Just watched the failed pilot of THREE COINS IN THE FOUNTAIN on the Internet Archive. Originally planned in 1964 and shot on location in Rome in late 1965, it was for a time considered a shoe-in for the 1966-67 TV season but was eventually dropped. The pilot finally aired five years later in early August of 1970.
The series was to star Joanna Moore, Cynthia Pepper and Yvonne Craig. Ms. Moore was then married to Ryan O'Neal and was, in fact, the mother of Tatum and Griffin O'Neal. Apparently their marriage was already on the rocks as he was already seen around town with other women while she was in Italy. They divorced soon after she returned to the US and her life sadly went downhill from there.
Cynthia Pepper was coming off a pleasant little series called MARGIE and was doing several pilots around that time. She gets the most screen time in the pilot. She's still around today at age 85.
Yvonne Craig, of course, would soon be kicking special guest villain butt as the balletic Batgirl. She had been acting since the late 1950s and was a familiar face on TV and in teen-oriented films around that time. In her memoirs, she writes at length about THREE COINS IN THE FOUNTAIN and what an enjoyable shoot it was. Afterwards, she and Cynthia went on a "Europe on 5 Dollars a Day" tour.
Based solely on the pilot, any series would have been similar to the earlier HOW TO MARRY A MILLIONAIRE with Barbara Eden, also based on a movie. The male guest star in COINS was Nino Castelnuevo, star of one of my favorite films--THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG. Also in the cast was child star Antony Alda, half-brother of Alan Alda. In her book, Yvonne misremembers him as "Robert" which was his father's name. She wrote that he grew up to be a rock performer.
Although shot in color and aired that way in 1970, only a black & white print is available. Produced, co-written (with Mel Shavelson), and directed by veteran Hal Kanter, the scenes of room are, of course, lovely, and presumably why the series ultimately did not get picked up as shooting had to be expensive there. The unrelated later sitcom TO ROME, WITH LOVE, was shot entirely in Hollywood with stock footage of Rome.
