This Day in TV History: The Circle Family (1982, unsold pilot) airs on NBC

Here's an odd one: 40 years ago tonight, NBC aired this unsold pilot, The Circle Family, about a carnival owner who gets out of the biz after winning an insurance settlement and starts a motor lodge. Max Baer Jr. stars as patriarch Hearst Circle. What a name! 

I wish I could add, "What a show," but I haven't seen it, and I can't find any video of it. So today I will say don't confuse this with Hearst TV stations, with The Family Circle magazine, with Hearst Circle in Toronto, with Bil Keane's Family Circus nor with A Family Circus Christmas, with the WTA's Family Circle Cup tournament...

Morgan Woodward, Sarah Torgov, and Sydney Penney also appear. Lee Goldberg's Unsold Television Pilots adds that Circle's wife left him for the carnival strongman and that he has taken in 3 orphans as his own children to keep them out of the orphanage system.

Here's a clip from the 1989 Family Circle Cup tournament just because: