ABC Stage 67

Significant episodes

ABC Stage 67 kicked off on September 14, 1966, with The Love Song of Barney Kempinski, a Murray Schisgal play that earned Alan Arkin an Emmy nomination. The cast also included Lee Grant, John Gielgud, and Alan King. A week later, on September 21, came Dare I Weep, Dare I Mourn?, a Stanley Mann adaptation of a John Le Carré story starring James Mason and Hugh Griffith. On October 5, The Kennedy Wit featured Jack Paar in conversation with David Powers, a former Special Assistant to President Kennedy and the first curator of the Kennedy Library, discussing JFK’s speeches.

Olympus 7-0000 aired October 12, a Richard Adler musical comedy with Larry Blyden, Donald O’Connor, and Phyllis Newman about a coach trying to build a pro football team. The Confession, a drama, aired October 19 with a cast including Brandon deWilde, Dana Elcar, Hugh Franklin, Katharine Houghton, Arthur Kennedy, and Byron Sanders. The Canterville Ghost, an original musical version of the Oscar Wilde story, aired November 2, with music by Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick, a script by Burt Shevelove, and a cast featuring Michael Redgrave, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Peter Noone, and Frankie Howerd.

The People Trap aired November 9, a teleplay by Earl Hamner Jr. based on a Robert Sheckley treatment, with an ensemble that included Lew Ayres, Pearl Bailey, Betty Furness, Lee Grant, Phil Harris, Mercedes McCambridge, Vera Miles, baseball legend Jackie Robinson, Cesar Romero, Mort Sahl, Connie Stevens, and Estelle Winwood. Evening Primrose aired November 16, an original musical from a John Collier short story, with a book by James Goldman and a Stephen Sondheim score.

Directed by Paul Bogart, it starred Anthony Perkins, Charmian Carr, and Dorothy Stickney, and was taped after hours at Manhattan’s now-gone Stern Brothers department store. A studio recording with Neil Patrick Harris in Perkins’s role came out in 2001, and the episode is viewable at the Museum of Television & Radio in New York and Beverly Hills, and on DVD. The Legend of Marilyn Monroe, a documentary narrated by John Huston, aired November 30 and has also been released on DVD.