 Remember a hallmark card when you will carry enough to send the very best. Cards bring you another and their exciting new series of broadcasts on the Hallmark Hall of Fame. The card will bring you true to life stories of actual persons who in their own way have contributed to a better world for all of us to live in. Presented on the Hallmark Hall of Fame by our distinguished host, Mr. Lionel Barrymore. And welcome to the Hallmark Hall of Fame. Here we dramatize every Sunday night a true story about real people to whom we respectfully dedicate this Hallmark Hall of Fame. And tonight transcribed we have a distinguished guest for you to meet. Oh beautiful for spacious skies for amber waves of grain goes well of patriotic him. Well, except for the obstinate faith and genius of one man, those amber waves of grain would be black with the terrible black stem rust that once threatened our entire wheat belt. This is the true story of the saving of our priceless wheat. And it's the poignant love story of Mark Alfred Calton, giant of the meadows. Now here's Frank Goss from the makers of Hallmark Gods. When you want to remember your friends there's one way to be sure the card you send receives an extra welcome. Look for that identifying Hallmark on the back when you select it. For words to express your feelings and designs to express your good taste. Let the Hallmark on the back be your guide. For that Hallmark tells your friends you cared enough to send the very best. Lionel Barrymore appears by arrangement with Metro Golden Mayor producers of Never Let Me Go starring Clark Gable and Jean Tierney and featuring Richard Hayden. And now Lionel Barrymore brings you the first act of our Hallmark Hall of Fame. 1976, the year of the ill wind. Ohio 1876. The wind blustering across the plains and meadows is hot and picturesque. Day and night the ill wind brings deadly pestilence to the wheat. The amber waves of grain turn black. Ruin rides the wind day and night inside a lonely Ohio farmhouse. A tall, severe man reads steadfastly by the light of an oil lamp. Be glad then ye children of Zion and rejoice in the Lord your God. He calls it to come down for you the rain. The floor shall be full of corn and the vat shall overflow with wine and with oil. Ma, why aren't you asleep, son? I can't sleep. Dad, I call the wind. Well, you're accustomed to a bit of wind, aren't you? Dad, are we going to lose all our wheat again? Son, throw your tin on a farm as a man. I'm going to tell you the hard truth now. We don't have any more wheat. It's sick, it's gone. Well, we have to move away like two American folks. Year after year the black stem rusts spreading across the wheat like a plague. Keeps on there won't be a stalk of wheat in America, keeps on. I don't want to move away, Dad. I like it here. Do we have to move away? You were born on this farm. Your mother died in his house. I don't want to move away either, son. Pop, Dad, don't cry. A boy's a man on a farm, but gets to be the farm breaks him back to a boy again sometimes. Gets to be. Don't cry, Dad. We'll do something. Someday they'll cure the wheat rust. Never. I bet. Your old man shall dream dreams, but your son shall see visions and shall prophesy the Lord said. He did? Listen, I will restore to you the years that the locusts have eaten, the canker worm and the caterpillar and the palmer worm. And ye shall eat in plenty and be satisfied, and shall praise the name of the Lord your God. That means we will stop the wheat rust someday. Your son shall see visions and shall prophesy. I bet. The black wind of 1876 sighs and blusters into history. But the boy's prophecy of Mark Calton has become a dedication. The sensitive boy, his heart eroded by those rare tears of his father, is a young man, a graduate of Kansas State Agricultural College, making his farewell address. Once good friends plague destroyed its countless human lives, but the centuries passed and with them passed the dread tolling of the bells and the cry of who hath dead, who hath dead in the fearful night. But the night is over and man is gifted with God and radiant knowledge. As we leave college, may those gifts help us carry a great crusade to the meadows of peace where a battle to the death is being fought. Famine, that rider of a lean horse is the enemy. Let us mark. With a nice graduation mark. Thank you for being out there today, Amanda. Oh, I take in all the better commencement exercises. Oh, do you help all the graduates work on their speeches too? Oh, I just help. You walked up and down and spouted and I wrote it down. Spouted? I should have remembered. You never joke about your words. No, I wish I could. I can't. I once saw my father, a strong, a powerful man, stern as granite. I saw him cry once. I know. He watched his wheat turn black until he couldn't stand it anymore. Cryed, cried, and then he read to me from the Bible, Joel, I think, about the sons of the elders seeing great visions. And you saw yours. I just know that the blight will strike again someday, perhaps for the last time, because all the wheat will be destroyed. It's a kind of judgment day. And bread, the best fruit of the poor, will be out of their reach. You love people, don't you? I like people. I love you. Scientists got to make distinctions, doesn't he? You love everybody, I know. But I can't marry everybody, just you, so let's, huh? And be a burden to you? Burden? Well, you know, doctors always pulling at their beard and looking at me sideways. Well, you have to get your start. I've got my start. No, you haven't, Mark. Have you? Well, I bet. The Department of Agriculture wants me. No. See here, I'm a brilliant young fellow. But aren't we terribly young to get married? A boy on a farm is a man, my dad always says. What do you say? Always. Now. Yes, Mark. And my bride will hold a sheaf of wheat for flowers, as in olden times. And the guests will throw wheat, not rice, and cry bread for life and pudding forever. And she shall be my bride and my wife and my staff and lantern forever. I bet. Fort and Mark Calden are married. As research scientist with the Department of Agriculture, Mark Calden makes the vast wheat fields from Gulf to Canada, his laboratory. Months become years. A race against the deadly dry wind that may bring the next and perhaps the last great blight. A struggle against the growing impatience and criticism in Washington. If you would only listen to me, sir. I have listened to you, Calden. I've also listened to warnings that time as well as money is running out. Let the grain blacken and die on the stock, is that it? There is no cure for wheat, Russ Calden. No cure. I've confessed that myself in a recent bulletin. Then an end to this waste. Stop now. When the true answer is clear at last, that a resistance train of wheat must be developed. Stop now. Off with. No, sir. Those are the orders of the Secretary of Agriculture. Then I shall go to the Secretary of Agriculture for other orders. Mr. Calden. Fort Whit. Yes, Mr. Wilson, I must go to the Ukraine. My dear Calden. If you mean dear in the sense of costly, expensive, spare me the word, sir, and listen to mine. My experiments prove we have no strain of wheat able to survive extreme cold and heat and dryness, which unite to invite the Black Stem Russ. And you fancy a resistance train can be found in the Ukraine. If anywhere, sir, yes. The answer then is no. That is the answer today, Mr. Secretary. I'll be back tomorrow. Mr. Calden. Tomorrow, I say, in the next day, in the next day, in the next day, in the next... Calden. Mr. Secretary. Mr. Calden. For heaven's sake, sir, please go to the Ukraine and let me get on with my work. Will you be gone very long, Mark? Just long enough, darling. Well, that's a pretty good answer. I'm looking for answers, too, Amanda. I must find a hearty strain of wheat used to hardship, a sort of golden bullet to shoot famine from his saddle once and for all. They're a little boy with visions, aren't you? I just don't want strong men to cry. It hurts. Yes, you do love people very much. I like people. I love Amanda. And someday... someday I'll lay a sheaf of golden wheat at your feet, just like a rich offering to Siri's goddess of the grain, strong, brave wheat, and to save a nation, perhaps, in 10 million lives. Wheat. A bouquet of gold for my bride and my wife. My staff and my lantern. Forever. For a moment, we return to the second act of the Hallmark Hall of Fame. Are you familiar with these famous words? God couldn't be everywhere, and so he gave us mothers. It's a wonderful tribute, and it seems especially appropriate on this last Sunday before Mother's Day. Perhaps you've been giving some thought lately to Mother's Special Day, thoughts about what you want to say to your mother and how you can say it best. For most of us, it isn't too easy to express the warmth and love we feel in our hearts all through the year. That's why I think you'll enjoy letting a Hallmark Mother's Day card speak for you. You see, Hallmark Mother's Day cards are beautiful and varied, and each one has a message all its own. You may choose a card that's spiritual or friendly, simple or elegant, or a Hallmark card with a touch of humor about it. At any rate, you're sure to find the one ideal card that says what you want to say, just the way you want to say it, in the big Hallmark collection. And your mother's pleasure in the card you select will reward you with happiness that can't be measured by cost. And now Lionel Barrymore brings you the second act of our true story of Mark Calton. Deserts of Turkestan and Central Asia. St. Petersburg. The Ukraine. Mark Calton talks to experts in the desolate fields. He talks to peasants. At last, on the edge of the forbidding two-guide step, gold. Living gold. My dearest Amanda, if you can hardly read this writing, it's because I'm too excited to write clearly or think soberly. I think I found it. Tell Dad. He'll be happy for his little boy who was a man at 10. Tell him, no more caravans leaving dead in dusty farms. An end to such sadness in America. I have found a wheat called Kubanka. A tough durum wheat, bearded like a tartar in a match for the cold and heat, and the black stem rust. His resistant strain of wheat is a dedication. Across America, he carries the gospel of the new wheat, the Kubanka durum. Take a chance, men. What can you lose? You've lost crop after crop of the old wheat. Try a new wheat. Famine, I tell you, rides a lean horse. And he rides every hot wind and every blizzard that hits your farms. He'll ride you down, I tell you. He'll ruin you and your country, I tell you. For anybody who'll take a chance, who's first? The gruckies across the great plains sweeps the golden tide of wheat under the unwinking sky. Wheat? It won't do. But it's tough, it survives. Tough, yes, it's tough. It's a tough, in fact, of the millers all over the country of protesting. Their machinery can't grind it up. A peasant's grindstone is easily replaced. Yes, but expensive machinery is not. There must be another way, then. A hybrid grain, softer but still resistant. It's tough, Carlton. Secretary Wilson is staggered at the cost of your endless experiment. It is not endless, sir. The end may be in sight. No more wasted money on this project. Waste all that's been accomplished, then. Is that it? Not saying good money after bad. That's it. I will not stop my work. Believe me, Secretary Wilson sympathizes with your problem. We all do. But there simply is not enough money for everything. Something must be sacrificed. Not this. I will go to Secretary Wilson again as I did once before. He will give me one more chance because he must. Even if it takes years. And it will. Suppose you fail again? Ask for my resignation. A bargain, Mr. Carlton. Years. The slow cycle of the season, watching Mark Carlton. It's a long day since Amanda Froth was his young bride. A long day since she died. The 20th century, with its terrible and splendid promise, has begun. 1904. Here the wind came back. Searing the millions of acres of wheat. Much of it, the hybrid grain of Mark Carlton's. The hot blast brings the black stem rust. Midsummer, a long, low cry goes up from the American plains. Death sits in the wheat again. And gold turns black. Disaster. The final figures on the recent blight. The recent drought and the black rust are a world calamity. Crop losses of 5 weight and low stem weight, 60%. Shocking. Losses where my latest hybrid wheat was growing, 3%. Carlton. 3%? Sometimes nothing. My dear Carlton. If all the wheat had been my new cubanca hybrid, our crushing loss would have been totally avoided. The new wheat can survive. And it is soft enough for milling. My work is finished, sir. Finished? It's only begun. There's other work to do among the grains. Millions in the future will owe their very survival to you. The name of my Carlton may not be on every tongue, but it will be remembered. And the deed is imperishable. For all of us, for a nation and a world, let me offer gratitude and humility. That's all, Carlton. Don't stand about. There's work to do. Long still summer dusk, the vaspers ring. A soft wind whispers in the cypress and the willows where a man kneels at a stone. The stone says Amanda fraught Carlton, beloved wife of Mark, Mother Angela. Once Amanda, long ago, I promised I'd lay her sheaf of wheat at your feet. Wait to save a nation or a world of okay of gold for my bride, my wife, my staff, and my lantern forever. Carlton to the bell. They don't weep, they rejoice, and they bring the word down to the kindly earth and all its truth. I will restore to you the years that the locust have eaten and you shall eat in plenty and be satisfied and you shall praise the name of the Lord, your God. A few years later, and just as Secretary Wilson prophesied, the name and deed of Mark Carlton are not forgotten. They're even greater with the times. Here helping to fulfill the Secretary Wilson's prophecy is the honorable Clifford Hope, the United States Congressman from Kansas, chairman of the House Agriculture Committee. Thank you, Mr. Barrymore. I think that the story you have just presented is in its very essence the story and ideal of America. A kindly providence has made us the trustee of this vast and fertile land. Devoted Americans like Mark Carlton have fought the great fight against famine, the most relentless of all catastrophes. The saving of our wheat, this wheat is the staff of life, so the welfare of the people is the staff of democracy. Ideologies grow in barren soils and feed upon hunger. The successful fight to save our wheat was a great victory for the American way of life. I congratulate you for your story of that victory. Clifford Hope, Congressman from Kansas. Mark Carlton, by his patience and fortitude, found the answer to a plague that menaced our entire wheat crop. He added enormous wealth to the nation, enormous security from hunger to a hunger world. I'll be back in just a moment to tell you about our Mother's Day program for next Sunday. But first, Frank Goss has something of his own to tell you about that important day. Right now, I'd like to speak to you fathers in the audience. If you have little folks at your house, why not plan to take them shopping early this week for Hallmark Mother's Day cards? Children love the privilege of picking out their very own cards for mother, and it gives them a chance to share in the loving spirit of thoughtfulness that makes Mother's Day such a special day of celebration. You'll find there are dozens of Hallmark Mother's Day cards in bright, gay designs that will catch the youngsters' eye and bring a glow of joy to their mother's heart. And there are Mother's Day cards too for a favorite aunts or grandmothers. Yes, and here's something nice to know. You can choose a Hallmark card to send to your wife on May the 10th. Remember, when you select greetings at a fine store where Hallmark cards are sold, the familiar Hallmark and Crown on the back will carry an added measure of happiness, for it means you carry enough to send the very best. And now here again is Lionel Barrymore. The makers of the Hallmark cards are most grateful to the public press and to educators throughout America for their overwhelming response to Hallmark's television presentation of Hamlet last Sunday. Well, next Sunday you will pay a special Mother's Day tribute to Mary Washington, the mother of our first president. On the Hallmark Radio Hall of Fame, it's a heartwarming, true story that I know you won't want to miss. A Hallmark Hall of Fame is every Sunday. Our producer-directors, William Gay, a script tonight was written by Milton Geiger. Until next Sunday then, this is Lionel Barrymore saying good night. In stores that have been carefully selected to give you expert and friendly service, remember a Hallmark card and you'll carry enough to send the very best. The part of Mark Colton was played by John Stevenson. Barbara Eiler was featured as Amanda. Others in our cast were Frank Martin, Richard Beals, Ted DeCorsia and Francis Ure. Congressman Hope spoke to you transcribed from Washington. Every Sunday, Hallmark cards presents two great programs for the whole family's enjoyment. The Hallmark Hall of Fame on radio with host Lionel Barrymore and on television with Miss Sarah Churchill. Consult your paper for time and station. Ladies and gentlemen, blood is as vital to our national defense as copper, rubber, planes or tanks. Blood plasma is urgently needed today to save the lives of our men in service and civilians in hospitals here at home. It is needed to build plasma reserves to meet such emergencies as fires, floods or enemy attacks. So call your local Red Cross chapter to roll up your sleeves to save a life. This is Frank Goss saying good night to you all until next week at the same time to present another true-to-life story of actual persons who in their own way have contributed to a better world for all of us to live in. Next Sunday we bring you our Mother's Day tribute to Mary Washington on the Hallmark Hall of Fame. You see, Kansas City, Missouri.