Summer Playhouse (1964 TV series)

Summer Playhouse is a 30-minute anthology television series that aired on CBS during the summers of 1964 and 1965. It consisted of unsold television pilots.

Summer Playhouse is unrelated to an NBC series of the same name that aired during the summers of 1954 and 1957.

Background and production
The practice of television executives of ordering dozens of pilots for proposed television series each year – far more than their networks could possibly broadcast as series – created a sizable body of unsold pilots that had never aired. Packaging these unsold pilots in anthology series and airing them during the summer provided television networks with a way of both providing fresh programming during the summer rerun season and recouping at least some of the expense of producing them. Summer Playhouse was one of these series.

Don Fedderson produced Summer Playhouse, and Steve Allen, Jimmy Durante, and Fred MacMurray were among its notable stars.

Broadcast history
Summer Playhouse ran for 12 episodes over 12 consecutive weeks in the summer of 1964, airing on CBS from 9:30 to 10:00 p.m. Eastern Time on Saturday evenings. It premiered on July 4, and its last episode that year aired on September 19. It returned in the summer of 1965, premiering on June 28 and running on Monday evenings from 8:30 to 9:00 p.m. Eastern Time for 11 consecutive weeks. Its final episode was broadcast on September 6, 1965.

Season 1 (1964)
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Season 2 (1965)
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