Bus Stop is a 26-episode American drama which aired on ABC from October 1, 1961, until March 25, 1962, starring Marilyn Maxwell as Grace Sherwood, the owner of a bus station and diner in the fictitious town of Sunrise in the ColoradoRockies. The program was adapted from William Inge's 1955 play, Bus Stop, and Inge was a script consultant for the series, which followed the lives of travelers passing through the bus station and the diner. Maxwell's co-stars were Richard Anderson as District Attorney Glenn Wagner, Rhodes Reason as Sheriff Will Mayberry, Joan Freeman as waitress Elma Gahrigner, Bernard Kates as Ralph the coroner, and Buddy Ebsen as Virge Blessing. Increasingly, as it became difficult to have guest stars be characters arriving by bus every week, the stories became more about people in the town which left little for Maxwell's character to do and led to her leaving the series after 13 episodes. She said, "There was nothing for me to do but pour a second cup of coffee and point the way to the men's room."
, the head of production at 20th Century Fox, created Bus Stop. Eight episodes were directed by Robert Altman. There were two Emmy Award nominations: Richard L. Van Enger for "Outstanding Achievement in Film Editing for Television" and Geraldine Brooks for "Outstanding Single Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role" for the episode "Call Back Yesterday", which aired on December 10, with David Hedison as her fellow guest star.
The episode "Cherie"
The series was preceded by Inge's play and the 1956 film, Bus Stop, in which Marilyn Monroe and Don Murray had the lead roles. The sixth episode was the series pilot, "Cherie," the only episode directly based on Inge's play and movie. Tuesday Weld was cast in the title role of Cherie, an 18-year-old singer who hopes to be discovered in Hollywood, and 24-year-old Gary Lockwood portrayed Bo, a Montana rodeo cowboy who wants to marry her. Joseph Cotten also starred in the episode as Dr. Lyman. Lockwood appeared the same season as investigator Eric Jason in ABC's Follow the Sun and would star two years later as NBC's The Lieutenant. Weld had previously appeared as the materialistic teenager Thalia Menninger on CBS's The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis with Dwayne Hickman and Bob Denver.
The series finale, "I Kiss Your Shadow", is a story of a man crushed by the memory of his wife's death in an automobile accident. The guest stars were George Grizzard, Alfred Ryder, and Joanne Linville. In his book Danse Macabre, Stephen King nominated this episode as "...the single most frightening story ever done on TV." King wrote that Bus Stop was "...a straight drama show... The final episode, however, deviated wildly into the supernatural, and for me, Robert Bloch's adaptation of his own short story 'I Kiss Your Shadow' has never been beaten on TV - and rarely anywhere else - for eerie, mounting horror." King's attribution of the script to Robert Bloch is contradicted by the episode's opening titles, which read "Teleplay by Barry Trivers From the Short Story by Robert Bloch."
Losing out to ''Bonanza''
Despite the quality of its story lines, cast, and guests, Bus Stop failed in the ratings against NBC's Bonanza, which moved for its third season from Saturday to Sunday evenings in the 9 p.m. Eastern slot. Ronald Reagan and Jack Benny appeared at the same hour on CBS in General Electric Theater and The Jack Benny Program. Bus Stop followed ABC's western series Lawman costarring John Russell and Peter Brown and preceded Gardner McKay's Adventures in Paradise.