Frank Perry

Actually, "Trilogy" was a compendium of three Truman Capote teleplays, each of which had its own, previous broadcast. But I agree with you "Christmas Memory" was superb, starring the always-engaging Geraldine Page.

Page reprised her "Cousin Sook" role a year after the December 1966 broadcast of "Christmas Memory" (on "ABC Stage '67'), in the teleplay of another Capote-based work, "Thanksgiving Visitor." Capote himself narrated both telecasts.

Page was, of course, a respected stage actress. But she harbored no snobbery as to in which medium she labored, turning in equally affecting and effective performances in films and on television. Page even briefly acted on the ABC soap opera "Loving."

I think most would consider her film roles of Tennessee Williams' works ("Summer & Smoke," "Sweet Bird of Youth"; Page also starred in stage versions of each, the former igniting the off-Broadway movement) to be her most prestigious. But I also recall her terrific & terrorfying (deliberately misspelled) performance in the Grande Dame Guignol classic "What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice?," and the melancholic role in what is, perhaps, Woody Allen's most depressing film, "Interiors."

Page and Bette Davis are probably my favorite actresses of all-time.

There was a very fine (and extended) remake of "Christmas Memory" filmed for TV in 1997, starring Patty Duke as "Cousin Sook." Duke gave a fine performance, one of the few actresses with a TV resume who could have honored Page's legacy with any dignity, and with a stage heritage, herself, to boot!

Even in her sometimes over-the-top, eponymous sitcom, Duke never gave less than a bravura performance. She was "that good" that young, a real "miracle worker."

An interesting sidebar, with a "Six Degrees of Patty Duke" connection--young Donnie Melvin, who played "Buddy" (Capote's fictional voice) in "Christmas Memory," had also played a small role on an episode ("The Babysitters") of "The Patty Duke Show," of a bratty child being baby-sat by Duke's character of "Patty Lane."

As a teen actor, Melvin went on to play "Peter Dunbar" on the CBS soap opera "The Secret Storm." Dunbar's character's mother on "Storm" was played by the late, great Judy Lewis, the out-of-wedlock daughter of actress Loretta Young & actor Clark Gable, raised to think she was the adopted daughter of Young (a film unto itself). Lewis played the role of "Susan Ames Dunbar Carver" on the CBS daytime drama for a decade, the longest of any of the actresses who played the character. But Melvin appears to have no acting roles since "Secret Storm" was canceled in 1974. Too bad, because the young Melvin displayed some real charm and potential.