One of the series for which Rockne S. O'Bannon (Martin Balsam) wrote was Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse (1958). Balsam appeared in an episode of that series entitled The Time Element (1958), which served as the unofficial pilot of Unwahrscheinliche Geschichten (1959).
In the segment Gramma you can see a cookie jar in the likeness of Falkor from neverending story. Which had Barret Oliver who played the main character Bastian.
The segment "Personal Demons", written by Rockne S. O'Bannon, depicts O'Bannon as a dried-up writer near the end of his career, as played by Martin Balsam. O'Bannon was only 31 at the time the program aired; far from being "dried-up", he went on to script for many other TV shows. He later wrote the film Spacecop L.A. 1991 (1988) and created the series SeaQuest (1993) and Farscape - Verschollen im All (1999).
The second time actor Barret Oliver has played a character who steals/reads a book he shouldn't have, the other being Bastian in The Never Ending Story.
Neither "Gramma" nor "Personal Demons" have opening or closing narration. "Cold Reading" has no closing narration.