This month we are celebrating Classic TV Shows. In the fifties, our show today was very popular under two different names: The Gale Storm Show and Oh, Susanna. In 1956, Hal Roach Studios premiered The Gale Storm Show starring Gale Storm. The series would be on the air four years, producing 125 episodes. When it was sold for syndication it was retitled, Oh, Susanna.
Susanna Pomeroy (Storm) is a cruise director on a ship that traveled around the world. A fun fact, Gale had a daughter in 1956 who was named Susanna for this character. A regular group of characters called the ship home including Elvira Nugent (Zasu Pitts) often called Nugie, Captain Huxley (Roy Roberts), and Cedric (James Fairfax).
Zasu Pitts was under contract to Hal Roach Studios in the 1930s where she made about 16 comedy shorts. You might have more curiosity about how Pitts got her name Zasu which truly was her name. Her aunts Eliza and Susan both wanted her named for them, so her mother came up with Zasu for both. Pitts was nominated for supporting actress for the Emmys in 1959. She had some tough competition including Rosemary DeCamp for Love That Bob, Verna Felton for December Bride, Elinor Donahue for Father Knows Best, and Kathy Nolan for The Real McCoys; they all lost to Ann B. Davis for Love That Bob.
Like The Love Boat, which would air decades later, guest stars traveled the seas as well. These stars included Pat Boone, William Frawley, Lorne Greene, and Boris Karloff.
The show started its life on CBS and ended it at ABC. Some of the plots include Nugey gives a boring passenger a glamour treatment and then spreads a rumor she is a countess to give her more excitement. However, two detectives hear this and assume she is an international jewel thief they have been searching for; Nugey finds herself the victim of some con men in Naples and Susanna has to recover her life savings from the bad guys; and Susanna tries to impress a passenger who was the friend of one of her former classmates, and she claims to be married to wealthy passenger Charles Martingale and then has to keep the mother from meeting Martingale.
Storm had a successful movie career, but it was almost nonexistent by the early 1950s. She was also a recording artist who had several top twenty hits. On this show, she sings on almost every episode.
The Gale Storm Show was one of the most popular sitcoms on television in the late fifties and set the stage for what was to come into the sixties.
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