Arnie: Trying to Adjust to a White Collar

December 1, 2025August 2, 2025 / thewritelife61 / 2 Comments

This month it’s all about one-named sitcoms and today it’s all about Arnie. Arnie is a series that isn’t talked about much anymore. It debuted in 1970 on CBS and was on the air for two years.

David Swift created this series. Swift was a successful director, producer, and writer. He created and wrote for Mister Peepers, The Interns, and Camp Runamuck before Arnie. He also wrote the screenplay for both the 1961 and 1998 version of The Parent Trap. Swift accumulated 51 credits for writing, 23 for directing including The Parent Trap from 1961, and 5 for producing.

Arnie Nuvo (Herschel Bernardi) is a blue-collar employee at Continental Flange Co. who was promoted to an executive position out of the blue. Arnie tries has a difficult time related to his very wealthy boss and he still has a lot of friends outside of management. He still has a union card so he can mediate difficult labor situations and is respected by the workers.

Sue Ane Langdon played his wife Lilian, Del Russel was his son Richard, and Stephanie Steele was his daughter Andre. Rounding out the cast was Elaine Shore, his secretary Felicia; Tom Pedi, his friend Julius, who still works on the dock; and Roger Bowen, his boss Hamilton Majors Jr.

The show was scheduled before The Mary Tyler Moore show on Saturday nights. Surprisingly, it received an Emmy nomination for best comedy series, but it didn’t receive very high ratings. Getting an Emmy nomination was impressive for this year. Its competition was Love American Style, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Odd Couple, and the winner, All in the Family.

Like it typically did, the network (and I’m not picking on CBS, they all did it), decided immediately to turn things topsy turvy instead of giving it some time. Arnie’s neighbor played by Dick Van Patten was let go and Charles Nelson Reilly, a tv chef named The Giddyap Gourmet, moved next door.

The series was moved to Monday night following My Three Sons which was moved from Saturday nights to Tuesday nights as well. That probably didn’t help the ratings because this was the last season of My Three Sons. As much as I love that show, it should have stopped a year earlier than it did. To make it more confusing half-way through the second season, Arnie moved back to Saturday and My Three Sons ended up on the schedule Thursday nights. Both shows were canceled by spring.

In addition to all the moving around, when it returned for its second season it was up against Monday Night Football, so I’m guessing that spot didn’t help attract people after it moved. Saturday nights its competition was weak; it was primarily up against the movie of the week, The Pearl Bailey Show, and Cade’s County.

The Television Academy interviews included both Eddie Foy and Dick Van Patten discussing this show.

Foy talked about the casting and said Bowen was the best cast member. He said it was a bit of a bland show, not a break-through series, but he thought Herschel was a big star at the time after starring in Zorba. Foy said it was a great show to work on and everyone in the cast had fun.

Dick Van Patten also talked about his time on the show. He said he had come to California for a play and while he was performing, Shirley Booth approached him and said she wanted him to talk to someone about joining the cast of Arnie as the neighbor. Van Patten said he didn’t remember much about the show which supports Foy’s view of it being a bit bland.

It sounds like the network was trying to take advantage of Bernardi’s fame at the time and maybe didn’t take as much care as it should in designing the perfect show for him.

Jonathan Harris: Oh the Pain

March 24, 2025November 13, 2024 / thewritelife61 / 2 Comments

This month our blog series is “All About The Bill Dana Show,” and we are learning about the careers of some of the cast members. Last week we looked at the life of Maggie Peterson, and today we are getting to know Jonathan Harris.

Harris was born Jonathan Daniel Charasuchin in the Bronx in 1914. His father worked in Manhattan’s garment district. His family often took in borders to make ends meet, and when they did, the border got Jonathan’s room, and he slept on a couple of dining room chairs.

By age 12, Harris was working at a pharmacy as a stockboy. Although money might have been short, Harris’s family’s love of music and theater was not. As a family they listened to opera in the dining room. Whenever they had some extra cash, they would take in a Broadway play. Harris was interested in archeology, poetry, and Shakespeare. He disliked his Bronx accent and taught himself to develop a British one.

Harris was able to graduate at age 16 from James Monroe High School. His pharmacy job paid off when he graduated from Fordham University with a pharmacology degree in 1936. Before entering college, Jonathan took the name “Harris” in place of his birth name.

In 1938 Harris married his high school sweetheart, Gertrude Bregman. They were married until his death.

While working in several pharmacies, Harris also worked on his acting skills. He created a phony resume which he used to land a spot in a local acting company. In 1942 he played a Polish officer in the Broadway production, “The Heart of a City.” He was persistent. He said that he went to Mr. Miller’s office to audition for a part in the play for two weeks, and everyday Mr. Miller’s secretary sent him away. Finally, she let him in, and Mr. Miller gave him his first part. Then he lied and said he could do a Polish accent. He then went to the Polish Consulate to listen to how they talked. So, despite a fake resume, being turned away for weeks, and then lying about an accent, he was a success in the play.

In 1949, Harris made his television debut in The Chevrolet Tele-Theatre. Throughout the fifties he would continue to appear in dramatic playhouse series.

In 1959 he had a recurring role in Zorro as Don Carlos Fernandez as well as an appearance on Father Knows Best.

The sixties brought him roles in several well-known series including The Twilight Zone, Bonanza, and The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet.

In 1963 he was offered the role of Mr. Phillips, the hotel manager on The Bill Dana Show. I won’t elaborate on this series, but if you missed the first blog in March, you can read about this show which was on the air for a season and a half.

Harris did an interview with the Television Academy. He said that when he read the script for The Bill Dana Show, he decided he had to come up with some other characteristics for Mr. Phillips. He made him devoid of humor. But he said he was a different man with his wife on the show, played by Amzie Strickland. Harris said Bill Dana was wonderful to work with. He also said that the writing was so good on that show that he never had to re-write anything. However, if something felt off, he would ask Sheldon Leonard about changing it, and Leonard was always open minded about revisions.

Harris continued to appear on dramatic shows while waiting for his next role.

In 1965 Lost in Space was put on the fall schedule. Harris played Dr. Zachary Smith. Neither his role nor the Robot were in the pilot of the series, but they were both brought in before the show began.

The show was a big hit with viewers. Harris felt his character, who was not trusted by the family, needed a bit of comedy, so he began to adlib his dialogue. Irwin Allen, creator of the show, approved the changes and allowed him to be considered a writer. Harris said he was a good re-writer, but he was never a writer.

Bill Mumy, who played the son on the show and interacted with Smith quite a bit said that Harris “truly, truly singlehandedly created the character of Dr. Zachary Smith that we know—this man we love to hate, coward who would cower behind the little boy, ‘Oh the pain! Save me, William! That’s all him.”

The show was still high in the ratings during its third season, but the writers were running out of ideas, and the show was canceled after 83 episodes.

In the seventies, Harris joined the casts of two Saturday morning series, Space Academy and Uncle Croc’s Block. Uncle Croc’s Block was a very weird show in my memory. Even though it was on Saturday mornings, he parodied kids’ shows. Uncle Croc, played by Charles Nelson Reilly, butts heads with his program director Basil Bitterbottom, Harris’s role; Phyllis Diller played Witchy Goo to round out the cast. Uncle Croc has a sidekick Rabbit Ears and introduced the cartoons.

He also continued to appear on other series, and you can spot him in The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, Land of the Giants, Get Smart, Bewitched, McMillan and Wife, Love American Style, and Vega$.

After the mid-seventies, most of his work was in the animation field.

He also became a drama coach, and Chuck Norris was one of his students.

In 1990, the cast of Lost in Space reunited for the 25^th anniversary. More than 30,000 fans attended the event.

Harris also spent time on his hobbies, which were many. He loved gourmet cooking, watching movies, reading, traveling, painting, magic, playing piano, gardening, dancing, knitting, and spending time with this family. He also kept his interest in listening to opera that he cultivated as a child.

He passed away in 2007 from a blood clot that traveled to his heart.

Harris was a talented actor. I’m not sure why he was never offered another sitcom or a chance to play a different type of character. I’m glad he found a home in animation, but I wonder if he regretted leaving Broadway for television. It was fun to learn more about this man and his career.

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.

Bill Dana: Actor? Script Writer? Author? Talent Agent? Yep

March 10, 2025November 13, 2024 / thewritelife61 / 2 Comments

This month we are exploring The Bill Dana Show for our blog series. Last week we talked a bit about the show itself, and for the rest of the weeks, we are looking at some of the other cast members’ careers. Today we begin with Bill Dana himself.

Dana was born William Szathmary in Quincy, Massachusetts in 1924. He was the youngest of six children. His older brother Arthur was fluent in several languages and inspired Bill to learn different accents.

Dana served with the US Army during WWII as a machine gunner and was awarded the Bronze Star Medal.

After the war, Bill enrolled at Emerson College. After graduation, he was hired as a page at NBC’s Studio 6B, or 30 Rock. He was also trying to break into comedy performing around New York. During the fifties he appeared on The Imogene Coca Show. He also did some writing and producing for The Spike Jones Show.

He met Don Adams and began writing routines for him in the fifties. He and Don would be part of each other’s lives for a bit. Don would be one of the cast members on The Bill Dana Show. Dana would appear on Adams’ show Get Smart, and Dana’s older brother Irving was the composer of the Get Smart theme song. Bill would also cowrite the script for the Get Smart film The Nude Bomb.

In the late fifties, Steve Allen hired Dana as a writer. Bill created a character, Jose Jimenez, for the “Man in the Street” segments of Allen’s show. Soon Jose became his alter ego. He made appearances as Jose on The Red Skelton Show, The Spike Jones Show, The Danny Thomas Show, and The Ed Sullivan Show. He even had a comedy album featuring the character.

Dana told a story on Ed Sullivan’s show that some people truly thought he was Jose Jimenez. One lady who met him out and about asked if his birth name was Jose Jimenez and he told her, “No, it’s Bill Szathmary.” She said “Wow, no wonder you changed it to Jimenez.”

In 1961, Dana began a recurring role on The Danny Thomas Show. He played Jimenez as an elevator operator. People responded so well that Danny Thomas and Leonard Sheldon spun off the character, now a bellhop at a luxury New York hotel, and The Bill Dana Show was created. In addition to Adams, Jonathan Harrison was part of the cast and Maggie Peterson joined them in season two. The show was on the air for one and a half seasons.

As we discussed last week, some people saw Jimenez as a hard-working immigrant who noticed some of the crazy things Americans did, and others saw him as a stereotyped Latino caricature. The pre-show Jimenez fit the second description better and the show Jimenez leaned more toward the first portrayal. However, as the character developed, viewers were not flocking to the show. It was also up against Lassie which at the time was a huge family show on Sunday nights.

The last time Jimenez was on the screen as a character was a 1966 episode of Batman in a cameo on the famous wall. Later Dana apologized for his caricature of Jimenez and became a bit of an activist for Latino causes. The National Hispanic Media Coalition endorsed the Jose Jimenez character and invited Dana to sit on their advisory board.

Dana jumped back and forth from actor to writer for a couple of decades. He wrote the script for All in the Family’s episode “Sammy’s Visit” starring Sammy Davis Jr. He also wrote for Bridget Loves Bernie, Chico and the Man, Donny and Marie, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, and Matlock.

His acting landed him in The Courtship of Eddie’s Father, Love American Style, The Snoop Sisters, Police Woman, McMillan and Wife, Ellery Queen, Switch, Vega$, Fantasy Island, The Facts of Life, and Empty Nest among a few others.

He had recurring roles on two additional shows during his career. He was on St. Elsewhere as Howie Mandel’s character’s father for three episodes. He also was Angelo on six episodes of The Golden Girls.

One of his last projects was founding the American Comedy Archives at Emerson College. He and Jenni Matz interviewed more than 60 comedians for this archive, including Phyllis Diller, Norman Lear, Carl Reiner, Betty White, and Jonathan Winters.

Dana was a man of many talents. He also ran a talent management company and an advertising agency. He wrote a book, The Laughter Prescription, with Dr. Laurence J. Peter.

Dana passed away in June of 2017 at his home in Nashville.

Certainly, Dana had a full career. I think starting off with the Jose debacle probably kept him from getting different roles early in his career. He also didn’t seem to know what he wanted to be when he grew up. Was he a comedy writer? A dramatic writer? A variety show writer? Was he an actor? A talent agent? An author? Not that you can’t be more than one thing in life, but in the span of three decades he never seemed to settle on one or two careers. Hopefully he had fun and enjoyed all the different hats he wore.

Bracken’s World: Ahead of Its Time

February 24, 2025November 10, 2024 / thewritelife61 / 2 Comments

As we wind up our What in the World? blog series this month, we end with Bracken’s World. Just like the other shows we covered, this one began in the sixties, 1969, and just like the others, it was on for less than two seasons.

Dorothy Kingsley created the series for NBC. This was her only foray into television; she was a screenplay writer for most of her career. Kingsley wanted to concentrate on the “little people” who work at the studio, rather than the executives. In one blog I read that props from Twentieth Century Fox where the show was filmed were often carted around in the background for authenticity. It would be fun to go back and make a list of the props that were shown around the set; specifically mentioned were props from Planet of the Apes and Land of the Giants.

Watch.plex.tv.com captures the essence of the show in its description “In the glitzy realm of Century Studios, powerful executive John Bracken shapes Hollywood’s fate, navigating ambition, romance, and betrayal through the eyes of his astute secretary Sylvia, who holds the key to both secrets and success.”

Century Studios was a movie studio. John Bracken owned the company, and he was never seen during the first season. Similarly to the way Charlie interacted with Charlie’s Angels, we only heard Bracken on the telephone, voiced by Warren Stevens. Sylvia Caldwell (Eleanor Parker) was his secretary. There were some impressive cast members in this show including stunt man Dennis Cole, Jeanne Cooper, Madlyn Rhue, Linda Harrison, Elizabeth Allen, Karen Jensen, and Laraine Stephens. Most of them played starlets waiting for their big break. Peter Haskell as producer Kevin Grant seemed to be responsible for a lot of the success of the show. Tom Selleck had a recurring role of Roger Haines during the first season. The characters dealt with the problems of the movie industry—drugs, sex, alcohol, and amoral executives.

Being a Hollywood studio, there were also a lot of great guest stars including Anne Baxter, Shelley Fabares, Sally Field, Lee Grant, Carolyn Jones, Ricardo Montalban, Edward G. Robinson, Martin Sheen, Richard Thomas, Forrest Tucker and Raquel Welch.

The series was on Friday nights in the hole filled when Star Trek was canceled. It was referred to as the “Friday night death slot.” The show’s competition was Love American Style and CBS Friday Night at the Movies, which started an hour before Bracken’s World did. I’m not sure when this death slot switched because at that same time, I recall loving Friday nights in the early seventies featuring The Brady Bunch, The Partridge Family, Room 222, The Odd Couple, and Love American Style.

The show’s ratings were not good, so for the second season, things were changed a bit. Parker left part way through season one because she didn’t like the scripts. We now got to see John Bracken in person, but he sounded like Leslie Nielsen who played him instead of John Warren. Dennis Cole was also shown out the door.

Jeanne Cooper had a very different view of the show than Parker. Cooper played one of the starlet’s mom who was also her agent. She said that it allowed viewers to go behind the scenes of a movie studio to get a realistic depiction of what happened when the cameras were off. She said that the cast can take much more time filming movies to discuss the script, but that is not the way television works, and Parker never understood the difference between the two mediums. Cooper felt the writing was much more sophisticated than shows had produced before and that it led the way for shows like LA Law and Boston Legal.

According to Cooper, there were two reasons for the demise of the show. One was that she said Bracken should never have been exposed. He should have stayed a voice who ran a studio like a Louis B. Mayer type. She also said the show was very expensive to produce. Often shows were ordered six at a time back then which gave the crew some wiggle room to have a few expensive shows and then cut back when it got viewers locked in to average out the cost. NBC would only buy two or three at a time. Finally, Stan Rubin, the executive producer, said NBC had to agree to a minimum of four-episode commitments at a time and they refused, so the show was canceled.

The show did seem to be a bit ahead of its time. Perhaps if it had debuted a few years later, it would have found more viewers.

My World . . . And Welcome To It: Just a Fantasy

February 10, 2025November 10, 2024 / thewritelife61 / Leave a comment

This month we are in the midst of What in the World? Every sitcom has the word “world” in it. On deck today is My World . . . and Welcome to It. This half-hour show was based on the cartoons of James Thurber. It debuted in 1969 and was on the air for a year.

William Windom played John Monroe a cartoonist who works for a magazine similar to the New Yorker called The Manhattanite. Monroe lives with his wife Ellen (Joan Hotchkis) and their daughter Lydia (Lisa Gerritsen). John often daydreams about his daughter’s future and the “older” Lydias were played by Talia Shire and Cindy Williams.

The name John Monroe was Thurber’s alto-ego in his book Owl in the Attic. He frequently daydreams and those are cleverly incorporated into the series.

The episodes opened with John observing different aspects of his life. The use of the cartoons created a fantasy life dream world where he escaped life situations he could not process.

Mel Shavelson created the show for NBC. He wrote and directed the pilot with one of my all-time favorites Sheldon Leonard as executive producer. The animation in the series was done by DePattie-Freleng Enterprises.

Rounding out the cast was Henry Morgan as Philip Jensen, a magazine writer based on Robert Benchley and Harold J. Stone as editor Hamilton.

The show was on Monday nights at 7:30 and was up against Gunsmoke. While it had a lot of great reviews from the critics, the viewers were not there in droves. Percy Shain of the Boston Globe referred to the show as “a joy and treasure.” Bob Williams of the New York Post wrote that it was “it’s warm, it’s witty, and it’s a sophisticated cut above the best of the TV network situation comedies.”

Not every critic treated it so kindly, however. Jack Gould of the New York Times felt it was “hackneyed gibberish relieved only by an occasional Thurber drawing” and Norman Mark of the Chicago Daily News decided that it “tried to appeal to all parts of the TV audience and failed.”

Perhaps Barry Harrison of the Washington Evening Star understood the show better than the other critics and had “an uneasy feeling [that] it is not long for TV.” His prediction came true when the series was canceled after one season.

According to Howard Anderson Jr. in his Television Academy interview, one of the major reasons for the cancellation was that it was so expensive to do the filming with a blue screen behind Windom for all the animation.

And then after it was canceled, it won the Emmy for Outstanding Comedy and Windom picked up the Emmy for Leading Role in a Comedy. The series it was up against included Love American Style, Room 222, The Bill Cosby Show, and The Courtship of Eddie’s Father. Windom won over Lloyd Haynes in Room 222 and Bill Cosby of The Bill Cosby Show.

The fans did send a lot of mail to the network, but with the so-so ratings and the fact that the animation made this one an expensive show to create, NBC did not put it back on the schedule.

After the show ended, Windom created a one-man play based on Thurber’s works and toured the country throughout the seventies. Perhaps if the network had given it some time after winning the Emmys, this show might have been more successful. It sounds like an interesting concept, although I also get the feeling that it might not have appealed to women; many of the descriptions I read discussed John’s fantasies that his wife and daughter were things to escape from. It’s worth taking a look at and seeing how it has fared over the last sixty years.

Burt Mustin: What a Character

December 30, 2024March 16, 2024 / thewritelife61 / 2 Comments

This month we are looking at some of our favorite character actors. As we wrap up the series, we are ending on a high note with the amazing Burt Mustin. Like Charles Lane, Mustin had a prolific career in Hollywood and television. However, unlike Lane, Mustin was offered his first acting job at age 67 after he had retired.

Mustin was born in Pittsburgh in 1884. His father was a stockbroker. After high school, Mustin enrolled in the Pennsylvania Military College (now Widener University) with a degree in civil engineering. During his college career he played trombone in the band and played goalie for his hockey team.

After graduation, Mustin toured Europe, planning to work at his father’s brokerage firm. However, a financial panic destroyed the company.

One of Burt’s university classmates was Charles Spinney. According to Burt, Spinney displayed lots of photographs of young ladies from his hometown of Memphis, Tennessee. One day, he was showing them to Burt when he spotted the photo of what he referred to as “the prettiest girl in the room.” Mustin traveled to Memphis to meet her and in 1915 he married Frances Robina Woods. The couple had no children and remained together for their entire lives, with Frances passing away in 1969.

After working as an engineer for a few years, Mustin decided to try to sell automobiles. In an interview, Mustin admitted, “I was the worst engineer the school turned out.” He began selling Oakland Sensible Sixes and later Franklins, Lincolns, and Mercurys. WWII put an end to car sales for a few years, so Mustin began working for the Better Business Bureau and then the Chamber of Commerce. He stayed in Pittsburgh until he retired.

He did a bit of amateur acting and continued his passion for music. He was part of the oldest Gilbert and Sullivan troupe in the country, the Pittsburgh Savoyards; the Pittsburgh Opera; and an officer in the Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barbershop Quartet Singing in America.

He was a founding member of the Pittsburgh Lions Club in 1921 and a life member in the Fellows Club of Pittsburgh. Mustin served as an announcer for the first weekly variety show on radio station KDKA.

After retiring, Mustin and his wife moved to Tucson, Arizona for her health where he continued acting. William Wyler saw him in a stage production of “Detective Story” and told Mustin to let him know if he ever wanted to pursue a film career. When Wyler was casting for Detective Story in 1951, Mustin reached out to him. The couple later moved to Los Angeles. Mustin would appear in 67 films overall.

In 1968 Mustin was cast in Speedway with Elvis and Nancy Sinatra. In one scene the stars have a lover’s quarrel in a coffee shop. When they make up, Elvis sings a song for his girl. Mustin is in the background cleaning the café and working at the counter. The producers felt the scene needed something else. That something else ended up being Mustin singing and dancing with a mop. No one on the set realized that Burt could sing before that adlibbed scene.

1951 was also the year that Mustin appeared on television in The Adventures of Kit Carson. He would find a new career in television for the next two decades, appearing in more than 130 series (which would equal more than 400 actual episodes).

During the fifties, he would be attracted to many westerns and dramas; however, he found his way onto a few comedies including The Great Gildersleeve, December Bride, and Our Miss Brooks.

If I listed half of the 1960s shows he appeared on, you would still be reading this blog next Monday when my new one is dropped. Take my word for it that he was on almost every popular sixties’ sitcom, including 14 episodes as Gus the fireman on Leave it to Beaver. Other sixties hits you can find him on include The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Joey Bishop Show, The Jack Benny Show, The Beverly Hillbillies, Get Smart, The Andy Griffith Show, The Lucy Show, Bewitched, Gomer Pyle USMC, Petticoat Junction, and My Three Sons, not to mention many dramas and westerns including Bonanza and Gunsmoke. He was no less busy in the seventies where we could catch him in Marcus Welby, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Brady Bunch, Love American Style, Adam-12, All in the Family, and Phyllis.

Johnny Carson loved having Mustin on The Tonight Show, where he was a fan favorite. He shared a lot of fun stories on the show. One of them was about him being at the first World Series for baseball in 1903 when the Pittsburgh Pirates played the Boston Red Sox. Unfortunately for Burt, Boston came back to win the series, but as a bonus he did get to see Honus Wagner play on the diamond.

Mustin passed away eight years after his wife at the age of 92. He left a gift to the college he was loyal to his entire life, enabling Widener University to renovate their theater. It is now named the Burton H. Mustin Theatre and Lecture Hall.

It’s hard to wrap your head around what a busy film and television career Mustin had. He was an actor for the last 25 years of his life, and with 67 movies and more than 400 episodes, that means that he accumulated about 20 credits per year which is almost two a month from age 67 to 92. Talk about an amazing career. Mustin proved that it’s never too late to find your next passion. Thanks for so many great memories Burt Mustin.

Noam Pitlik: What a Character

December 16, 2024March 16, 2024 / thewritelife61 / 4 Comments

This month we are right in the middle of one of my favorite blog series, What a Character. This week we are delving into the career of Noam Pitlik; in addition to his acting, he won an Emmy for his work as a director. Which show? Let’s find out.

Pitlik was born in Philadelphia in 1932. After graduating from high school, he enrolled at Gratz College and later was a theater major at Temple University in 1954. Pitlik had a two-year stunt in the Army and earned a master’s degree in theater at New York University.

He began his acting career on WCAU in a western. In 1951, he was hired for the set design and construction crew for the Philadelphia Experimental Theater. He carried a bit of his hometown with him when he was part of the Summer Theater Guild in Indiana, Pennsylvania in the “Philadelphia Story.” He was hired for his Broadway debut in an off-Broadway production of The Threepenny Opera.”

In 1961 he moved to Los Angeles and received his first television roles, appearing on Cain’s Hundred and Dr. Kildare. Cain’s Hundred was not a show I remembered hearing much about. It was about a former underworld lawyer who works with the federal government to bring the top 100 criminals to justice. The show lasted one season. Pitlik had a variety of offers for shows throughout the sixties. Most of them were dramas and westerns, but we also see him on My Favorite Martian, The Munsters, Gidget, The Flying Nun, The Monkees, The Andy Griffith Show, The Doris Day Show, Get Smart, That Girl, and I Dream of Jeannie.

During the sixties, he married for the first time. His marriage with Jesse Blostein in 1967 would only last three years.

Pitlik also appeared in fourteen films and eight made-for-tv movies. The most memorable films are The Graduate, Fitzwilly, and The Fortune Cookie.

The seventies were his most prolific decade of acting. He appeared in 26 different series, often in 2-5 different episodes. You’ll see Pitlik in reruns in a variety of genres including Hogan’s Heroes, Room 222, Bewitched, Love American Style, All in the Family, The FBI, Cannon, Mannix, The Partridge Family, The Bob Newhart Show, The Odd Couple, and Barney Miller. His last acting appearance was in Becker in 1998.

The seventies were also when he tried the role of husband again, marrying Linda Hirsch in 1974; this marriage also lasted three years.

He began directing in the seventies and obtained 39 directing credits throughout the next two decades.

In an interview with Temple University for the Alumni Review in 1979, Pitlik said that the switch in his career was not “a case of my needing to change functions for economic reasons. I used to figure out what I made a day as an actor, and it was obscene. I changed for emotional reasons. I had become very frustrated by the kinds of things I was doing in acting, and I was looking for a change in my life that would be more challenging. I enjoyed acting, but I never seemed to get enough to do.” His first episode as director was on The New Dick Van Dyke Show. He directed 12 episodes for The Practice and 11 for Taxi.

However, Barney Miller was where he perfected his skill as director for 102 of its 171 episodes. In 1979, he won an Emmy as Director for the show. He beat out Paul Bogart for All in the Family, Alan Alda and Charles Dubin for M*A*S*H, and Jay Sandrich for Soap. He also received a Peabody Award and a Directors Guild of America Award for his work on Barney Miller. He lost the Emmy in 1981 to James Burrows for Taxi. His co-nominees included Jerry Paris for Happy Days, Linda Day for Archie Bunker’s Place, Burt Metcalfe and Alan Alda for M*A*S*H, and Rod Daniel for WKRP in Cincinnati.

In the Temple interview, Pitlik said that his “main responsibility is to create an atmosphere in which each of the people involved in the production can conform to their best work. Although a director oversees all aspects of the production, there are many people involved, and he’s dependent on all of them. There’s no more collaborative business than the television business. Each person contributes to the success or failure of a show whether he or she is a writer, actor, cameraman, or whatever.”

In 1995 he began directing episodes of The Home Court and did so for 14 of the 20 episodes. I must admit I do not remember this show at all. The synopsis was Sydney Solomon was a family court judge who had to deal with the toughest prosecuting attorneys and repeat offenders. However, her biggest challenges came when dealing with her kids, four boys aged 11-19.

Pitlik had better luck with his third marriage to Susan Whittaker which lasted from 1986 until his death in 1999. Whittaker was a television producer. Noam passed away from lung cancer at age 66.

Like Jerry Paris, Pitlik had a very successful acting career before finding his passion behind the camera. If you are responsible for directing a series, Barney Miller is a great accomplishment. It was fun to learn more about his career both in front of and behind the camera.

Dick Schaal: What a Character

December 2, 2024March 16, 2024 / thewritelife61 / 2 Comments

Today we began our “What a Character” blog series. Typically, when we discuss character actors, we are looking at actors who were busy in the forties, fifties, and sixties, but in the past sixty years, there have been a lot of great character actors as well. Today we are looking at the career of Richard Schaal.

Schaal was born in Chicago in 1928. His dad was a machinist, and his mom was a telephone operator. After he graduated, he ran a construction company before joining the Second City comedy troupe in 1959, not long after it began.

In 1950 he married Lois Treacy. I could not find a divorce date, but it was some time before 1964. They had a daughter Wendy who is also an actress.

Eventually he made his way to California. He had seventeen film credits on his resume; most of them were not too memorable, but he was in The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming and Slaughterhouse Five.

Television is where he made most of his acting appearances. He began his TV career in 1964 in East Side/West Side. This was a show I had not heard of before. Apparently, it was on for one year and starred George C. Scott as a social worker trying to help his clients in the mix of cultures that makes up New York City.

Schaal would find a few more roles in the sixties on several shows including The Dick Van Dyke Show, That Girl, and I Dream of Jeannie.

In the sixties, Schaal met Valerie Harper and they married in 1964.

During the seventies, he collected roles on many sitcoms including The Doris Day Show, The Partridge Family, Love American Style, The Bob Newhart Show, and The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

On The Mary Tyler Moore Show, he played Howard Arnell, Paul Arnell, Chuckles the Clown, and Dino. Not surprisingly, he made appearances on Rhoda and Phyllis.

In 1970, Schaal and Harper wrote a script for Love American Style for “Love and the Visitor” which aired on season two, episode 5 where a bridegroom ends up in the wrong girl’s bedroom. Harper said they were part of the Writers Guild, but their hearts were in acting and once she got the part of Rhoda, the writing stopped.

Harper discussed Schaal during an interview with the Television Academy. She describes him as her former husband and good friend. She said she and Schaal hosted a talk show with Skitch Henderson for about a year in the mid-sixties. They did interviews and sketches. She said after that they decided to move to Los Angeles.

📷imdb.com The Russians Are Coming The Russians Are Coming

The seventies were also a busy time for Schaal who continued to find roles on television. You can see him on dramas such as Nero Wolfe and Hardcastle and McCormick. He also was on sitcoms including Harper Valley PTA and Just Our Luck. He had a recurring role during this decade on Trapper John MD from 1981-85. The show was a sequel of M*A*S*H and portrayed Trapper later in life. Schaal played Dr. David Sandler. He also accepted a role on It’s a Living in 1980. His daughter Wendy was part of the cast. She has a very successful career and has appeared in many popular series. From 2005-2023, she was one of the voices in American Dad.

In 1980 he tried marriage a third time with Tasha Brittain. They would divorce in 1989.

Schaal retired in 1990 and passed away in 2014 in Los Angeles. No cause of death was provided. He did have spinal surgery in the late 90s and was in a wheelchair after that.

Sadly, I could not find a lot of information about Schaal or his personal life. He had a successful career, but it’s too bad there wasn’t more improvisational work at the time. It sounds like he was very gifted in that area. He didn’t have as much luck in love, but at least, according to Valerie Harper, he was a great guy and they remained good friends. He was one of those character actors who added so much to the television industry, especially in the sixties and seventies.

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.