Jo Anne Worley: What a Character

July 29, 2024March 14, 2024 / thewritelife61 / 2 Comments

We are winding up a blog series about Supportive Women. One of the women I wanted to include was Jo Anne Worley. I didn’t know much about her apart from her appearances on Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In and being in my favorite made-for-television movie, The Feminist and the Fuzz.

Jo Anne was born in 1937 in Lowell, Indiana. Her loud voice was not an acting tool. She always felt she was loud. She said, “I have a big mouth, and I’m sorry to say I’ve always had one. When I was young, in church, I never sang with everybody else. I only mouthed the hymns, so I wouldn’t drown anyone else out. I have my quiet moments. But I don’t have many.” She was named school comedienne at her high school.

In one interview with a Lowell reporter, she said “I’ll never forget the place I’d work every summer while in high school. It was called Robert’s Hotel, Gas and Café, and it was at the intersection of US 41 and Highway 2. They had an old juke box in the café where I worked, and I’d sing and joke around whenever the business was slow, which seemed like most of the time.”

After graduation, Worley moved to Blauvelt, New York to work with the Pickwick Players. She was later offered a scholarship to Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls, Texas. After two years at the school, she moved to Los Angeles City College and enrolled at the Pasadena Playhouse. Her first musical role was in “Wonderful Town.”

In 1961 she was in the off-Broadway musical show “Billy Barnes Revue” with Charles Nelson Reilly and Larry Hovis (who was Carter on Hogan’s Heroes). The original show in 1959 featured Bert Convy, Joyce Jameson, Patti Regan, Ken Berry, Ann Guilbert, Jackie Joseph, and Len Weinrib.

Jo Anne was in two episodes of The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis in 1961-2. During the rest of the sixties, she was offered several big-screen roles.

In 1964 she was given a role in “Hello, Dolly.” A year later she developed her own comedy and singing act in Greenwich Village where she was discovered there by Merv Griffin.

Griffin encouraged her to appear on his show which she did forty times. Like Marcia Wallace, who we learned about last week, her appearance on Merv Griffin was seen by someone who recommended her for a new show. In this case, George Schlatter cast her in Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In.

Worley left the show in 1970. She made guest appearances on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. She also appeared on several game shows, including Super Password, Hollywood Squares, and many versions of Pyramid.

In 1971 she made the television movie I discussed above, The Feminist and the Fuzz. It starred David Hartman, Barbara Eden, Farrah Fawcett, Worley, Julie Newmar, and Henry Morgan. I would love to see it again.

For most of her career, Worley would be providing voices for animation. However, she appeared in a handful of shows during the seventies and eighties, including Adam 12, Love American Style, Hawaii Five-0, CHiPs, Murder She Wrote, The Love Boat, Mad About You, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and The Middle.

In 1975, Worley married Roger Perry. They would stay together for 25 years, divorcing in 2000. Perry has 95 acting credits and appeared in many popular shows in the seventies, eighties, and nineties. He was also in The Feminist and The Fuzz. After divorcing Worley, he would marry actress Joyce Bulifant.

During the seventies and eighties, Worley did a lot of regional theater in Milwaukee and several cities in California.

In the 1990s she got involved with Disney and provided her voice for Beauty and the Beast and A Goofy Movie. She also was on several Disney series including Kim Possible and the Wizards of Waverly Place.

She was in a limited run of a musical production of “The Wizard of Oz,” playing the wicked witch of the west in 1999. In 2007, she appeared on Broadway as Mrs. Tottendale in “The Drowsy Chaperone,” and she reprised the role in 2015 at The Cape Playhouse. She was also cast in “Wicked” as Madame Morrible in 2008.

Jo Anne Worley once said, “my goal in life is to be the kind of person my dog thinks I am.” That seems to be good advice for all of us. It was fun getting to know a little more about this funny woman. We love her as much as her dog did.

Love American Style: Love and the Celebrities

June 3, 2024March 22, 2024 / thewritelife61 / 2 Comments

This month we are starting a new blog series, Casting Celebrities. We’re going to take a look at four shows that featured a group of celebrities every week. We’ll learn more about Love, American Style; Fantasy Island; The Love Boat, and Supertrain. When we discuss Supertrain, we’ll also look at the small number of stars who appeared on all four shows.

Today we begin with Love, American Style. This show was an iconic 1970s show. Like Laugh In, the clothing, furnishings, and vocabulary do not make it timeless. But it was a lot of fun. This fast-paced anthology series featured two to four mini episodes each week, and between them were quick skits, often featuring a brass bed. Each smaller episode is titled “Love and the _______.”

A troupe of players was featured on each show for the in-between skits. These regulars included William Callaway, Buzz Cooper, Phyllis Davis, Mary Grover, James Hampton, Stuart Margolin, Lynn Marta, Barbara Minkus, and Tracy Reed. Margolin went on to a regular role in The Rockford Files; Tracy Reed was featured in McCloud and Knot’s Landing; Phyllis Davis was part of the cast of Vega$ and Magnum PI, and James Hampton will be familiar if you watched The Doris Day Show or F-Troop.

The show had a memorable and catchy theme song. Written by Arnold Margolin, the first year it was performed by The Cowsills. The snappy melody was set to the following words:

Love, Love, Love

Love, American Style,
Truer than the Red, White and Blue.
Love, American Style,
That’s me and you.

And on a star-spangled night my love,

My love come to me.
You can rest you head on my shoulder.
Out by the dawn’s early light, my love
I will defend your right to try.

Love, American Style,
That’s me and you.

During the second and subsequent years that Love, American Style was on the air, the theme song was performed by the Ron Hicklin Group. The Ron Hicklin Group could be heard in a variety of motion pictures and commercials, and they also appeared on recordings with stars such as Paul Revere and the Raiders and Cher. John and Tom Bahler, brothers who sang under The Charles Fox Singers were also part of this group. The band provided television theme song recordings including Batman, That Girl, Happy Days, and Laverne and Shirley. They also did the singing for The Partridge Family theme and songs performed on the show as well as the Brady Bunch Kids. Ron retired in the early 2000s, and Tom does a variety of things. He is also known for writing Bobby Sherman’s hit, “Julie Do You Love Me?”. John married Janet Lennon, one of the Lennon sisters who performed on The Lawrence Welk Show. He currently lives in Branson and conducts the “new” Lawrence Welk orchestra.

Paramount Television developed the show. The executive producer of the show was Arnold Margolin, Stuart’s brother. There were 53 different directors during the four-year run. The series received Emmy nominations for Outstanding Comedy Series in 1970 and 1971; Best Music Composition in 1971, 1972, and 1973, winning in 1973; and winning the Emmy in 1970 for Outstanding Original Music and Lyrics.

Many people wrote for the show, but Garry Marshall and Jerry Belson received the most credits. One of the writers, Peggy Elliott, was interviewed by the Huffington Post in May of 2013, and she talked about her time writing for the show.

“But the show I loved writing the most, was Love, American Style. For every other show, I was writing for characters created out of someone else’s head. Sure, we could create the occasional guest-star role, and we had been told to make every role, no matter how small, a real person. ‘Think of the actor who’s playing that delivery boy,’ I can hear Billy Persky, the co-creator or That Girl, say: ‘This is a big break for him — it’s the biggest role he’s had so far. Give him something to work with.’

But with Love, American Style, every character was our very own; every situation came out of our heads. Each segment of the hour the show ran each week was a one-act play created entirely by us. Added to the attraction was the fact that we could say and do things that were taboo on every other TV show in the early ‘70s. Arnold Margolin, co-creator of the show with Jim Parker, told me recently that the creative side of the network wanted the show to be more daring, while the censors kept their red pencils ready. There was a full-time position on the show just to run interference.

We must have put both sides through the hoops with one episode we wrote: ‘Love and The Hand-Maiden.’ A young guy was dating a centerfold model. As their relationship developed, he discovered that she had no problem with shedding her clothes, but she always kept her hands covered — with artful poses in magazines, and with gloves in real life. He became obsessed with seeing her hands and came up with one ruse after another to get her to take off her gloves. We had a ball writing it, with one double-entendre after another.”

If you were a star of any kind in the early 1970s, you most likely were on Love, American Style. The show produced 108 episodes, and those shows featured 1112 different actors. Some of the famous names showing up in the credits include Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Phyllis Diller, Arte Johnson, Ozzie and Harriet Nelson, Regis Philbin, Burt Reynolds, Sonny and Cher, Flip Wilson, and Jo Anne Worley.

Brad Duke wrote a biography about Harrison Ford, and he said Ford had fond memories of appearing on Love, American Style. “He recalled that he had been given little time to prepare his wardrobe for the role of a philosophical hippie in the November 1969 episode, “Love and the Former Marriage.” He appeared on set with long hair and a beard thinking they were appropriate for the role. He was surprised when he was told he needed a haircut and trim and then was given a navy blue dress shirt and vinyl burgundy jeans with a large belt. They even had a scarf with a little ring to put around my neck. And I thought, someone has made a mistake here. So, rather than argue with the wardrobe people, I put on the clothes and went to find the producer. I walked on the set and he was pointed out. I tapped his shoulder and when he turned around he had on the same clothes I did. He was a hippie producer I guess. At least the check went through, and I got paid.”

The best way to get a good understanding of what the show was like is to look at a couple of the episodes.

January 23, 1970: Love and the Big Night

Starring Ann Elder, Buddy Lester, Frank Maxwell, Julie Newmar, and Tony Randall, this episode is often listed as a favorite of viewers. Randall is a married businessman who escorts his voluptuous secretary (Newmar) to her apartment after a late night at the office. Eager to get home to his wife, Randall hurriedly tries to open a stubborn jar of mayonnaise and winds up covered with mayo. Newmar cleans his suit, but while it’s drying, it’s stolen. After a series of amusing mishaps, Randall finally gets back to his own apartment and creeps into bed with his wife–only to find out she’s not there.

February 25, 1972: Love and the Television Set

It starred Harold Gould, Marion Ross, Ron Howard, and Anson Williams. Reading this list of names might give you a hint about what happened to this episode after it aired. Garry Marshall had written a pilot about a 1950s family that did not sell. He turned it into an episode for Love, American Style. George Lucas caught the episode and was impressed with Ron Howard and offered him a role in his new movie American Graffiti about 1950s teens. The movie was so popular that the network decided to put Marshall’s pilot in the fall line-up as Happy Days. Harold Gould’s role was given to Tom Bosley for the series. When Love, American Style went into syndication, this episode was retitled “Love and the Happy Days.”

October 22, 1970: Love and the Bashful Groom

This is the episode I recall when I think of the series. When I watched it originally, I was staying overnight at my grandparents’ house and my grandmother was shocked at the “vulgarity.” It really seems quite tame today, but back then it probably was unexpected. She would approve of Tom Bahler marrying Janet Lennon though because I watched Lawrence Welk with her and my grandfather whenever I was at their house.

In this episode, Paul Petersen, Christopher Stone, Meredith MacRae, Jeff Donnell, and Dick Wilson are featured. Harold (Petersen) and Linda (MacRae) are getting married. He learns that she grew up in a nudist colony and is not comfortable being naked for his wedding. After a soul-searching talk with his best friend, and realizing he loves Linda enough to be uncomfortable, he decides to go through with the ceremony. He gets to the church a bit late and walks in, only to see that everyone else is dressed in their Sunday best. His bride informs him that they always dress up for weddings. One of the congregation members says something like “Let’s not make him uncomfortable,” and they all begin to undress. Of course, you see nothing improper, no naked bodies, only clothes flying. This was probably not the best episode to “expose” my grandmother to as a first glimpse of the show.

The show lasted for four years and was cancelled in 1973. In 1985, a reboot was created, but it was on in the mornings and only lasted a few months. The show was on at the same time as everyone’s favorite game show, The Price is Right. For the 1998 fall season, a pilot was created for prime time, but it was never ordered. While doing my research for this blog, I noticed that there was a Love, American Style project in production, so we may see it resurface again. I’m not sure I would want to watch a contemporary version of the show though. It was such a product of its time, and I fear what a current version would be like after seeing the reboot of Match Game which has been airing the past few years.

Frank Gorshin: Batman’s Most Puzzling Villain

March 18, 2024March 18, 2024 / thewritelife61 / 2 Comments

This month, our theme is Bam! Pow! Batman Villains. We have learned a bit about the careers of the Joker and Cat Woman, and today we are spending some time with the Riddler, portrayed by Frank Gorshin.

Gorshin started out as an impressionist and comedian before transitioning into acting.

Frank was born in Pittsburgh in 1933 into a blue-collar, middle-class family. His mom was a seamstress, and his father was a railroad worker. His paternal grandparents arrived in the US from Slovenia and his mother was born in Slovenia, coming to the Pittsburgh area as a young girl; his parents were very involved in the Slovenian community, both singing with the Preseren, a Slovenian singing society.

When he was 15, Gorshin got a part-time job as an usher at the Sheridan Square Theatre. He studied the mannerisms of the actors he watched in those movies and developed an impressionist act. Some of his favorite actors to mimic included James Cagney, Cary Grant, Al Jolson, and Edward Robinson. After entering a talent contest in 1951, he won a week-long engagement at the Carousel nightclub in New York.

Sadly, Gorshin’s older brother was hit by a car two days before and died. His parents convinced him to keep his performance schedule and sent him to New York.

After high school, Gorshin enrolled at the Carnegie Tech School of Drama (now Carnegie Mellon University).

At age 20, Frank was drafted into the US Army and sent to Germany. He was an entertainer in Special Services for a year and a half. When Gorshin left the Army, he began his acting career, appearing in four movies and on television in Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

I can’t imagine the horror Gorshin’s parents felt when getting a call in 1957 that their son had fallen asleep while driving from Pittsburgh to Hollywood, a 39-hour trip for a screen test. With their other son passing away from a car crash six years earlier, now they had to deal with the fact that their other son was in a coma with a fractured skull. Luckily, he made a full recovery.

Another big event occurring in 1957 was his marriage to Christina Randazzo. They had a son and separated later in life, but they never did divorce as far as I could tell.

Until his death, Gorshin would appear in more than sixty big-screen films. During the fifties, he only appeared in a handful of television series, but that would change in the 1960s. Some of the most memorable shows included The Defenders, The Munsters, Star Trek, and The High Chapparal. With his comedy act, he visited The Ed Sullivan Show four times. The first time he did his impressionist act on the series, he would be scheduled with this new band called The Beatles.

The sixties also found him on Batman, his reason for being in this month’s blog series. He said that he developed a fiendish laugh at Hollywood parties. “I listened to myself laugh and discovered that the funniest jokes brought out the high-pitched giggle that I use on the show. With further study, I came to realize that it wasn’t so much how I laughed as what I laughed at that created the sense of the menace.”

He did not love the unitards that many of the comic book villains wore, so he asked for a green business suit and bowler hat, covered with question marks since he always left riddles for Batman and Robin to solve. He often said “Riddle me this, Batman” which became a catchphrase of the mid-sixties.

Gorshin said “When I was first approached to play the Riddler, I thought it was a joke. Then I discovered the show had a good script and agreed to do the role. Now I am in love with the character.”

Gorshin was the only villain to be nominated for an Emmy. He got the nod in 1966 for the episode “Hi Diddle Riddle.” He had some tough competition, going against Werner Klemperer as Colonel Klink on Hogan’s Heroes, Morey Amsterdam on The Dick Van Dyke Show, and winner Don Knotts on The Andy Griffith Show.

Gorshin was in ten episodes of the show, but after appearing numerous times, he was unavailable, and the producers replaced him with John Astin. I realized hindsight is 20/20 as they say, so the producers were never considering the effect the show would have on pop culture and the decades it would be a fan favorite, but that switch seems extreme. However, they did it with Julie Newmar and Eartha Kitt as well, so maybe they figured if you have to replace a villain, let’s replace them with someone very different from the original. Gorshin, however, was not a fan of being replaced but did get over it enough to accept his tenth episode role in season three and appeared as Riddler in the 1979 made-for-television movie Legends of the Superheroes.

Frank made his Broadway debut in 1969 in the musical biography, “Jimmy” which was about the controversial life of New York mayor Jimmy Walker.

Gorshin was very busy in the seventies and eighties. Among the twenty plus shows he appeared on were The Virginian, Martin and Rowan’s Laugh In, Ironside, Hawaii Five-0, Charlie’s Angels, and Murder She Wrote.

In the last three decades of his life, he spent more time making big-screen films. One thing I found surprising is that Gorshin appeared in three soap operas, all at different times in his career: General Hospital in 1963, The Edge of Night in 1982, and The Bold and the Beautiful in 1999.

In the early 2000s, Gorshin did a one-man Broadway show, portraying George Burns. He was reunited with his Batman cast in a made-for-tv movie, Return to the Batcave: The Misadventures of Adam and Burt. His last appearance was on CSI: Crime Scene Investigation on “Grave Danger” on which he played himself. The episode was directed by Quentin Tarantino and was dedicated to Gorshin.

Unfortunately, Gorshin was a heavy smoker throughout his life. Adam West once said that “Frank could reduce a cigarette to ash with one draw” and his nightclub performances warned patrons they would be exposed to a lot of second-hand smoke if they attended. Not surprisingly, he died from lung cancer, complicated by emphysema and pneumonia.

I enjoyed getting to know Frank Gorshin in this blog. While I was much more familiar with the careers of Burgess Meredith and Julie Newmar, Gorshin and Cesar Romero are actors I knew very little about. I hope you are also enjoying getting to know these fun “villains.”

Julie Newmar: Batman’s Most Beautiful Villain

March 11, 2024February 17, 2024 / thewritelife61 / 2 Comments

This month we are learning a bit about the Batman villains and their careers. No study of Batman’s favorite nemesis would be complete without Cat Woman, Julie Newmar. Julie shared the role of Cat Woman with Eartha Kitt who appeared the final television season and Lee Meriwether who was so catty in the Batman movie. What else did Julie Newmar do during her career? Let’s find out.

Born Julia Chalene Newmeyer in 1933, Julie Newmar as she is known in the acting world, was a television and film actress, dancer, singer, and stage performer. But, as they say in the commercials, that’s not all. She also was known for writing, designing lingerie, and managing real estate investments.

Newmar was born in LA. Her father Don was head of the physical education department for the Los Angeles College. Her mother, of both Swedish and French descent, was a fashion designer under the name Chalene and later worked in real estate.

Julie began dancing early in life and performed as a prima ballerina with the Los Angeles Opera when she was only 15. With an IQ of 135, Newmar graduated from John Marshall High School at age 15. She continued dancing in films in the early fifties. At age 19, she was also working as a dancer/choreographer for Universal Studios. In 1954, she appeared in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers as Dorcas, one of the seven brides.

In 1955 she got her first Broadway appearance in “Silk Stockings.” She continued her movie and Broadway careers throughout her years in entertainment, appearing in 33 films in all.

Television is where Newmar gained most of her fame. Her first television appearance was on The Phil Silvers Show in 1957 and then Ominbus in 1959. But it was in the sixties that she became a household name. She started the decade in Adventure in Paradise in 1960, followed by a variety of shows including The Defenders, Route 66, and The Twilight Zone in the early sixties.

In 1964 she was offered the role of Rhoda on My Living Doll, where she played a robot. She was not enthralled with the choice of Bob Cummings as her costar and did not seem to enjoy her time on this show. She said that “They originally wanted Efrem Zimbalist Jr. It was not a flip part—it needed a straight actor who could play opposite this bizarre creature so the comedy would come off. That quality was lost when they hired Bob. The show could have been wonderful. I think it would have run for many seasons had they hired Efrem because he had the right qualities.”

After appearing in several comedies including The Beverly Hillbillies and F Troop, she received another recurring role as Cat Woman in Batman. She would appear in the series 13 times, 12 as Cat Woman, the only villain to make Batman question his morals, because we knew he was in love with her, and if she showed any sign of remorse, who knows where things might have gone. Her Cat Woman costume now lives at the Smithsonian Institution.

Newmar lived in Beekman Place in New York in the mid-sixties. One weekend her brother had come to visit her from Harvard. They were sitting around chatting when the phone rang. She was asked if she would like to play Cat Woman on the Batman series. She was a bit miffed because they said they were casting in California, and the role started on Monday. Her comment was “That’s how television is done: they never know what they are doing until yesterday.” When her brother heard Batman, he jumped up and said that was the favorite show at Harvard and they even skipped classes to watch it. He told her to take the role, so she did.

After Batman, she finished out the sixties in The Monkees, Star Trek, Get Smart and It Takes a Thief. With 11 seventies offers, you can see her in shows such as Bewitched, Columbo, McMillan and Wife, Love American Style, The Bionic Woman, and The Love Boat. One of my favorite made-for-tv movies was The Feminist and the Fuzz. It had an exceptional cast, including Newmar who appeared in the movie along with Barbara Eden, David Hartman, Jo Anne Worley, Farrah Fawcett, Harry Morgan, Herb Edelman, Penny Marshall, and John McGiver. This ensemble was directed by Jerry Paris, who directed so many great shows from The Dick Van Dyke Show to Happy Days.

Her other starring role in the seventies was a marriage to J. Holt Smith, an attorney. After the wedding, Newmar moved to Forth Worth, Texas until 1984 when they divorced.

The eighties was a more quiet decade for the actress but she did accept roles on CHiPs, Fantasy Island, and Hart to Hart. In 1992, she appeared in George Michael’s music video, “Too Funky,” She was still working in 2016 and 2017 in Batman animation features.

If you were a fan of Batman and Dark Shadows in the sixties, you were in luck when Newmar took on the role of Dr. Julia Hoffman (played in the original series by Grayson Hall) in Dark Shadows: Bloodline, the audio drama miniseries.

She was not just a pretty face, however. She received two US patents for pantyhose and one for a bra, under the name Nudemar. She also began investing in LA real estate and was credited with helping to improve the neighborhoods of La Brea Avenue and Fairfax Avenue. In one episode of My Living Doll, Rhoda is asked to play Chopin’s “Fantasie Impromptu” on the piano. Newmar played the piece herself. She had studied under concert pianist Dr. MacIntyre, and she said that scene is the only one she’s done with her playing the piano which had been her career choice before acting. One of Julie’s comments about herself was “Tell me I’m beautiful, it’s nothing. Tell me I’m intellectual—I know it. Tell me I’m funny, and it’s the greatest compliment in the world anyone could give me.”

Julie also enjoys art and gardening. She has a rose, a day lily, and an orchid named for her. Her gardens are often chosen as a spot for holding charity events.

Like Barbara Feldon from Get Smart, Julie Newmar is beautiful, bright, and funny. I hope she enjoyed her career. Obviously, she could have been a brain surgeon or any other profession of her choice. She seems like she would be a fun person to just hang out with and the conversation would never run out. Thank you, Julie Newmar for choosing the entertainment business over medical science for our sakes.

Burgess Meredith: America’s Favorite Villain

March 4, 2024March 4, 2024 / thewritelife61 / 2 Comments

Bam! Pow! It’s Batman Villain Month. We will be looking at the career of an actor who played a Batman baddie every week this month. We are beginning with my favorite, The Penguin, played by Burgess Meredith.

Oliver Burgess Meredith was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1907. His father was a physician, and his mother was born into a family of Methodist revivalists. Burgess followed his Methodist faith for his entire life. After high school, he enrolled at Amherst College, until 1932 when he became a reporter for the Stamford Advocate. He worked in a variety of jobs while getting started in acting including retail, an editor, a merchant marine, and a runner on Wall Street.

He joined Eva Le Gallienne’s Civic Repertory Theatre in New York City. His Broadway debut was in this company’s “Romeo and Juliet” in 1930. His film debut came in 1935 in Winterset. Later in his career, he would return to Broadway as a director. He shared a Tony Award with James Thurber for their collaboration on “A Thurber Carnival” in 1960, and he earned a Tony nomination for his staging of “Ulysses in Nighttown” in 1974. In the late seventies, he directed Fionnula Flanagan’s one-woman play, “James Joyce’s Women” which toured for several years.

Meredith had more success in acting than marriage. Helen Derby Merrien Burgess was his wife from 1932-1935. His marriage to actress Margaret Perry only lasted two years, ending in 1938.

In 1942, Burgess enlisted in the US Army Air Forces for WWII, reaching the rank of captain. He was discharged in 1945. Meredith married another actress, Paulette Goddard, and they were together from 1944-1949. However, in 1951 he married Kaja Sundsten and they were together until his death.

Meredith would appear in 80 movies during his career, as well as a number of made-for-television movies. He might be best known in the past few decades for Grumpy Old Men and Grumpier Old Men in the 1990s.

However, it was television where he found the most acclaim. His first appearances came in 1949 on the Ford Theater Hour and The Silver Theater. Throughout the fifties he continued receiving offers for theatric roles on these types of programs. During the early sixties, he was everywhere. You could catch his appearances on dramas such as The Naked City, Ben Casey, The Twilight Zone, The Bold Ones, Room 222, Ironside, and Mannix. He rode onto many western sets including Wagon Train, Rawhide, The Wild, Wild West, Bonanza, Daniel Boone, and The Virginian. He found his way onto several comedies such as Please Don’t Eat the Daisies and The Monkees.

Given the astounding number of drama shows that he chose roles on, it is a bit surprising that one of his best-known roles was the campy, humorous 1960s series Batman. From 1966-1968, he made 21 appearances as the Penguin. When he appeared on The Monkees, it was also as the Penguin. Originally the producers wanted Spencer Tracy for the role of Penguin. Tracy said he would not accept the offer unless his character was allowed to kill Batman. So, Meredith got the role. The cast loved him, and the producers made sure there was always a Penguin script waiting so whenever Burgess was free, it could be filmed.

He was perfect for the role with his raspy voice and that iconic Penguin laugh. The laugh came about because Burgess had given up smoking but had to smoke for his role on Batman. When he coughed, he covered it up with his trademark laugh. When asked why he did Batman, he replied that he did it “for two reasons, one of which was the salary. The other was that, after the first few episodes, Batman became the in-thing to do. Everybody would either play a villain or appear as himself in that cameo showcase where a celebrity would poke his head through the window of a building that Batman and Robin were climbing. Actually, we didn’t get as much money from the show as you might think, although we were paid decent money for the feature film version. The main impetus to continue appearing on Batman—beyond the desire to get some TV work—was that it was fashionable.”

Later in his career, Burgess continued appearing on the big screen and provided voice-over work and a bit of animation. Unfortunately, he was named as an unfriendly witness by the House Un-American Activities Commission which ended his studio work for several decades. Burgess also did commercial work and was known for his roles for Skippy Peanut Butter and United Air Lines.

Meredith was a life-long Democrat and was generous to the Democratic party. He was an environmentalist and tried to end pollution. He was also fascinated by intelligent animals, especially dolphins. One night he said he felt a dolphin needed help while staying at a friend’s beach house. He ran out to the beach and found a dolphin caught in a net under a dock and was able to save its life. He was nominated for two Academy Awards, both for Supporting Actor in Rocky and The Day of the Locust. A 21-acre park in Pomona, New York was named for him; he provided the funding to incorporate the village.

In 1997, Meredith died from complications of Alzheimer’s. His former Batman costar, Adam West, spoke at his memorial service.

While almost all of the bad guys on Batman were memorable, the Penguin and Cat Woman were by far my favorites. We will look at the career of Julie Newmar next week.

How My Living Doll Became Cat Woman

March 13, 2023March 13, 2023 / thewritelife61 / 2 Comments

This month we are learning more about some of our favorite robots in this blog series called “I Robot.” Today we go back to the mid-sixties for My Living Doll.

This was both a science fiction and comedy show that debuted in September of 1964. Jack Chertok produced it for Television Productions with CBS. The show was filmed at Desilu studios. Chertok had been the creative force behind My Favorite Martian. James Aubrey, president of CBS, approached Chertok about doing another show. He did not even require a pilot to be made. Chertok’s writers from My Favorite Martian, Bill Kelsay and Al Martin, created the show from an idea proposed by Leo Guild. Kelsay wrote many of the episodes for Date with the Angels starring Betty White and several My Three Sons plots. Martin wrote for many earlier shows and screenplays including Roy Rogers.

The plot they created was that Dr. Bob McDonald (Bob Cummings), a psychiatrist for the Air Force, was given Rhoda Miller (Julie Newmar), a lifelike robot to protect. He was trying to keep her out of the hands of the military. Rhoda’s formal name was AF709. Dr. Carl Miller (Henry Beckman) built her for the US Air Force but she eventually lands in McDonald’s care when Miller is transferred to Pakistan. His job is to help educate her to be the perfect woman while keeping her true identity a secret. Beauty marks on her back were the control buttons. Her main power switch was on her right elbow. Her eyes could be covered to prompt a system relaxation. Rhoda’s memory bank contained 50 million pieces of information. Bob told his coworkers Rhoda was Dr. Miller’s niece, and she took on the role of his secretary at the office, typing 240 words a minute. On other episodes, she learned to calculate where dice would fall and how to make trick shots playing pool.

In one episode, Rhoda is asked to play Chopin’s “Fantasie Impromptu” on the piano. Newmar actually played the piece herself. She had studied under concert pianist Dr. MacIntyre, and she said that scene is the only one she’s done with her playing the piano which had been her career choice before acting.

Like I Dream of Jeanne, many of the episodes deal with Bob trying to keep Rhoda out of trouble while she is learning what society and the current culture is like. Rhoda learns human emotions throughout the first season; perhaps this would have led to a romantic relationship between the robot and the doctor.

Rounding out the cast was Peter Robinson (Jack Mullaney), Bob’s neighbor and coworker who thinks Rhoda is someone he wants to date. Irene Adams (Doris Dowling) plays Bob’s sister who moves in to act as housekeeper and chaperone so the neighbors are not suspicious of a single woman living there. On Love That Bob, Rosemary DeCamp played Bob’s sister who moves in to take care of the household for him. Mrs. Moffat was added later on as Peter’s housekeeper.

The show never really found its viewer base. The New York Times reviewer Jack Gould noted that it “very probably had the makings of a popular novelty hit . . . with Miss Newmar giving a light and amusing performance as the automated dish, the premise could work out . . . Bob Cummings, an old hand at chaperoning pretty girls, again is cast in his familiar assignment.”

Newmar didn’t feel that Cummings was the right actor for the role. She said that “They originally wanted Efrem Zimbalist Jr. It was not a flip part—it needed a straight actor who could play opposite this bizarre creature so the comedy would come off. That quality was lost when they hired Bob. The show could have been wonderful. I think it would have run for many seasons had they hired Efrem because he had the right qualities.”

The ratings were not good; however, another issue was the fact that it was on Sunday nights against Bonanza, one of the most popular shows ever. In December, CBS moved the show to Wednesday nights but the ratings did not improve. In January, Cummings asked to be written off the show. CBS agreed but never got a replacement for him. He was said to have been transferred to Pakistan, and Robinson took over caring for Rhoda with his housekeeper living in his house again to keep the neighbors from talking.

Apparently, Cummings and Newmar never hit it off. She complained that he had tried to teach her to act and that he seemed unhappy that she was getting more press attention. Later Newmar stated that the real trouble on the set was Cumming’s addiction to methamphetamines. She said he had erratic behavior and became increasingly more depressed and insecure.

After Cummings left the show, another five episodes were aired, and then the show was canceled. The show ended up ranking 79^th out of 96 shows. Two decades later, producer Howard Leeds would go on to create the show we will discuss next week, Small Wonder.

I was not able to confirm it, but I read several sources that said this show coined the term, That does not compute” which is what Rhoda said when she was asked something she did not understand.

During the summer of 1965, CBS aired repeats of the show. After that, the show was never seen on television again in the United States. Rumors were rampant about whether the 26 episodes had been damaged in a fire, hidden by Chertok, or destroyed. Two episodes seemed to have survived, but there were also reports that six or ten existed in all. CBS was able to obtain about half the episodes somewhere and released a DVD with them on it. We will have to see if the additional episodes ever show up or not.

Transitioning to Cat Woman Photo:designyoutrust.com

This was another of those shows that seemed to suffer from an identity complex. Cummings was known as a ladies’ man to viewers from his seasons on Love That Bob. If the show was not going for romance, then it seems that Newmar was correct in her assessment of Cummings being the wrong person for the role. With Bewitched debuting the same year and I Dream of Jeanne coming right on the heels of My Living Doll, it seems like one of the shows might not obtain enough viewers. Cummings’ addiction problems certainly did not help the show. Newmar should probably be happy the show ended when it did, allowing her to step into the role of Cat Woman on Batman. Like My Living Doll, Cat Woman had all the qualities Batman admired and wanted in a romantic partner, but unlike Rhoda who was not human, Cat Woman was all too human and too much of a villain to allow Batman to act on his passion for her.

Although the show debuted almost sixty years ago, many of the issues of working with a robot are still with us today as scientists work on giving robots a sense of humor and some empathy. We are seeing more of them in the workplace, and it will be interesting to see if any new shows take up the subject in the near future.

Buck Rogers Is Not for This Century

March 6, 2023November 10, 2022 / thewritelife61 / 2 Comments

I am calling this month’s blog series, “I Robot.” We are taking a look at some popular shows that featured robots. I did not include Lost in Space in this group because I did devote a blog to the show that discussed that robot in some detail.

Cast of Buck Rogers Photo: pinterest.com

Today we start with a show that was a fan favorite in the 1980s, although full disclosure, I had never seen this show until I wrote this blog: Buck Rogers in the 25^th Century.

Because Star Wars was so popular, Universal decided to develop a television show about space. Glen Larson was the primary face behind the creation. The original plan was to make a series of Buck Rogers made-for-tv movies for NBC. Larson was also behind the show Battlestar Galactica.

Universal changed plans and filmed a big-screen movie about Buck Rogers. It had good reviews, netting $21 million. After the success of the film, NBC asked for a weekly series. Buck Rogers was not a new concept; he was created in 1928 by Philip Francis Nowlan and had been featured in a variety of media including comic strips, books, and radio. The original movie was edited for television, and it became the first two episodes of the series.

The concept of the show was that Captain William “Buck” Rogers (Gil Gerard) was a NASA pilot commanding Ranger 3 which was launched into outer space in 1987. Because of a part malfunction, Buck is frozen for 504 years and his spacecraft is found in 2491. At this time, he learns the Earth was recovering from a nuclear war.

Buck has to try to assimilate into the 25th-century culture. Because he was previously a pilot, he is placed in the Earth Defense department. Buck is often undercover. He works with Colonel Wilma Deering (Erin Gray), a starfighter pilot. Stargates were artificially created portals in space to help travel between stars. If you watch the episodes closely, you will notice a subtle shift in Wilma’s hair color. Gray was required to dye her hair blonde for the first season. As the season progresses, the color begins to fade and she was allowed to do that, so by the second season, she has brunette hair.

Another coworker is Twiki, a small robot (Felix Silla and voiced by Mel Blanc). Twiki provided much of the humor on the show. Also helping the trio was Dr. Theopolis (voiced by Eri Server), a small computer disk who understood Twiki and was part of the Computer Council. In the first season, the group received its orders from Dr. Elias Huer (Tim O’Connor).

It was a bit kitschy a la Batman. Several villains are involved in plots. In the first season, the “bad guy” was Princess Ardala (Pamela Hensley) who tried to conquer Earth. Most of the population resided in New Chicago and the rest of the planet was being explored again, and new cities were popping up like New Detroit, New Manhattan, New Phoenix, etc.

In the original story, Buck awakes after 500 years to learn that America was overrun by Mongol invaders and in ruins. Wilma and Dr. Huer are both part of that story, as are Killer Kane and Ardala Valmar.

For a show that did not produce very many episodes, a lot of celebrities were featured on the show including Gary Coleman, Jamie Lee Curtis, Peter Graves, Jack Palance, Markie Post, Dorothy Stratten, and Vera Miles. A few of the stars who played Batman’s foes show up on Buck Rogers including Cesar Romero, Frank Gorshin, Roddy McDowall, and Julie Newmar.

The opening theme music for the show was composed by Stu Phillips and arranged by Johnny Harris. Harris added a 45-second audio clip when Rogers is spinning and then begins with the main theme.

The show debuted in September of 1979. It was popular with viewers, but critics were not on board with the show. Gerard did not like the direction his character was taking. He was in favor of more series stories and felt like his character was just used to make continual jokes and not taken seriously. At times he even rewrote scripts to favor his character over other roles. There was a lot of tension on the set. Two of the writers and script editors left in the middle of the year. Gerard was reprimanded by the network, and he said he hoped that the series would not be picked up for a second season.

James Van Hise said the show’s scripts “never took advantage of what they had at hand.” And he said Larson exploited a well-loved character in popular culture. John Javna in his book The Best of Science Fiction TV described the show as the worst science fiction show of all time. Bill Lengeman said the acting was wooden and specified that the episode “Space Rockers” was the worst episode of TV science fiction he had ever seen. Many critics were not happy with the way the women were treated in the second season. Ardala was dismissed, and Wilma lost her respectful position, almost becoming an inconsequential sidekick to Buck.

An actors’ strike delayed filming for season two. A new set of producers was brought in and the format was tweaked. Buck, Wilma, and Twiki were now on a spaceship called the Searcher with a mission to look for lost groups of humanity. Many of the previous characters were no longer part of the series, including Theopolis, Ardala, and Dr. Huer. The Starfighter on the series was created by Ralph McQuarrie and had been one of his designs for Battlestar Galactica.

Taking on more of a Star Trek aura, the new characters included Admiral Efram Asimov, a distant relative of Isaac Asimov (Jay Garner) who commands the Searcher; Hawk (Thom Christopher) an alien who represents the Bird people, now almost extinct; like Spock, he remained straight-faced while others are enjoying emotional moments; Dr. Goodfellow (Wilfrid Hyde-White) an elderly scientist; and Crichton (voiced by Jeff David) a robot built by Goodfellow who disdains humans.

The storylines became more serious and an underlying romance was hinted at between Buck and Wilma. Although the changes were what he asked for, Gerard later complained again about the show. Larson might have been second-guessing himself for casting Gerard. His first choice for the role was Kurt Russell. However, he was concentrating on his movie career and had no interest in coming back to television. Interestingly, Russell had been passed over for the role of Han Solo in Star Wars, losing to Harrison Ford. Ratings dropped in the second season. After only producing 21 episodes for season one, NBC canceled the show after 11 episodes in season two.

Despite the small number of shows produced, Universal released the show on DVD in 2004, but the first two episodes were replaced with the original big-screen movie. The series can also be streamed on NBC’s app.

New books and comic books were produced in the eighties. There were also several sets of action figures released by Mego. Milton Bradley debuted a Buck Rogers board game. You could also purchase jigsaw puzzles, model kits of space ships, die-cast toys, trading cards, and a lunch box.

Although the show garnered no Emmys for acting which is not surprising, it did receive five nominations. In season one, Bruce Broughton won for Outstanding Achievement in Music Composition for a Series. Other nominations included Outstanding Cinematography for a Series in season one, Outstanding Art Direction for a Series in season two, and Outstanding Costume Design for a Series in both seasons. The miniature sets for the landing bays and launch tubes were built with Styrofoam. Although they were inexpensive, combined with clever lighting, they appeared as complex architectural sets.

The show was beloved by its fan base. It’s hard to say why it had such a short life. There seem to be many reasons it didn’t last. With the success of Star Wars, everyone jumped on the outer space bandwagon, and the viewers could only watch so many of them. Gerard certainly did not help the ratings with his complaints and dissatisfaction with the show. Getting rid of Princess Ardala and reducing the role of Wilma to a minor character did not help retain female viewers. The show never seemed to be able to figure out what it was. Was it a Star Wars? Was it Batman? Was it Star Trek? It just seemed to not be very well planned or developed.

If you enjoy science fiction, it might be worth watching. After all, there are only 32 episodes, and if nothing else, you might want to watch to see if in the decades since it debuted, it still makes that list of worst science fiction shows. I’d be interested in hearing what you decide. As for this blog series on robots. I can happily relay that Twiki won the TV Land Awards in 2008 for Most Awesome Robot!

MacMillan and Wife: The Show That Bridged the Generation Gap

September 2, 2019 / thewritelife61 / 6 Comments

Before launching into this week’s topic, I wanted to say thank you to everyone who has been following and reading my blog. This week begins my fourth year writing this blog. I was worried I would find enough topics to fill the first year but next year is already outlined, so another year of classic television is on the way. It has been a lot of fun, and I’ve learned a lot.

This month we are looking at crime-solving duos. We start our series learning a bit more about McMillan and Wife. McMillan and Wife began as part of The Sunday NBC Mystery Movie which included Columbo and McCloud. The shows rotated each week, so fewer episodes were produced of each than a typical weekly show.

McMillan and Wife debuted in 1971 and was on the air until 1977, yet only forty episodes were produced. Leonard Stern was the creator, writer, and executive producer of the show; he previously produced Get Smart.

Stewart “Mac” McMillan (Rock Hudson) was an attorney and US Navy veteran who apparently had been involved in some CIA activities. He is now Commissioner of Police in San Francisco. He gets involved in high-profile cases. His wife is Sally (Susan St. James), and her father was a detective for the San Francisco Police Department; she learned a lot from him and helps her husband solve crimes. Sargent Charlie Enright (John Schuck) helps Mac with his cases. Sally and Mac have no children (it’s confusing because Sally was pregnant twice on the show, but the children are never mentioned in the show later). Their housekeeper Mildred (Nancy Walker) also lives with the couple. Mildred’s character resembles the role Thelma Ritter played in Pillow Talk, where Hudson starred with Doris Day. She is a sarcastic, hard-drinking woman and is always ready to offer her opinion, but she is devoted to Mac and Sally.

Once Hudson was cast as Mac, the show got priority in development. Several actresses were considered for the role of Sally, including Diane Keaton and Jill Clayburgh, but Hudson was most comfortable with St. James.

Hudson was 21 years older than St. James, but their relationship worked. Mac is supposed to be in his 40s and Sally in her 20s (he was 46 at the time and she was 25). Sally is self-confident and is not afraid to speak her mind. However, she is also a wife who loves her husband, and one of the running gags on the show is that Mac had dated a lot of women in his past, and when Mac and Sally are out and about, they typically run into some gorgeous woman who says, “Hi Mac.” Sally usually responds with a jealous comment or a withering look. The difference in their ages actually worked well for demographics. Hudson appealed to older viewers while St. James attracted younger viewers.

Often the cases Mac solves happen during events the couple attends. One episode featured a burglary at a charity event they were attending; once they found a skeleton in their house after an earthquake. Another show had Mac abducted by mobsters and replaced with a surgically-made twin replacing him.

An interesting fact is that the interior of their house in the pilot episode was in fact Hudson’s home. In the first regular episode, the MacMillans bought a new house. In the final season, the setting changed to an apartment.

Sally and Mac led a glamorous life. The scripts were well written, and the dialogue was witty and clever. The couple was often compared to Nick and Nora Charles in the Thin Man movies. Mac and Sally have a lot of their best conversations after they go to bed at night.

Sally was known for wearing a football jersey for her nightgown. The jersey was an authentic 49ers Jersey, number 18, George Washington, a wide receiver. Washington was a four-time Pro Bowler. He made a guest appearance on the show in season four, “Guilt by Association.”

Considering that there were only forty episodes produced, this show had an incredible number of guest stars. I apologize for the long list, but it’s the only way to capture how impressive it is. The stars included sport celebrities Dick Butkus, Rosie Grier, Alex Karras, and Bobbie Riggs.

It also featured a Who’s Who of television sitcom royalty: John Astin, Meredith Baxter, Tom Bosley, Michael Constantine, Bert Convy, Wally Cox, Richard Deacon, William Demarest, Donna Douglas, Barbara Feldon, Norman Fell, Buddy Hackett, Larry Hagman, Alan Hale, Shirley Jones, Stacy Keach, Bernie Kopell, Julie Newmar, Charlotte Rae, Charles Nelson Reilly, Dick Sargent, Natalie Schafer, Susan Sullivan, Karen Valentine, and Dick Van Patten.

The show, like McCloud and Columbo, was quite popular with viewers. The ratings were impressive until the sixth season.

Unfortunately, the last season had too many changes to overcome. St. James decided to leave to concentrate on her movie career. Schuck left to star in the sitcom, Holmes and Yo-Yo, and Walker left for her own sitcom, The Nancy Walker Show. Sadly, Walker and Schuck would have been better off staying because both their shows lasted only 13 episodes. St. James starred in a couple of movies, but they weren’t anything memorable. She would go on to star in Kate and Allie in 1984.

On the show, Sally was killed in an airplane crash. Mildred was said to leave to open a diner, so her sister Agatha (Martha Raye) took over her job. Schuck made a few appearances but was said to have been given a promotion to lieutenant which kept him too busy to assist Mac much. The show may have been able to overcome one of these changes but not all of them. Much of the strength of the show was the relationship between Mac and Sally. Walker’s funny bantering and actions provided a comedic relief for the show. When Raye took over, she was just scatterbrained and loud; the appeal of Walker was not part of her character.

It’s wonderful the show lasted five good seasons, but it might have lasted many more if the original cast had been retained. At the other end of the spectrum, Columbo aired off and on until 2003 and is remembered by more viewers.

DVDs were released for all six seasons between 2005 and 2014. With only forty shows in the series, this would be a fun binge-watching week-end show to tackle.

Love and the Funny Show

February 26, 2018February 26, 2018 / thewritelife61 / 4 Comments

There was something magical about the Friday evening television schedule from 1971-1973. Anyone who was born in the late 1950s or early 1960s can remember sitting down in front of the television at 7 pm (central time) for the Brady Bunch and staying put through The Partridge Family, Room 222, The Odd Couple, and Love, American Style. Sitting through an entire evening of shows was almost unheard of back then, but we binge watched every Friday night. While the boys were divided between Marcia Brady and Laurie Partridge, every girl of that age had was in love with Keith Partridge. Watching an episode of The Partridge Family today makes me feel 10 again. For the next five weeks, I’m taking a look at each of the shows that made this schedule so enjoyable.

Today we begin with Love, American Style. This show was an iconic 1970s show. Like Laugh In, the clothing, furnishings, and vocabulary do not make it timeless. But it was a lot of fun. This fast-paced anthology show featured two to four mini episodes each week, and between them were quick skits, often featuring a brass bed. Each smaller episode is titled “Love and the _______.”

The show had a memorable and catchy theme song. Written by Arnold Margolin, the first year it was performed by The Cowsills. You will see a lot of overlap between these five Friday night shows, and music is one of those cross-overs. The Partridge Family was based on the life of The Cowsills.

During the second and subsequent years that Love, American Style was on the air, the theme song was performed by the Ron Hicklin Group. The Ron Hicklin Group could be heard in a variety of motion pictures and commercials, and they also appeared on recordings with stars such as Paul Revere and the Raiders and Cher. John and Tom Bahler, brothers who sang under The Charles Fox Singers were also part of this group. The group provided television theme song recordings including Batman, That Girl, Happy Days, and Laverne and Shirley. They also did the singing for The Partridge Family theme and songs performed on the show as well as the Brady Bunch kids. Ron retired in the early 2000s, and Tom does a variety of things. He is also known for writing Bobby Sherman’s hit, “Julie Do You Love Me?”. John married Janet Lennon, one of the Lennon sisters who performed on The Lawrence Welk Show. He currently lives in Branson and conducts the “new” Lawrence Welk orchestra.

The snappy melody was set to the following words:

Love, Love, Love

Love, American Style,
Truer than the Red, White and Blue.
Love, American Style,
That’s me and you.

And on a star-spangled night my love,

My love come to me.
You can rest you head on my shoulder.
Out by the dawn’s early light, my love
I will defend your right to try.

Love, American Style,
That’s me and you.

Brad Duke wrote a biography about Harrison Ford and he said Ford had fond memories of appearing on Love, American Style. “He recalled that he had been given little time to prepare his wardrobe for the role of a philosophical hippie in the November 1969 episode, “Love and the Former Marriage.” He appeared on set with long hair and a beard thinking they were appropriate for the role. He was surprised when he was told he needed a haircut and trim than given a navy blue dress shirt and vinyl burgundy jeans with a large belt. They even had a scarf with a little ring to put around my neck. And I thought, someone has made a mistake here. So, rather than argue with the wardrobe people, I put on the clothes and went to find the producer. I walked on the set and he was pointed out. I tapped his shoulder and when he turned around he had on the same clothes I did. He was a hippie producer I guess. At least the check went through, and I got paid.”

The best way to get a good understanding of what the show was like is to look at a couple of the episodes.

January 23, 1970: Love and the Big Night

Starring Ann Elder, Buddy Lester, Frank Maxwell, Julie Newmar, and Tony Randall, this episode was often listed as a favorite. Randall is a married businessman who escorts his voluptuous secretary (Newmar) to her apartment after a late night at the office. Eager to get home to his wife, Randall hurriedly tries to open a stubborn jar of mayonnaise and winds up covered with mayo. Newmar cleans his suit, but while it’s drying, it’s stolen. After a series of amusing mishaps, Randall finally gets back to his own apartment and creeps into bed with his wife–only to find out she’s not there.

February 25, 1972: Love and the Television Set

It starred Harold Gould, Marion Ross, Ron Howard, and Anson Williams. Reading this list of names might give you a hint about what happened to this episode after it aired. Garry Marshall had written a pilot about a 1950s family that did not sell. He turned it into an episode for Love, American Style. George Lucas caught the episode and was impressed with Ron Howard and offered him a role in his new movie American Graffiti about 1950s teens. The movie was so popular, that the network decided to put Marshall’s pilot in the fall line-up as Happy Days. Harold Gould’s role was given to Tom Bosley for the series. When Love, American Style went into syndication, this episode was retitled “Love and the Happy Days.”

October 22, 1970: Love and the Bashful Groom

In this episode, Paul Petersen, Christopher Stone, Meredith MacRae, Jeff Donnell, and Dick Wilson are featured. Harold (Petersen) and Linda (MacRae) are getting married. He learns that she grew up in a nudist colony and is not comfortable being naked for his wedding. After a soul-searching talk with his best friend, and realizing he loves Linda enough to be uncomfortable, he decides to go through with the ceremony. He gets to the church a bit late and walks in, only to see that everyone else is dressed in their Sunday best. His bride informs him that they always dress up for weddings. One of the congregation members says something like “Let’s not make him uncomfortable,” and they all begin to undress. Of course, you see nothing improper, only clothes flying. This was probably not the best episode to “expose” my grandmother to as a first glimpse of the show.

The show lasted for four years and was cancelled in 1973. In 1985, a reboot was created, but it was on in the mornings and only lasted a few months. The show was on at the same time as everyone’s favorite game show, The Price is Right. For the 1998 fall season, a pilot was created for prime time, but it was never ordered. While doing my research for this blog, I noticed that there was a Love, American Style project in production, so we may see it resurface again. I’m not sure I would want to watch a 2019 or 2020 version of the show though. It was such a product of its time, and I fear what a current version would be like after seeing the reboot of Match Game which has been airing the past year or so.

Let’s all write to Antenna TV and Me TV to see if they will make the original 1971 television schedule happen, and we can watch these original shows again, reliving the excitement we experienced the first time around.

Next week we get to know The Odd Couple.

It Only Takes One Episode to Get Smart

October 16, 2017 / thewritelife61 / 6 Comments

In the mid-1960s, spy shows were all the rage. James Bond drew large audiences to theaters: Dr. No in 1962, From Russia with Love in 1963, Goldfinger in 1964, and Thunderball in 1965. Inspector Clouseau was big at the box office too appearing in The Pink Panther in 1963 and A Shot in the Dark in 1964. If you were checking out books at the library, you probably would have read Len Deighton’s The IPCRESS File (1962), The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (1963), or Harriet the Spy (1964). On the small screen, The Avengers was ahead of the curve, premiering in 1961, but in the mid-1960s, we would see some of the classic television shows debut: Mission Impossible began in 1966, The Man from UNCLE showed up in 1964 and in 1965, The Wild, Wild West and I Spy got network approval.

Another show came on the air in 1965 as well – on September 18, 1965, Get Smart was seen for the first time. Dan Melnick, a partner in Talent Associates thought a spy satire might be a good fit for their upcoming schedule. He recruited Buck Henry and Mel Brooks to write the show. The team took the show to ABC. ABC bought it but they wanted a few changes. They wanted Tom Poston to take the role of Maxwell Smart. They wanted a dog on the show to add “heart.” Finally, they wanted Smart’s mother to be a major role and envisioned Smart coming home at the end of the episode to explain the case to his mother. Henry and Brooks said no to the mother, so ABC rejected the show and sold it back to Talent Associates.

Grant Tinker from NBC agreed to buy the show with the caveat that Don Adams star in place of Tom Poston. And so, the creative talent of Brooks and Henry brought Maxwell Smart (Don Adams), Agent 99 (Barbara Feldon), and the Chief (Edward Platt) to life. The show would stay on the air for five seasons, producing 138 episodes.

The first four seasons were filmed at Sunset Bronson Studios. In 1970, the show moved to CBS and the last season was filmed at CBS Studio Center.

Mel Brooks left the show after the first year, but Buck Henry stayed through 1967 as the story editor.

Most of the administrative cast stayed with the show for its run. Leonard B. Stern was the executive producer for all the shows. Irving Szathmary was the music and theme composer, as well as conductor, for all five seasons. Gerald C. Gardner and Dee Caruso were the head writers for the series. Don Adams would get to direct 13 episodes and write 2 of them.

The show centered around the three main characters. Maxwell Smart is Agent 86. He works for CONTROL, a US government counter-intelligence agency in Washington DC. Max is resourceful. He is a adept marksman, has hand-to-hand combat skills and is extremely lucky. He uses several cover identities, but the one he uses most often is greeting card salesman. He insists in going by the book and this, along with his clumsy nature, cause problems for him.

He and his partner Agent 99 take on world threats. We never learn Agent 99’s real name, although we think we have in one episode. In “99 Loses CONTROL”, she says her name is Susan Hilton but at the end of the episode, we learn she was lying. Agent 99 is smart and competent. Her father was apparently a spy as well. (In real life, Barbara Feldon was also smart; she won on The $64,000 Question with the category of Shakespeare.) If you look closely, you will often see Agent 99 slouching, sitting, or leaning on something to conceal the fact that she was a bit taller than Adams.

Their boss, Chief, whose real name is Thaddeus, is sarcastic and grouchy but also serious, sensible, and smart. He began his career as Agent Q and his cover name is often Harold Clark. Other CONTROL agents we meet during the series are Agents 8, 13, and 14, as well as Larrabee, the Chief’s highly inefficient and bumbling assistant.

Their primary enemy is KAOS, an international organization of evil founded in Romania in 1904 (a Delaware corporation for tax purposes!). The two KAOS employees we see most often are Conrad Siegfried (Bernie Kopell), the VP for Public Relations and Terror and his assistant Shtarker (King Moody), whose personality can change from sadistic to childlike. While Siegfried and Smart are mortal enemies, they respect each other. Sometimes they begin talking like old friends. In one episode, they are discussing the flavor of cyanide pills each side has that month. CONTROL is giving out raspberry, and Smart tries to give one to Siegfried. Like CONTROL, KAOS has a bowling team to build rapport and fellowship among their employees.

Another KAOS agent is Hymie the Robot played by Dick Gautier. Dr. Ratton of KAOS built Hymie for evil, but Smart manages to turn the robot into a CONTROL agent. Hymie is faster and stronger than any human. He also has the ability to swallow any poison and then identify it. He has emotions and a need to maintain neatness. Unfortunately, he takes commands literally; if Smart says “Get ahold of yourself,” he literally wraps his arms around himself.

The opening sequence of the show is one of the most spoofed openings in television. Smart walks through doors that continue to other doors. It was ranked as the number 2 opening out of the top ten by TV Guide viewers in 2010.

The show is still known for its catch phrases that became part of the American vocabulary including “Would you believe?”, “Sorry about that Chief,” “And loving it,” and “I asked you not to tell me that.”

The series is identified with its James Bond-like gadgets. Telephones could be concealed in neckties, combs, and watches, but most often it is in Smart’s shoe which he had to take off to answer. Agent 99 has a compact phone and a fingernail phone which forces her to look like she is nervously biting her nails to talk on it.

The show features a bullet-proof invisible wall in Smart’s apartment which lowers from the ceiling; he often forgets to put it back up and runs into it. Cameras can be in a bowl of soup. A laser weapon was concealed in a suit jacket button, the blazer laser. The Cone of Silence are two glass domes that cover Smart and the Chief when they talk about a case. Smart insists on using it because it’s regulation; however, they can hardly hear each other, but anyone on the outside can hear their conversation clearly and often reports what the other person said.

Other weapons and aids for the spies included a parking meter telegraph, a perfume bottle radio transmitter, invisible icing, and a pencil listening device. Guns were hidden in a charm on a charm bracelet, in a pool cue, as a hairbrush, as a flashlight, and in a crutch. CONTROL even had gloves with fingerprints already on them – the fingerprints were KAOS agents so they would get the blame for a break-in.

Blowing up stuff is always good on a spy show and Get Smart had explosive rice; toothpaste that is really a fuse; an exploding wallet, ping pong ball and golf ball; and a horoscope book or lipstick case that contained knock-out gas.

Smart had several cars but his most famous was a red 1965 Sunbeam Tiger. The two-seat roadster had a machine gun built in, a smoke screen, a radar tracker, and an ejection seat. When the series went off the air, Don Adams received the car and continued to drive it for ten years.

Get Smart probably had some of the most famous guest stars of any show. Just a few of these celebrities include Steve Allen, Barbara Bain, Milton Berle, Ernest Borgnine, Carol Burnett, James Caan, Johnny Carson, Wally Cox, Robert Culp, Phyllis Diller, Jamie Farr, Jack Guilford, Bob Hope, Martin Landau, Julie Newmar, Pat Paulson, Tom Poston, Leonard Nimoy, Vincent Price, Don Rickles, and Fred Willard.

The show stayed true to its character through its entire run. In Season 1, Hymie is introduced and the dog, Fang, disappears. In Season 2, we meet Siegfried. Smart and Agent 99 get engaged and marry in Season 4. NBC demanded the change to boost ratings. In Season 5, they have twins. Agent 99 continues working and is one of the first, if not the first, mother to be viewed as a working woman. When the ratings did not increase, the show was cancelled. It went into syndication where it was very successful. Unfortunately, the DVD set was held up in legal battles and only came out weeks before Adams died.

Get Smart was one of the most clever and creative sitcoms ever airing on television. It had `21 Emmy nominations including two for Feldon and won 7 of those awards. Don Adams won best actor on a comedy three times and the show won best comedy twice.

William Johnston came out with 9 paperbacks based on the series in the late 1960s and Dell Comics issued 8 comic books in 1966 and 1967. For the March 5-11, 1966 TV Guide, Andy Warhol designed a pop art piece using Barbara Feldon. Numerous collectibles were created: board games, lunch boxes, dolls, and model cars.

The show produced many spin-off projects. The Nude Bomb was a theatre release in 1980 with Feldon and Smart reprising their roles. Get Smart Again debuted in 1989 as an ABC TV movie. After its release, a show appeared on FOX starring Feldon and Smart again called Get Smart in 1995. In 2008 a movie was made starring Steve Carell and Anne Hathaway. Don Adams was known to later generations as the voice of Inspector Gadget.

Of course, everyone has their favorite episodes, but after reviewing several polls and interviews with Nick at Nite and other 50^th anniversary celebrations, I have come up with these top five. Take a rainy fall day and give them a peek. However, if we are looking just at titles, I have to give a shout out to “Spy, Spy Birdie”, “Bronzefinger”, “Impossible Mission”, and “Tequila Mockingbird”.

A Spy for a Spy
The Not-So-Great Escape
Ship of Spies
The Amazing Harry Hoo
The Little Black Book

Unfortunately, this is one of those shows that doesn’t get as much recognition and respect as it deserves. Considering how much technology has developed in the last 50 years, the show is still up to date. The dialogue is witty; the characters are likable, even when they’re mortal enemies; and the show is just plain fun.