Bus Stop

1 9 6 1 – 1 9 6 2 (USA)
26 x 60 minute episodes

Grace Sherwood (Marilyn Maxwell) owned the diner at the bus depot in Sunrise, Colorado, in this Sunday-night ABC series loosely based on the play by William Inge which had also been the inspiration for the 1956 Marilyn Monroe movie.

Together with her waitress Elma (Joan Freeman), Sheriff Will (Rhodes Reason) and District Attorney Glenn Wagner (Richard Anderson), Grace watched life through the stories which unfolded as passengers arrived and departed the small town – many of them lost and troubled and attempting to overcome their difficulties.

Marilyn Maxwell left the cast halfway through the series, claiming “there was nothing for me to do but pour a second cup of coffee and point the way to the men’s room”.

Guests during the show’s run included James Brolin, Dean Stockwell, Ellen Burstyn, Rod Taylor, Buddy Ebsen, Claude Akins, Keenan Wynn, Jason Evers, Tuesday Weld, George Hamilton, Earl Holliman and Joyce Van Patten.

The show was cancelled as a result of the explicit violence featured in the episode originally titled “Told by an Idiot” – but broadcast as “A Lion Walks Among Us”- in which 19-year-old Fabian (in his television acting debut) played a young psychopath accused of axing an elderly storekeeper to death who later buries a switchblade knife into his defence attorney for insisting on a fee for getting him acquitted of the axe murder.

The episode caused a great deal of controversy at the time, including questions by the Federal Communications Commission.