Parley Baer: His Life Was a Three-Ring Circus

April 20, 2026January 4, 2026 / thewritelife61 / 2 Comments

Like so many great character actors, Baer had a very interesting life. One of the things I love most about these actors is their story off screen.

Parley Baer was born in Salt Lake City, Utah in 1914. At ten years of age, he began working at an amusement park where he realized that enjoyed entertaining people. After graduation, he studied drama at the University of Utah. In 1935 the Utah paper reviewed “Box and Cox,” a play directed by Baer that was put on for the Speech Arts Fun Frolic.

In 1936 he ran away to join the circus. Okay, maybe he didn’t literally run away. but he was a ringmaster for Circus Vargas and Barnam & Bailey. Later he did publicity for the AI G. Barnes Circus during the winter. In 1987 he told the Monrovia News that running a circus is “a giant living jigsaw puzzle that has to be put together for every performance.”

Baer began working as director of special events on radio station KSL, participating in a few radio programs.

During World War II, he enlisted in the US Army Air Force, serving in the Pacific Theater from 1942-46. After his discharge, he made his way to Jungleland in California where he trained tigers before serving as a docent at the Los Angeles Zoo.

In 1946, Baer met and married circus aerialist and bareback rider Ernestine Clarke. They were together for 54 years until her death in 2000. The Clarke family performed in the circus for generations. Ernestine worked with the family’s trapeze act. She also was part of the famous riding acts of the Hannefords and the Cristanis. As a solo performer she was featured in Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. Parley admired the performers and told the Flint Journal in 1974 that they “accomplish things everyone would like to try but are too scared. I guess it’s the vicarious thrill we all experience in a circus that gives a circus its tremendous popularity.” His daughter Dale also became a trapeze star.

In the 1974 Flint Journal article, he also relayed “that trying to explain why you love the circus is like trying to explain why you love someone. I guess we all harbor the secret desire to be the man on the flying trapeze.”

While Baer loved being an actor, he continued to act as a publicity agent for six to eight weeks every year for the circus for most of his career. In the Sun News in 1961 he said, “I can’t get the circus out of my system.” Throughout his life he worked with several circuses including Al G. Barnes, Cole Brothers, Ringling Brothers, and Polack Brothers.

Parley and Ernie eventually moved to Hollywood so he could work on his film career. He had one toe in movies, one in television, and one on the radio. In 1952, Baer took on the radio role of Chester on “Gunsmoke.” One of his castmates was Howard McNear who played Doc. The two would later move to Mayberry and spend time together again.

Baer’s first film was The Kid from Texas in 1950. Throughout his career he would be chosen for Disney movies. Baer said that at the Disney studio “everything is done for the comfort of the actor and the perfection of the production.” He believed that is why their movies were so successful for so long.

While he was in another 64 movies, television is where he kept the busiest. He popped up on television for the first time in 1951 when he was on Gruen Guild Theater. In the fifties he appeared in 43 shows.

The 1960s found him in 83 different series. He had recurring roles on four different shows this decade. He was Mr. Winters on National Velvet for two episodes in 1960 and two episodes of The Gertrude Berg Show as Professor Nimitz.

From 1953-65, he appeared as Darby the pharmacist in 69 episodes of The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. It would be fun to live in a town where Baer made your malts and filled your prescriptions, and Frank Cady, Sam on Green Acres, was your doctor.

From 1962-63, he was Mayor Roy Stoner on seven episodes of The Andy Griffith Show. During his time on the show, he became very close to Hal Smith who played Otis the drunk, and he continued his friendship with Howard McNear who was Floyd the barber.

According to a MeTV article from December 8, 2020, he said that these men were ”two of my dearest, dearest friends.” He said he and Smith had a routine, a tradition they developed going to many of the same auditions for voiceovers: “Smith would always ask him, ‘You busy?’ to which Baer replied, ‘No.’ Smith would then ask, ‘Whatcha doing after?’ Baer would say ‘Nothing,’ to which Smith replied, ‘Let’s go get a cup of coffee and sit and lie to each other for a while.’”

📷thewritelife61.com The radio cast of Gunsmoke

After the deaths of his two friends, Baer said, “There isn’t a day that I don’t think about these guys, that I don’t mourn their passing. They were great friends and two of the finest actors who ever came down the path.”

The seventies found Baer on another 27 shows with his recurring role of the seventies was as Dr. Cunningham on Here’s Lucy in 1971.

During the 1980s, Baer maintained a steady presence on television, appearing in more than 30 shows and securing 5 regular cast roles throughout the decade. In 1982, he took on dual roles as Huntington Phelps on Madame’s Place and Minister Brown on Dallas. From 1981-84, he portrayed Doc Appleby on The Dukes of Hazzard, followed by a three-year run as Buck on Newhart from 1984-87. He closed out the decade with a role as Mr. Hube on Life Goes On.

Baer ended his acting career in the nineties, but before he died, he made appearances on 13 additional shows, along with two recurring roles. In 1990 he battled against racism as Mr. Lukins on three episodes of True Colors. This show was about a middle-class interracial blended family taking on life’s hardest issues with love and humor.

Part of Baer’s legacy was dealing with racism. He was very proud to be part of the film White Dog. Baer plays Wilbur Hull, someone you think of as a kindly grandfather, until you realize that he is a bigot who trained his dog to attack Black people. Baer said that “Often racism, like true evil, presents itself with a smile and a handshake.”

Baer did his share of commercials, animation, and voiceover work. He had a thirty-year role as Ernie, one of the Keebler cookie elves.

His last recurring role was Miles on The Young and the Restless from 1993-96. Baer was 80, and he said the soap operas realized they had a lot of older viewers, so they decided to find some classic television actors to feature on the series.

Baer died at the Motion Picture and Television Hospital from complications after having a stroke.

I often listen to Old Time Radio while driving and often hear McNear and Baer on “Gunsmoke.” One of my favorite quotes about radio comes from Baer. He said “radio is the most nearly perfect medium for an actor. If you have an audience of 5 million people listening to you, you’re giving 5 million performances.”

Baer certainly had a variety of careers from working in the circus to being an elf. He made 64 movies, appeared in more than 1500 individual television episodes, and was in 15,000 radio episodes.

Baer was often stereotyped as a fussy, bossy, obstinate official very much like Mayor Stoner on The Andy Griffith Show. However, you just knew he was a lot of fun when you got him away from work.

Jane Connell: What a Character!

April 13, 2026January 6, 2026 / thewritelife61 / 2 Comments

This month is one of my favorite themes: What a Character! Today we are learning about the career of Jane Connell.

Connell was born in California in 1925. After high school she attended the University of California, majoring in drama. She married her college boyfriend Gordon Connell, and they were together until her death in 2013. The couple performed together; one of their first plays was at San Francisco’s Purple Onion with May Angelou who was a calypso singer at the time.

Connell spent almost five decades in New York Theater including Broadway, summer stock, national tours, and cabaret. Jane talked about how things changed in the theater, saying “there’s no question that theater has changed through the years. The one thing that bothers me is that so many of today’s young actors come from television and have not been taught theater technique. They don’t realize when they’re upstaging you. It’s not done out of meanness or trickery. They just think there’s a camera over their shoulder that is filming the other actor. But I don’t complain about it. I just look out front and deliver the lines. I was born a character person. I was always eccentric, never a conventional beauty. I grew up in the Depression, the youngest of four kids. I wanted to make people laugh, because making my family laugh helped us forget our concerns. And I found that I could do it.”

Connell’s claim to fame happened in 1966 when she was cast as Agnes Gooch in the Broadway version of Mame. She would also appear as Agnes in the 1974 film that Lucille Ball starred in.

She appeared in ten big screen films throughout her career as well as several made-for-tv movies.

Her first television appearance was on nine episodes of Stanley in 1956. This was an early sitcom starring Buddy Hackett as a newsstand vendor in a luxury hotel where he gets involved with many of the residents and guests.

Connell showed up in many of the most popular sitcoms in the sixties and seventies including The Patty Duke Show, Rowan and Martin’s Laugh In, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, That Girl, Green Acres, Love American Style, and Maude. She was cast in six Bewitched episodes as different characters, often playing regal figures including Martha Washington, Queen Hapzibah, Queen Victoria, and Mother Goose.

She continued her movie and tv work throughout the eighties and nineties including MASH and Law and Order. Her last appearance was in 1999. At age 87 she passed away while living at the Lillian Booth Actors Home of the Actors Fun in New Jersey, leaving behind Gordon who died in 2016 and two daughters Melissa and Maggie.

I thought it was ironic that she was typically described as a tiny dynamo with a squeaky voice, being under five feet tall. However, one of her most memorable lines was on Bewitched as Queen Victoria when she said, “We are not amused”– the opposite of a tiny, squeaky-voiced character like Agnes Gooch. Thanks for being such a versatile character actor Jane Connell and treating us to so many years of entertainment.

Edgar Buchanan: Avoiding The Dentist’s Office

April 6, 2026January 4, 2026 / thewritelife61 / Leave a comment

Maybe one of the reasons everyone liked Edgar Buchanan was because he was a real Human, growing up in Humansville, Missouri where he was born in 1903. When he was seven, his family moved to Oregon.

In 1928, Buchanan earned a DDS degree from North Pacific College School of Dentistry. That same year he married one of his classmates from dental school, Mildred Spence. Mildred was the first woman dentist in Eugene, Oregon. In 1939 the couple relocated their dental practice from Oregon to Altadena, California. While they were living there, Edgar joined the Pasadena Playhouse and began acting. His first role was in “My Son is Guilty” in 1939. Buchanan said “Being an actor is all I ever really wanted” in a 1964 interview with the Deseret News.

After that, he turned the dentist’s office over to his wife and never looked back. However, he did manage to fit some dental work into his acting career. He pulled a tooth out for his stand-in Jack Henderson. Edgar was in thirteen films with Glenn Ford. Ford told a story about one day when he needed some dental work done, and Edgar agreed to do it. They did not have anesthesia on the set, so Ford took a few swallows of whiskey to help ease the pain. Ford said for every third drink he took, Buchanan also took one.

He may have been a dentist by trade, but in film, he was most often a judge or doctor, and 25 of his acting credits cast him in those roles.

Even starting his career a bit later in life, he managed to collect 96 big-screen acting credits and another 80 on television. Some of the movies Buchanan was a part of include Move Over Darling, Cheaper by the Dozen, Shane, and Benji.

His first television role was in Hollywood Theater Time in 1950. During that decade, he accepted roles in many sitcoms.

He was a familiar face across four television series during the golden age of westerns. From 1952-54, he portrayed Red Connors on Hopalong Cassidy. He then stepped into the title role as Judge Roy Bean from 1955-56. Between 1957 and 1960, he appeared in six episodes of Tales of Wells Fargo as Doc Dawson. Rounding out the decade, he took on the role of Doc Burrage in five episodes of The Rifleman between 1959 and 1961.

Buchanan made a pilot to star in Luke and the Tenderfoot. Two episodes were made about a fast-talking con man who befriends a naïve young man as they travel west. The network chose not to buy the pilot; however, it did show the episode on television later. The other episode has never been aired on television, but they both are available to watch on YouTube.

The sixties was his busiest decade. He showed up on many westerns and sitcoms. He also played Grandpa on National Velvet; this show was about a young girl who lives on a dairy farm with her family and a former jockey.

Of course, this was also the decade he had his most famous role, Joe Carson on Petticoat Junction (222 episodes), Green Acres (16 episodes), and The Beverly Hillbillies (3 episodes). Joe Carson was a role far removed from a judge or a doctor. He was a lazy guy who spent a lot of time trying to think up get-rich-quick schemes. Despite that, he’s such a likeable guy, we are always rooting for him.

A fun fact is that Edgar’s son Buck appeared in two of the Petticoat episodes with his dad.

In 1963, Buchanan talked with The Daily Herald about his role on Petticoat Junction. He said that “the small community is the heritage of every American. We all evolved from small towns. Humansville had a population of about 600—give or take a couple hundred.” He went on to say, “For me, especially, Petticoat Junction is home. On the show, I work with four pretty gals. And in real life, I had four sisters always peckin’ at me.”

Before passing away at the end of the seventies, Buchanan appeared in four additional series. He also took on one more regular cast role as JJ Jackson in 24 episodes of Cade’s County in 1971-72.

Buchanan died from a stroke complicated by pneumonia in 1979.

In a February 20, 1972, interview, Buchanan told the Boston Globe that the key to his acting success was that “I’ve always played myself, whether doing a dramatic part or a comedy role.” Many of his co-stars said Edgar always stole the scenes they were in; his costars in Move Over Darling mentioned that in several interviews.

In that 1964 interview with the Deseret News, he was asked how his career lasted so long, and he said that he knew he was not a leading man type but a character actor. However, he said with a twinkle in his eye, “I’ll just have to confess that my wife says I’m the handsomest man to ever walk on a stage and anyone who calls my wife a liar has got to fight me.”

I’m glad Buchanan found the perfect job. He was seen by many more people on television than he would have been in his dentist’s office. And he was always a character I’m happy to say.

The Don Knotts Show: Too Much Competition

March 9, 2026March 8, 2026 / thewritelife61 / 4 Comments

This month our theme is “Variety is the Spice of Life.” If I mention the name Don Knotts, almost everyone probably pictures Barney Fife from Mayberry. You might also think about some of his well-known movies including The Ghost and Mr. Chicken or The Shakiest Gun in the West. However, you might be surprised to know that Don Knotts had his own variety show on NBC for a season in 1970.

Don had a few regulars in his cast including Gary Burghoff, Louis Nye, and Elaine Joyce. He had musical guests interspersed with skits. Joyce might have made the worse choice in her entire career when she agreed to join this show because to do it, she turned down a chance to be part of the cast of The Carol Burnett Show.

Two recurring skits were about the process it took to put a weekly television show together and another one was similar to one Carol Burnett and Harvey Korman did called “The Front Porch” with Don and a guest sitting on a rocking chair discussing life.

Knotts’ show did not attract viewers. After a few episodes, the network hired Bob Sweeney who had directed The Andy Griffith Show. Don said Sweeney “came in and made some changes in the writing staff. Then he made some changes in the show creatively. And he did a good job, He improved the show, I thought.” Sweeney also hired Burghoff for the show.

While Andy Williams debuted the Osmond Brothers, Don’s claim to fame for his variety show was debuting The Carpenters.

While there were a lot of variety shows on television, the schedulers didn’t do Knotts any favors. His show was up against The Mod Squad on ABC and The Beverly Hillbillies and Green Acres on CBS. That is some tough competition. And this was an era when a family typically had one television, and the entire family had to agree on what they were watching together.

During his Television Academy interview, Don discussed his show. “We did all kinds of things, but in the end, the show just couldn’t compete with shows like The Carol Burnett Show, Donny & Marie, or Sonny & Cher. There was tremendous competition that season for variety, because everybody and his brother had a variety show.”

I think Don was right about why his show failed, but even with so many variety shows, I think there were a few other problems with this one. There were 12 other variety shows on the air during this year, including Knotts’ friend Jim Nabors, but scheduling was a huge barrier to overcome.

Also, Knotts was introduced to America as a cast member of The Steve Allen Show, and he was great on that one. I think the country wasn’t ready to accept him as a host on a show though. He spent his entire career as Barney Fife, an over-confident sidekick who helped the sheriff in Mayberry. His movie characters were all nervous, timid people who found a surprising way to beat the bad guys. Suddenly he was the star of the show and it’s a tough typecasting role for fans to adjust to.

That said, I’m putting this failure on the network for having too many variety shows on the air and not scheduling them against each other so the most popular ones rose to the top. And this was in the early seventies. Think about the shows that were starting at the time, very different shows from the fifties and sixties hits. Knotts was not the only one to fail at this time, so he could chalk it up to a life lesson learned and quickly wipe it from his memory.

The Jim Backus Show: It Was Hot Off the Wire

September 22, 2025July 16, 2025 / thewritelife61 / 2 Comments

This month we are in a blog series, “It’s Their Show.” Today we are taking a closer look at The Jim Backus Show. Most people know Backus today as Mr. Howell on Gilligan’s Island. While he did show up on several television series, cartoons, and made-for-tv movies for Gilligan’s Island, Backus had a long and successful career without any Gilligan appearances. He started in the movies in 1948 and wound up his career with an amazing 253 credits.

In addition to being the voice of Mr. Magoo, Backus starred in several other series including I Married Joan and Blondie.

In 1960, The Jim Backus Show debuted. It was one of the first syndicated shows, so it’s hard to gauge how it did against its competition. However, I will say what I can tell you is that there were still 13 westerns on the air during the week, so while the influence of the Plains was waning, it was still very popular. It was also a year that lots of stars had made the plunge to dip their toe into the television industry. There were 11 stars with their own shows that year in addition to Backus, including Jack Benny, Ann Sothern, Danny Thomas, Andy Griffith, and Donna Reed.

The series had a great cast. They had several good directors, including Gene Reynolds who produced MASH and Lou Grant and a lot of good writers, including Jay Somers who would go on to create and write Green Acres. However, they had 14 directors and more than 40 writers to produce those 39 episodes. They also had a great line up of guest stars including Ken Berry, Charles Lane, Jayne Meadows, Zasu Pitts, Tom Poston, and Bill Quinn.

Backus is Mike O’Toole, the editor and owner of a news service struggling to make a go of it. He often doesn’t have the money to pay his rent or his staff’s salaries. Working with O’Toole are reporters Dora (Nita Talbot) and Dave (Bill McLean) as well as Sidney (Bobs Watson), their office boy. When they weren’t working, they spent some time at Heartless Harry’s, a bar downstairs that was popular with newspaper people. He truly was heartless, because he wouldn’t let anyone from Mike’s company in the bar unless they put down a $10 deposit.

One of the episodes I watched for this blog was #5, “No Help Wanted.” The opening pans the big city before moving down to the office of the wire service with Mike in the window joined by Dora.

The episode begins with Mike and Dora’s car breaking down in the middle of nowhere. There’s a large estate in the distance, but Mike won’t let Dora ask them for help until he’s tried to fix the problem himself.

Directed by Gene Reynolds and written by Dick Chevillat and Jay Sommers, the plot is that a retired stage actress, Catherine Lyden (Linda Watkins), has lots of money and loves living a normal life. Her former agent keeps trying to lure her back into show business. She decides to clean the maid’s house so she can hire someone, but when Dora and Mike meet her, they recognize her, and they think she is destitute and try to help her. After they get back to the office, they buy her some groceries and clothes. She tries to tell them that she has plenty of things and she doesn’t need their help. O’Toole writes a story about her having to work as a maid to make ends meet and puts a photo in the paper with her holding a pail and looking disheveled. When the article appears, several people contact her to try to help her out. When Mike and Dora get her contract from the playwright who is trying to hire her, they tell her that it’s a form to get a retraction from the paper.

After she signs it, they tell her the truth, that it’s a five-year contract and she begins to cry. Surprisingly they never do find out she wasn’t down and out. They think she is crying from gratitude, and they leave.

There were some fun bits of dialogue especially between Dora and Mike, and the filming was very different from most sitcoms, but I was drawn in by it. One of the things that I found most interesting about this episode is the soundtrack. There is some laughter in the background, but you hear birds, the office machinery running, and the sounds of the city. It’s like you’re right in the location with the cast and hear what they would hear.

This was a tough episode for me though. First of all, I kept waiting for Lyden to be touched by the fact that they were trying to help her and maybe that made her realize the public missed her. However, she never cared that they were spending their hard-earned money on her. She truly was upset when they tricked her, and I found it tough to watch because they never learn she was not destitute and truly was happy and they have now made her miserable for five years. It just didn’t have that feel-good ambiance we expect our sitcoms to feature.

The series produced 39 episodes before being canceled. I’m guessing the fact that it didn’t make it had something to do with the fact that it was on different nights and times across the country.

Sometimes these shows are hard to find. They all had two names. The Tom Ewell Show was known as The Trouble with Tom, The Phyllis Diller Show was known as The Pruitts of South Hampton, and The Jim Backus Show went by Hot Off the Wire. With so much competition from other stars trying to vie for their spot on the schedule and being a syndicated show, I’m guessing it was hard to lure enough fans to make it worthwhile to produce a second season of the show.

Cimarron Strip: Steak, Anyone?

June 30, 2025May 7, 2025 / thewritelife61 / 2 Comments

As we wind up our “Go West Young Man” blog series, we turn our attention to Cimarron Strip for the last blog of the series. This show was only on the air for one season, from 1967-68. It was produced by the creators of Gunsmoke, America’s most beloved western. Like The Virginian, it was a 90-minute show.

Set in the Oklahoma in 1890, the series occurred in a geographical region called No Man’s Land, an ungoverned area for several decades. Marshal Jim Crown (Stuart Whitman) tries to bring law and order there. Crown arrives only to learn that the sheriff has resigned, and it’s up to him to bring peace to the area with no Army support. We get to know Dulcey Coopersmith (Jill Townsend) who comes to live with her father, but upon her arrival, she discovers he is dead. Her father’s partner MacGregor (Percy Herbert) has let their Wayfarer’s Inn become a bit dilapidated, but Dulcey is determined to bring it back. Marshal Crown stayed there when he was in Cimarron City. Francis Wilde (Randy Boone) often served as Crown’s deputy.

Rounding out the cast is the bartender at the Inn, Fabrizio (Jack Braddock); Major Covington at a nearby Army fort (Andrew Duggan); a Dr. Kihlgren (Karl Swenson); and Hardy Miller (Robert J. Wilke).

The show was on Thursday nights, up against Batman, The Flying Nun, and Bewitched on ABC. It faced Daniel Boone and Ironside on NBC. Definitely some tough competition.

The theme song was composed by Maurice Jarre, who was the scorer for the films Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago for which he won two Oscars.

The show never attained the ratings numbers it needed to keep its place on the schedule. From what I have been able to find out, it was well written and well cast. Guest stars kept it interesting, and the scenery was beautifully filmed.

I’m guessing the main reason the show didn’t make it was just viewer fatigue with the western genre. There were already shows like Bonanza and Gunsmoke which were hugely popular. One more western might just have been one too many, no matter how good it was. In addition to the western series, some of the shows that were on the air when Cimarron Strip debuted included That Girl, Hogan’s Heroes, Mannix, Batman, Lost in Space, Get Smart, and Rowan and Martin’s Laugh In—very different choices than westerns. I do remember Arnold the pig on Green Acres always wanting to watch westerns on television. We still fall prey to this on the major three networks. After ER became popular, the next season featured ten new medical shows. And then most of them get cancelled, not necessarily because they’re bad but because it’s just an overload of medical shows.

Most people don’t want the same supper every night even if it’s steak or lasagna. That said, this seemed to be a steak kind of show, so just because it couldn’t survive the mass onslaught of westerns in the sixties doesn’t mean it’s not worth watching. If you check it out, let me know what you think.

Don Adams: Always Smart

March 31, 2025November 13, 2024 / thewritelife61 / 2 Comments

This month our blog series is titled “All About The Bill Dana Show.” The first week in March we learned about the show and now we have been spending time with some of the cast. We end our series with Don Adams.

Adams was born Donald James Yarmy in Manhattan in 1923. Don was a blend of cultures, Hungarian Jewish on his dad’s side and Irish-American on his mom’s. Don was raised Catholic while his brother Dick was raised Jewish. I could not find out what their sister decided to do. She later became a writer under the name Gloria Burton and wrote a script for Get Smart. His brother was also an actor. Dick has about 50 acting credits and appeared in many of the most popular sitcoms during the sixties and seventies, including three appearances on Get Smart.

Adams dropped out of high school and went to work as a theater usher. In 1941 he joined the US Marine Corp. At one point he was injured during a Japanese assault on Tulagi. He was the only survivor from his platoon. While recovering, he came down with blackwater fever, a side effect from malaria and was evacuated to New Zealand. He was not expected to recover, but when he did, he was sent back to the US as a Marine drill instructor.

After his discharge, he moved to Florida to work as a comedian. He refused to do material he considered “blue” and was fired.

In 1947 he married Adelaide Efantis, and her stage name was Adelaide Adams. Don decided to take the name Adams as well for his stage name. He worked as a commercial artist and cashier to support their family.

In 1954, Don was the winner of Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts with a comedy act written by Bill Dana. He began making appearances on The Steve Allen Show, where Dana was a writer. In 1961 he became a regular on the Perry Como Show.

About this time, Don and Adelaide divorced, and Adams married Dorothy Bracken, another actress. They split up in 1977 when he married Judy Luciano, also an actress but that marriage also ended in divorce. (I could only find one credit for his last two wives; Bracken was on Get Smart, while Luciano appeared on The Love Boat.)

While discussing his marriages, Don said “I’m no longer independently wealthy. I guess it’s the result of too many wives, too many kids and too much alimony. I’ve been paying alimony since I was 14 and child support since 15. That’s a joke, but not by much. . . I like getting married, but I don’t like being married.”

In 1963 Adams was offered the role of Byron Glick, hotel detective on The Bill Dana Show. As we’ve discussed this month, the show was on the air for a season and a half. While working on the show, Don was also the voice of cartoon Tennessee Tuxedo which he continued doing until 1973.

During those years he also made an appearance on The Danny Thomas Show and on Pat Paulsen’s Comedy Hour.

In 1965 he was offered the role of Maxwell Smart in a new spy satire, Get Smart.

The sixties saw westerns being overtaken by spy shows such as The Man From U.N.C.L.E., I Spy, The Pink Panther, and The Avengers. Mel Brooks and Buck Henry decided to try their hand at writing a campy sitcom and Get Smart was born.

The role of Smart was created for Tom Poston, but ABC turned it down, and NBC said yes. They had Adams under contract, so he got the part. Rounding out the cast was Edward Platt as the Chief and Barbara Feldon as Agent 99.

Smart and 99 had great chemistry and married in a later season. Feldon and Adams remained life-long friends.

One of the most memorable parts of the show was all the catch phrases Adams created on the show including “Sorry about that Chief,” “Would you believe,” and “Missed it by that much.”

In addition to acting, Adams worked as a producer and director on the show. He was nominated for an Emmy from 1966-1969. He won three of those, losing to William Windom for the little-remembered one-season show, My World and Welcome to It. Lloyd Haynes from Room 222 and Bill Cosby for The Bill Cosby Show were also nominated that year.

The show moved to CBS for the final season, but the ratings never recovered, and the show was canceled after that year.

Like so many of our successful actors with unusual characters, Adams suffered from typecasting after the show ended. He did become part of two additional sitcom casts during his career.

In 1971 he was on The Partners. According to imdb.com, the plot is that “Lennie Crooke and George Robinson are inept detectives teamed up to solve crimes. Captain Andrews is their exasperated boss, Sgt. Higgenbottom is a smarmy co-worker, and Freddy confesses to most of the neighborhood crimes.” Adams played Crooke, but the show only produced 20 episodes.

In 1985, Adams tried a sitcom again on Check it Out. This one was about a grocery store and its employees. Adams played Howard Bannister. The show lasted three seasons, ending in 1988. The show was not very popular in the US but was a hit in Canada.

In between those two shows, Adams appeared in a handful of series including Fantasy Island, The Fall Guy, The Love Boat, Empty Nest, and Nick Freno: Licensed Teacher. He made most of his salary appearing in nightclubs. He also had his Smart character resurrected in several big screen films and television series.

Because of the typecasting, he returned to animation and found a lot of success, especially with Inspector Gadget which he voiced from 1983-1999.

He also tried his hand at a game show. Called Don Adams’ Screen Test, it had an interesting concept. The show was filmed in two 15-minute parts; Adams would randomly select an audience member to recreate a scene from a Hollywood movie such as From Here to Eternity with Adams as director. It ended after 26 episodes.

In his spare time, it sounds like he visited the racetracks, betting on horses. He also spent a night a week at the Playboy Mansion playing cards with Caan and Rickles. He loved history and studied Abraham Lincoln and Adolf Hitler in depth. He also wrote poetry and painted.

Don passed away in 2005 from a lung infection and lymphoma. The eulogists at his funeral included James Caan, Bill Dana, Barbara Feldon, and Don Rickles.

It’s hard to know what to make of Adams’ career. Obviously, he was hard working, an excellent Marine, and a man of many interests. He was fired for not performing blue material but then put horse racing and gambling above the needs of his family, according to several of his friends. He created the amazing role of Maxwell Smart, one of the best characters in television history, but that feat kept him from achieving other great roles in the following decades due to typecasting. It sounds like Check It Out was very popular in Canada, so maybe if he had been given a few chances to create characters different from Smart in a couple other sitcoms, it would have helped.

I feel bad for those actors who are so successful in the characters they help create that they are barred from future jobs, but then again, those characters are some of the best actors in television: George Reeves as Superman, Ray Walston as My Favorite Martian, Henry Winkler from Happy Days, Frank Cady from Green Acres, and Jack Klugman from The Odd Couple. I guess you trade being warmly remembered for fewer quality roles.

Apart from Get Smart, I knew little about Adams before writing this blog, so it was fun to get to know him a bit.

Maggie Peterson: A Musical Darling

March 17, 2025November 13, 2024 / thewritelife61 / 2 Comments

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.

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.

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.

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.

Lawrence Welk: A Bubbly Personality

November 18, 2024November 18, 2024 / thewritelife61 / 2 Comments

When I started thinking about icons from the 1950s, Lawrence Welk was the first person who came to mind. I was very lucky in having grandmothers that were about 11 years apart in age, and I received different knowledge and experiences from each of them. I always remember one weekend when I was at my maternal grandmother’s house and we watched Ike and Tina Turner in Central Park. Later at my paternal grandmother’s house, we watched The Lawrence Welk Show.

Let’s learn a bit about Lawrence and then take a closer look at his television show. Welk was born in 1903 in North Dakota. His parents settled there after leaving Odessa, part of the Russian Empire, now Ukraine.

The house where Welk grew up is now a tourist attraction. Their life there was not easy. Their first winter was spent living in an upturned wagon covered in sod. Welk quit school in the fourth grade to work on the family farm. The community spoke Russian, and Welk did not learn English very well until he was 21.

Somehow, when he was 17, Lawrence convinced his father to buy him an accordion for $400 (about $5500 today). He later said that he “wanted a good accordion because the reeds kept breaking on those cheap accordions all the time. And I told my father if he would buy me the real good accordion, the best accordion that’s available, I would stay on the farm until I was 21 years of age.”

After turning 21, Welk performed with a variety of bands in North and South Dakota. In 1927, Welk graduated from the MacPhail School of Music in Minneapolis. He formed an orchestra which became the band for WNAX in Yankton, South Dakota. From 1927-1936, they were on a daily radio show which led to a lot of engagements throughout the Midwest. During the thirties, Welk had a big band that specialized in dance music playing “sweet” music, unlike Benny Goodman who played more rhythmic big bands.

When the band was playing at the William Penn Hotel in Pittsburgh, a dancer referred to their music as “light and bubbly as champagne.” Welk took on the phrase to describe his music for the rest of his career.

In 1931 Welk married Fern Renner; they would remain married until his death.

In the forties, Welk’s band began a ten-year commitment at the Trianon Ballroom in Chicago. It was not unusual to have thousands of people come to watch them play.

In 1941, Decca Records signed Welk. He would later record for Mercury Records and Coral Records before moving to Dot Records in 1959. In 1967, Welk bought back all his masters from Dot and Coral and joined Randy Wood in a new venture, Ranwood Records. In 1979, Welk bought out Wood.

Welk moved to Los Angeles in 1951, so his family could have a stable home life. He produced a show called “The Lawrence Welk Show” on KTLA there which was broadcast from the Aragon Ballroom in Venice Beach. Four years later, ABC moved it to television. For the television show, the crew created a bubble machine to produce large bubbles that floated across the stage. It went through several variations until the soapy film did not land on instruments. Eventually, the machine was just used in the opening and closing of the show.

To appeal to a wider audience, Welk featured current songs as well as big band standards. Welk had a cast of performers who were on the show every week. Myron Floren played the accordion, Dick Kesner played the violin, Buddy Merrill was on guitar, and Pete Fountain took up the clarinet.

Some of those performers talked about their show in a 2021 article, https://www.kxnet.com/news/lawrence-welk-70-years-on-television/

📷womensinternationalmusicnetwork.com The Lennon Sisters

There were a lot of regulars on the show. The Lennon Sisters auditioned at Welk’s home. Kathy Lennon remembered that “Mrs. Welk was there . . . Mr. Welk came out and he indeed was sick. He had on a maroon, satin smoking jacket and velvet slippers. I mean it was like out of a movie somewhere. And he came, sat down on the couch, looked at us, and said, ‘Sing,’ just like that. So, we went over and hit the key on the piano and we sang . . . And he said, ‘Wow. Would you be on my Christmas show?’ And we were on every Saturday night after that for thirteen years.”

Bobby Burgess was one of the original Mouseketeers. He joined the troupe as a dancer in 1961. His dance partners included Barbara Boylan, Elaine Balden, and the one I remember, Cissy King. Burgess said that now he can enjoy watching the show. “I just love to watch the show now, because I was so focused on my dance routines that I never really got to sit down and enjoy it. Now I can turn on the reruns and enjoy Norma Zimmer or [husband and wife] Guy [Hovis] and Ralna [English].”

Ralna English said that “it was all beautiful music, beautiful sets, beautiful costumes and if you didn’t like something, wait a second.”

Other well-known performers included Jo Ann Castle, Gail Farrell, Joe Feeney, Larry Hooper, Sandy Griffiths, Mary Lou Metzger, Jimmy Roberts, and Tanya Falan Welk, Lawrence’s daughter-in-law. Norma Zimmer, mentioned above, was the Champagne Lady.

From 1955-1982, the show aired on Saturday nights. Until 1971 it was on ABC, and then the network canceled the show in the famous “rural purge” that got rid of Green Acres and Petticoat Junction, as well as a handful of other shows. Welk put his show into syndication for the next eleven years until his retirement. The show increased in viewership during that decade.

Welk took care of his money and expanded his business career. His company, Teleklew, Inc. invested in music publishing, recordings, and real estate. After the show ended, the corporation was renamed The Welk Group and included the Welk Music Group and the Welk Resort Group.

Lawrence also received four patents, including a musically themed restaurant menu, an accordion tray for serving food, and an accordion ashtray.

In 1992, Welk passed away from pneumonia.

As I mentioned, on Saturday nights, you can still tune in to PBS to catch a glimpse of what this show was all about, and maybe it will bring back some memories of your grandparents.

Virginia Sale: What a Character

July 15, 2024July 1, 2024 / thewritelife61 / 2 Comments

We are learning about some of our favorite female character actresses. Today we are learning more about the life of Virginia Sale.

Virginia was born in 1899 in Illinois. Her father Frank was a dentist, and her mother Lillie Belle was a poet and truant officer for the Urbana Illinois School District. After graduation, she attended the University of Illinois for two years and then transferred to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York where she graduated in the early twenties. Her brother Charles was a vaudeville comic, and he persuaded her to go to Hollywood to pursue a film career.

She began her career in Hollywood as an extra. In 1931, she did an interview for the Kansas City Star where she said “I had known an assistant director [named Ned] when I lived in New York. He introduced me to King Vidor, then casting for The Crowd. He gave me quite a good bit in the picture, although it lasted only five days. When asked how much salary I wanted, Ned told me to say $350 a week. ‘Well, I think you ought to work for us for $25 a day’ the casting director said. ‘That’s an awful comedown I protested,’ trembling in my boots. ‘All right then, let’s compromise on $35 a day,’ he said. I was awfully glad to get it.” That would be almost $600 a day currently.

During her first two years in Hollywood, Virginia lived at the Hollywood Studio Club. She appeared in 54 films between 1930 and 1935.

The Hollywood Studio Club was created as a safe place for starlets to live. Mary Pickford, along with several other women, was trying to raise money to construct a new building to house actresses. Will Hays gave $20,000 and soon after the studios contributed. Julia Morgan was hired as the architect. She designed an Italian Renaissance Revival style building that opened in 1926. The first floor had a spacious lobby, a library, writing rooms, a dining room, and a stage. The upper stories were single, double, and triple rooms. Men were only allowed to be on the first floor. You had to be between 18-35 years old, be seeking work as an actress, and could stay a maximum of three years. A hundred women lived there, paying $10-15 a week for room and board.

Barbara Hale, Donna Reed, Dorothy Malone, Ann B. Davis, Barbara Eden, Sharon Tate, and Sally Struthers were just a few of the women who lived there. The most famous resident was Marilyn Monroe. After the culture shift in the sixties and seventies, the residents decreased until the Club could no longer financially exist. In 1975 the doors were closed, and the contents were auctioned off.

In Hollywood Sale was often cast as an older woman, even though she was still in her twenties. She entered the movie entertainment business just as silent films were ending. Her first role was in Legionnaires in Paris in 1927. During her film work, she met actor and studio executive Sam Wren, and they married in 1935. In 1936 they had twins named Virginia and Christopher.

In the thirties, Virginia developed a one-woman show based on her life growing up in Illinois which she called “American Sketches.” She performed the piece more than 6000 times throughout the thirties, forties, and fifties, even touring Europe during WWII. This sounds like it would have been a fun show to see. Some of the different pieces of the performance included: “Traveling on the Illinois Central” where she portrays a mother trying to keep her son under control after a visit with relatives; “Life of the Party” where she is a giggling, talkative woman who annoys a young man she is trying to impress;
“Mealtime in Indiana” where she impersonates a housewife trying to get ready for the Ladies Guild while preparing supper for her family; “Three O’Clock in the Morning” as a weary hostess trying to get her guests to go home, and “I Remember Abraham Lincoln” where she is Grandma Willoughby reminiscing about her encounters with Lincoln.

She also received some radio work, including a serial, For Those We Love, playing Martha the maid every Sunday for eight years.

Her film career continued to develop during those decades and she appeared in Topper, When Tomorrow Comes, They Died with Their Boots On, and Night and Day.

Sam served in WWII as part of the Air Corps. When he returned home, he had a six-year position as executive secretary for the Actor’s Equity. He was an executive at both Warner Brothers and Columbia studios.

In 1949 as television was developing, she and Sam created a sitcom, Wren’s Nest which featured the life of the Wrens starring Virginia, Sam, and the twins. The show aired three times a week. Virginia took over writing duties on the show. Many of her scripts were based on real events that happened to the family. The series contained 47 episodes.

During the fifties, Sale took a break from the big screen, focusing on television shows and commercials. She appeared in several series in the fifties, but she hit her stride during the sixties. If you watch a lot of television from that decade, you can catch her in a variety of shows including The Many Lives of Dobie Gillis, Ben Casey, The Beverly Hillbillies, Wild Wild West, The Andy Griffith Show, Green Acres, and I Spy. She had a recurring role on Petticoat Junction where she played several characters. Her final television role was in Police Woman in 1975.

Sam passed away in 1962, and Virginia lived another thirty years, dying in 1992 from heart failure. Both Sam and Virginia are buried in Arlington National Cemetery. She spent her final years at the Motion Picture and Television Country Hospital in Woodland Hills, California.

Sale could thank Mary Pickford for her home once again. Pickford was part of the Motion Picture Relief Fund which she founded with Joseph Schenck and Reverend Neal Dodd. When several former Hollywood stars died destitute in the thirties, 48 acres were purchased in the San Fernando Valley to build a Motion Picture Country House. In 1948, the Motion Picture Hospital was dedicated on the grounds. Later television actors were invited to live there as well. By that time, the site included a retirement community with individual cottages, administrative offices, and a hospital. Fees are based on the ability to pay. Actors, artists, backlot men, cameramen, directors, extras, producers and security guards are all eligible to live there. To live there, residents must be at least 70 and have worked in the entertainment industry for at least 20 years.

It was fun to learn not only about Virginia Sales but also the places she lived at the beginning and the end of her career.