1965. ABC's "A time for us" started with a party

 

Roxanne Reynolds’ party on ABC's afternoon A Time for Us started with cocktails and wound up with midnight supper. Normally it would have lasted six hours. On the air it took only three—a half-hour a day for six days.

By the time the last guest had said good night—actually it wasn’t a guest, it was Doug Colton, a ne’er-do-well piano player hired for the occasion— enough plots and subplots had been generated to keep the soap opera bubbling for all this season and part of next. That’s how producer Joseph Hardy planned it—“To initiate plot and intrigue that will involve these people’s lives for at least a year.” 

Here, roughly, are the pre-party and post-party situations; and, believe us, this is no time to practice your speed-reading:

Roxanne Reynolds is a trouble-prone divorcée who comes from one of the top social families of Haviland, locale of the piece. Her father is Jason Farrel, wealthy but shallow, whose wife Leslie, now in Europe, is a bit of a playgirl. Roxanne recently was divorced from Craig Reynolds, a free-lance editor in New York. Their son Steve, who attended Yale, is, as someone says, trying to “find himself.” He’s not looking very hard at this point because he has just been jilted —hard—by Linda Driscoll.

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TV Guide - september 1965