The Cocktail Party The Cocktail Party The Cocktail Party is a play by T. S. Eliot. Elements of the play are based on "Alcestis", by the Ancient Greek playwright Euripides. The play was the most popular of Eliot's seven plays in his lifetime, although his 1935 play, "Murder in the Cathedral", is better remembered today. It was written while Eliot was a visiting scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study in 1948. "The Cocktail Party" was first performed at the Edinburgh Festival in 1949. In 1950 the play had successful runs in London and New York theaters (the Broadway production received the 1950
Murder, She Wrote from eighth to 58th in the yearly ratings; the series lost nearly 6 million viewers as the audience was not willing to follow it to Thursday, which left CBS with little choice but to end "Murder, She Wrote" after 12 seasons in August 1996. To soften the blow, the network agreed to air the final four episodes in its original Sunday night timeslot, as well as commission four "Murder, She Wrote" movies over the next few years: the first was "South by Southwest" (1997), with three more following as "A Story to Die For" (2000), "The Last Free Man" (2001),