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.

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.

Love American Style: Love and the Celebrities

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

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

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

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

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

Love, Love, Love

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

And on a star-spangled night my love,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

January 23, 1970: Love and the Big Night

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

February 25, 1972: Love and the Television Set

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

October 22, 1970: Love and the Bashful Groom

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

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

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

This Full House Was Never Too Crowded

January 30, 2023January 1, 2023 / thewritelife61 / 2 Comments

As we are looking at some of our favorite television families, the series would not be coplete without the Tanners. Airing from 1987 to 1995, Full House appeared on ABC, producing 192 episodes. Jeff Franklin created the show about widower Danny Tanner (Bob Saget) who raised his three daughters: D.J. (Candace Cameron Bure), Stephanie (Jodi Sweetin), and Michelle (Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen) with the help of his brother-in-law Jesse (John Stamos) and best friend Joey (Dave Coulier). DJ’s best friend Kimmy (Andrea Barber) is also on the scene quite often. Interestingly, Coulier was friends with Saget and early in his career, he slept on Saget’s couch while he was trying to become a comedian.

The First Season Cast Members Photo: time.com

Because Saget and Coulier were already friends, the two actors went on a road trip to Las Vegas with Stamos to help them get to know each other. Since Coulier and Stamos were both single at the time, they bonded a lot. On the show, Joey and Jesse also become closer friends, seeming to have more in common with each other than with Danny.

Danny is a sports anchor, his brother-in-law is a musician, and his best friend, a comedian. They juggle schedules to get the girls where they need to go and tuck them in at night.

In season two, Danny becomes the host of a morning show, Wake Up San Francisco. His costar, Rebecca (Lori Loughlin), is young and fun and smart. However, the romance is not between her and Danny; she dates and later marries Jesse.

Saget was always first choice for Danny but because of his schedule, the pilot features John Posey in the role. Jodi Sweetin was brought in after an appearance she made on Valerie. Loughlin was hired for a six-week limited romance but never left once she started.

There were a lot of famous celebrities who appeared on the show including Frankie Avalon, Scott Baio, The Beach Boys, Phyllis Diller, Annette Funicello, Kareem Abdul Jabaar, Little Richard, and Marcia Wallace. On one episode Cameron’s real brother, Kirk Cameron appeared with Chelsea Noble. They began dating and later married.

Surprisingly, the show’s writing staff was inconsistent; Franklin who also wrote for the show was the only writer to stay through eight seasons.

Several of the characters developed catch phrases that were repeated all over the country. Jesse’s was “Have Mercy”; Joey’s was “Cut it Out”; and D.J.’s was “Oh My Lanta.” Stephanie often said “How Rude” while Michelle fittingly had two (one for each twin), with “You Got it Dude” and “You’re in Big Trouble Mister.”

The theme song, “Everywhere You Look,” was co-written by Bennett Salvay and Jesse Frederick, with Frederick doing the singing.

The show was in the top thirty every year after season one. It was on Friday nights for most of its run. There was a short time during season two when it was briefly moved to Tuesdays and then aired on both Tuesdays and Fridays to try to build its audience numbers. During season five, the show moved to Tuesdays until it was canceled. Despite its being in the top 25 in 1995, the network decided to end the show. It cited increasing production costs.

Fun fact, Dave Coulier made a puppet for the show, Mr. Woodchuck. He sold it to Toys R Us if you are ever looking for a gift for a big fan of the show. Another interesting item is that Ashley Olsen was right-handed while Mary Kate was left-handed, so Michelle is ambidextrous.

Unlike so many of the reboots of shows from the 80s and 90s, this show had a sequel, Fuller House, starring the same cast from 2016-2020. The show recently began appearing in Me TV’s lineup of shows.

The cast was definitely one big family on the show and they considered themselves family off the air as well. This came to light recently after the death of Bob Saget. When asked about how they were doing, Coulier commented, “We pull together as a family during moments like this. We’ve pretty much experienced everything that a real family can experience. Getting picked up, getting canceled, marriages, divorces, births, deaths. I mean, it’s pretty much what every family goes through. And we’ve stuck together through all of it.”

He also said that it “was incredible to have a group of people in our lives like this, where we know we’re going to get that instant support system. It’s pretty special.” Bure said that the cast “genuinely love each other.”

Saget, Stamos, and Coulier truly watched the girls grow up and transition from their kids to their friends. It is these relationships that give the show the special heart-warming atmosphere that surrounds most of the scenes. There are the arguments, misunderstandings, and hurt feelings that all families experience, but there is also unconditional love both on and off the set. We would all be better off if we had a “Full House.”

The Phyllis Diller Show: So Much Potential

September 6, 2021 / thewritelife61 / 4 Comments

This month’s blog series is “It’s My Show.” Today we are beginning with a show I’ve discussed a few times over the years that had the perfect cast and concept, but it was cancelled after only one season: The Phyllis Diller Show which also went by The Pruitts of Southampton.

Image result for images of the pruitts of southampton — Photo: pinterest.com

The show was created by David Levy in 1967 and was loosely based on the book House Party by Patrick Dennis. Levy was also the creator/producer for The Addams Family which aired from 1964-1966. The shows also shared composer Vic Mizzy who wrote the themes for both series. Mizzy also wrote the catchy tune from Green Acres. The opening theme song had Phyllis Diller dancing, skipping, and singing through the mansion, and the lyrics were:

PD: Howcha do howcha do, howcha do my dear
What a LOVELY surprise, nice to see you here.

RG: All the bills have been long overdue my dear.

PD: File them under I.O.U…
Howcha do, howcha do, Well HELLO, it’s you!
Like my beads, like my dress?
Aren’t they marvy-poo?
They belong to the internal revenue.
And they got us eating stew.

CHORUS: The Pruitts of Southampton,

Live like the richest folk,
But what the folk don’t know is that
The Pruitts are flat broke!

PD: Howcha do, howcha do, howcha do, my dear

RG: We are out of champagne, and I’m stuck, my dear.

PD: Ask the butler to lend you a buck, my dear.
Howcha do, howcha do, howcha do…

The Pruitts, an incredibly wealthy family, live in the Hamptons. After going through an IRS audit, the family realizes they owe so much in back taxes, $10,000,000 in fact, that they were now broke. The IRS agrees to let them continue living in their mansion because they think exposing such a wealthy family’s poverty would cause a lot of repercussions.

Image result for images of the phyllis diller show — Photo: pinterest.com

Phyllis Diller starred as Phyllis Pruitt. Phyllis lives with her uncle Ned (Reginald Gardiner), her brother Harvey (Paul Lynde), her daughter Stephanie (Pam Freeman), brother-in-law (John Astin), and their butler (Grady Sutton). Midseason, the show was revamped and the family brings in boarders to raise money, including Norman Krump (Marty Ingels) and Vernon Bradley (Billy De Wolfe). They should have been able to raise a bit of money with 68 bedrooms in the house. Other characters included Regina Wentworth (Gypsy Rose Lee), their nosy neighbor and Baldwin (Richard Deacon), the IRS agent. The incredible Charles Lane plays Max.

In addition, there were a lot of guest stars during that single season including Ann B Davis, Bob Hope, Arte Johnson, John McGiver, Louie Nye, Hope Summers, and Mary Wickes.

The shots of the family home were filmed at the Vanderbilt mansion, Biltmore.

The show began on Tuesday nights. At the time, The Red Skelton Hour was one of the most popular shows on television and was tough competition. When the show was revamped, it moved to Friday nights where it was up against Friday Night at the Movies and T.H.E. Cat. If you don’t remember that show, don’t feel bad, you probably remembered very few of the new series that debuted that year.

1967 was not a very profitable year for sitcoms specifically. Besides Phyllis Diller’s show, the season aired Run Buddy Run, Mr. Terrific, The Jean Arthur Show, Occasional Wife, and Pistols and Petticoats. That Girl was one of the few shows to return the following season.

Even though it was named as one of the worst sitcoms ever in several TV Guide listings, critics at the time praised the show. Phyllis Diller was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Actress in 1967. Marlo Thomas won, but there was some great competition including Elizabeth Montgomery, Barbara Eden, and Barbara Stanwyck.

One reviewer on imdb.com titled their review “The worst thing I have ever seen in my life” and followed up with a review that said, “Just kidding, this show is amazing and hilarious and that is why I gave it a 10/10.”

When Vic Mizzy discussed the show in a Televison Academy interview, he said the director was not any good, the scripts weren’t as funny as they could have been and sometimes Phyllis didn’t know her part. He thought those were the reasons the show failed. He thought it could have been unbelievabley funny.

One day Vic got a large check from England and it turns out the show was a hit there decades after it was aired in the United States.

I watched a couple of the episodes on youtube for this blog. Phyllis Diller was in rare form. Her hair is crazy like always and slapstick was part of her performance. The laugh track was annoying, but the show was funny at times. Pam Freeman was a breath of fresh air. In one of the episodes, Phyllis and her brother-in-law were trying to finance a pizza-making machine. They had to work around the fact that Baldwin from the IRS put a pay phone in the home to keep them from making so many long-distance calls. One of the funniest scenes was when Phyllis and her brother-in-law climb up one of the phone poles to tap into the line to talk to Baldwin pretending to be other people in order to get Baldwin to approve their financing. Phyllis had to come up with a variety of different voices during the calls. You could definitely hear a bit of Green Acres influence in the background music for this show. This was a show that only could have been produced in the sixties.

One of the best parts of watching the show was seeing the old commercials. I had forgotten the one about Joy dish soap when the dinner guests could see themselves in the plates. It just reminded me it was joyful to see these old shows in their entirety.

It was a fun show to learn about with an outstanding cast and should have been much more successful than it was. Whether the failure came from the director, the scripts, or some other behind-the-scenes issue, I’m not sure. It’s worth watching an episode or two just to see the wackiness that was associated with some sixties shows, but if I have to watch ten episodes of a show, I’ll take That Girl every time.

The Millionaire and His Wife: Jim Backus and Natalie Schafer

July 9, 2018 / thewritelife61 / 8 Comments

Today we continue our month-long series about the characters on Gilligan’s Island and the stars who portrayed them. We begin with the millionaire, Thurston Howell III, and his wife, Lovey. On the island, their money is worthless, but it doesn’t stop Mr. Howell from bribing other captives when it’s in his best interest. He must have been a boy scout who learned the motto, “Be prepared,” because he and his wife took clothes on a three-hour tour to last a few years. In real life, Natalie Schafer was the millionaire. Both Backus and Schafer had very interesting careers.

Jim Backus

Jim Backus was born in Cleveland in February of 1913. He was one of those stars who seemed to excel in everything: radio, Broadway, animation, big-screen movies, and television series. In an interesting aside, Margaret Hamilton who would go on to have a full career including the Wicked Witch of the West at the Wizard of Oz, was one of his grade school teachers. Jim grew up in a wealthy area, attending Shaw High School in East Cleveland. His father was a mechanical engineer. I could not find exact proof of this but several articles mention he was expelled from the Kentucky Military Institute for riding a horse in the mess hall. He later attended the American Academy of Dramatic Art.

In 1939 he married Betty Kean; they divorced in 1942. One of his famous quotes was “Many a man owes his success to his first wife and his second wife to his success.”

In the 1940s, Backus began appearing on radio as the “rich man,” which he often portrayed afterward on radio and television. He played the role of aviator Dexter Hayes on Society Girl on CBS Radio Network. He also appeared on the Mel Blanc Show as Hartley Benson, an arrogant character, and as Hubert Updike on The Alan Young Show. He also showed up regularly on The Jack Benny Program.

During his radio years, he married Henny Backus whom he was married to the rest of his life.

He began his big-screen cinema career in 1949 and would go on to appear in almost 100 movies, including Here Come the Nelsons, Pat and Mike, and Rebel Without a Cause (seen above). His most famous movie role was probably Tyler Fitzgerald in It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World. My favorite movie of his is Hello Down There with Tony Randall and Janet Leigh from 1969.

During the 1950s, he began auditioning for roles on television. He would go on to appear on 18 different series during that decade, including I Married Joan, on which he starred with Joan Davis. On the show, Backus played a respected judge and Davis was his scatterbrained wife. The show was very popular and lasted three seasons.

As if he wasn’t busy enough with acting in the 1950s, he also made a song recording with Phyllis Diller that hit the top 40 in 1958. It was called “Delicious,” and the two of them would take a sip of champagne throughout the song, saying “Delicious.” As the song continues, they get more drunk and a bit giddy, slurring their words and laughing hysterically.

His television career continued to be demanding in the 1960s. He appeared on 25 series, and four of them had regular starring sitcom roles. In 1960, The Jim Backus Show debuted. The program focuses on Backus in the role of Mike O’Toole, the editor/proprietor of a low rent wire service struggling to stay in business.

He had made movie shorts about Mr. Magoo in the 1950s and in 1960, he starred in 130 episodes of Mr. Magoo and would make 26 more episodes under the title The Famous Adventures of Mr. Magoo in 1964-1965. Mr. Magoo was an older nearsighted man who was very popular, appearing in ads and merchandise for years. The humor of the show was based on the difference between what Mr. Magoo thinks he sees and the reality of what was really there. Jim Backus liked to repeat a story about his famous character. He was in the movie, Don’t Bother to Knock, with Marilyn Monroe. She asked Jim to meet her in her dressing room later and his curiosity got the best of him, so he went, only to learn she wanted him to portray Mr. Magoo which he did.

This was also the decade he was offered the role of Thurston Howell III on Gilligan’s Island in 1964. That same year he was asked to play the role of Abner Kravitz on a new show, Bewitched but turned it down because he was committed to Gilligan’s Island. Gilligan’s Island would run from 1964-1967 and he would go on to appear in several Gilligan revivals including the far-fetched The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan’s Island.

During 1968-1969, Backus took the role of Mr. Dithers in a revival of Blondie.

During the 1960s, he also appeared on 77 Sunset Strip, The Beverly Hillbillies, Daniel Boone, The Wild, Wild West, and I Spy, among others.

Backus continued his television work into the 1970s where he appeared on 31 shows. He appeared in a variety of genres including I Dream of Jeannie, Young Dr. Kildare, Medical Center, The Brady Bunch, Gunsmoke, Ellery Queen, Charlie’s Angels, Fantasy Island, and The Love Boat.

Backus also continued his commercial work in the 1970s and 1980s. He was the spokesperson for La-Z-Boy furniture and General Electric. He and Natalie Schafer appeared in an ad for Redenbacher’s popcorn. They played their characters from Gilligan’s Island but apparently had been rescued and were in a luxurious home. In a sweet ending, it was the last television appearance for either of them.

When Jim Backus had a little bit of free time between acting jobs, he loved to golf. He also tried his hand at writing a few books and film scripts, including his autobiography which he wrote with his wife, Only When I Laugh in 1965.

In July of 1989, Backus died from pneumonia, after suffering from Parkinson’s disease for many years.

He had a long and varied career and seemed to have many friends in the business.

Natalie Schafer

A millionaire in real life, Natalie Schafer seemed like a very fun woman, a bit of a character. She was born in November of 1900 in New Jersey and raised in Manhattan. She was quite secretive about her age, often claiming she was born in 1912.

She began her career in Broadway, appearing in 17 plays. She married actor Louis Calhern in 1934 and they divorced in 1942. She moved to Los Angeles in 1941 to become a film actress and received parts in 34 movies. Incidentally, she and her ex remained friends and appeared together in the movie Forever Darling in 1956.

Like Backus, Schafer typically played wealthy and sophisticated roles. She did not have the versatility her tv husband had but continued to stay busy acting on television. While Gilligan’s Island was her only long-term role, she appeared on 21 shows in the 1950s (including I Love Lucy, Loretta Young, Phil Silvers, and Topper); 8 in the 1960s (including The Beverly Hillbillies, 77 Sunset Strip, and Route 66); 15 in the 1970s (including Mayberry RFD, The Brady Bunch, and McMillan and Wife); and an additional 8 shows in the 1980s before she passed away (including Three’s Company, The Love Boat, Trapper John, and Simon and Simon).

Schafer made most of her money from investments, particularly in real estate.

Several sources revealed that much of her fortune was bequeathed to either her Gilligan’s Island co-star Dawn Wells or to care for her dogs; however, at least $1.5 million was donated to the Lillian Booth Actors’ Home to renovate their outpatient wing. I never saw any answers from Wells about inheriting money, but on Vicki Lawrence’s talk show, she did say that Schafer spent her last years living with her. Like many wealthy people, she was quite thrifty. She often admitted that she accepted the role of Mrs. Howell because she got a free trip to Hawaii to film the pilot and didn’t expect it to get picked up.

Everyone seemed to like her on the set. Dawn Wells said she especially adored Schafer and Backus. Schafer was a hard worker and liked to keep fit. In a Chicago Tribune article from October 25, 1965, she relayed her secrets for staying in shape. For one thing, she did her own stunts on the show. She also said she swam nude every morning and evening, doing 100 strong kicks at the side of the pool. She also invented an ice cream diet for herself. She claimed to eat a quart a day, saying she had a bowl of vanilla ice cream with her coffee, two bowls of varying flavors for both lunch and dinner, and another single bowl for an afternoon snack. She claimed that she would lose three pounds in five days.

In 1990, Schafer passed away from liver cancer. After her death, she wanted people to realize her true age, and many of her closest friends were quite surprised to learn she was 12 years older than she claimed.

While Thurston Howell III and his wife Lovey were two interesting characters, I don’t think they can compete with the characters who were Jim Backus and Natalie Schafer. I had a lot of fun learning about them.

Love and the Funny Show

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

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

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

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

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

The snappy melody was set to the following words:

Love, Love, Love

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

And on a star-spangled night my love,

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

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

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

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

January 23, 1970: Love and the Big Night

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

February 25, 1972: Love and the Television Set

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

October 22, 1970: Love and the Bashful Groom

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

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

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

Next week we get to know The Odd Couple.

This Man Was Busy, Busy, Busy

December 4, 2017 / thewritelife61 / 3 Comments

Most television viewers today would not recognize the name Billy De Wolfe, but if you played his voice for them, they would immediately know it as Professor Hinkle from Frosty the Snowman. I remember Billy primarily from That Girl as Ann Marie’s drama coach, Jules Benedict. I was amazed to see he only appeared in three episodes because he was such a strong character, I would have thought he was in at least 20 shows. He became known as the prim, pompous, and sarcastic stock character.

Billy was born William Andrew Jones in Massachusetts in 1907. His father was a bookbinder, and they moved back to his parents’ home country of Wales shortly after his birth, returning to the United States when he was nine years old. His parents hoped he would become a Baptist minister, but his dreams were grounded in acting. He started his entertainment career as an usher. He then became a dancer with the Jimmy O’Connor band. This led to his appearing on the vaudeville circuit where a theater manger offered him the use of his name, Billy De Wolfe. He traveled to London to perform for five years and returned to America in 1939.

In 1942 he joined the US Navy where he became a Seaman 1^st Class as a musician. Before he enlisted, he was offered a contract with Paramount, and he continued with them in 1944 when he left the Navy. His first movie Dixie was with Dorothy Lamour and Bing Crosby. He appeared in nine movies during the 1940s.

He loved old-fashioned musical comedies and had a chance to act with Doris Day and Gene Nelson in both Tea for Two and Lullaby of Broadway. He and Doris would be friends for the rest of his life. He gave her the nickname Clara Bixby because he said she looked more like a Clara than a Doris, and many of their friends referred to her as Clara.

He transitioned to theater and performed on the live stage in both Broadway and London.

He then decided to try television where he became very successful. Above he appears on the Dick Van Dyke Show. He appeared on six shows before obtaining his first role as a regular on a sitcom. During the late 1960s and early 1970s he would be cast in five different sitcoms.

In 1966, he was part of the amazing cast of The Pruitts of South Hampton. I have mentioned this show before in my blogs, and it is hard to believe that this incredible cast could not pull off a more successful show: Phyllis Diller, Louis Nye, John Astin, Reginald Gardner, Paul Lynde, Gypsy Rose Lee, John McGiver, Richard Deacon, Marty Ingels, and De Wolfe. The series was based on a novel, House Party, by Patrick Dennis. A wealthy family realizes it owes the IRS $10,000,000 in back taxes. They want to keep the appearance that they still have plenty of money while living in a smaller home with one car and a butler. One of the first shows to debut in color, it was cancelled after 30 episodes.

In 1966, De Wolfe also began the role of Jules Benedict on That Girl. He played a sarcastic acting teacher who made it clear it was painful to work with these young actors who simply had no idea of how to act. But we also realized that he had a big heart that he did not want anyone to see. His last episode was in 1969.

In 1967, he took a role as radio station manager Roland Hutton Jr. on Good Morning, World. Dave Lewis (Joby Baker) and Larry Clarke (Ronnie Schell) are small-time radio hosts Lewis and Clarke on the air from 6-10 am. Lewis is married and an introvert while Clarke is a swinging single. Also appearing on this show was a new comer, Goldie Hawn, who played the Lewises’ neighbor. The show only lasted a year. Several critics pointed out that De Wolfe was the funniest person on the show.

In 1969, De Wolfe was able to stay employed for another 13 episodes on the series The Queen and I. He starred with Larry Storch. They worked on an aging ocean liner, The Amsterdam Queen, which the owners were planning on selling for scrap. Duffy (Storch) wants to save the ship through any means possible, but Nelson (De Wolfe) doesn’t like or trust him, although he fails to ever catch him doing anything wrong.

Doris Day began her sitcom in 1968. For the 1970 season, she and her kids moved to San Francisco to live over an Italian restaurant, owned by the Palluccis (Kaye Ballard and Bernie Kopell). She hired her friend Billy to play Willard Jarvis, the bad-tempered neighbor who really was a peach when you got to know him.

During his years on the Doris Day Show, he also appeared on the Debbie Reynolds Show and Love American Style. He was also a regular on the talk show circuits, appearing many times on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show and the Mike Douglas Show.

Phoebe Murgatroyd was a famous commercial character. De Wolfe donned a hat and shawl (but kept his iconic mustache) to portray the romance expert who gave love life advice for this series of Ban Roll-On deodorant ads.

Who realized in 1969 that an animation special, based on the song, “Frosty the Snowman,” would go on to become a beloved classic and would play a role in generations of kids celebrating Christmas. For almost 50 years, viewers have cried at Professor Hinkle’s nasty act of locking Frosty in a greenhouse to melt. While I look forward to Charlie Brown and Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer every holiday, Frosty is my must-see every December.

In the early 1970s, Billy was diagnosed with lung cancer. He passed away in 1974, his friend Doris helping him through this tough time.

Billy De Wolfe is another example of one of these great performers who could do it all. He was a dancer. He appeared in many lucrative movies. He was successful on Broadway. When he decided to give television a try, he stayed employed with the medium until his death. And he left the legacy of Frosty the Snowman that has been a Christmas staple for almost 50 years. If you are searching for things to do this winter, add watching several episodes of Billy De Wolfe shows to your list and get to know this multi-talented man a bit better.

It Only Takes One Episode to Get Smart

October 16, 2017 / thewritelife61 / 6 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Time to Get Things Started”

April 3, 2017April 3, 2017 / thewritelife61 / 2 Comments

John Lennon said, “Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.” That is especially true when looking at our two television shows today. We are going to explore two shows that mixed reality and fantasy, or humanity and puppets more accurately. Madame’s Place and The Muppets are both what they now call a mockumentary. Both shows featured a puppet hosting a late-night tv show, interacting with humans. On Madame’s Place, Madame was the only non-human, while The Muppets blended muppets and humans throughout the show. We’ll also take a quick peek at the men behind the fantasy: Wayland Flowers and Jim Henson.

Madame’s Place debuted in 1982 while The Muppets began in 2015, 33 years apart. Both shows lasted one season and featured celebrities interacting with the characters. Both Madame and Miss Piggy had Jay Leno on their show. Both shows also went beyond the professional lives of their stars, featuring their personal lives as well.

Madame’s Place

Madame lived in a large mansion. All 51 episodes included her three-person staff: Bernadette Van Gilder (Susan Tolsky) who was her secretary; Walter Pinkerton (Johnny Haymer) who was an ex-boxer, now butler; and her niece Sara Joy Pitts (Judy Landers) who was a bit of a dumb blonde. A young Corey Feldman appeared in half the shows as Buzzy St. James, the next-door neighbor boy.

Madame clad herself in feathers and sequins. Madame was never described as politically correct, and she did not mince words with her staff or her nightly guests. She always had a witty comeback.

Some of the guests on her show included Frankie Avalon, Joyce Brothers, Scatman Crothers, Phyllis Diller, Eva Gabor, George Gobel, Arsenio Hall, Pee-Wee Herman, Jay Leno, Anthony Newley, Charles Nelson Reilly, Debbie Reynolds, John Schneider, William Shatner, Toni Tenille, Betty White, and Fred Willard.

I was surprised to learn that Wayland Flowers was actually born Wayland Parrott Flowers in Georgia in 1939. He passed away in 1988 in California from cancer. He always performed with Madame, and their first break happened when they were cast on The Andy Williams Show in the mid-1960s. They appeared on Laugh-In, The Hollywood Squares, and The Mike Douglas Show, as well as four years on Solid Gold.

Flowers once said that Madame had a mind of her own, and sometimes what she said shocked him.

If you wish to see Madame in action, there are several youtube videos of her. Madame’s Place s0le13 is an episode where Madame holds a contest to determine her next (and 7^th) husband.

The Muppets

Like Madame’s Place, The Muppets showed life on a late-night talk show. The gang is all here. Kermit and Miss Piggy have ended their relationship, but it is obvious they still have feelings for each other. The show is Up Late with Miss Piggy. Before the show went live, Kermit always said, “Time to get things started.”

THE MUPPETS – “Pig Girls Don’t Cry (Pilot)” – Miss Piggy is furious that Kermit booked Elizabeth Banks as a guest on her late night talk show Up Late with Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear meets his girlfriend’s parents, and Grammy Award-winning rock band Imagine Dragons performs their new single “Roots,” on the season premiere of “The Muppets,” TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 22 (8:00-8:30 p.m., ET) on the ABC Television Network. (ABC/Andrea McCallin) KERMIT THE FROG

Kermit is the executive producer; his best friend, Fozzy Bear, is the co-host; Gonzo is the head writer with fellow writers Rizzo the Rat and Pepe the King Prawn; Scooter is in charge of talent, Bobo is the stage manager; Dr. Bunsen Honeydew and Beaker are the prop handlers; Uncle Deadly is in charge of Miss Piggy’s wardrobe; Sam the Eagle is in charge of the network’s Standards and Practices; Denise, another Pig, and Kermit’s current girlfriend, is in charge of marketing; the house band is the Electric Mayhem; and we’re not totally sure what the Swedish Chef actually does. Rowlf the Dog owns a bar across the street and many of the characters retire there after the show to talk about the evening’s performances.

The show mixes humans and muppets. For example, Fozzy is dating a human girl, and her parents don’t approve.

The show cleverly made fun of a lot of the late-night shows. Some of the guests who came to dish with Piggy included Christina Applegate, Elizabeth Banks, Jason Bateman, Jere Burns, Kristen Chenoweth, Laurence Fishburn, Josh Groban, Joan Jett, Mindy Kaling, Jay Leno, Willie Nelson, and Reese Witherspoon.

The show was cancelled after one year. A lot of people complained about The Muppets living as adults in adult situations. This was unfair criticism because the Muppets began as a show aimed at adults.

Jim Henson was born in Mississippi in 1936 and died in New York in 1990. He began creating puppets in high school. While at the University of Maryland, he created a show starring Kermit among other now-unknown puppets called Sam and Friends, an adult show. The show appeared in television in the Washington, DC area from 1955-1961.The puppets lip-synched popular songs and acted in sketches spoofing television shows. Henson founded Muppets, Inc. in 1958. The Muppets then appeared on late night talk shows.

In 1969, the Muppets moved to Sesame Street where they became famous. The Muppet Show was on television from 1976-81, and the crew made several movies including The Muppet Movie, The Great Muppet Caper, and The Muppets Take Manhattan.

In the 1980s, Disney became involved with the Muppets and several television shows occurred (The Jim Henson Hour in 1989 and Muppets Tonight from 1996-98), along with a couple more movies. In 2004, Disney acquired all rights to the Muppets and made additional movies.

I’m not sure why neither of these shows made it to year two. Maybe people just couldn’t accept the interaction of puppets and humans. With The Muppets, I think some people who would have liked the show assumed it was for kids while people who assumed it was for kids were unhappy it was an adult show.

I found both shows a lot of fun. They didn’t take themselves or celebrities too seriously. Another show I fell in love with that put kids’ characters into modern situations was the New Looney Tunes, but that’s a show we’ll explore in detail in a future blog.

I could not find an author for the following quote: “It’s not reality that shapes us, but the lens through which your brain views the world that shapes your reality.” I don’t know about you, but in watching the news and reading newspapers (ok, almost no one reads newspapers anymore), I find reality is not a fun place to dwell in. I will happily add a bit of fantasy. It seems to produce a lot of great one-liners.

Piggy: I’m telling you this because we’re friends: we are no longer friends.

********************************************************************

Fozzie: I knew you wouldn’t approve it so I went over your head.
Kermit: I’m the boss.
Fozzie: Oh that’s right. So I went behind your back.

********************************************************************************

Cousin Charlie: Well, if you need me I’ll be in my dressing room practicing my collection of one-liners.
Madame: Well, be sure to do a good job darling. They’re all in your face.
*********************************************************************************

Madame: These are my Summer Diamonds. Some are diamonds, some are not.