empted its entire evenings  schedule so the film could be aired in one night, as opposed to two  parts on consecutive nights. This was considered a bold move at the  time. It was the longest single network telecast of a film up to  then (three hours and 10 minutes with commercials; Ford Motor Co.  was the lone sponsor), beating the previous record set by  Laurence Olivier (qv)s _Richard III (1955)_ (qv), which was  telecast by NBC over three hours on March 11, 1956. An estimated 60  million viewers watched the program.