I loved this show when I was a very small child. The premise was that a billionaire would choose people he did not know to receive from him anonymously a check for a million dollars tax free. (How that could have been arranged, the tax free element, was one of the more fanciful concepts of the show.) The show ran from 1955-1960 and the episodes included comedies and dramas. The implicit message was that having a lot of money is nice, but really has little to do with the happiness of the individuals who receive the funds, and that solving the deep problems that beset us usually does not depend upon the size of our bank account. A million dollars in 1955 would be equivalent to eleven million today.
Interesting. The (sort of) equivalent of this today (again I emphasise the loose connection here) are those trending social media posts which show people walking up to random strangers and offering to pay for their groceries.
However, It backfired recently in Australia when a man did it without the knowledge of the man at the checkout counter (who came to the country as an asylum seeker) because the post went viral. He was concerned at the invasion of privacy and that his family back in Afghanistan would think he was living on struggle street!
https://amp.abc.net.au/article/101253920
The saying “give a man a fish he eats for a day, teach him to fish and he eats for a lifetime” comes to mind always.