The Debbie Reynolds Show: Her Sponsorship Went Up in Smoke

September 29, 2025July 17, 2025 / thewritelife61 / 2 Comments

Before we get into our topic of the week I’m celebrating today. This is my 475th post! Thank you to everyone who has joined me in my journey.
We are in the final week of our blog series this month, “It’s Their Show.” We are winding down with The Debbie Reynolds Show. While most of the shows we learned about this month were on air in the late fifties and early sixties, The Debbie Reynolds Show appeared in 1969 on NBC.

The show was created by Jess Oppenheimer who Lucille Ball called “the brain” behind creating I Love Lucy. This month we learned a bit about Bob Carroll Jr. and Madelyn Pugh Davis who created and wrote for I Love Lucy and The Tom Ewell Show, and they are back to write for this sitcom as well.

The show didn’t get off to a great start because Reynolds was clear that she wanted no cigarette commercials on her show. However, NBC was courting American Tobacco as the sponsor and Debbie threw a fit. When the tobacco company learned Reynolds was threatening to quit, they pulled their funding. Reynolds assured NBC that she would agree to forego NBC’s promise of a second year of the series, and she gave up her ownership in an NBC film What’s the Matter with Helen?, although she was able to star in the film.

The plot of this show was that Reynolds was married to Jim (Don Chastain), a sportswriter for the Los Angeles Sun. Like Lucy always trying to get into show business, Debbie Thompson wants to be a reporter, and she comes up with various schemes to get her that job. Jim just wants her to be a stay-at-home wife.

Rounding out the cast were Debbie’s sister Charlotte (Patricia Smith), Charlotte’s husband Bob (Tom Bosley) and Bruce (Bobby Riha), Debbie’s son. Like George Burns had done in his show, Debbie often addresses the audience directly.

Debbie Reynolds did double duty in this one, singing the theme for the show, “With a Little Love.”

Sadly, Reynolds was not in the same financial situation that many screen stars were when they agreed to try a television series. When the show was canceled after one season, she lived in her car for a while and her career never got back on track. For 35 years after this sitcom was canceled, Reynolds played bit parts, appeared as herself, or did animation. It must have been hard to tolerate after being a big star on the silver screen.

Tom Bosley talked about appearing in this sitcom in his interview with The Television Academy. He said the network allowed the cast to make seventeen episodes, but from the beginning they knew the show would be canceled because of the stunt Debbie and her PR rep pulled regarding the sponsorship.

Bosley thought Oppenheimer was a genius, but Bosley said even without the issue Reynolds had with the network, the show needed reworking for it to remain on the air. Bosley said Reynolds was very energetic, but she was bitter about her husband leaving her for Elizabeth Taylor, and her second husband was a gambler who left her with half a million dollars of debt to pay off.

To make ends meet, she went to Las Vegas to perform and started a costume museum to preserve the artifacts.

Unfortunately, this show was doomed from the start. While I admire Reynolds for standing up for what she believed in, the way she went about it was not helpful. It should have been written into her contract or handled in a nonpublic discussion. If Reynolds had let the network take care of sponsorships, things would have been okay. A few months after this show debuted, Congress took their anti-smoking initiative one step further and passed the Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act, banning the advertising of cigarettes on television and radio starting in 1971, so many shows walked away from tobacco companies in 1970. However, when Reynolds dug her heels in and threatened to quit, she not only lost her two-year minimum deal and her upcoming movie profits, but the studio was just biding its time because it had already decided to cancel the series because of her behavior.

Even though Oppenheimer was described by everyone as an amazing creator and producer, this show felt like another I Love Lucy with a different occupation, and I’m guessing viewers felt that way too. It was similar to Sherwood Schwartz who kept revising The Brady Bunch for decades and kept writing sitcoms with the main characters somehow “lost” that were all duplicates of his Gilligan’s Island.

By 1969, it was time to move away from the hard-to-restrain wife in the sixties concept. In addition to being a copycat of I Love Lucy, I have to be honest. While I found something fun and charming about the other series we learned about this month, the episodes I tried to watch for this blog were painful. The characters were not likable, the writing was not witty or even easy to listen to, and considering what a great cast they had, the show just fell flat. Sadly, I recommend avoiding this one unless you are trying to put yourself to sleep some night.

The Tom Ewell Show: Surrounded by Women

September 15, 2025July 18, 2025 / thewritelife61 / 2 Comments

Thanks for joining me today. We are having fun with this month’s blog series, “It’s Their Show,” and today we are taking a closer look at The Tom Ewell Show. The shows we are delving into this month were all movie stars jumping from the big screen to the small screen. Some of them landed on their feet and some didn’t.

While most of the shows we are covering have a star we all know, Tom Ewell is no longer a household name. His first movie was in 1940, and he’s probably best known for The Seven-Year Itch with Marilyn Monroe. He did become a television fixture, starring in the soap Search for Tomorrow as well as a cast member of Baretta in the seventies and Best of the West in the eighties.

The Tom Ewell Show debuted on CBS in 1960 and was on for one season. The premise is about a guy who has to navigate life with a lot of women: his wife (Marilyn Erskine), daughters (Cynthia Cherault, Sherry Alberoni and Eileen Chesis), mother-in-law (Mabel Albertson), and a female dog and a parakeet.

Tom Potter is described as a “bumbling” father. I’m not sure why so many shows in the early days featured a wife who caused complications for her husband or a bumbling husband. Potter was a real estate agent. Rounding out the cast are friends pharmacist Howie Fletcher (Norman Fell) and Jim Rafferty (Barry Kelley).

Potter loves sports, but the rest of his household is not too interested. Often, he is watching a sporting event on television while telling his family about the high points when they obviously could care less.

The concept of the show was set up in the opening which showed Tom looking around and then being put into a house before seeing the house overrun by women.

The show was created by Madelyn Pugh Davis and Bob Carroll Jr. who wrote for I Love Lucy. Pugh Davis said she based the show on her family. Her family had all girls and a mother-in-law in the house.

Ewell owned the production company in partnership with Davis and Carroll and Four Star Productions. Quaker Oats and Proctor and Gamble alternated sponsorship of the show.

Time reviewed the show after its debut and said “The Tom Ewell Show leads a relentless parade of situation comedies, all designed to show that American family life is as cute as a freckle on a five-year-old. The show, which might also be titled Father Knows Nothing, presents the comic with the excavated face as a bumbler named Potter who is trapped in the customary format: Harassed Man Beaten Down by Wife, Three Daughters, Mother-in-Law. In the opening episode, Ewell could find no better way to outsmart his spendthrift women than closing his bank account and ruining his own credit. For those who may have tuned out early, the women were all set to start spending again.” Not a great review.

This makes the female characters sound very unappealing, but on the show, his wife and daughters were delightful. His mother-in-law liked him and they often bantered back and forth; I think it’s worth watching the show just to see Mabel Albertson in action. However, the plots left a bit to be desired: Tom teaching his wife to drive a car, his daughter learning to play the tuba; and the typical sibling issues of everyone wanting to use the phone and the bathroom at the same time.

The show struggled finding viewers. Associated Press television critic Cynthia Lowry interviewed Ewell that fall, and he said that he had read both the positive and negative reviews of the show. He agreed with the critics who felt that Potter was too inept, and the comedy centered more on that and their family life. He said for December episodes, that issue would be addressed in the writing, and the family dog and parakeet were being dropped from the show. Unfortunately, it was not enough to attract viewers, and the show was canceled after one season.

In an episode I watched, “The Spelling Bee,” from late November, Tom is trying to interest his family in golf. When he finally got them to watch a golf match, the females were more interested in what the golf spectators were wearing. And then his youngest daughter ran in and turned the station to a kid’s show. One of his girls is practicing her spelling to try to win a trip to Washington DC by winning the all-state spelling bee.

When Tom leaves the house, he continues to run into fathers and sons who are playing baseball, going fishing, working together, or talking about sports. Tom daydreams he has three boys, but we realize that he is holding a skein of yarn for his daughter while he does so. He tries to talk his oldest girl into going into the real estate business. Later he tries to talk his middle daughter Debbie into giving up spelling for golf. He also tries to get his wife to go bowling with him. When Tom realizes that one of his friends has a son trying to win the spelling bee as well, he turns it into a big sports event and is determined to beat them.

He buys a bunch of dictionaries and then gets up early to “train” Debbie. However, she had already left the house and when she returns, he finds out she’s been on the driving range practicing her golf, so they can be in a father and child golf match. He drills her on spelling the rest of the day. That night Debbie comes down with laryngitis.

Her grandmother gives her honey and lemon. The following night they attend the spelling bee, and Tom gives Debbie a pep talk, but then he reminds her he loves her no matter what. Of course, the final two contestants are Debbie and the son of Tom’s friend. She wins, and she and her dad get to travel to Washington, DC where they meet the President. The show ends with Tom telling his friend about all the great non-sport talents his girls have. It was a cute show, and the characters were all likable. There were a few great one-liners. It would not make my top 25 shows, but it was much better than many of the sitcoms in the sixties.

The show had a decent time slot. It was on Tuesday nights at nine, competing with Stagecoach West and Thriller. While both of those shows garnered decent ratings, neither of them was in the top thirty. The primary director was Hy Averback, who would later direct twenty episodes of MASH. So, they had the right elements in place, but the show just could never find its fans.

Larry Rhine talked about writing for the show. Rhine said Ewell was a nice man, but he said Ewell didn’t think the kids should be involved in the show much because they didn’t have the caliber of other actors. Rhine told Ewell they could consider them more as props which seems like a strange concept for a family show, considering that the episode I watched revolved around the daughters.

Rhine said Ewell found the show was over when he was on the set one day and he was called to the telephone about a trip he was supposed to take with CBS, and he was told that he was no longer part of the group because he had been fired.

I’m guessing part of the problem with this show getting renewed is that it debuted when westerns were still king and many of the television schedule spots were already filled with them. While it was definitely not a terrible show, the sixties were on the cusp of introducing very different sitcoms than the family-based ones that filled the fifties’ slots. By 1965 we would be tuning into Batman, Honey West, Hogan’s Heroes, The Smothers Brothers Show, and I Dream of Jeannie. However, that said, there are worse ways to spend a weekend than viewing a season of The Tom Ewell Show.

Jess Oppenheimer: The Brains Behind I Love Lucy

January 20, 2025November 10, 2024 / thewritelife61 / 4 Comments

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.”

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.

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.

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 50^th 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 Show with 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.

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.

Having a “Bawl” with I Love Lucy

January 13, 2025January 13, 2025 / thewritelife61 / 2 Comments

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.