For many viewers the Cavalcade of America was history on the air. DuPont Company publicist Lyman Dewey confidently asserted that the typical viewer “abstracts [sic] the meaning for himself” without explicit statement from the company, identifying DuPont with the “rugged scene of America’s struggle.” Program specialists exercised the format’s malleable historical and dramatic properties under maximum editorial control. A complete reliance on telefilms ensured the prescribed interpretation of scripts, expanded the scope of production limited by the television studio, and lent programs a finished look that specialists felt reflected the company’s stature. The use of telefilms allowed for additional economies in the rebroadcast and syndication of programs. Shorn of the “Story of Chemistry” commercials that concluded each program, telefilms were then placed in circulation on the club-and-school circuit. Merchandising directed to the general viewing public leavened the series’ educational purpose with entertainment values. Promotional material accompanying the Cavalcade’s second telecast, titled “All’s Well with Lydia,” for example, described “the Revolutionary War story of Lydia Darragh, American patriot and Philadelphia widow, who by her cleverness gained information instrumental in an American victory.” Spot announcement texts supplied to local stations read, “Was she minx or patriot?” A second exclaimed, “Lydia Darragh’s receptive ear, ready smile and pink cheek are more dangerous to British hopes than a thousand muskets!”

In a bid to freshen up the series’ historical venue with the trend toward “actuals” then in favor on General Electric Theater and Armstrong Circle Theatre, during the 1954–55 television season, Cavalcade introduced contemporary story subjects: “Saturday Story,” with the football team the Cleveland Browns’ Otto Graham, who played himself; “Man on the Beat,” a police drama; “The Gift of Dr. Minot,” the story of the 1934 Nobel laureate in medicine and his treatment of anemia; and “Sunrise on a Dirty Face,” a juvenile-delinquent drama. The favorable reception of stories of “modern American life” led to a change of title for the 1955–56 television season. Retaining an option on the historical past, the new DuPont Cavalcade Theater debuted with “A Time for Courage,” the story of “Nancy Merki and the swimming coach who led her to victory over polio and to Olympic stardom.” In subsequent weeks Cavalcade featured a mix of contemporary and historical stories, including “Toward Tomorrow,” a biography of Dr. Ralph Bunche; “Disaster Patrol,” an adventure story about the Civil Air Patrol; “The Swamp Fox,” featuring Hans Conried in the role of General Francis Marion; and “Postmark: Danger,” a police drama drawn from the files of U.S. postal investigators.

DuPont’s new interest in contemporary relevance, however, was occasionally misread by Batten, Barton, Durstine and Osborn, its Madison Avenue advertising agency and program producer. Rejecting a Cavalcade Theater script titled “I Lost My Job,” a DuPont Company official testily explained to agency producers that on Cavalcade or in any other DuPont advertising, we do not want to picture business in a bad light, or in any way that can be interpreted as negative by even a single viewer. It just seems axiomatic that we’d be silly to spend advertising money to tear down the very concept we’re trying to sell.

By the 1956–57 television season, that sale had moved to new settings and locations far from the Cavalcade’s capsule demonstrations of free enterprise at work. Spurred by editorial confidence in the value of entertainment, the newly renamed DuPont Theatre all but abandoned the historical past, at least as an educational prerequisite for an evening’s entertainment. The following season the DuPont Show of the Month confirmed the trend with a schedule of 90-minute spectaculars, some in color, debuting September 29, 1957, with “Crescendo,” a musical variety program costarring Ethel Merman and Rex Harrison.