well with the public or critics.

“It’s very hard to fool around with Shakespeare,” he said. “If you leave out Act V, Scene 3, Line 2, someone will say, ‘That’s my favorite.’ Or the scholars will say, ‘That’s the best part. It has more meaning than the rest of the film put together.’ ”

CBS’ Strichman said that the network would not stand in Hallmark’s way, however, if it wanted to bring Shakespeare back into its repertory.

“Their track record in making things work which no one thought could work is second to none. We would be open to anything Hallmark brought in,” he said. But, he quipped: “We might have a little trouble with ‘Titus Andronicus,’ ” a reference to one of Shakespeare’s more obscure and less successful plays.

UCLA’s first two “Hallmark Hall of Fame” screenings--of the 1970 “Hamlet” at 7:30 tonight and of “Little Moon of Alban” and “Victoria Regina” on July 26--are part of the Film and Television Archive’s fourth annual Festival of Preservation. Other “Hall of Fame” productions will be screened in a retrospective from Aug. 6 through Sept. 5, including: “Macbeth” (1960), “Twelfth Night” (1956), “Anastasia” (1967), “Saint Joan” (1967), “All Quiet on the Western Front” (1979), “Promise” (1986) and “Foxfire” (1987).

The series was a natural for inclusion in the preservation festival, Rosen said.

“When someone asks, ‘Why should you preserve television?’, the best answer is always to point to images that are on the screen that people are in love with and whose importance they see,” he said. “Then say, ‘Without preservation, they would have been lost.’ The word Hallmark by itself justifies television preservation.”

As the official repository of the Hallmark collection, the archive is responsible for preserving a complete record of the series.

But, Rosen said, there is no known record of the four episodes from the 1955-56 season: “The Devil’s Disciple,” “Dream Girl,” “The Corn Is Green” and “The Good Fairy.” Also missing is the second half of 1973’s “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown.”

Information: (213) 206-FILM.

* LAST LAUGH: A group of TV comedy writers breathe new life into old scripts. F10