This month it’s all about The Bill Dana Show. After learning more about the show, we are taking a look at some of the cast members who were part of the series. Today we meet Maggie Peterson.
📷tvinsider.com
Maggie Peterson was born in Greeley, Colorado in 1941. Her father was a doctor, and her mom was a stay-at-home mom. She grew up in a musical family and always claimed some of her earliest memories included music. Peterson joined her brother Jim and two friends in the Ja-Da Quartet, and they would ride around in the back of a pickup truck singing.
When Dick Linke heard Peterson singing at a Capital Records convention in 1954, he encouraged her to come to New York after graduating, so in 1958 she did, and she brought the quartet with her. They were on the Perry Como and Pat Boone shows. In 1959 they released their only album, “It’s the Most Happy Sound.” Not longer after it came out, the band broke up.
For several years after that, Peterson joined The Ernie Mariani Trio (later known as Margaret Ann and Ernie Mariani Trio). They played in Las Vega, Lake Tahoe, and Reno. Bob Sweeny and Aaron Ruben, the director and producer for The Andy Griffith Show, spotted here there.
📷tagsrwc.com Charlene Darling
Originally, Peterson was brought in to read for the role of Ellie Walker, a love interest for Andy, but Elinor Donahue received that role. Then Maggie was offered the role of Charlene Darling.
Like her birth family, The Darlings were a musical group; however, Roscoe Darling and Maggie’s father were nothing alike. Because she had recurring roles on Andy Griffith, she also was cast on The Bill Dana Show and Gomer Pyle USMC during the same years.
Maggie kept busy in 1969, appearing in an episode of The Queen and I and in three big-screen movies. In 1970, she showed up on Love American Style, Green Acres, and Mayberry RFD. The seventies found her on an episode of Karen and The Odd Couple. During the eighties, she only did a few made-for-tv movies, including Return to Mayberry. Her last acting credit was in The Magical World of Disney in 1987.
In 1968, Peterson opened for Griffith at Lake Tahoe. While there, she met jazz musician Ronald Bernard Mancuso (Gus), and he and Maggie married ten years later. Gus was a well-known musician. He won Playboy Jazz Poll New Artist of the Year in the late fifties. He toured the world with Sarah Vaughn and Billie Eckstine. He also backed a lot of performers in Las Vegas.
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The couple lived in Los Angeles for a bit before moving to Las Vegas where Maggie became a film and television location scout. At that time, Gus was working with Quincy Jones. Eventually the couple landed back in Las Vegas and Gus taught at the University of Nevada there.
Gus passed away from Alzheimers in 2021, and Maggie died in her sleep a year after her husband.
I wonder why Maggie switched from acting to location scout. I could not find that out. It seems like music was her real love and she got into acting to help pay bills. I’m glad music came back as a big part of her life with Gus. She seemed to have a fun career. It was interesting to learn a bit more about her since I only knew her as Charlene Darling before this blog.
This month we are exploring The Bill Dana Show for our blog series. Last week we talked a bit about the show itself, and for the rest of the weeks, we are looking at some of the other cast members’ careers. Today we begin with Bill Dana himself.
📷findagrave.com
Dana was born William Szathmary in Quincy, Massachusetts in 1924. He was the youngest of six children. His older brother Arthur was fluent in several languages and inspired Bill to learn different accents.
Dana served with the US Army during WWII as a machine gunner and was awarded the Bronze Star Medal.
After the war, Bill enrolled at Emerson College. After graduation, he was hired as a page at NBC’s Studio 6B, or 30 Rock. He was also trying to break into comedy performing around New York. During the fifties he appeared on The Imogene Coca Show. He also did some writing and producing for The Spike Jones Show.
He met Don Adams and began writing routines for him in the fifties. He and Don would be part of each other’s lives for a bit. Don would be one of the cast members on The Bill Dana Show. Dana would appear on Adams’ show Get Smart, and Dana’s older brother Irving was the composer of the Get Smart theme song. Bill would also cowrite the script for the Get Smart film The Nude Bomb.
📷thenewyorktimes.com
In the late fifties, Steve Allen hired Dana as a writer. Bill created a character, Jose Jimenez, for the “Man in the Street” segments of Allen’s show. Soon Jose became his alter ego. He made appearances as Jose on The Red Skelton Show, The Spike Jones Show, The Danny Thomas Show, and The Ed Sullivan Show. He even had a comedy album featuring the character.
Dana told a story on Ed Sullivan’s show that some people truly thought he was Jose Jimenez. One lady who met him out and about asked if his birth name was Jose Jimenez and he told her, “No, it’s Bill Szathmary.” She said “Wow, no wonder you changed it to Jimenez.”
In 1961, Dana began a recurring role on The Danny Thomas Show. He played Jimenez as an elevator operator. People responded so well that Danny Thomas and Leonard Sheldon spun off the character, now a bellhop at a luxury New York hotel, and The Bill Dana Show was created. In addition to Adams, Jonathan Harrison was part of the cast and Maggie Peterson joined them in season two. The show was on the air for one and a half seasons.
As we discussed last week, some people saw Jimenez as a hard-working immigrant who noticed some of the crazy things Americans did, and others saw him as a stereotyped Latino caricature. The pre-show Jimenez fit the second description better and the show Jimenez leaned more toward the first portrayal. However, as the character developed, viewers were not flocking to the show. It was also up against Lassie which at the time was a huge family show on Sunday nights.
📷wikipedia.com
The last time Jimenez was on the screen as a character was a 1966 episode of Batman in a cameo on the famous wall. Later Dana apologized for his caricature of Jimenez and became a bit of an activist for Latino causes. The National Hispanic Media Coalition endorsed the Jose Jimenez character and invited Dana to sit on their advisory board.
Dana jumped back and forth from actor to writer for a couple of decades. He wrote the script for All in the Family’s episode “Sammy’s Visit” starring Sammy Davis Jr. He also wrote for Bridget Loves Bernie, Chico and the Man, Donny and Marie, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, and Matlock.
His acting landed him in The Courtship of Eddie’s Father, Love American Style, The SnoopSisters, Police Woman, McMillan and Wife, Ellery Queen, Switch, Vega$, Fantasy Island, The Facts of Life, and Empty Nest among a few others.
He had recurring roles on two additional shows during his career. He was on St. Elsewhere as Howie Mandel’s character’s father for three episodes. He also was Angelo on six episodes of The Golden Girls.
One of his last projects was founding the American Comedy Archives at Emerson College. He and Jenni Matz interviewed more than 60 comedians for this archive, including Phyllis Diller, Norman Lear, Carl Reiner, Betty White, and Jonathan Winters.
Dana was a man of many talents. He also ran a talent management company and an advertising agency. He wrote a book, The Laughter Prescription, with Dr. Laurence J. Peter.
Dana passed away in June of 2017 at his home in Nashville.
Certainly, Dana had a full career. I think starting off with the Jose debacle probably kept him from getting different roles early in his career. He also didn’t seem to know what he wanted to be when he grew up. Was he a comedy writer? A dramatic writer? A variety show writer? Was he an actor? A talent agent? An author? Not that you can’t be more than one thing in life, but in the span of three decades he never seemed to settle on one or two careers. Hopefully he had fun and enjoyed all the different hats he wore.
This month our blog is devoted to The Bill Dana Show which was on the air for two seasons in the early sixties.
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Bill Dana is not a name remembered much anymore but, in the sixties, he was a huge celebrity. There is some tough talk about why he was so famous. During the late fifties and early sixties, especially as so many radio shows transitioned to television, there were some politically incorrect shows. This one teetered on the edge of it, in the same ways the show Life with Luigi did.
Bill Dana’s alter ego, Jose Jimenez, debuted on The Steve Allen Show in the late fifties. Jimenez was a Mexican immigrant. He saw the United States through a different lens than people who grew up here. He often was amused by what he saw going on around him. However, he was not the lazy stereotype Mexican. Jimenez was hard working and wise in many ways. He was not offensive in the way Amos and Andy were. Dana was a Hungarian Jewish man playing a Hispanic man so that was not well received either.
While I still love so many programs from the fifties and sixties that hold up well today and have delightful characters, many programs from this time make us cringe and we are embarrassed for the television industry at that time.
There are also many performers that may have bordered on sexual and ethnic political incorrectness, many of their characterizations may not be offensive, but I sure don’t find any humor in them.
📷 Jose Jimenez televisoinacademyawards.com
Remember this was during the Civil Rights Movement era, so things were beginning to get examined more closely in pop culture. Even if Jose was a good guy, his exaggerated accent set him up more of a caricature than a character.
While there was some blowback from the Latino community, many fans adored Jimenez. Danny Thomas and Sheldon Leonard decided to give Jose his own show after he made a few appearances on The Danny Thomas Show. NBC put the show on its schedule without even seeing a pilot because he was so popular.
While the quick sketches with Jose were in your face humor, putting the character in his own television series gave the writers time to develop him more and make him more dimensional. Leonard made this a workplace sitcom which was different for him since so many of their shows—The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Danny Thomas Show, That Girl, Good Morning World—were all balancing personal and work life. Earl Hagen, who wrote so many great tunes for the Leonard group, wrote this one as well.
The show aired September 22, 1963, and ran for a season and a half, ending January of 1965.
Jimenez is a bellhop at a luxury New York hotel. He lives in a special staff apartment, eats in the hotel kitchen, and interacts with most of the guests. He is surrounded by a great cast which we’ll get to know in more detail this month. Don Adams was Byron Glick, house detective. Jonathan Harris took on the role of Mr. Phillips, the hotel manager. Fellow bellhop Eddie (Gary Crosby) is always trying to get Jose to lose his rose-colored view of life. For season 2. Maggie Peterson plays waitress Susie.
The ratings were not great. Perhaps viewers had a harder time connecting this Jose to the caricature Jose. Certainly, more criticism came from the Latino community as the show went on. In addition to Jose, there was feedback on other shows that used stereotypical Mexican characters and in commercials like the Frito Bandito.
📷washingtonpost.com
Jose had one cameo role in Batman when he meets the duo and introduces himself as “My name—Jose Jimenez” in 1966. That was the final appearance of the character and a few years afterward, Dana read an obituary that he wrote for Jose at a Latino civil rights meeting in Los Angeles, and he became an activist for the Latino community, so there was some good coming out of the situation.
The show was canceled partway through season two. Another factor in the show’s ratings was the fact that it was on Sunday nights up against Lassie, a family favorite. However, the show did somehow receive an Emmy nomination for outstanding sitcom. No surprise it didn’t win. Despite being a mediocre show with some nugget of greatness here and there, it was up against McHale’s Navy, The Farmer’s Daughter, and the show that won, The Dick Van Dyke Show.
If The Bill Dana Show had just been a show about “a guy” who arrives from Mexico to work in a posh hotel, and we saw life through his eyes, good and bad in America, the concept could have been fun and more accepted. It appears that the writing was pretty good and it had a great cast. Jose was just not the character to build the show around.
As we wind up our What in the World? blog series this month, we end with Bracken’s World. Just like the other shows we covered, this one began in the sixties, 1969, and just like the others, it was on for less than two seasons.
Dorothy Kingsley created the series for NBC. This was her only foray into television; she was a screenplay writer for most of her career. Kingsley wanted to concentrate on the “little people” who work at the studio, rather than the executives. In one blog I read that props from Twentieth Century Fox where the show was filmed were often carted around in the background for authenticity. It would be fun to go back and make a list of the props that were shown around the set; specifically mentioned were props from Planet of the Apes and Land of the Giants.
Watch.plex.tv.com captures the essence of the show in its description “In the glitzy realm of Century Studios, powerful executive John Bracken shapes Hollywood’s fate, navigating ambition, romance, and betrayal through the eyes of his astute secretary Sylvia, who holds the key to both secrets and success.”
Century Studios was a movie studio. John Bracken owned the company, and he was never seen during the first season. Similarly to the way Charlie interacted with Charlie’s Angels, we only heard Bracken on the telephone, voiced by Warren Stevens. Sylvia Caldwell (Eleanor Parker) was his secretary. There were some impressive cast members in this show including stunt man Dennis Cole, Jeanne Cooper, Madlyn Rhue, Linda Harrison, Elizabeth Allen, Karen Jensen, and Laraine Stephens. Most of them played starlets waiting for their big break. Peter Haskell as producer Kevin Grant seemed to be responsible for a lot of the success of the show. Tom Selleck had a recurring role of Roger Haines during the first season. The characters dealt with the problems of the movie industry—drugs, sex, alcohol, and amoral executives.
Being a Hollywood studio, there were also a lot of great guest stars including Anne Baxter, Shelley Fabares, Sally Field, Lee Grant, Carolyn Jones, Ricardo Montalban, Edward G. Robinson, Martin Sheen, Richard Thomas, Forrest Tucker and Raquel Welch.
The series was on Friday nights in the hole filled when Star Trek was canceled. It was referred to as the “Friday night death slot.” The show’s competition was Love American Style and CBS Friday Night at the Movies, which started an hour before Bracken’s World did. I’m not sure when this death slot switched because at that same time, I recall loving Friday nights in the early seventies featuring The Brady Bunch, The Partridge Family, Room 222, The Odd Couple, and Love American Style.
The show’s ratings were not good, so for the second season, things were changed a bit. Parker left part way through season one because she didn’t like the scripts. We now got to see John Bracken in person, but he sounded like Leslie Nielsen who played him instead of John Warren. Dennis Cole was also shown out the door.
Jeanne Cooper had a very different view of the show than Parker. Cooper played one of the starlet’s mom who was also her agent. She said that it allowed viewers to go behind the scenes of a movie studio to get a realistic depiction of what happened when the cameras were off. She said that the cast can take much more time filming movies to discuss the script, but that is not the way television works, and Parker never understood the difference between the two mediums. Cooper felt the writing was much more sophisticated than shows had produced before and that it led the way for shows like LA Law and Boston Legal.
According to Cooper, there were two reasons for the demise of the show. One was that she said Bracken should never have been exposed. He should have stayed a voice who ran a studio like a Louis B. Mayer type. She also said the show was very expensive to produce. Often shows were ordered six at a time back then which gave the crew some wiggle room to have a few expensive shows and then cut back when it got viewers locked in to average out the cost. NBC would only buy two or three at a time. Finally, Stan Rubin, the executive producer, said NBC had to agree to a minimum of four-episode commitments at a time and they refused, so the show was canceled.
The show did seem to be a bit ahead of its time. Perhaps if it had debuted a few years later, it would have found more viewers.
As we are in the middle of our What in the World? blog series, today it’s a forgotten sitcom from the sixties: Good Morning World.
📷wikipedia.com
This series was created by Sam Denoff and Bill Persky, the team behind That Girl. The concept was based on Persky and Denoff’s time as writers for a New York radio station in the fifties.
In fact, William B. Williams, a WNEW DJ was given screen credit because the title was based on his daily greeting, “Hello, World.” William B. Williams was quite a character and an icon in the world of music. He was born in 1923 and after attending the University of Syracuse, he got a job with WAAT in New Jersey. He filled in for a DJ who failed to come to work but then was fired for, believe it or not, wearing red socks to work. He was hired by WNEW in New York City. He became a beloved radio icon. The radio station said at his funeral there was a huge crowd outside which included taxi drivers, sanitation workers, bookies, waitresses, singers, songwriters, politicians, housewives, first responders, and even the Rockettes.
📷radiohalloffame.com William B. Williams
According to the radio station’s website, “William B. Williams respected singers and songwriters, music and musicians, and it showed. He had a permanent, perhaps profound, effect on the lexicon of pop music.
He bestowed the ‘Count’ on Basie and the ‘Duke’ on Ellington. Billie Holiday was ‘Lady Day.’ Ella Fitzgerald was the ‘First Lady of Song.’ Louis Armstrong was ‘Pops.’ Sinatra was ‘Francis Albert,’ the ‘Chairman of the Board.’ Nat ‘King’ Cole was simply ‘Nathaniel.’”
The show was produced by Sheldon Leonard and Carl Reiner. Looking at that alone and you would expect it to be a hit.
The premise was two radio disc jockeys who have a morning show, “Lewis and Clarke,” in Los Angeles. Dave Lewis is happily married, and Larry is a lady’s man and party boy.
They had some problems casting this show. Roddy McDowell and Sharon Farrell were cast as the married couple. Then Ron Rifkin replaced McDowell. Then they were both let go and David Lewis was played by Joby Baker, his wife Linda was played by Julie Parrish, and Ronnie Schell was cast as Larry Clarke.
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Billy de Wolfe and Goldie Hawn were fun additions to the cast. De Wolfe played Roland Hutton, the stuffy station manager. Hawn was Linda’s best friend Sandy Kramer.
The series debuted on CBS in 1967. It was on Tuesday nights, sponsored by Procter and Gamble. It was competing with N.Y.P.D., a police crime show and Tuesday Night at the Movies which began half an hour before Good Morning World.
Given that the talent behind The Dick Van Dyke Show was contributing to this show as well, it’s not surprising that it seems to be a mixture of The Dick Van Dyke Show and the later Mary Tyler Moore Show. Like Dick Van Dyke, the show features the DJs’ home and work life; like Mary Tyler Moore, you have a Lou Grant-type manager, and we learn about life at a radio station.
The theme music was by David Grusin. The opening was a different look for a sitcom. It’s a bouncy theme that begins with an alarm clock ticking, the guys quickly getting ready, morning traffic, life in LA, and the two DJs barely getting into their chairs before the show started.
The show was not awful in ratings, but the network had two concerns. They still were not sure Baker and Parrish were the right actors to play the married couple, and Parrish had some health concerns that affected the show. They were also concerned that the show did not pull in more of the viewers who were watching The Red Skelton Show which was on before Good Morning World. I don’t think that is surprising. I’m guessing people who enjoyed watching Red Skelton would not love this show as much and vice versa. Full disclosure, I am not a Red Skelton fan. I didn’t find his humor funny, and I have read too many stories shared by actors and writers who experienced his ego and lack of respect dealing with coworkers.
📷imdb.com
The network made the decision not to renew the show for a second season. Schell, who had been playing a private on Gomer Pyle: USMC, another Leonard/Reiner show, returned to military life with a promotion to corporal.
Goldie Hawn was free to accept an offer to appear on Martin and Rowan’s Laugh In which was a turning point for her career. De Wolfe became part of the cast of his close friend Doris Day’s show.
Baker never starred in another show, but he was a busy character actor. Parrish was later cast in Return to Peyton Place and also stayed busy in television; she later had a recurring role on Beverly Hills 90210.
This would be an easy series to binge watch with 26 episodes available. S’more Entertainment released the series on DVD in 2006 and its’ on Roku, so viewers can check it out for free.
This month we are in the midst of What in the World? Every sitcom has the word “world” in it. On deck today is My World . . . and Welcome to It. This half-hour show was based on the cartoons of James Thurber. It debuted in 1969 and was on the air for a year.
📷martin crookall- wordpress.com
William Windom played John Monroe a cartoonist who works for a magazine similar to the New Yorker called The Manhattanite. Monroe lives with his wife Ellen (Joan Hotchkis) and their daughter Lydia (Lisa Gerritsen). John often daydreams about his daughter’s future and the “older” Lydias were played by Talia Shire and Cindy Williams.
The name John Monroe was Thurber’s alto-ego in his book Owl in the Attic. He frequently daydreams and those are cleverly incorporated into the series.
The episodes opened with John observing different aspects of his life. The use of the cartoons created a fantasy life dream world where he escaped life situations he could not process.
Mel Shavelson created the show for NBC. He wrote and directed the pilot with one of my all-time favorites Sheldon Leonard as executive producer. The animation in the series was done by DePattie-Freleng Enterprises.
Rounding out the cast was Henry Morgan as Philip Jensen, a magazine writer based on Robert Benchley and Harold J. Stone as editor Hamilton.
📷moviedatabase.com
The show was on Monday nights at 7:30 and was up against Gunsmoke. While it had a lot of great reviews from the critics, the viewers were not there in droves. Percy Shain of the Boston Globe referred to the show as “a joy and treasure.” Bob Williams of the New York Post wrote that it was “it’s warm, it’s witty, and it’s a sophisticated cut above the best of the TV network situation comedies.”
Not every critic treated it so kindly, however. Jack Gould of the New York Times felt it was “hackneyed gibberish relieved only by an occasional Thurber drawing” and Norman Mark of the Chicago Daily News decided that it “tried to appeal to all parts of the TV audience and failed.”
Perhaps Barry Harrison of the Washington Evening Star understood the show better than the other critics and had “an uneasy feeling [that] it is not long for TV.” His prediction came true when the series was canceled after one season.
According to Howard Anderson Jr. in his Television Academy interview, one of the major reasons for the cancellation was that it was so expensive to do the filming with a blue screen behind Windom for all the animation.
And then after it was canceled, it won the Emmy for Outstanding Comedy and Windom picked up the Emmy for Leading Role in a Comedy. The series it was up against included Love American Style, Room 222, The Bill Cosby Show, and The Courtship of Eddie’s Father. Windom won over Lloyd Haynes in Room 222 and Bill Cosby of The Bill Cosby Show.
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The fans did send a lot of mail to the network, but with the so-so ratings and the fact that the animation made this one an expensive show to create, NBC did not put it back on the schedule.
After the show ended, Windom created a one-man play based on Thurber’s works and toured the country throughout the seventies. Perhaps if the network had given it some time after winning the Emmys, this show might have been more successful. It sounds like an interesting concept, although I also get the feeling that it might not have appealed to women; many of the descriptions I read discussed John’s fantasies that his wife and daughter were things to escape from. It’s worth taking a look at and seeing how it has fared over the last sixty years.
As we ponder the What in the World? blog series this month, today we are taking a look at Shirley’s World.
This sitcom starred Shirley MacLaine as a photographer. For a variety of reasons, this show was doomed to fail. Let’s learn why that was the case.
📷imdb.com
ABC aired this show in 1971. It was co-produced by ITC Entertainment, a British company and American producer Sheldon Leonard. As I’ve said many times, Sheldon is one of my favorite classic television people. When he did a show, quality was guaranteed. In this sitcom, Shirley Logan (Shirley MacLaine) worked at World Illustrated magazine and her editor Dennis Croft (John Gregson) sent her around the world on assignments. However, Shirley always managed to find herself in dangerous situations while trying to help clients she was only supposed to photograph. One site described it as “the indomitable and highly resourceful Shirley met more than her share of high drama and intrigue—meeting would-be Soviet defectors, interviewing film stars, and even becoming a circus clown—with a few hilarious moments along the way.”
The opening of the show is very confusing. It’s a collage of photos one after another of Shirley with her camera out and about. If you didn’t know what the show was about, and it sounds like a lot of the crew and cast never did figure that out, you would assume this was a documentary or a mystery show. It does not read as a comedy.
There is a similarity to Sheldon Leonard’s series I Spy with shows set around the world. Rather than being videotaped, this series was shot on film. Because it was set all over, the producers decided against a laugh track or live audience. This gave the sense of a mini film; although laugh tracks can be annoying, the lack of laughter was also a detriment for a sitcom.
📷rewatchclassictv.com
I could not determine what set things off, but MacLaine and her British crew had what was often described as a “mutual loathing” of each other. She also seemed to have issues with the writers. After voicing often how much she disliked some of the scripts, she was banned from seeing them until 48 hours before shooting began. Eleven writers were credited with scripts, including Rob Reiner. From what I read about “fans,” the writing did leave a lot to be desired.
The show aired Wednesday nights. It was up against the second half of Medical Center and the NBC Mystery Movie which included Columbo, McMillan and Wife, and McCloud. So not only was it against two shows in the top 20, but if someone began watching either of those two shows, they were not switching halfway through the episode to watch Shirley’s World.
David Hofstede reviewed the show in his Comfort TV blog in February of 2023 (https://comforttv.blogspot.com/2023/02/shirley-you-cant-be-serious-visiting.html). As he tells us, “I gave up after ten episodes because all of them suffered from the same flaws. There’s nothing here for a viewer to follow that seems at all credible. Shirley MacLaine’s acting talent is unquestionable, from The Apartment to Sweet Charity to Terms of Endearment. Yet here she doesn’t seem to know what to do with the character or the situations she encounters. She laughs in serious moments—is that because she didn’t know what else to do?”
📷rewatchclassictv.com
Another review mentioned that apart from one small reference to Shirley being from Idaho, we don’t know anything about her.
In the early decades of television, we saw many stars who made that transition to television beautifully—Burns and Allen, Jack Benny, Debbie Reynolds, but there are also plenty like Henry Fonda and Jimmy Stewart who didn’t.
I understand 20/20 is everything as we look back in time, but it’s hard to understand how this show even got on the air. We have a great film star in MacLaine and an amazing producer in Leonard, and that is about it for the positives.
The show was expensive to create due to overseas locations and untypical filming techniques, it was poorly written, the character was never developed, the bi-nation crew didn’t get along, it was put on the schedule against two top-twenty shows that were an hour long, and never seemed to figure out if it was a sitcom, a drama, or a mystery.
Some things are just not meant to be, and Shirley’s World appears to be one of them.
We have been learning a lot about Lucille Ball this month. We delved into I Love Lucy and why it was so important to American culture. We got to know Lucy as a person. And we discussed Jess Oppenheimer and the influence he had on her. Today we are finishing up the month by checking out three shows she starred in after I Love Lucy went off the air: they all debuted in the sixties.
The first show, the Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour, was an extension of I Love Lucy. It spun out thirteen one-hour specials that aired between 1957 and 1960. Five of them debuted during the 1957-58 season of I Love Lucy. The other eight were shown on the Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse and they featured the same cast as I Love Lucy.
Desi tried to talk the network into doing these specials the first year just to keep some freshness in the series, but he was denied the chance. By the last season, they agreed it might work.
During the final season of the series, both the Mertzes and the Ricardos move to the Connecticut suburbs. Apparently, the two couples were running an egg farm to make their living and Fred was Ricky’s manager.
Despite their move out of the City, many of these episodes feature Lucy’s meetings with famous guest stars. For example, in “Lucy Takes a Cruise to Havana,” Lucy meets Hedda Hopper. Production costs were estimated to be $350,000 but with the guest stars, these costs increased and rather than do ten episodes the first year, Arnaz was forced to spread them out over three years.
Ratings were good in the beginning but with the news of Lucy and Desi’s marriage in trouble, both this series and I Love Lucy started to lose viewership. By the time the last episode was filmed, the couple could not even talk without a fight erupting and they communicated by messages. The day after filming, Ball filed for divorce.
The theme song of the series was used with a bit of updating. That symbolizes all ten episodes. It was the same series, but it wasn’t. Had this type of programming happened throughout the original series it might have been more popular but coming on the heels of the ending of the show and the fans being aware that “Ethel and Fred” could barely tolerate each other in real life and then learning “Lucy and Ricky” were ready for divorce took a lot of the fun out of watching the show.
From 1962-68, Lucy attempted another sitcom. While Vivian Vance was no longer Ethel, she was a co-star for the first three seasons of the show. Gale Gordon who had been Lucy’s first choice for Fred Mertz in the early fifties was no longer under contract in 1962 and appeared in this series beginning in season two.
While Arnaz and Ball had divorced two years before this series debuted, they were still in business together. Their company, Desilu Productions, was struggling with the end of I Love Lucy. In 1961 four of their shows were canceled. By spring of 1962, only The Untouchables was still on the air.
Desi approached Lucy about returning to a weekly sitcom. She agreed if it could take the time slot on Mondays that I Love Lucy had, and if Vivian Vance was part of the cast, and the I Love Lucy writers were brought back. The new show, The Lucy Show, debuted Monday, October 1, 1962.
Lucy Carmichael lives with her two kids (Candy Moore and Jimmy Garrett) and Vivian Bagley (Vivian Vance), a divorced friend, and her son (Ralph Hart). Vivian was the first woman to be divorced on television. Her husband had left her a trust fund, so Lucy had to approach the bank often for funding for some of her harebrained projects and purchases. In season two, Gale Gordon took on the role of banker Mr. Mooney. The show had decent ratings and continued in its format until 1965. Lucy moves from New York to Los Angeles when her daughter goes to college in California. Vivian remarries and stays in New York. Lucy meets a new best friend, Mary Jane Lewis (Mary Jane Croft). When Lucy learns that Mr. Mooney is being transferred to the LA bank, their relationship continues, and eventually she works for him.
At the end of the second season, a dispute occurred between Lucy and the writers over a script Ball felt was not up to their standard, and the writers left. In 1964 Desi had resigned as head of Desilu, so Ball took over as president. Most specials, sports shows, and cartoons on CBS were now in color, but they refused to broadcast most of their series in color. Ann Sothern began appearing on the show as a countess to fill in the gaps of Vance being absent.
For the 1966 season, the show dropped all references to Lucy’s children, her trust fund and her life in New York. I don’t know why shows think viewers will just go along with these strange format revamps. Doris Day did the same on her show when her former life and children just disappeared one day and were never mentioned again. Because the show was set in California, a lot of guest stars were featured on the show, many of them bank customers.
During the last season of the show, Gary Morton, Ball’s second husband, was named executive producer of the show. He actually seemed to do well in this role. For this year, Ball was nominated and won an Emmy for the star of the show, the show was nominated for Emmys for best comedy show (but lost to Get Smart) and for the writing and for Gale Gordon as supporting comedy actor (who lost to Werner Klemperer of Hogan’s Heroes). The show was #2 in the ratings.
Surprisingly, this is when Lucy decided to end the show and put it into syndication. Even odder is the fact that she began a new show with a similar plotline that same year. Lucy and her real-life kids, Lucie and Desi Jr. joined the cast which included Croft, and Gordon with Vance making appearances during the run of the show. This show, like the other two, was on the air for six seasons.
Ball as Lucy Hinkley Carter is living in LA, a widow with two children Kim and Craig, played by her own two kids. She works for her brother-in-law Harry Carter, played by Gale Gordon but now they are at an unemployment agency. Vance made six guest appearances on the show.
Again in this show, a number of famous guest stars showed up including Ann-Margret, Milton Berle, Carol Burnett, George Burns, Liberace, Eva Gabor, Helen Hayes, Dean Martin, Vincent Price, Ginger Rogers, Dinah Shore, Danny Thomas, Lawrence Welk, and Flip Wilson.
In 1973 the show fell out of the top ten, the first Lucille Ball show to ever do so. Lucy did a sixth season and then ended the show.
Lucille Ball deserved a break after this show ended. She had been on the air for 23 years. Little Ricky, or little Desi, had been born early in I Love Lucy history and now he was off on his own acting career. After 1974 when this show went off the air until her death in 1989, most of her projects were connected with I Love Lucy, although she was listed as executive producer for several shows including Mission Impossible and Mannix.
None of these post-I Love Lucy shows were much different from each other, but it proved that America still wanted to watch Lucy on the air. Television looked very different in 1974 than it did in 1951, and Lucille Ball influenced and inspired much of that change. I wonder if Lucy would be surprised to learn that fifty years after her final show ended its production, she is just as popular as ever and Lucy merchandise is unending. It says a lot about just how true it was that everyone loves Lucy.
As we are learning all about Lucille Ball and her shows this first month of 2025, the month would not be complete without getting to know Jess Oppenheimer, the man Lucy called “the brains” behind I Love Lucy. He was also the producer and head writer of the show. Director William Asher said “he was the field general. Jess presided over all the meetings and ran the whole show. He was very sharp.”
📷televisionacademy.com
Oppenheimer was born in San Francisco in 1913. He took part in a study of gifted children in Stanford Professor Lewis Terman’s project. Ironically, one of Terman’s quotes about Jess was that he “could detect no signs of a sense of humor.” Jess’s father James owned the largest luggage store in San Francisco, but he died in an accident when Jess was 16.
Oppenheimer went on to attend Stanford in the 1930s. He started to spend a lot of his free time at radio station KFRC and performed in a comedy sketch he wrote for the show “Blue Monday Jamboree.”
In 1936 he moved to Hollywood and was hired as a writer on Fred Astaire’s radio show. He later went to work for Jack Benny as well as Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy, George Burns and Gracie Allen, Bing Crosby, Marlene Dietrich, Judy Garland, Bob Hope, and Ginger Rogers.
When World War II began, Oppenheimer joined the US Coast Guard where he met Jack Dempsey and Cesar Romero. While he was there, he was diagnosed with double vision which had bothered him his entire life but had never been addressed.
Agent Ray Stark was Fanny Brice’s son-in-law and later Stark recruited him to write for her Baby Snooks Show based on his reputation in the Coast Guard.
In 1942, Oppenheimer met Estelle Weiss, an employee of Wallichs Music City. They married in 1947 and were together for the rest of his life.
📷wikipedia.com
In 1948, CBS hired Oppenheimer to write a script for a new radio show, “My Favorite Husband.” Several of the scripts portrayed the wife, played by Lucille Ball, as a sophisticated socialite. When Jess added slapstick comedy and transitioned her to a childlike, impulsive, naïve wife, the show was a big success.
In 1950, CBS moved the show to television to star Lucy and her real-life husband Desi Arnaz. Lucy demanded that Oppenheimer stay in charge. Jess suggested doing a show “about a middle-class working stiff who works very hard at his job as a bandleader and likes nothing better than to come home at night and relax with this wife who doesn’t like staying home and is dying to get into show business.” He suggested the title “I Love Lucy.”
For the first five seasons, Oppenheimer was the producer and head writer, with help from Madelyn Pugh and Bob Carroll Jr. as other writers. As part of his contract, Oppenheimer received 20% of the ownership in the show. He gave Pugh and Carroll each 5% of that amount.
A wannabe actor, Oppenheimer appeared on I Love Lucy in two episodes. In #6, “The Audition,” he was one of three TV executives who audition Desi and in #127, “The Tour,” he walks in front of the bus before Ethel and Lucy board it. In one of the more famous episodes, #30, “Lucy Does a TV Commercial,” Jess is the voice that tells Lucy to go ahead and begin her commercial.
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In 1956, Oppenheimer moved to NBC where he became a producer of special shows.
During the sixties, Oppenheimer created and produced three other sitcoms. In 1960 he worked with Annie Farge and Marshall Thompson on Angel; in 1963 with Glynis Johns on Glynis, and with Debbie Reynolds on The Debbie Reynolds Show. He also was listed as writer, producer, and director for the 1967 season of Get Smart.
Oppenheimer received two Emmys and seven nominations. His Emmys were for Producer for Best Situation Comedy, I Love Lucy, in 1953 and 1954. He was also nominated for Producer for Best Situation Comedy, I Love Lucy, in 1952 and 1955; for Best Comedy Writer, I Love Lucy, in 1955 and 1956; for Best Single Program of the Year, General Motors 50th Anniversary Show in 1958; Program of the Year, The Danny Kaye Show with Lucille Ball in 1963; and Outstanding Program Achievement in Humor, The Danny Kaye Showwith Lucille Ball in 1963.
He was also an inventor with 18 patents. One of his inventions was an in-the-lens teleprompter.
In 1962, Lucille Ball brought a new sitcom to television; however, Oppenheimer sued the show, claiming that Lucy Carmichael was Lucy Ricardo, his character, He received a financial settlement, and the character was changed, but unfortunately, it ruined the friendship between Oppenheimer and Ball.
The Oppenheimer family lived on Burlingame Avenue in Los Angeles. In a funny twist, Jess bought the house from MGM hairstylist Sydney Guilaroff; he was the person who turned Ball into a redhead for the 1943 movie, DuBarry was a Lady.
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Jess’s best friends were Mel Blanc, Hans Conried, and Jerry Hausner, who had played Ricky’s agent on I Love Lucy.
In 1988, Oppenheimer had an intestinal surgery; he died shortly after from heart failure. At his death, Lucille Ball said he was “a true genius” and said that “she owed so much to his creativity and his friendship.”
I love hearing stories about people like Jess Oppenheimer and Sheldon Leonard who are creative geniuses and are the influence and inspiration for so many of the classic television shows.
This month we are learning to love Lucy. We have looked at the career of Lucille Ball, and today we are taking a peek back at the well-loved sitcom, I Love Lucy.
📷pinpage.com
The show starred Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz, Vivian Vance, and William Frawley. The series featured a young housewife, Lucy Ricardo, who lived with her husband Ricky, a nightclub bandleader. Their landlords, Fred and Ethel Mertz, were also their best friends. Lucy and Ethel get involved in a variety of schemes to get into show business. Lucy relies on Ethel and Fred who were in vaudeville earlier in their career. Eventually Lucy and Ricky have a son which coincided with the birth of their son Desi Jr. Lucy and Ethel try Desi’s patience often with their antics. When he gets upset, he starts speaking Spanish. Fred doesn’t have much time for the women’s plots either. After living through the Depression, he is considered cheap and doesn’t tolerate nonsense. In season six, the quartet move to Connecticut.
In 2012, ABC News and People did a joint survey, listing I Love Lucy as the Best TV Show of All Time.
The theme music was composed by Eliot Daniel with lyrics by Harold Adamson.
The show had three directors: Marc Daniels was director from 1951-53; William Asher, who would later produce Bewitched among other shows, was director from 1952-57, and James V. Kern directed 39 episodes from 1955-57.
Jess Oppenheimer was producer for the first 153 episodes; Desi Arnaz was executive producer for the first 124 episodes and producer for the final 26.
Oppenheimer was credited with writing for seasons 1-5, Madelyn Pugh Davis and Bob Carroll Jr. assisted him.
📷📷wikipedia.com Best Friends
Lucille Ball had been starring in “My Favorite Husband” on the radio and in 1950, CBS wanted her to transition to television. Richard Denning had been her costar on the radio, but now she wanted to do a series with her real-life husband, Desi Arnaz. CBS did not think visitors would buy in to Lucy, the all-American girl, married to a Cuban musician. To prove them wrong, Lucy and Desi created a vaudeville act written by Carroll and Pugh that they performed with Arnaz’s orchestra in New York. The act was a big hit, so Harry Ackerman approved the couple doing the show.
The pilot was ordered in 1951. Oppenheimer, Pugh, and Carroll also made the move from radio to television. Philip Morris decided to sponsor the show. Ball wanted to continue her film career along with television show which was set to air biweekly. Philip Morris wanted the show to air weekly, and they wanted it filmed in New York. Because Lucy and Desi were expecting their first child, they wanted to stay in Hollywood. The couple agreed to reduce their pay by a $1000 a week in order to stay in California and cover the additional expenses of filming. They asked for 80% ownership in the films, with the remaining 20% going to Oppenheimer who shared 5% with Pugh and 5% with Carroll. Desilu (combining Desi and Lucy) became their production company.
The couple hired Carl Freund, who had worked on many big-screen movies, to film the show. He uniformly lit the set so all three cameras would pick up the same quality of the image. He also pioneered “flat lighting,” which lit everything with bright lights to get rid of shadows. The three-camera method became the standard sitcom technique.
📷rottentomatoes.com
A live audience produced a more authentic laugh than the canned laughter some shows used. Both Desi and Lucy’s mothers’ laughter can be detected in these early episodes.
When Lucy needed some rest after having her baby, the company could not finish their 39-episode commitment, so Oppenheimer and Desi decided to rebroadcast some of their favorite episodes instead. This out-of-the-box thinking proved to be so popular that it eventually led to the syndicated market.
When Lucy decided to transition her show from radio to television, Gale Gordon and Bea Benaderet were offered the roles of Fred and Ethel. However, both of them were already transitioning from radio to other televisions series. Gordon had already committed to Our Miss Brooks and Benaderet had agreed to star in The George Burns and Grace Allen Show.
The role of Ethel was then offered to Barbara Pepper, who was a good friend of Lucy’s. However, she was known to have a drinking problem; Wiliam Frawley also was a heavy drinker, so the production staff did not feel comfortable having two cast members with alcoholic issues, so the offer to Pepper was rescinded. Pepper would appear quite often in I Love Lucy and eventually she settled in Hooterville, married to Fred Ziffel.
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Frawley never appeared drunk during filming or caused any problem on the show. I did think it was funny though that he had a clause in his contract that he did not have to film when and if the New York Yankees were in the World Series. They made it to the big show every year the series ran except for 1954.
Mary Wickes was then offered the role, but she was afraid working with Lucy would harm their friendship. Director Marc Daniels suggested Vivian Vance who was performing in “The Voice of the Turtle.” Oppenheimer and Arnaz went to watch her performance and hired her on the spot. Lucy was not thrilled with the idea of Vance. She thought she was prettier than her vision of what Ethel would look like. Vance was only two years older than Ball, but the producers agreed to dress her in frumpier clothing. Eventually Ball and Vance became good friends. Vance was the first actress to win an Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actress. When I Love Lucy ended, Ball asked Vance to star in her new series, The Lucy Show.
Unfortunately, Vance and Frawley never warmed to each other the way she and Lucy did. They barely tolerated each other, although they were both always professional on the set.
Lucy and Desi had several miscarriages and when they were able to sustain a pregnancy which resulted in daughter Lucie, they filmed Lucy without ever mentioning that she was pregnant. The sponsors thought it would be in poor tasted to talk about pregnancy. However, in the second season, they were pregnant once again, and the pregnancy was written into the show. They had to use the word “expecting” when talking about the baby. The episode “Lucy Goes to the Hospital” in 1953 was watched by almost 72% of families with televisions, the highest rating for quite some time. It was surpassed by Elvis Presley’s first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show.
The show was on for from 1951-1957 on CBS, resulting in 180 episodes.
I Love Lucy aired on Mondays for its first run. In 1967 the network began offering the show in syndication and it has never been off the air.
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I Love Lucy was nominated for Best Comedy/Sitcom in 1952, 1953, 1954, and 1955, winning in 1953. Ball was nominated for Best Comedienne in 1953-1958, winning in 1953 and 1956. Vance was nominated for Best Supporting Actress in 1954, 1955, 1957 and 1958, winning in 1954. Frawley was also nominated for his role in 1954-1958. He never won but he lost to some great actors including Art Carney and Carl Reiner. Only Arnaz was denied a nomination for his comedy skills.
In 1957, Lucille Ball decided to end the show. She and Desi created a new show that wasn’t really new. It took the four main characters from I Love Lucy and moved them to Connecticut. Arnaz changed the format and length of the show, now an hour long, because he said he wanted to change it up before people got tired of the characters. He said this format kept the cast intact but also allowed for a celebrity guest star for Lucy to meet in every episode. In 1960 the show ended, the same year the couple’s real life marriage ended.
Unfortunately, the couple’s marriage dissolved in 1960, and in 1962, Lucy bought Desi’s shares of Desilu becoming the sole owner. She sold the company to Gulf+Western who owned Paramount Pictures.
We all remember the merchandising that accompanies shows in the sixties and seventies like dolls, board games, lunch boxes, etc, but I Love Lucy had more than its share of memorabilia. In 1952 a baby doll was released. Believe it or not, you could purchase an I Love Lucy bedroom set for $199 in the fifties, as well as I Love Lucy his and her pajamas.
The way it ended, I Love Lucy never had a proper finale. I wish I had the time to devote to how much this show changed the course of television, but a weekly blog just can’t contain as much history as there is to tell. I’m sure Lucy would be amazed if she knew that more than seventy years after the show began, we are still watching it and talking about it. Legacy doesn’t get any better than that.
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