Before we get into our topic of the week I’m celebrating today. This is my 475th post! Thank you to everyone who has joined me in my journey. We are in the final week of our blog series this month, “It’s Their Show.” We are winding down with The Debbie Reynolds Show. While most of the shows we learned about this month were on air in the late fifties and early sixties, The Debbie Reynolds Show appeared in 1969 on NBC.
The show was created by Jess Oppenheimer who Lucille Ball called “the brain” behind creating I Love Lucy. This month we learned a bit about Bob Carroll Jr. and Madelyn Pugh Davis who created and wrote for I Love Lucy and The Tom Ewell Show, and they are back to write for this sitcom as well.
The show didn’t get off to a great start because Reynolds was clear that she wanted no cigarette commercials on her show. However, NBC was courting American Tobacco as the sponsor and Debbie threw a fit. When the tobacco company learned Reynolds was threatening to quit, they pulled their funding. Reynolds assured NBC that she would agree to forego NBC’s promise of a second year of the series, and she gave up her ownership in an NBC film What’s the Matter with Helen?, although she was able to star in the film.
The plot of this show was that Reynolds was married to Jim (Don Chastain), a sportswriter for the Los Angeles Sun. Like Lucy always trying to get into show business, Debbie Thompson wants to be a reporter, and she comes up with various schemes to get her that job. Jim just wants her to be a stay-at-home wife.
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Rounding out the cast were Debbie’s sister Charlotte (Patricia Smith), Charlotte’s husband Bob (Tom Bosley) and Bruce (Bobby Riha), Debbie’s son. Like George Burns had done in his show, Debbie often addresses the audience directly.
Debbie Reynolds did double duty in this one, singing the theme for the show, “With a Little Love.”
Sadly, Reynolds was not in the same financial situation that many screen stars were when they agreed to try a television series. When the show was canceled after one season, she lived in her car for a while and her career never got back on track. For 35 years after this sitcom was canceled, Reynolds played bit parts, appeared as herself, or did animation. It must have been hard to tolerate after being a big star on the silver screen.
Tom Bosley talked about appearing in this sitcom in his interview with The Television Academy. He said the network allowed the cast to make seventeen episodes, but from the beginning they knew the show would be canceled because of the stunt Debbie and her PR rep pulled regarding the sponsorship.
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Bosley thought Oppenheimer was a genius, but Bosley said even without the issue Reynolds had with the network, the show needed reworking for it to remain on the air. Bosley said Reynolds was very energetic, but she was bitter about her husband leaving her for Elizabeth Taylor, and her second husband was a gambler who left her with half a million dollars of debt to pay off.
To make ends meet, she went to Las Vegas to perform and started a costume museum to preserve the artifacts.
Unfortunately, this show was doomed from the start. While I admire Reynolds for standing up for what she believed in, the way she went about it was not helpful. It should have been written into her contract or handled in a nonpublic discussion. If Reynolds had let the network take care of sponsorships, things would have been okay. A few months after this show debuted, Congress took their anti-smoking initiative one step further and passed the Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act, banning the advertising of cigarettes on television and radio starting in 1971, so many shows walked away from tobacco companies in 1970. However, when Reynolds dug her heels in and threatened to quit, she not only lost her two-year minimum deal and her upcoming movie profits, but the studio was just biding its time because it had already decided to cancel the series because of her behavior.
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Even though Oppenheimer was described by everyone as an amazing creator and producer, this show felt like another I Love Lucy with a different occupation, and I’m guessing viewers felt that way too. It was similar to Sherwood Schwartz who kept revising The Brady Bunch for decades and kept writing sitcoms with the main characters somehow “lost” that were all duplicates of his Gilligan’s Island.
By 1969, it was time to move away from the hard-to-restrain wife in the sixties concept. In addition to being a copycat of I Love Lucy, I have to be honest. While I found something fun and charming about the other series we learned about this month, the episodes I tried to watch for this blog were painful. The characters were not likable, the writing was not witty or even easy to listen to, and considering what a great cast they had, the show just fell flat. Sadly, I recommend avoiding this one unless you are trying to put yourself to sleep some night.
We have been learning a lot about Lucille Ball this month. We delved into I Love Lucy and why it was so important to American culture. We got to know Lucy as a person. And we discussed Jess Oppenheimer and the influence he had on her. Today we are finishing up the month by checking out three shows she starred in after I Love Lucy went off the air: they all debuted in the sixties.
The first show, the Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour, was an extension of I Love Lucy. It spun out thirteen one-hour specials that aired between 1957 and 1960. Five of them debuted during the 1957-58 season of I Love Lucy. The other eight were shown on the Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse and they featured the same cast as I Love Lucy.
Desi tried to talk the network into doing these specials the first year just to keep some freshness in the series, but he was denied the chance. By the last season, they agreed it might work.
During the final season of the series, both the Mertzes and the Ricardos move to the Connecticut suburbs. Apparently, the two couples were running an egg farm to make their living and Fred was Ricky’s manager.
Despite their move out of the City, many of these episodes feature Lucy’s meetings with famous guest stars. For example, in “Lucy Takes a Cruise to Havana,” Lucy meets Hedda Hopper. Production costs were estimated to be $350,000 but with the guest stars, these costs increased and rather than do ten episodes the first year, Arnaz was forced to spread them out over three years.
Ratings were good in the beginning but with the news of Lucy and Desi’s marriage in trouble, both this series and I Love Lucy started to lose viewership. By the time the last episode was filmed, the couple could not even talk without a fight erupting and they communicated by messages. The day after filming, Ball filed for divorce.
The theme song of the series was used with a bit of updating. That symbolizes all ten episodes. It was the same series, but it wasn’t. Had this type of programming happened throughout the original series it might have been more popular but coming on the heels of the ending of the show and the fans being aware that “Ethel and Fred” could barely tolerate each other in real life and then learning “Lucy and Ricky” were ready for divorce took a lot of the fun out of watching the show.
From 1962-68, Lucy attempted another sitcom. While Vivian Vance was no longer Ethel, she was a co-star for the first three seasons of the show. Gale Gordon who had been Lucy’s first choice for Fred Mertz in the early fifties was no longer under contract in 1962 and appeared in this series beginning in season two.
While Arnaz and Ball had divorced two years before this series debuted, they were still in business together. Their company, Desilu Productions, was struggling with the end of I Love Lucy. In 1961 four of their shows were canceled. By spring of 1962, only The Untouchables was still on the air.
Desi approached Lucy about returning to a weekly sitcom. She agreed if it could take the time slot on Mondays that I Love Lucy had, and if Vivian Vance was part of the cast, and the I Love Lucy writers were brought back. The new show, The Lucy Show, debuted Monday, October 1, 1962.
Lucy Carmichael lives with her two kids (Candy Moore and Jimmy Garrett) and Vivian Bagley (Vivian Vance), a divorced friend, and her son (Ralph Hart). Vivian was the first woman to be divorced on television. Her husband had left her a trust fund, so Lucy had to approach the bank often for funding for some of her harebrained projects and purchases. In season two, Gale Gordon took on the role of banker Mr. Mooney. The show had decent ratings and continued in its format until 1965. Lucy moves from New York to Los Angeles when her daughter goes to college in California. Vivian remarries and stays in New York. Lucy meets a new best friend, Mary Jane Lewis (Mary Jane Croft). When Lucy learns that Mr. Mooney is being transferred to the LA bank, their relationship continues, and eventually she works for him.
At the end of the second season, a dispute occurred between Lucy and the writers over a script Ball felt was not up to their standard, and the writers left. In 1964 Desi had resigned as head of Desilu, so Ball took over as president. Most specials, sports shows, and cartoons on CBS were now in color, but they refused to broadcast most of their series in color. Ann Sothern began appearing on the show as a countess to fill in the gaps of Vance being absent.
For the 1966 season, the show dropped all references to Lucy’s children, her trust fund and her life in New York. I don’t know why shows think viewers will just go along with these strange format revamps. Doris Day did the same on her show when her former life and children just disappeared one day and were never mentioned again. Because the show was set in California, a lot of guest stars were featured on the show, many of them bank customers.
During the last season of the show, Gary Morton, Ball’s second husband, was named executive producer of the show. He actually seemed to do well in this role. For this year, Ball was nominated and won an Emmy for the star of the show, the show was nominated for Emmys for best comedy show (but lost to Get Smart) and for the writing and for Gale Gordon as supporting comedy actor (who lost to Werner Klemperer of Hogan’s Heroes). The show was #2 in the ratings.
Surprisingly, this is when Lucy decided to end the show and put it into syndication. Even odder is the fact that she began a new show with a similar plotline that same year. Lucy and her real-life kids, Lucie and Desi Jr. joined the cast which included Croft, and Gordon with Vance making appearances during the run of the show. This show, like the other two, was on the air for six seasons.
Ball as Lucy Hinkley Carter is living in LA, a widow with two children Kim and Craig, played by her own two kids. She works for her brother-in-law Harry Carter, played by Gale Gordon but now they are at an unemployment agency. Vance made six guest appearances on the show.
Again in this show, a number of famous guest stars showed up including Ann-Margret, Milton Berle, Carol Burnett, George Burns, Liberace, Eva Gabor, Helen Hayes, Dean Martin, Vincent Price, Ginger Rogers, Dinah Shore, Danny Thomas, Lawrence Welk, and Flip Wilson.
In 1973 the show fell out of the top ten, the first Lucille Ball show to ever do so. Lucy did a sixth season and then ended the show.
Lucille Ball deserved a break after this show ended. She had been on the air for 23 years. Little Ricky, or little Desi, had been born early in I Love Lucy history and now he was off on his own acting career. After 1974 when this show went off the air until her death in 1989, most of her projects were connected with I Love Lucy, although she was listed as executive producer for several shows including Mission Impossible and Mannix.
None of these post-I Love Lucy shows were much different from each other, but it proved that America still wanted to watch Lucy on the air. Television looked very different in 1974 than it did in 1951, and Lucille Ball influenced and inspired much of that change. I wonder if Lucy would be surprised to learn that fifty years after her final show ended its production, she is just as popular as ever and Lucy merchandise is unending. It says a lot about just how true it was that everyone loves Lucy.
As we are learning all about Lucille Ball and her shows this first month of 2025, the month would not be complete without getting to know Jess Oppenheimer, the man Lucy called “the brains” behind I Love Lucy. He was also the producer and head writer of the show. Director William Asher said “he was the field general. Jess presided over all the meetings and ran the whole show. He was very sharp.”
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Oppenheimer was born in San Francisco in 1913. He took part in a study of gifted children in Stanford Professor Lewis Terman’s project. Ironically, one of Terman’s quotes about Jess was that he “could detect no signs of a sense of humor.” Jess’s father James owned the largest luggage store in San Francisco, but he died in an accident when Jess was 16.
Oppenheimer went on to attend Stanford in the 1930s. He started to spend a lot of his free time at radio station KFRC and performed in a comedy sketch he wrote for the show “Blue Monday Jamboree.”
In 1936 he moved to Hollywood and was hired as a writer on Fred Astaire’s radio show. He later went to work for Jack Benny as well as Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy, George Burns and Gracie Allen, Bing Crosby, Marlene Dietrich, Judy Garland, Bob Hope, and Ginger Rogers.
When World War II began, Oppenheimer joined the US Coast Guard where he met Jack Dempsey and Cesar Romero. While he was there, he was diagnosed with double vision which had bothered him his entire life but had never been addressed.
Agent Ray Stark was Fanny Brice’s son-in-law and later Stark recruited him to write for her Baby Snooks Show based on his reputation in the Coast Guard.
In 1942, Oppenheimer met Estelle Weiss, an employee of Wallichs Music City. They married in 1947 and were together for the rest of his life.
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In 1948, CBS hired Oppenheimer to write a script for a new radio show, “My Favorite Husband.” Several of the scripts portrayed the wife, played by Lucille Ball, as a sophisticated socialite. When Jess added slapstick comedy and transitioned her to a childlike, impulsive, naïve wife, the show was a big success.
In 1950, CBS moved the show to television to star Lucy and her real-life husband Desi Arnaz. Lucy demanded that Oppenheimer stay in charge. Jess suggested doing a show “about a middle-class working stiff who works very hard at his job as a bandleader and likes nothing better than to come home at night and relax with this wife who doesn’t like staying home and is dying to get into show business.” He suggested the title “I Love Lucy.”
For the first five seasons, Oppenheimer was the producer and head writer, with help from Madelyn Pugh and Bob Carroll Jr. as other writers. As part of his contract, Oppenheimer received 20% of the ownership in the show. He gave Pugh and Carroll each 5% of that amount.
A wannabe actor, Oppenheimer appeared on I Love Lucy in two episodes. In #6, “The Audition,” he was one of three TV executives who audition Desi and in #127, “The Tour,” he walks in front of the bus before Ethel and Lucy board it. In one of the more famous episodes, #30, “Lucy Does a TV Commercial,” Jess is the voice that tells Lucy to go ahead and begin her commercial.
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In 1956, Oppenheimer moved to NBC where he became a producer of special shows.
During the sixties, Oppenheimer created and produced three other sitcoms. In 1960 he worked with Annie Farge and Marshall Thompson on Angel; in 1963 with Glynis Johns on Glynis, and with Debbie Reynolds on The Debbie Reynolds Show. He also was listed as writer, producer, and director for the 1967 season of Get Smart.
Oppenheimer received two Emmys and seven nominations. His Emmys were for Producer for Best Situation Comedy, I Love Lucy, in 1953 and 1954. He was also nominated for Producer for Best Situation Comedy, I Love Lucy, in 1952 and 1955; for Best Comedy Writer, I Love Lucy, in 1955 and 1956; for Best Single Program of the Year, General Motors 50th Anniversary Show in 1958; Program of the Year, The Danny Kaye Show with Lucille Ball in 1963; and Outstanding Program Achievement in Humor, The Danny Kaye Showwith Lucille Ball in 1963.
He was also an inventor with 18 patents. One of his inventions was an in-the-lens teleprompter.
In 1962, Lucille Ball brought a new sitcom to television; however, Oppenheimer sued the show, claiming that Lucy Carmichael was Lucy Ricardo, his character, He received a financial settlement, and the character was changed, but unfortunately, it ruined the friendship between Oppenheimer and Ball.
The Oppenheimer family lived on Burlingame Avenue in Los Angeles. In a funny twist, Jess bought the house from MGM hairstylist Sydney Guilaroff; he was the person who turned Ball into a redhead for the 1943 movie, DuBarry was a Lady.
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Jess’s best friends were Mel Blanc, Hans Conried, and Jerry Hausner, who had played Ricky’s agent on I Love Lucy.
In 1988, Oppenheimer had an intestinal surgery; he died shortly after from heart failure. At his death, Lucille Ball said he was “a true genius” and said that “she owed so much to his creativity and his friendship.”
I love hearing stories about people like Jess Oppenheimer and Sheldon Leonard who are creative geniuses and are the influence and inspiration for so many of the classic television shows.
This month we are learning to love Lucy. We have looked at the career of Lucille Ball, and today we are taking a peek back at the well-loved sitcom, I Love Lucy.
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The show starred Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz, Vivian Vance, and William Frawley. The series featured a young housewife, Lucy Ricardo, who lived with her husband Ricky, a nightclub bandleader. Their landlords, Fred and Ethel Mertz, were also their best friends. Lucy and Ethel get involved in a variety of schemes to get into show business. Lucy relies on Ethel and Fred who were in vaudeville earlier in their career. Eventually Lucy and Ricky have a son which coincided with the birth of their son Desi Jr. Lucy and Ethel try Desi’s patience often with their antics. When he gets upset, he starts speaking Spanish. Fred doesn’t have much time for the women’s plots either. After living through the Depression, he is considered cheap and doesn’t tolerate nonsense. In season six, the quartet move to Connecticut.
In 2012, ABC News and People did a joint survey, listing I Love Lucy as the Best TV Show of All Time.
The theme music was composed by Eliot Daniel with lyrics by Harold Adamson.
The show had three directors: Marc Daniels was director from 1951-53; William Asher, who would later produce Bewitched among other shows, was director from 1952-57, and James V. Kern directed 39 episodes from 1955-57.
Jess Oppenheimer was producer for the first 153 episodes; Desi Arnaz was executive producer for the first 124 episodes and producer for the final 26.
Oppenheimer was credited with writing for seasons 1-5, Madelyn Pugh Davis and Bob Carroll Jr. assisted him.
📷📷wikipedia.com Best Friends
Lucille Ball had been starring in “My Favorite Husband” on the radio and in 1950, CBS wanted her to transition to television. Richard Denning had been her costar on the radio, but now she wanted to do a series with her real-life husband, Desi Arnaz. CBS did not think visitors would buy in to Lucy, the all-American girl, married to a Cuban musician. To prove them wrong, Lucy and Desi created a vaudeville act written by Carroll and Pugh that they performed with Arnaz’s orchestra in New York. The act was a big hit, so Harry Ackerman approved the couple doing the show.
The pilot was ordered in 1951. Oppenheimer, Pugh, and Carroll also made the move from radio to television. Philip Morris decided to sponsor the show. Ball wanted to continue her film career along with television show which was set to air biweekly. Philip Morris wanted the show to air weekly, and they wanted it filmed in New York. Because Lucy and Desi were expecting their first child, they wanted to stay in Hollywood. The couple agreed to reduce their pay by a $1000 a week in order to stay in California and cover the additional expenses of filming. They asked for 80% ownership in the films, with the remaining 20% going to Oppenheimer who shared 5% with Pugh and 5% with Carroll. Desilu (combining Desi and Lucy) became their production company.
The couple hired Carl Freund, who had worked on many big-screen movies, to film the show. He uniformly lit the set so all three cameras would pick up the same quality of the image. He also pioneered “flat lighting,” which lit everything with bright lights to get rid of shadows. The three-camera method became the standard sitcom technique.
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A live audience produced a more authentic laugh than the canned laughter some shows used. Both Desi and Lucy’s mothers’ laughter can be detected in these early episodes.
When Lucy needed some rest after having her baby, the company could not finish their 39-episode commitment, so Oppenheimer and Desi decided to rebroadcast some of their favorite episodes instead. This out-of-the-box thinking proved to be so popular that it eventually led to the syndicated market.
When Lucy decided to transition her show from radio to television, Gale Gordon and Bea Benaderet were offered the roles of Fred and Ethel. However, both of them were already transitioning from radio to other televisions series. Gordon had already committed to Our Miss Brooks and Benaderet had agreed to star in The George Burns and Grace Allen Show.
The role of Ethel was then offered to Barbara Pepper, who was a good friend of Lucy’s. However, she was known to have a drinking problem; Wiliam Frawley also was a heavy drinker, so the production staff did not feel comfortable having two cast members with alcoholic issues, so the offer to Pepper was rescinded. Pepper would appear quite often in I Love Lucy and eventually she settled in Hooterville, married to Fred Ziffel.
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Frawley never appeared drunk during filming or caused any problem on the show. I did think it was funny though that he had a clause in his contract that he did not have to film when and if the New York Yankees were in the World Series. They made it to the big show every year the series ran except for 1954.
Mary Wickes was then offered the role, but she was afraid working with Lucy would harm their friendship. Director Marc Daniels suggested Vivian Vance who was performing in “The Voice of the Turtle.” Oppenheimer and Arnaz went to watch her performance and hired her on the spot. Lucy was not thrilled with the idea of Vance. She thought she was prettier than her vision of what Ethel would look like. Vance was only two years older than Ball, but the producers agreed to dress her in frumpier clothing. Eventually Ball and Vance became good friends. Vance was the first actress to win an Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actress. When I Love Lucy ended, Ball asked Vance to star in her new series, The Lucy Show.
Unfortunately, Vance and Frawley never warmed to each other the way she and Lucy did. They barely tolerated each other, although they were both always professional on the set.
Lucy and Desi had several miscarriages and when they were able to sustain a pregnancy which resulted in daughter Lucie, they filmed Lucy without ever mentioning that she was pregnant. The sponsors thought it would be in poor tasted to talk about pregnancy. However, in the second season, they were pregnant once again, and the pregnancy was written into the show. They had to use the word “expecting” when talking about the baby. The episode “Lucy Goes to the Hospital” in 1953 was watched by almost 72% of families with televisions, the highest rating for quite some time. It was surpassed by Elvis Presley’s first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show.
The show was on for from 1951-1957 on CBS, resulting in 180 episodes.
I Love Lucy aired on Mondays for its first run. In 1967 the network began offering the show in syndication and it has never been off the air.
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I Love Lucy was nominated for Best Comedy/Sitcom in 1952, 1953, 1954, and 1955, winning in 1953. Ball was nominated for Best Comedienne in 1953-1958, winning in 1953 and 1956. Vance was nominated for Best Supporting Actress in 1954, 1955, 1957 and 1958, winning in 1954. Frawley was also nominated for his role in 1954-1958. He never won but he lost to some great actors including Art Carney and Carl Reiner. Only Arnaz was denied a nomination for his comedy skills.
In 1957, Lucille Ball decided to end the show. She and Desi created a new show that wasn’t really new. It took the four main characters from I Love Lucy and moved them to Connecticut. Arnaz changed the format and length of the show, now an hour long, because he said he wanted to change it up before people got tired of the characters. He said this format kept the cast intact but also allowed for a celebrity guest star for Lucy to meet in every episode. In 1960 the show ended, the same year the couple’s real life marriage ended.
Unfortunately, the couple’s marriage dissolved in 1960, and in 1962, Lucy bought Desi’s shares of Desilu becoming the sole owner. She sold the company to Gulf+Western who owned Paramount Pictures.
We all remember the merchandising that accompanies shows in the sixties and seventies like dolls, board games, lunch boxes, etc, but I Love Lucy had more than its share of memorabilia. In 1952 a baby doll was released. Believe it or not, you could purchase an I Love Lucy bedroom set for $199 in the fifties, as well as I Love Lucy his and her pajamas.
The way it ended, I Love Lucy never had a proper finale. I wish I had the time to devote to how much this show changed the course of television, but a weekly blog just can’t contain as much history as there is to tell. I’m sure Lucy would be amazed if she knew that more than seventy years after the show began, we are still watching it and talking about it. Legacy doesn’t get any better than that.
This month we are learning why We All Love Lucy. We’ll delve into her sitcoms and get to know Jess Oppenheimer and hear about his role in her television life. But today, we are starting with the woman herself, Lucille Ball.
📷facebook. A young Lucille Ball
Lucille Desiree Ball was born August 6, 1911, in Jamestown, New York. She was the only daughter of Henry Durrell Ball, a lineman for Bell Telephone, and Desiree Evelyn Hunt Ball. They lived at 60 Stewart Avenue. The family belonged to the Baptist Church there, and many of her relatives were among some of the first European settlers in Massachusetts.
The family moved frequently for her father’s career, but Jamestown always had a claim on Lucy, and they celebrate her in many ways there. The family lived in Montana, New Jersey, and Michigan before her father passed away from typhoid fever at age 27 in 1914.
Her mother returned to New York, living in Celoron, a summer resort on Chautauqua Lake. The road she grew up on is now named Lucy Lane. Celoron had an amusement park with a boardwalk, the Pier Ballroom, a roller coaster, a bandstand, and a stage.
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Lucy’s mother remarried four years later. It was her stepfather who encouraged Lucy to audition for his Shriner’s chorus line, which gave her the first taste of what it would be like to be in show business. When she was 16 the family returned to Jamestown.
When Lucy was only 14, she was dating a 21-year-old hoodlum. Her mother was devastated by the situation and finally enrolled Lucy in the John Murra Anderson School for Dramatic Arts in New York City to encourage her in her theater career. Ball did not love the school, and her instructors told her she would not be successful in the entertainment business. Luckily, Lucy did not take their comments to heart. She later said that “one of the things I learned the hard way was that it doesn’t pay to get discouraged. Keeping busy and making optimism a way of life can restore faith in yourself.”
In an attempt to prove the school wrong, Lucy began working as an in-house model for Hattie Carnegie. This was where she first changed her hair. Being a brunette, Carnegie taught Ball to bleach her hair blonde. Her modeling was interrupted for two years when she dealt with the effects of rheumatic fever.
At the ripe old age of 21, Ball returned to New York City to pursue an acting career. She went back to the Carnegie agency and became the Chesterfield Cigarette Girl.
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In 1933 she was in Roman Scandals as a Goldwyn Girl; while playing a slave girl, she had to have her eyebrows entirely shaved off, and they never grew back. Some of the things an actor goes through for roles is crazy. After that movie she moved to Hollywood to try a film career. After becoming a contract player for RKO Radio Pictures, she received a decent amount of work. At this time, she met the Marx Brothers, appearing in Room Service. She also worked with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in several musicals.
When she registered to vote in 1936, both she, her brother, and her mother registered as Communists. During that year she signed a document as a Communist supporting Emil Freed for assembly and was appointed delegate to the State Central Committee of the Communist Party of California.
Ball later claimed she never had a strong political affiliation. In 1944, Lucy can be seen in a newsreel fund raising for Franklin Roosevelt. She also mentioned that she voted for Eisenhower in 1952 when he was on the Republican docket. In 1953 Ball met with HUAC and gave a sealed testimony. She said that she voted Communist at her grandfather’s insistence and did not know she had been appointed a delegate. Before filming episode 68 of their show, her husband and co-star Desi addressed the audience and said Lucy was not a Communist; she was just influenced by her grandfather. He joked that “the only thing red about Lucy is her hair, and even that is not legitimate.”
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In the late thirties, she dabbled in radio to earn some additional money. She was a regular on “The Phil Baker Show” and on “The Wonder Show” where she met announcer Gale Gordon.
In 1940 Lucy met Desi Arnaz when they both appeared in the movie Too Many Girls. They fell in love immediately, and before the year was out, they eloped. Arnaz was drafted in 1942, but a knee injury kept him from active service, and he was placed in Hollywood organizing and performing USO shows for wounded GIs.
Lucy finally got her big break in 1943. Arthur Freed was making a movie based on the play “DuBarry Was a Lady”; he bought it for Ann Sothern, but when she turned it down, she recommended her best friend, Lucille Ball.
In 1944, Ball filed for divorce, but the couple reconciled before it went through. Lucy and Desi had Lucie in 1951 when Lucy was almost 40, and son Desi was born during the series and written into the scripts in 1953. Mom and son appeared on the first cover of TV Guide which came out in 1953.
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Ball continued to make movies throughout the forties and kept a foot in radio. In 1948 she was cast as Liz Cooper on the radio show, “My Favorite Husband” on CBS.
When CBS wanted to transition the show to television, Lucy wanted Desi to be her television husband. CBS said no, so the couple went on the road with an act to prove the popularity of the them working together and CBS backed down.
The show was incredibly successful. (If you want to learn more details about the series and all the history that it produced, keep an eye out for my blog which will post January 13, 2025.) The couple created their own production company and had many “firsts” with technology producing their show. During filming breaks of the show, Lucy and Desi made two movies: The Long, Long Trailer in 1954 and Forever, Darling in 1956.
After years of turmoil and ups and downs in their marriage, the couple divorced. However, they continued to remain in each other’s lives through their children and their relationship. Later in life, Lucy said “Desi was the great love of my life. I will miss him until the day I die.”
📷closerweekly.com Ball and Vance
Lucy bought Desi’s share in the production company which produced a variety of shows including Mission: Impossible, Star Trek, and The Untouchables. In 1967 Lucy sold her shares to Gulf+Western, owned by Paramount, for $17 million, which would translate into $138 million today.
Lucy married Gary Morton in 1961. At the time, Morton was a comedian 13 years younger than Lucy. He said he had never seen an episode of I Love Lucy. Ball hired Morton for her production company, teaching him the television business.
For the next decade, Lucy worked on a number of television specials. She also tried sitcom life again. She starred in The Lucy Show from 1962-68 and in Here’s Lucy from 1968-1974. We’ll discuss these shows the last week of January. Many of Lucy’s friends appeared on these shows. Her close friends included Mary Jane Croft, Judy Garland, Ethel Merman, Barbara Pepper, Ginger Rogers, Ann Sothern, Vivian Vance, and Mary Wickes.
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Ball kept busy acting during the early 1980s. Desi Arnaz passed away in 1986. In 1988 Lucy had a mild heart attack. She appeared at the 1989 Academy Awards show and she and co-presenter Bob Hope were given standing ovations. She died a month later. Lucy had been a heavy smoker, and her cause of death was abdominal aortic aneurysm which is seen more in smokers.
Lucy always sent flowers to Carol Burnett on her birthday. The day before she died, she ordered them, and they were delivered a few hours after Carol learned of her death.
Lucy was cremated and her ashes were interred in Forest Lawn Cemetery with her mother’s remains. In 2002, both women’s remains were moved to the Hunt family plot in Jamestown. In Jamestown you can find the Lucille Ball Desi Arnaz Museum & Center for Comedy and the Lucille Ball Little Theater.
In 2009 a statue of Lucy was erected in Celoron. Many people called it “scary,” and it became known as “Scary Lucy,” which I totally endorse. In 2016, a more lifelike statue was created to replace Scary, but the scary statue had become so popular, it was left on display with the new one as its neighbor.
📷youtube.com The different sides of Lucy
Those two statues symbolize my relationship with the show. I appreciate the show and everything it did to create the classic age of television. Whether it’s technical filming strategies, the writing, the way the business was run, everything was important in this show. However, I have to admit, it’s not a show I choose to watch. It changed the entire course of television in similar ways that All in the Family would do a few decades later, but I honestly don’t enjoy watching either of these series. That might be a fault in my genes, but I also have to be honest.
However, Lucy Ricardo, while we may think of her as naïve and sophisticated, traditional and unconventional, submissive and disobedient, was an important icon in the way that women thought about themselves in the fifties.
Women had been brought in to work and gain independence while so many men were overseas fighting, and then they were asked to give it all up and go back to a domestic and tranquil life. Leslie Feldman, a political scientist and author of The Political Theory of I Love Lucy, writes that Lucy was “a transitional figure—she’s on the cutting edge. . . Are [women] going to stay home and be wives and mothers? Are they going to go to work? Or are they going to do both? And what if they really do better and earn more money than their husbands? What about that? That’s an element of Lucy too.”
📷biography.com
Lucy was a force in show business. While she was not alone in taking control of her own career—Donna Reed, Betty White, and Ann Sothern were also powerhouses in establishing their own companies and running them—Lucy did it with the nation watching her. Even the choices she made about whether to divorce Desi or not were all done in the public eye and were sending messages whether people chose to receive them or not.
Lucille Ball was an amazing actress and an amazing business person. Apart from whether I enjoy watching the show or not, it changed the history of television and the way sitcoms were written, cast, and remembered. Thank you, Lucille Ball, for not listening when your instructors told you that you would never make it in show business. You not only made it in television, you truly made television what it is today.
This month, we are looking at popular fifties stars and shows. While the show we are talking about today outlasted the fifties by almost another decade, it gained its popularity during the 1950s. Today we are learning about What’s My Line.
📷wikipedia.com
This panel game show was on CBS. It debuted in 1950 and ran until 1967. The show was produced by Mark Goodson and Bill Todman, and the working title was Occupation Unknown. Perhaps the title should have been What’s My Schedule. The show began on Thursday nights as a live show. Later in season one, it switched to every other Wednesday and then moved to every other Thursday. In October of 1950, it landed on Sunday nights where it would remain throughout the rest of its life.
The original series, which was usually broadcast live, debuted on Thursday, February 2, 1950, at 8:00 p.m. ET. After airing alternate Wednesdays, then alternate Thursdays, finally on October 1, 1950, it had settled into its weekly Sunday 10:30 p.m. ET slot where it would remain until the end of its network run on September 3, 1967.
📷imdb.com
Celebrity panelists ask contestants questions to figure out their occupation. While most of the contestants were not famous, there was a “mystery guest” segment. The panelists were blindfolded for this segment and asked questions to determine the celebrity. People enjoyed watching the panelists banter with each other and the sophisticated humor they shared with us.
Each episode had four panelists. The most famous panelists were Dorothy Kilgallen, Arlene Francis, and Bennett Cerf. John Daly was the moderator. The first show in the series featured New Jersey governor Harold Hoffman, Kilgallen, poet Louis Untermeyer, and psychiatrist Richard Hoffman. Later in season one, Arlene Francis came on board with Kilgallen, Untermeyer and writer Hal Block. In season two, Cerf replaced Untermeyer and Steve Allen took over for Block in season three. When Steve Allen left to host The Tonight Show, comedian Fred Allen was part of the panel from 1954 until his death in 1956. Kilgallen was killed in 1965 and her replacement varied for two years. Her death is a mystery itself and well worth reading about. Many people think she was killed because of her investigation into JF Kennedy’s assassination.
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The panelists started the series wearing business clothing, but by 1953 they shifted to formal attire with the men showing up in suits and ties and women in formal gowns and gloves. Unfortunately, we never got to see the beautiful colors of these clothes. Until 1966 everything was filmed in black and white. In the final season, the show was broadcast in color, but the kinescopes were saved in black and white.
Both critics and television viewers liked the show, and it won an Emmy for Best Quiz or Audience Participation Show in 1952, 1953, and 1958.
Because it was a game show, most of the 700 episodes were on kinescope, 16 mm filming. Because many original shows in that era were recorded via kinescope onto silver nitrate film, many networks destroyed recordings to recover the silver. After learning that the network was not keeping the recordings, Goodson and Todman offered to pay for the broadcast and retained the recordings from season three on, however many of those were also lost along the way. A variety of the episodes are stored at different archive centers around the country. My home state houses one from 1951 at the University of Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research in Madison.
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The remaining kinescopes which have been digitized have been seen on television on the Game Show Network and 757 of them exist on YouTube.
Many of us remember the reruns and seeing the contestant come on stage and write their name on a chalkboard as Daily said “Will you enter and sign in please.” The very first contestant was Pat Finch who was a hat check girl at the Stork Club.
The first mystery guest was New York Yankees shortstop Phil Ruzzuto. Many of these guests used fake voices to answer questions. Some of the mystery guests who appeared on the show included Julie Andrews, Louis Armstrong, Lucille Ball, Jack Benny, James Cagney, Gary Cooper, Joan Crawford, Salvador Dali, Sammy Davis Jr., Doris Day, Aretha Franklin, Ava Gardner, Judy Garland, Jackie Gleason, Alfred Hitchcock, Bob Hope, Ginger Rogers, Roy Rogers, Eleanor Roosevelt, James Stewart, Elizabeth Taylor, and John Wayne.
📷littlethings.com Blindfolds come out for a mystery guest
The emcee would choose a panelist who could ask yes or no questions. If the answer was yes, they could continue until they got a no response and then the next panelist would be able to pose questions. If the contestants answered no, Daily flipped a card; when the contestant had ten cards, they won $50.
If you have heard of or even used the term “Is it bigger than a breadbox?,” you might want to know that it came from the show. Steve Allen asked the question in 1953, and it became a standard question after that night. In fact, on one episode, the guest was a breadbox maker, and when Daly could not help laughing at the question, Allen figured it out.
In 1967 The New York Times broke a story that CBS was canceling many of their game shows. None of the panelists had been told that the show was not renewed. Despite the fact that the low costs of the game shows made them profitable, the low ratings led the network to conclude that game shows were no longer suitable for prime-time schedules.
After the show was canceled in 1967, it did go into syndication five days a week. Soupy Sales joined Francis and Cerf on the panel of the reboot. A variety of other panelists took the fourth seat including Joyce Brothers, Jack Cassidy, Bert Convy, Joel Grey, Meredith MacRae, Henry Morgan, Gene Rayburn, and Nipsey Russell. The show ended in 1974. Cerf died during the run of the syndicated series.
It’s hard to believe, but Colonel Harland Sanders was on the show as founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken, although he was not easily recognized at the time, so he was not a mystery guest. While no president ever appeared while in office, Ford, Carter, and Reagan all appeared on the show.
📷youtube.com We switched to a first-name basis in the 70s
It would be fun to see this show on television today, but I’m afraid it would not be the same. In the way that Dick Cavett had a manner of interacting with guests to ask amazing questions with his humor and intelligence, this game show had that same atmosphere. Today, I think the banter would border more on crudeness than wit. There is something charming about a panel of very intelligent people talking with each other, trying to determine the identities of the people they were interviewing while being dressed to the nines that was fun to sit in on and be a part of. I guess that’s why this show is in our series where we are saluting the fifties because that was the era where it could shine.
After learning about Your Show of Shows last week, we are going to take a closer look at some of the forces behind the award-winning show. We begin with Imogene Coca.
Photo: imdb.com
Imogene Coca was born Emogeane Coca in 1908. Her father was a violinist and vaudeville orchestra conductor, and her mother was a dancer and magician’s assistant.
Photo: geni.com
She began appearing in vaudeville as a child acrobat. She also took piano, dance, and voice lessons as a child. She was drawn to dance and studied ballet and moved from Philadelphia to New York to become a dancer while still a teenager. Her first job was in the chorus of a Broadway musical, “When You Smile.” For a few decades, she appeared in stage musical revues, cabaret, summer stock, and movies.
In 1935, Coca married Bob Burton. They were married until 1955 when he passed away.
Coca discussed her early career: “I never thought of myself in comedy at all. I loved going to the theater and seeing people wearing beautiful clothes come down the staircase and start to dance. I wanted to play St. Joan.”
In her forties, Coca decided to add comedian to her slate of talents, and she was a natural. In 1948 she appeared on Buzzy Wuzzy on television. If you have never heard of it, don’t feel bad. I thought it might be a kid’s show. ABC was trying to develop its network, with all of its five stations. Jerry Bergen a comedian wanted to try a variety series. This 15-minute-long show lasted only four weeks.
She might not have had an illustrious beginning, but tv was good to Imogene. For fifty years, she would appear on tv, including six shows as a regular cast member.
Photo: imdb.com with Caesar, Reiner and Morris
In 1950 she joined the cast of Your Show of Shows, becoming a household name. She was nominated for five Emmys on the show. She won the award in 1952 and lost the other years to Gertrude Berg, Lucille Ball, Red Skelton, and Eve Arden. When discussing the chemistry that she and Caesar had, Imogene said “Two people couldn’t be less alike than Sid and myself. But we kind of know what the other one’s going to do. We pick up each other’s vibes.”
A born comedian, Life magazine described her as taking “people or situations suspended in their own precarious balance between dignity and absurdity, and pushing them over the cliff with one single, pointed gesture.” A critic at the time, said she was not the typical, loud, brash comedian and was “a timid woman who, when aroused, can beat a tiger to death with a feather.”
Photo: imdb.com Cast members
Your Show of Shows was a great success and everyone tuned in Saturday nights to catch the latest show. Fans loved the ongoing skits such as Coca and Caesar playing the bickering couple, the Hickenloopers or a Bavarian town clock that had real life figures and broke down whenever it chimed the hour.
Many viewers mentioned the parodies the show did of movies. These were similar to the ones the Carol Burnett Show also did so well. Two of the scenes that came up often in viewers’ memories were the scene spoofing On the Waterfront when Marlon Brando tells his brother “I could have been a contender” and the parody of From Here to Eternity when Deborah Kerr and Burt Lancaster have a romantic moment on the beach. In Your Show of Shows version, the couple is continually hit with waves until they almost drown.
From Here to Obscurity parody Photo: scottrollinsfilmandtvtriviablog
When the network chose to break up the Caesar-Coca team and give them their own shows, Coca had her own show, but it only lasted a year. For the rest of the fifties, she appeared primarily on drama shows which often aired plays.
In 1960, Imogene tried marriage a second time. She wed King Donovan and they would be together until his death in 1987.
From 1963-64, she joined the cast of Grindl which also lasted only one season. Coca played Grindl. She was an employee of the Foster Temporary Service, and she worked for Anson Foster (Jim Millhollin). Grindl accepts and completes a variety of jobs including babysitter, bank teller, and theater ticket taker. Most of the assignments get her involved in some type of crime or mystery. The show was on Sunday nights between Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color and Bonanza which was a great spot, but it also competed with the popular Ed Sullivan Show.
Grindl Photo: dvdplanetstore.com
In 1966-1967, she jumped into another new sitcom, It’s About Time. This wacky show was created by Sherwood Schwartz and also starred Jim Millhollin. The premise is that two astronauts who were traveling faster than light end up in prehistoric Earth time and when they are unable to return, make friends with the locals living there. This show preceded The Ed Sullivan Show but then ended up competing with Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color.
It’s About Time Photo: youtube.com
During the seventies, she appeared on many shows, including Bewitched, Night Gallery, The Brady Bunch, and Love American Style.
Her busy career didn’t flounder in the eighties. She continued to guest star on shows including Trapper John, MD and Mama’s Family. She appeared in an episode of Moonlighting which produced her sixth Emmy nomination. She would lose to Shirley Knight for thirtysomething.
She was in movies off and on through the decades and perhaps is best known for her role of Aunt Edna in National Lampoon’s Vacation.
Aunt Edna in National Lampoon’s Vacation Photo: ifccenter.com
Of course, during these decades she also continued to appear on many variety and game shows. You will spot her in reruns of The Carol Burnett Show, The George Gobel Show, and Bob Hope and Dean Martin specials among other shows. She also did not ignore her early love of Broadway. She received a Tony Award nomination for “On the Twentieth Century.”
On the Brady Bunch Photo: theveryspecialblog.com
In 1988 at age 80, Coca received the Lifetime Achievement Award in Comedy; her male counterpart receiving the award that year was George Burns. She was also honored in 1995 with the Women in Film Lucy Award, named for Lucille Ball.
Coca finished her career voicing characters for children’s programming. Sadly, she suffered from Alzheimer’s disease. She passed away at home in 2001. When he heard of her passing, Sid Caesar said, “All the wonderful times we shared together meant the world to me.”
Photo: legacy.com
Imogene Coca was truly a special person. She had several different careers rolled into one. It’s hard to imagine that she did not begin comedy until her forties because she was one of the best. I’m sad that at the end of her life she was not able to retain the beautiful memories she gave us during her professional life. Thank you for creating a lifetime of special moments that you left for us.
In October we are having fun with the “What a Character” series. Although this actress spent less than two decades on television, she had a memorable career. Today let’s learn more about Mary Jane Croft.
Photo: rottentomatoes.com
Mary Jane Croft was born in 1916 in Muncie, Indiana. She described herself as a “stage-struck 17-year-old just out of high school,” when she began working at the Muncie Civic Theatre. Moving on to the Guild Theatre Company in Cincinnati led her to radio station work at WLW.
In the thirties, she received a lot of experience and she described her work there: “from 1935-1939, I played parts with every kind of voice and accent: children, babies, old women, society belles, main street floozies—everything.” She appeared in Life with Luigi, Blondie, The Adventures of Sam Spade, The Mel Blanc Show, and Our Miss Brooks, among other shows. She was a frequent guest star on My Favorite Husband, Lucille Ball’s radio show which would become very important to her television career.
Croft had married Jack Zoller, another actor earlier in her life. The marriage did not last long but produced a son, Eric. After her divorce, she moved to Hollywood in 1939.
On the radio Photo: closerweekly.com
While Croft appeared in three big-screen films, most of her professional career was spent on television. Her first role was in Eve Arden’s show, Our Miss Brooks from 1953-1955 once it moved from radio to television. She portrayed Daisy Enright whom she had also voiced on the radio show. Daisy and Connie Brooks competed for the head English teacher position and for the attention of Mr. Boynton. During that time, she also was cast in The Lineup, The Life of Riley, I Married Joan, and Dragnet.
From 1954-1957, she was on I Love Lucy seven times. She and Lucy continued both their professional and personal relationships. In the final season of Lucy’s show, she played Betty Ramsey, a neighbor of the Ricardos and Mertzs when they moved to Connecticut.
In the mid-fifties, she showed up on A Date with Angels, The Eve Arden Show, and The Court of Last Resort.
In 1959, she married Elliott Lewis and they were married until he died in 1990. She met Lewis while appearing on Lucy’s show; he was the producer. Sadly, her son Eric was killed in action in Vietnam.
Photo: ebay.com
From 1955-1958 she was the voice of Cleo on The People’s Choice for 99 episodes. This is another one of those quirky shows from the fifties. The premise is that Socrates Miller, known as “Sock,” joins the city council and clashes with the mayor, John Peoples. Sock then dates and marries John’s daughter Mandy. Sock has a basset hound named Cleo, and Cleo shares her thoughts with the audience about what is going on.
Croft with Lyle Talbot and the Randolphs on Ozzie and Harriet–Photo: pinterest.com
From 1955-1966 she appeared as Clara Randolph on the Ozzie and Harriet Show for a total of 75 episodes. Joe and Clara Randolph were the Nelsons’ neighbors and good friends.
Although Croft did accept roles on Vacation Playhouse in 1966 and The Mothers-in-Law (another Arden show) in 1969, her career from 1962-1974 was with Lucille Ball. She was on The Lucy Show from 1962-1968 as Mary Jane Lewis when Lucy’s original sidekick Vivian Vance left the show. She continued that same role into Here’s Lucy from 1969-1974 for an additional 34 episodes.
Her last acting credit was a TV Movie with Lucille Ball titled Lucy Calls the President.
Croft with Lucille Ball–Photo: closerweekly.com
Croft died of natural causes in 1999.
Ball and Croft–Photo: closerweekly.com
Geoffrey Mark who wrote The Lucy Book: A Complete Guide to Her Five Decades on Television, got to spend time with Croft. He said she was “nothing like the characters she played,” in an exclusive interview with Closer Weekly. “She was intelligent, thoughtful in her speech and prettier than you would think. I found her to be very honest in that there was no nonsense about what she said. If she said it, she meant it. She was aware that she had become this icon mostly because of her association with Lucille Ball, but also because of other things that she did.”
When he asked her how she was able to assume so many character voices, she said that she thought about what the backstory of the character might be and invented a voice that would serve that character. It was something she learned when she worked in radio.
Photo: tumblr.com
Although Croft only appeared on 26 different shows, she had a busy and lucrative career. She is remembered for three major roles: Daisy Enright on Our Miss Brooks, Clara Randolph on Ozzie and Harriet, and Mary Jane Lewis on The Lucy Show and Here’s Lucy. And even if her television career was not long, she was in the entertainment business for her entire life after graduation. She created many memorable radio voices as well. With her numerous roles, she truly was quite a character.
For the month of July we are taking a look at some of the innovative talk shows of the past. With only three channels to choose from in the sixties, almost everyone tuned into The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. However, talk shows were also popular during the day.
The Mike Douglas Show began in Cleveland, Ohio in 1961. It had light banter with guests and featured musical performers daily, although more serious interviews were also conducted from time to time. In 1963, the show was expanded to Pittsburgh, Boston, Baltimore, and San Francisco.
In 1965, the show moved to Philadelphia and went into national syndication that same year. One final move was made in 1978 when it relocated to Hollywood. For 1980, Douglas handed the show over to John Davidson to host. It went through some changes and replaced about one-third of the staff, but the ratings continued to plummet and it was officially cancelled in November of 1981 with more than 6000 shows and 30,000 guests.
Douglas was born in Chicago in 1925 and became a teenage singer, entertaining on the radio and in supper clubs. He sang a lot of big band numbers and became the staff singer at WKY in Oklahoma City before joining the Navy in WWII. He had two hits in the fifties, “Old Lamplighter” and “Ole Buttermilk Sky,” but his career was not going anywhere, so he decided to turn to television.
Photo: eyesofageneration.com
Douglas had a different celebrity co-host every week, and they interviewed a variety of entertainers. The show was very popular and had high ratings. Douglas had a fun personality . In 1976, Match Game received higher ratings, so Douglas made an unscheduled appearance on the game show to congratulate Gene Rayburn on having the number 1 daytime show on the air.
Photo: muppetwikifandom.com
I could literally fill pages with the guest stars and musical performers who appeared on the show. Some of the more interesting ones included two-year-old Tiger Woods who showed off his golf swing for Bob Hope and James Stewart.
Jimmy Stewart, Bob Hope and a very young Tiger Woods Photo: pinterest.com
A Who’s Who listing of guests also included Fred Astaire, Lucille Ball, George Burns, Sid Caesar, Angela Davis, Bette Davis, Judy Garland, Alfred Hitchcock, Malcom X, Mother Teresa, the Muppets, Ralph Nader, Richard Nixon, Vincent Price, and John Wayne.
The “Supreme” music guests Photo: pinterest.com
A variety of musical genres were represented with performers including ABBA, The Beach Boys, The Bee Gees, James Brown, Ray Charles, Cher, Sam Cooke, Electric Light Orchestra, Marvin Gaye, Genesis, The Jacksons, Jefferson Airplane, Elton John, John Lennon with Yoko Ono, The Mills Brothers, The Rolling Stones, Sly and the Family Stone, The Supremes, and Frank Zappa.
With Gene Simmons and Cher Photo: vintage.com
Critics also liked the show. It received its first Emmy in 1967 and would go on to win four more.
Tom Kelly, who co-authored with Douglas on his memoir, revealed why he thought Mike was so successful: “One big key to his great success was he had his ego in check. He always let the guest have the limelight. He was a fine performer. He could sing, he could do comedy, he did it all, but he always gave the guest the spotlight.”
Photo: wikipedia.com
I can remember my mother watching Mike Douglas most days while I played with my toys. Here we are sixty years later and afternoon talk shows like Ellen DeGeneres and Kelly Clarkson are still going strong thanks to pioneers like Mike Douglas who showed us the classy way to be a host.
After learning a bit about the career of Ann Sothern last week, today we take a look at two of her shows: Private Secretary and The Ann Sothern Show. Although they were two different shows, the second almost seemed like a continuation of the first. To make things even more complicated, when the shows went into syndication, Private Secretary was renamed Susie and all the episodes of Susie would air, followed by The Ann Sothern Show and then back to Susie.
Photo: allposters.com
As we learned last week, Ann suffered from hepatitis for three years. With her medical bills mounting and less film work coming in, she needed to make a living, so she turned to television to revive her career.
After appearing in series of ten Maisie films earlier in her career, Ann had a solid fan base. Ann was a smart business woman and she had a 42% ownership in her new show, Private Secretary. The show debuted in 1953.
Sothern with Don Porter–Photo: pinterest.com
Ann portrays Susie MacNamara, a former actress and WAC WWII veteran; she is the secretary to Peter Sands (Don Porter), a talent agent. Susie often complicates life for her boss, although she means well.
One of her best friends was Violet (Ann Tyrell), their receptionist. Cagey Calhoun (Jesse White) is always trying to cause trouble for Peter as a rival talent agent.
Sothern with Ann Tyrell and Jesse White–Photo: episodate.com
While the scripts weren’t ground-breaking, they were well written and witty. Some shows reference one of Mr. Sands’ clients, actress Harriet Lake, which was Ann’s real name.
The show was noted for its state-of-the-art set decoration featuring IBM typewriters and Western Electric phone systems, as well as stylish furnishings.
Photo: wikimedia.com
The show was on Sunday nights on CBS and alternated weeks with highly rated Jack Benny Show. I have never seen this with any other show but Lucky Strikes, the show’s sponsor also financed The Jack Benny Show on CBS and Your Hit Parade on NBC. So, when Your Hit Parade was on hiatus for summer, Private Secretary’s reruns were shown on that network and then new shows would begin in the fall back on CBS.
The show continued to have great ratings but in 1957, even though the show was renewed for the next year, Ann got into an argument with producer Jack Chertok and she left the series which ended. I could never find definitively why they argued, but it had to do with the show’s profits.
Photo: wikipedia.com
Sothern was nominated for Best Actress Emmy for 1955, 1956 and 1957, losing to Loretta Young, Lucille Ball, and Nanette Fabray.
Instead of a sixth year of Private Secretary on CBS, The Ann Sothern Show debuted in 1958 as a weekly show. Chertok kept the rights to the title, hoping to get another actress to fill the MacNamara role. This show was created by Bob Schiller and Bob Weiskopf. Desi Arnaz would produce the show which worked out as Ann and Lucille Ball were very close friends. They appeared on each other’s shows.
In The Ann Sothern Show, Ann now plays Katy O’Connor, the assistant manager of an upscale New York hotel, The Bartley House. Her secretary is Olive Smith (Ann Tyrrell), the front desk clerk is Paul Martine (Jacques Scott), and the bell boy is Johnny Wallace (Jack Mullaney). Later Ken Berry replaced Mullaney as Woody Hamilton.
Many of the cast members from the former show appear on the new series. Although Katy has a boss she answers to, she has a lot of authority running the hotel. Katy’s first boss is Jason Macauley (Ernest Truex), a man who is dominated by his nagging wife Florence (Reta Shaw). When ratings were not great, Truex was replaced by Don Porter as James Devery. As in Private Secretary, there are some romantic currents between Katy and James. Olive’s boyfriend, a dentist, Dr. Gray, is played by Louis Nye. In season two, Jesse White showed up as Oscar Pudney an unethical newsstand owner near the hotel.
Sothern with Jacques Scott–Photo: wikipedia.com
The storylines often revolved around the personal life of the staff and stories about guests staying at the hotel. The concept provided the opportunity to attract a variety of guest stars during its run. In addition to Lucille Ball, actors who appeared on the show included Jack Albertson, Frances Bavier, Constance Bennett, Eva Gabor, Joel Grey, Van Johnson, Jayne Meadows, Howard McNear, Janis Page, Cesar Romero, and Connie Stevens.
Once again Ann was nominated for an Emmy is 1959 but lost to Jane Wyatt for Father Knows Best.
Post Cereals and General Foods were sponsors for this show, and the cast would often appear in commercials at the end of the show. Ann would then sign off with “Well, goodnight everybody. Stay happy!”
Photo: pinterest.com
For the second year, the show’s ratings were decent but not great. The show was moved to Thursday nights up against The Untouchables, a top ten show. The ratings declined, so it was cancelled.
The final episode ended in a cliffhanger. Mr. Devery finally realizes that he is in love with Katy and proposes to her. They kiss but the show ends before Katy can answer yes or no.
I remember watching the shows in syndication and I thought they were good. Ann Sothern appeared to be a likable person and a hard-working actress. Both shows were often in the top 25% of the ratings. With all the reboots that have been done, I have never heard of either of these shows as possibilities and they seem to be good options for a contemporary show.
If you want to check out the shows, Private Secretary has several DVD options. The only place I could find The Ann Sothern Show was on etsy, and the site specifically mentions that it is “not a retail set nor is this a commercial studio release.” Maybe with all the classic television networks debuting, we will see Private Secretary back on the air again soon.
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