Thanks for joining me this month in our blog series, “It’s Their Show.” As it became obvious that television wasn’t going away and movie stars were only hurting themselves shunning the industry, several celebrities decided to make the jump and star in their own show on the small screen. Ray Milland was one of the first stars to tackle the task. Milland had been known for many great movies including The Lost Weekend, for which he won an Oscar, and Dial M for Murder.
His show was originally titled “Meet Mr. McNutley,” but it became The Ray Milland Show. This is one of those shows that fans remember fondly as very funny and well written.
The show debuted in 1953 and ran for two seasons, two very different seasons. In the first season, McNutley is an English professor at Lynn Haven College for Women. Although all the students find him attractive his wife (Phyllis Avery) understood that this was not affecting her marriage. Rounding out the cast were their neighbors Pete and Ruth Thompson (Gordon Jones and Jacqueline DeWit) and the college dean (Minerva Urecal) who was not swooning over McNutley.
When the show returned for its second season, his name is now Mr. McNulty and he is a drama professor, moving from New England to Comstock University in California, a coed college. Dean Dodsworth (Lloyd Corrigan) and his wife (Madge Blake) take the place of their neighbors in this version.
The first season, CBS put the show on Thursday nights where it was up against Groucho Marx’s You Bet Your Life, a top ten program. Although many things changed from season one to season two, what stayed the same was that the show was still up against You Bet Your Life and Groucho’s show was still in the top ten. Ray’s show was cancelled at the end of the second season.
The producers of the show were Joe Connolly and Bob Mosher. The partnership would have some minor success in the early sixties after this show went off the air (Bringing Up Buddy, Ichabod and Me, Calvin and the Colonel) before hitting it big as the writers and producers for Leave It to Beaver and The Munsters. They were also behind The New Leave It to Beaver Show in 1997.
I watched the Christmas episode from the second season for this blog. Peg gets involved with the local orphanage and agrees to host a child for Christmas. She is a difficult child and makes life and the holidays very unpleasant for the couple. However, as viewers, we are in on a scene where Susie (Beverly Washburn) reveals why she is so mean. She decides to become the perfect child so the couple will take her to the orphanage Christmas party, but her goal is to expose Santa as a fake to the other kids, and the show ends with an unexpected twist. It was a heart-warming story, and the humor was a bit subdued, but I enjoyed the episode. I was impressed by Washburn’s portrayal of a bad, good little girl. By the way, Washburn is still acting; she’s probably best remembered for her role in Old Yeller.
Milland would attempt another television series in 1959, and that show also ran for two seasons. As Markham, he portrayed a former attorney turned private detective who solved crimes around the world.
It’s too bad that the network never gave this show a chance to move to a spot in the schedule where it didn’t have so much competition. I thought it was more sophisticated than some of the sitcoms during the fifties. I’m guessing that it might have been a big hit.
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