EMMYS 1965: The Dick Van Dyke Show (season 4)

NETWORK: CBS

The fourth season saw The Dick Van Dyke Show continue at the height of its popularity to find new ways to tell stories, introduce more backstory for Rob and Laura, and continue to provide serious public service commentary packed into a hilarious comedy shell. The season opens with a classic sitcom questioning of gender norms. Laura beats up a guy for Rob, and this causes him to question his masculinity and wrestle with how he feels about how "feminine" is wife is or isn't. You've probably seen similar episodes on other shows since then, but what's interesting about this one is that it calls out a real-life behind-the-scenes issue. It was very unusual to see women in slacks on television back in the mid-1960s. Famously, Gene Roddenberry put his female officers in pants in his original Star Trek pilot, and one of the network's notes was insistence they wear skirts. (Just as a side note, it wasn't misogyny to blame for how short they were, though costumer Bill Theiss did like to play with as little fabric as possible. The miniskirts were a request from actress Grace Lee Whitney who wanted to show off her legs. ...Of course, on some other cast members they end up so short as to barely be a skirt -- there's a matching uniform panty under it which is prominently displayed on a few crewwomen! But I digress.) Mary Tyler Moore told the network that she wanted to wear slacks around the house on the show because she was a housewife and that's what she would wear. There's a moment in this episode where Rob comes in and complains that his wife is always in slacks and why can't she be more feminine. Laura retorts, "I thought you liked me in slacks!" And the episode eventually ends with Rob realizing he was talking nonsense, borne out of insecurity. The rest of the episode is a hoot too, as Rob privately engages a judo tutor (why was judo such a thing in the '60s?), culminating in his desire to fight his wife to prove he can beat her.

In a similar story about gender issues, Ritchie begins coming home from school with black eyes given to him by a female bully. The show dances around the question of whether it's ever okay to hit a girl. I like that it came down to, against their better judgment and with much equivocating, Rob and Laura instructing Ritchie that if she attacks him again he can defend himself. We also get a brief couple looks at the girl's parents, and from what we see of their marriage it seems the child is just mirroring what she sees at home. The final solution to the episode is that Ritchie does avoid hitting the girl, but gets her to leave him alone - by kissing her. While I really dislike the trope that children are violent because they have crushes, it's hilarious that the girl wanted him to kiss her only to drop him once she decided he was a bad kisser!

One criticism that I do have for the series, however, is that sometimes for the sake of story it seems to forget that Rob and Laura have a son. Every now and then the Petries will run off and do something with their friends and I just wonder, "Who's watching Ritchie?" Or they'll be home and he's nowhere to be seen. Granted, they do hire a babysitter in one episode, but sometimes it seems like there's no time to even line one up. It's not a big deal, but it's something that would become much more of an issue in the future for a series like Everybody Loves Raymond. Thankfully, young Larry Matthews gets a few episode too and another standout this season is "Boy#1, Boy #2" in which Rob is tasked with writing a commercial for two kids, and ends up casting his son and the neighbor boy. Laura and Millie's inner stage moms come out and get competitive and the whole exercise proves the old W.C. Fields advice to never work with children. Kudos to the writers, actors, and directors for making good kid actors look like bad kid actors.

We get more celebrity guest stars this season as well. The first is comedian Don Rickles who appears in a two-part episode. First, he is introduced in a flashback episode revolving around the old "pregnant woman stuck in an elevator" cliche. But the clever bit here is that he's attempting to rob the Petries when the elevator is stopped. Part two has him in jail as a convict, and he's invited the Alan Brady Show to come perform a special show for the boys in the clink, which he emcees.



Season four finally breaks with tradition and Alan Brady, as portrayed by Carl Reiner, is finally shown onscreen no longer obscuring his face. It's good, but I do sort of miss the old mystery gag. Still, the episode really wouldn't have worked that way. There's a great story where he's cast in a Tennessee Williams-type play and can't help from secretly hiring Rob to punch it up to be more his brand of humor.

Another great message episode is a hilarious story about an intoxicated Laura trying to entertain her in-laws for the first time. Moore is phenomenal in this episode. We watched it as a family over Thanksgiving, and the humor still plays just as well today. The smart thing though is, while we are laughing at the situation, the episode had an important message: never take another person's prescription medication. This is not a subject that gets a lot of television attention even these days (there were a few shows that did stories about Ritalin a decade ago), but it's just as important an issue today. With the present opioid epidemic, it's fascinating to see a message like this on network television in 1964.

As in previous seasons, the series loves to play with structure. Not only do we have the usual flashback episodes, but we have one this season which is framed as a court case. It's a very fun story revolving around faulty pillows, with an unexpected culmination. Ed Begley guest starts as the judge.

The changing music scene also gets lampooned in this season. There's a take on the contemporary Beatlemania, when a hugely popular British invasion musical duo are guests on The Alan Brady Show and Rob is forced to hide them out at his house and try to keep it a secret. In another episode, Rob learns that a terrible song he wrote in the army is now a hit pop record. It's a good episode about the importance of making good deals regarding music publishing rights. As usual, the show has writer's perspective on show business and how it can rook good people out of their due.

In another sign of the times, an old friend of Rob's has become something of a Hugh Hefner type and offers Rob a job at his "gentleman's magazine." While tamer than Playboy, it's amazing how much this episode was able to get away with given censorship of the time. It helps that so much is implied rather than outright stated, but it's still very clear there's something salacious going on.

There's a hilarious episode with a great message called "Show of Hands," in which Rob accidentally stains his hands black on the same night he's supposed to accept an award for the show. This might not be too big a deal were it not an award from the Committee for Interracial Integration. With good humor, the series makes a wonderful statement about race relations that sadly remains as important and relevant as ever.

Finally, I want to mention another two-part episode with an important guest star. In "Stacey Petrie," Rob's brother Stacey comes to town, played by Dick Van Dyke's real brother, Jerry Van Dyke. It gives Jerry a good character to play, though I'm not sure I was ever as engaged in the story as I perhaps should have been.

The 1965 Emmy Award ceremony was the most bizarre one arguably in the entire history of the Awards. They drastically changed the way the awards were done, eliminating most categories and throwing everything into four broad categories: directing, writing, acting, and overall program. In each category, several awards were given. So, comedies were competing along with dramas and variety shows. It's a bizarre footnote in history. While in earlier years there were sometimes too many categories (dramas were sometimes split into as many as three categories), this seemed a bizarre over-correction. Dick Van Dyke won in the "Actors and Performers" category alongside such various personalities as Barbra Streisand and Leonard Bernstein. Rather than clear genre categories, The Dick Van Dyke Show was one of four programs awarded "Outstanding Program Achievement" and the only comedy to win (two other winners were variety programs or specials).

Also due to the strangeness of that year's categories, the award for writing went to the drama series The Defenders, and The Dick Van Dyke Show lost in that category for the only time in its run. I believe that had it been in a designated comedy writing category, Carl Reiner's nominated episode, "Never Bathe on Sunday" would have won him another Emmy. It's a classic episode in which Rob and Laura go away on a second honeymoon only for Laura to get her toe caught in the faucet will taking a bath. For most of the show, Laura is an offstage voice in the bathroom (since she's naked in the tub) and the situation is really smart and funny. Mary Tyler Moore is great in it, though at the time of filming she was annoyed at being off camera for nearly the whole show and she flipped out at Reiner over it (she was on edge, as she was quitting smoking at the time). Despite the backstage drama, what resulted was a standout half-hour of television.

FAVORITE EPISODES: My Mother Can Beat Up My Father, The Lady and the Baby Sitter, 4 1/2, Pink Pills and Purple Parents, It Wouldn't Hurt to give Us a Raise, The Death of the Party, The Case of the Pillow, Girls Will Be Boys, Your Home Sweet Home is My Home, Never Bathe on Sunday, Show of Hands

UP NEXT: The Dick Van Dyke Show (for the last time!)

EMMYS 1964: The Dick Van Dyke Show (season 3)

NETWORK: CBS

Let us return to Wednesday nights on CBS for the second consecutive Outstanding Program in the Field of Comedy Emmy for The Dick Van Dyke Show. The series is now in its third season at the height of its popularity. What had already been a great show took some more chances in the third year to explore some more contemporary themes and issues.

The series opened with another flashback episode, this time to the day Richie was brought home from the hospital. A typical sitcom trope now, Rob comes to believe that their baby has been switched with someone else's at the hospital. Similar to the episode of Full House where Jesse doesn't know which twin is which, Rob resorts to taking a footprint of the baby and comparing it with the hospital records. After the Petries receive a gift meant for the other family (the hospital had frequently gotten their rooms confused), Rob arranges a meeting with the other couple to return it and, he believes, to swap babies. Boy, is he surprised when it is revealed the other couple is black! It's a great laugh moment and shows he was just being paranoid (though it's worth pointing out that, depending on a number of factors, African American babies can look a lot lighter at birth). Not only is this a hilarious resolution to the story, but a subtle statement about civil rights in the country. In 1963, the American South is still segregated and white characters on television don't interact with black ones as equals quite so frequently. It is also worth considering that the entire story hinges on both couples being in nearby rooms at the hospital. So although the integration in the episode exists predominantly for a gag, its presence serves as an unobtrusive message of tolerance.

Exploration of marital issues also goes further in season three, this time broadening to characters beyond Rob and Laura. In "The Lady and the Tiger and the Lawyer," a nice unmarried neighbor moves in next door and so Rob and Laura each try to set him up with someone. The story takes an unexpected turn at the end when the man, though he enjoyed both dates, decides not to pursue a relationship with either of them, not because there's anything wrong with either of them, but because he has a history of spousal abuse and is in therapy to deal with his anger issues. He isn't ready for another relationship, realizing he needs to work on himself first. What began as sitcom hijinks of "which girl will win out?" ends on a sobering and mature discussion of divorce and domestic violence, while allowing him not to seem like a monster but a self-aware man who doesn't want to hurt anyone else. It's a surprising but excellent episode.

Similarly, there's an episode where Rob begins to suspect that his neighbor Jerry is stepping out on his wife with another woman. This as it is would be a bit of a mature subject for a TV sitcom, but as the story unfolds we find that the other woman is not a mistress but a psychologist who was recommending a marriage counselor for Jerry because he and Millie have been having problems. The audience is led to believe initially that the marriage is in trouble because Jerry's being a cad, but in the end it's just that marriage is hard and he's being proactive by finding someone to help them. This is the first sitcom episode I'm aware of to suggest marital counseling. And it seems to work because Jerry and Millie stay together.

It's not all serious, though. There's a typical sitcom plot where Rob and Jerry go in together on buying a boat, much to the chagrin of their wives, and strain on their friendship. In another, Rob fears he is going bald (to which I relate), which leads to some fun scenes with Mel Cooley, since he too is bald. Laura has her own little secret exposed when she finally reveals to Rob that she's been lying about their age the whole time and she was only 17 when they got married. This leads to the first of several two-part episodes this season where they worry their marriage may not be technically legal (another sitcom trope), and run off to get remarried.

Another two-part story gives us another fascinating look behind the scenes of the comedy world. Sally is a guest on a late night talk show (think Johnny Carson), and Buddy and Rob lose a day's work helping her write material for it. That one appearance turns into a return appearance, and soon they are losing work writing their own show, a situation that worsens when Sally is offered a sort of permanent fixture role on the talk show, leaving her to abandon writing duties for The Alan Brady Show. Things get even more uncomfortable when Laura takes a job as their secretary/stenographer of sorts to help them in Sally's absence. Rob finds it difficult to work alongside his wife, and ultimately Laura exhausts herself trying to hold that part-time job and maintain all of her regular household work to keep Rob happy.

The art world is lampooned in a few different episodes. "October Eve" finds Laura unwittingly being painted nude and the painting being displayed in a gallery. In "The Masterpiece", Rob accidentally spends an absurd amount of money on a painting. When it is discovered it's painted over something else, they strip away some of it to see what's underneath: a version of American Gothic with smiling figures. They consult an art dealer to see if it's worth anything, only to learn that the painting on top which they destroyed was actually painted by Frank Sinatra under a pseudonym, but is now ruined. That same episode contains one of my favorite bits, where Laura allows herself to buy one thing at the auction, and she chooses some bizarre sculpture that no one is able to identify or explain. They just call it "a thing", and she knows immediately that she wants it until she gets it home and doesn't know what to do with it.

The series also had a special Christmas episode, presented almost entirely as an episode of the fictional Alan Brady Show. There's a flashback to explain the premise (which I think was a mistake), but the basic idea is that the writers (Rob, Buddy and Sally) and their families join Alan for a series of sketches and songs for the holidays. Carl Reiner appears again as Alan Brady, his face this time obscured by a Santa Claus beard. The cast perform "I Am a Fine Musician" for the second time, having done so previously last season. Speaking of recurring bits, there was another episode focusing on Rob again being roped into directing the annual community variety show. This episode guest stars character actress Eleanor Audley, whose voice is immediately recognizable to Disney fans: the previous decade she had voiced both Cinderella's wicked stepmother and Maleficent in Sleeping Beauty.

Other notable guest stars pop up in an episode about old-time radio stars, and feature some faces you might not know, but voices you very well may. One of these is Richard Haydn (playing a character called Edwin Carp here), whose voice I immediately recognized as the caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland, and whose face you might recall as he would go on to play Max in The Sound of Music. I also recognized guest actor Michael Forest from Star Trek; he doesn't play a Greek god here, but rather an old boyfriend of Laura's who is now a priest.

Not only did The Dick Van Dyke Show win it's second Emmy for Comedy Series, but both Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore won Emmys for their performances, the show won an Emmy for Direction, and another Emmy for writing for the episode "The Plots Thicken". In this story, Rob's father buys a cemetery plot for both Rob and Laura, only for Laura to remind Rob that her father already gave them a plot for their wedding. The argument over who would be laid to rest with who brings out underlying strife and resentments between the in-laws. The writing of the series continued to be strong, headed by Carl Reiner, along with other solid writers including new to the writers' room, Garry Marshall, another television veteran who would go on to create his own sitcom staples, including Happy Days.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention the introduction of yet another footstool gag this season. Now Rob might not only tumble over the footstool during the opening or smartly sidestep it, but he sometimes notices, steps to avoid, and then trips on the leg and stumbles anyway.

The third season builds on the successes of the second season, keeping the show funny and fresh, expanding stories across several episodes, going further into the lives of the characters, and also making time to explore relevant cultural issues. Indeed, I could go on about many other standout episodes, but this is meant to be an overview, not an episode guide! The Dick Van Dyke Show continues to be worthwhile viewing in its third season. It was a good year for a show at the top of its game, and a good year for Dick Van Dyke who of course would appear a few months later in Disney's Mary Poppins.

FAVORITE EPISODES: That's My Boy??, Laura's Little Lie, The Alan Brady Show Presents, The Third One From the Left, My Husband is the Best One, My Part-Time Wife, A Nice Friendly Game of Cards, My Neighbor's Husband's Other Life, I'd Rather Be Bald Than Have No Head at All, Teacher's Petrie

UP NEXT: The Dick Van Dyke Show (it's on a roll!)

EMMYS 1963: The Dick Van Dyke Show (season 2)

NETWORK: CBS
SPONSOR: Joy

Finally we ease out of the variety show format and back to classic sitcom territory, though by way of a character writing for a variety show. After making a splash in a number of guest appearances over the late 1950s, Dick Van Dyke's star rose enough to headline his own series, allowing him to showcase both his versatility has a comic performer and song and dance man, but for the first time on this blog, a sort of normal guy. No longer is he a broad caricature, but a portrait of a loving husband and father, veteran of the army, working in a somewhat unconventional field.



The Dick Van Dyke Show was created by veteran comedy writer Carl Reiner, who based it on his own experiences in writing television. His original pilot starred himself in the title role, but the series was retooled for Van Dyke instead. As a series, it's kind of a return to format of the early 1950s sitcoms with one foot in variety entertainment. Just as Ricky Ricardo was a nightclub performer and Danny Thomas was a working comic actor, The Dick Van Dyke Show centers around the character of Rob Petrie, head writer for the fictional comedy/variety series The Alan Brady Show. Similarities to Danny Thomas' show are perhaps not so coincidental, as Thomas serves as a producer on the show as well. Also of note, it was shot at Desilu studios where the three-camera model began. Like other classic sitcoms, The Dick Van Dyke Show lives in that happy medium between relatable domestic life and the minor thrill of a peak backstage at how Hollywood works. But rather than focus on the performer, Carl Reiner wisely shifts focus to the unsung heroes of the medium, the writers. No more are we in the realm where Red Skelton would joke about firing a writer when the joke doesn't land. Now the writer is the central character, and Reiner clearly has lifted story ideas from real life experience. What happens when writers aren't getting along? Or when you are just stuck for an idea? Or that worst thing to happen in comedy writing, the threat of having plagiarized a joke? What's it like when the guest celebrity is actually a heel in real life? Joining Rob are his writer friends, Sally and Buddy. Cleverly, just as would be their actual role, they mainly serve to punch up the show with jokes. But it's not just that. There are interesting undercurrents like Sally feeling like her femininity is overlooked by the male work environment, and she starts to resent being called "fella".

One of the more contentions things in comedy writing in recent years has been the scandal of "stolen jokes" and whether certain comedians have plagiarized material. Reiner makes clear this was a problem even in 1963, when Petrie inadvertently steals material for a sketch from another show and the trouble that creates. It was interesting watching this episode now, and remembering how difficult issues of ownership and copyright are in the realm of writing, especially comedy.

On the domestic side of things, Rob has a wife and son, as well as friendly neighbors next door who make frequent appearances. We get some good old-fashioned "father knows best" kinds of stories, as well as "having a misunderstanding with the wife" stories. Gracing our sets as Rob's wife, Laura is Mary Tyler Moore in her big break. Moore is radiant in this series, and the perfect match for Van Dyke's charisma. She is the queen of comedic histrionic crying. Laura is not Lucy Ricardo. She's a former dancer, and a bit more of a modern domestic woman, but is prone to overreacting. Moore is endearing and charming and capable of standing up to Rob when he's being an idiot. Their marriage has its problems, but their relationship is great. In the second season, we get to see the crazy circumstances of their wedding.

The opening titles of the series are classic. Rob arrives home to his loving wife, turns to greet his visiting friends, and tumbles over an unseen footstool. Toward the end of the season, the show plays with our expectations with Rob sidestepping the stool instead. The first time this happens is a lot of fun. Like Simpsons couch gags or X-Files taglines, it becomes a bit of bonus fun to see what might happen with the fall this episode. About midway through season two, they also started putting the episode titles onscreen at the end of the opening.

This was my first full-episode exposure to The Dick Van Dyke Show, though of course I had been aware of it from Nick at Nite and seen little bits. But until now, I had never watched a whole show, and now after having gotten through a whole season, I'm a fan. It's clear that Carl Reiner's experience informs the writing, and the best episodes are written by him. He also appears as Alan Brady, Rob's boss, but always seen from behind and his face isn't revealed, very similar to Wilson on Home Improvement. One of the things that's been enjoyable about reviewing these old sitcoms is seeing how much groundwork later shows of the '80s and '90s were indebted to. I started to realize how much Full House follows similar tropes, for example, of peppering in musical performances.

But just as it's got similarities to the '50s shows that preceded it, The Dick Van Dyke Show is a series of the '60s and you can tell how society is slowly shifting. We're still in the Kennedy years, and married couples still sleep in separate beds, but women are wearing pants more frequently, humor is changing a little, and they even slip in a few mild curse words! The series is also commenting on the world of its day, and not just variety shows. An entire episode, "It May Look Like a Walnut," was a parody of creepy science-fiction films, the type gaining popularity in the late 1950s and early '60s. It's a fun episode, though the gag about Rob losing his thumbs was rather spoiled for me when certain shots clearly showed thumbs still there. But how was he to turn doorknobs without them? I guess we can let it slide because it's all a dream in the end, but it's a shame that the writing is a little smarter than the final execution. A great gag in the episode though is an alien who "looks like Danny Thomas" played by Thomas himself.

Another hilarious episode involved Rob suddenly having an allergic reaction in Laura's presence. She is convinced by a recent magazine article that this proves he's subconsciously mad at her. While Rob tries to get to the bottom of the mystery, Laura grows increasingly hysterical. The episode smartly strings out the mystery for the audience to figure out without revealing too much too early to give it away. Not only a fun jab at pop psychology, it also showcases Van Dyke's comedic sneezing. Van Dyke also plays a good comedy drunk in an episode where he is hypnotized to think he's completely hammered whenever he hears a bell. There are also a good number of episodes focusing on the humor of marital squabbles, like discovering a secret checking account, or that terrible moment when you ask your wife what's wrong and she just says, "You know what you did."

There were a lot of episodes I enjoyed and it would be difficult to name or describe too many of them. I quite liked learning the backstory of Rob and Laura's ill-fated wedding day in "The Attempted Marriage." Both Moore and Van Dyke are at the top of their game, and Reiner's script is very smart. It also plays to the strengths of television, with a flashback structure. This also helps break up the typical sitcom monotony of the show existing mainly on two sets. When the season ended, they took the next month to show four flashback episodes from the first two years in rerun that documented Rob and Laura's first meeting through the birth of their son.

It is easy to see why The Dick Van Dyke Show was an Emmy favorite. It's got all the usual ingredients of classic sitcoms, with a dash of novelty and perfect casting. I quite enjoyed watching it and look forward to future episodes to come. Interesting note though for anyone seeking it out on DVD: the DVD set I obtained put a season 3 episodes at the end of the season 2 set and left it off the season 3 set. A mild annoyance, but worth pointing out. I still haven't seen any of season 1 and am tempted to watch them. But no time to look back, we only look forward in this project!

FAVORITE EPISODES: The Two Faces of Rob; The Attempted Marriage; My Husband is Not a Drunk; What's in a Middle Name; Gesundheit, Darling; It May Look Like a Walnut;, My Husband is a Check-Grabber; When a Bowling Pin Talks, Listen

Up Next: The Dick Van Dyke Show (again!)

EMMYS 1962: The Bob Newhart Show

NETWORK: NBC

You may have read the title and thought, "That's incorrect! You mean 1972. The Bob Newhart Show was a staple of the 1970s." And on the one hand, you would be right. However, you may be entirely unaware that ten years before Bob Newhart's seminal television sitcom, he had a short-lived variety show also called The Bob Newhart Show. I was just as surprised as you are.

Bob Newhart was an accountant-turned-comedian who did stand-up in the early 1960s. His style was generally low-key, presenting humorous scenarios where he often played imaginary conversations with another party, usually over the phone. His comedy frequently took a satiric look at modern American life, television, and politics. At the time, one of his best-known bits involved a contemporary Madison Avenue image consultant type coaching Abraham Lincoln through the Gettysburg Address.

Newhart made a few appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show as he made his name in comedy, as well as other variety shows, which culminated in the release of his 1960 comedy album, The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart. He wanted to call it The Best New Comedian Since Attila the Hun, but the record label used that instead as a subtitle. This 30-minute record, including the Abe Lincoln bit, was a huge success. Huge for comedy records and huge in general. It won the Grammy Award for Best New Artist and Album of the Year. Bob Newhart's comedy stylings beat out musicians like Ray Charles and Ella Fitzgerald and other pop favorites of the early 1960s for the best album. And his follow-up record, The Button-Down Mind Strikes Back!, won for best comedy album.

So with his star on the rise, naturally NBC snagged him for a television series. The Bob Newhart Show ran only one season, from 1961-1962 on Wednesday nights. Like other comedy variety shows of the day, the format was generally an opening monologue from Bob, then a sketch or two and maybe a musical act. There would also be celebrity guest appearances. And as with the success of his first record, the series would go on to win the Emmy Award for the Field of Humor that year.

But after that first season, Bob Newhart decided to call it quits. He wasn't happy in the television medium at the time, particularly because the schedule put a demand on the writing. He felt that if they went into another season, it would be too difficult to have top material for monologues and the comedy would suffer. He preferred honing his material for college crowds in the stand-up scene. The way he tells it now, he "pulled a Dave Chapelle," citing the contemporary comedian who also walked away from a highly successful series.

Despite being so short-lived, the original Bob Newhart Show not only won the Emmy, but a Peabody Award as well. And so it is surprising that very little seems to be known about the series, and indeed, this was the first series in this project that I was unable to find even one full episode of. Previously, I've been stuck with scattered episodes for a few series, but even for The Art Carney Special there were a few on the internet. All I was able to uncover was a single internet video featuring about ten minutes of an episode with guest Fess Parker.



There are a number of his stand-up appearances on other shows of the era, and many episodes he did of The Dean Martin Show a few years later. But for some reason, his own series is just a mystery.
It's a real shame that I can't give a proper review to the show, and that it isn't available somewhere, especially considering the name that Bob Newhart remains even today. That this award-winning series should fade into obscurity is a real tragedy. I did listen to The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart and a couple of his others from this period to get a feel for his comedy and for what the show might have been like. But it's really not the same as getting to see even one full episode in living color as it first aired. If anyone out there is reading this who could help dust off this television curiosity, please do!

Anyway, at least moving forward I know that series will be easier to obtain, as we head firmly into the sitcom era, leaving variety mostly behind us.

FAVORITE EPISODES: N/A (sadly)
UP NEXT: The Dick Van Dyke Show

EMMYS 1961: The Jack Benny Program (season 11)

NETWORK: CBS
SPONSORS: Lipton tea, State Farm insurance

Jack Benny, violinist/comedian among the most popular entertainers of the time, finally made the jump to a weekly schedule for his television series in 1960 and won the Emmy for the second time. As I mentioned earlier, Jack's show was mostly a variety show, but with the odd side-episodes and ideas that were more of a sitcom format. By this point in the run of the series, the more sitcom side was far more frequent in the episodes, so that makes it clear why this series won in the Comedy Series rather than Variety Series category. There was even one episode devoted entirely to just the older variety format, and it sort of sticks out. That episode, by the way, was the television debut of Ann-Margaret. But the rest of the time a good portion of the show would be taken up with some long-form skit or parody, even if keeping to the old formula of Jack introducing the show with a monologue in front of a curtain. And often there would be a musical number, usually performed by Dennis Day.

But for much of the season, there would be whole episodes devoted to just Jack Benny in his daily life, with his friends and his black manservant, Rochester. The Jack Benny Program had ultimately meshed the original variety format with the sitcom format pioneered by I Love Lucy. In one episode, Jack even "leaves" his show to go take care of urgent business, and that story takes up the rest of the episode. In a way, one could see programs like this as precursors to Seinfeld, which originated as showing the life of an entertainer implying where he gets the material for his actual shows. And I never thought of it before, but the format of Jack opening and closing the shows in front of the curtain may be paid homage to by the structure of the '90s Nickelodeon series Kenan and Kel.

As I mentioned above, Jack Benny finally took the television show weekly this season and with new sponsors. Like other series of the time, many stories were adapted from episodes of his radio program. He now devoted more time to the television version, and did so with gusto and a plethora of guest stars. The season premiere featured George Burns, Tony Curtis, and Mike Wallace, among others. That first show was a great one, because the entire story revolved around Jack taking the show weekly and advertising it. It was a smart way to make a funny show and remind the audience that they could tune in next week. It was a half-hour of self promotion! But it was also an opportunity to parody the work of Mike Wallace. Remember, this was back before 60 Minutes. At the time, Mike Wallace did a series of interviews on a local New York show called Night Beat. From there, he got some nationally televised Mike Wallace interviews. So now, here's this up and coming journalistic icon, and Jack Benny comes along and has a parody interview with him (framed as a nightmare). It's a fun, topical episode.

Another hilarious celebrity appearance is that of Jimmy Stewart in a story where Stewart's mail keeps getting delivered to Jack's house by mistake, and the end up at the same concert. 

But as long as we're on the subject of guest stars, I would be remiss if I didn't hail the comedic talents of Jack's regular associates, especially in this season Mel Blanc. You know Mel Blanc, the man of a thousand voices. He is well known for voicing many Hanna-Barbera and Warner Bros. cartoon characters, including Bugs Bunny and Barney Rubble. He makes a number of memorable appearances this season, some taken directly from radio bits. Perhaps most memorable is as a sales clerk at Christmas who has to keep wrapping and unwrapping a wallet he sold to Benny. In another episode, he shows off his voice talents doing horses, dogs, etc.



A great use of the television medium is in the story "Jack Goes to the Vault" where Jack Benny takes some government folks to tour his personal vault to see his security system. This show features elaborate set design of an underground cavern with moving walls, crocodiles, giant doors, a drawbridge, and more. It's very impressive for the time, especially considering it was all just a one-time gag.

Once again, I had a difficult time tracking down episodes and was only able to watch roughly two thirds of the season. But what I saw was a lot of fun, with verbal humor, visual humor, and music. I think this season was better than season 9. I really got a feel for Jack Benny's persona and why his comedy was so popular. It was also interesting as a snapshot of the period, particularly with the frequent jokes about the L.A. smog. While still a variety show at its core, I think The Jack Benny Program, particularly in these later years, is a worthy piece of sitcom history as well. Certainly, it deserves its accolades for comedy.

FAVORITE EPISODES: Nightbeat Takeoff, Jack Goes to a Concert, Christmas Show, Jack Goes to the Vault, Main Street Shelter

UP NEXT: The Bob Newhart Show

EMMYS 1960: The Art Carney Special

NETWORK: NBC
SPONSORS: DELCO batteries and AC spark plugs

This is the weirdest thing to happen in this category so far. We've already seen the Emmys have confusion about classifying variety shows and sitcoms and gone through years where they awarded single programs over full seasons, etc. Things took yet another bizarre turn for the 1959-1960 season when they cut a bunch of categories and limited things to "Outstanding Program in the Field of Humor," and Drama and Variety. While The Jack Benny Program took the statue for writing the second year in a row, the series award went to a strange series that wasn't even consistently a comedy. That wording "the field of humor" is very telling.

Art Carney was a character actor probably best known for playing Ed Norton opposite Jackie Gleason on The Honeymooners. But now a new decade was around the corner and it almost seems as if Carney was trying to make a name for himself as more than one character, as an entertainer and as a serious actor, at least that's the impression that I get watching the resulting Art Carney Special. Alternately titled The Art Carney Show, this was barely a series. Instead, it was a series of 10 programs starring Carney that aired on usually a monthly basis from 1959 to 1961 (the last aired almost a year after the previous 9). They were broadcast on NBC and were a sort of anthology, with no real uniting element apart from starring Carney. The series generally ran an hour long, but I've read that some went for 90 minutes.

It was not a straight comedy series, and certainly not a sitcom. Some programs were more dramatic. For example, the second episode was a production of Thornton Wilder's Our Town starring Carney as the Stage Manager. Other episodes were self-contained little teleplays very much of the sort you'd see in the Golden Age of Television from other anthology drama series. While whimsical and humorous at times, they were not strictly comedies. Still other programs were more comedic, sketch-driven variety formats taking a satirical look at contemporary life. All this is to say The Art Carney Show was a strange and unique moment in television history.

Unfortunately, its uniqueness also means obscurity, making it extremely difficult to locate and view. Short of setting up a screening at a museum or the Paley Center, I was at the mercy of whatever was uploaded to YouTube, and that was very little. I was able to view two full episodes, "The Man in the Dog Suit" and "Full Moon Over Brooklyn". Both had comedic elements and would be classified as humor in the academic sense, but were rather removed from typical television comedy I'd seen to that point. It's curious watching characters give jokey banter that in normal series would get laughs but with no laugh track. "The Man in the Dog Suit" has some typical repartee moments but they feel strange on television just lying there without laughs. This does not mean they aren't funny, but that the tone is different. And for the most part the story is of a different tone altogether from that sort of typical television banter.

"The Man in the Dog Suit" is a story about the struggles of conformity and becoming a cog in a machine that you don't respect. Carney plays a banker up for a promotion he's not sure he wants, trapped in a life he never asked for. One night he attends a costume party and is stuck wearing a dog suit, but finds as the dog he can loosen up and be someone else. But after the party, he keeps wanting to return to the dog suit, with destructive results. It's a fascinating little play, with a great cast including Celeste Holm and Orson Bean. But the humor is more of a deep satire on social conventions, and the second half becomes more dramatic than its set-up. We are in an entirely different sophisticated brand of humor.

"Full Moon Over Brooklyn" is a bit more whimsical, though with no less of a satiric edge. It's a sort of fable about a man who works for a railroad company running cargo on barges. A shipment from a traveling circus comes in, including a woman with her live bear. But when the bear appears to be dead, the man is trapped ferrying between ports because neither side will accept the shipment lest they be charged for damaging the cargo. The bear is of course played by a man in a bear suit, and this becomes rather ridiculous late in the show when the bear turns out to have just been hibernating and wakes up.

Both are much more like little plays and while there's certainly a degree of humor present, neither would easily be thought of as comedy. How then did this strange little infrequently broadcast series win the Emmy award? Because in addition to these stories, there were some early episodes which were apparently much more in a more traditional sketch comedy box. Often for Emmy voting, and I assume it was true back then too, series are being based on only a few submitted episodes. It is therefore very likely that the Emmy voters based the award on some of these earlier shows, such as "Very Important People". I was again unfortunately unable to find a full broadcast of this program, but what has survived to the internet is a clip of a parody sketch of the popular game show What's My Line? Here, Dick Van Dyke guests stars, and it's a fun little parody; a spot-on take on the typical tropes of the series. If earlier broadcasts were more of this type, it's Emmy award is less of a mystery. You can watch the clip below.

One innovation I did want to mention about the series is the advent of color. Not all of the available footage from the series is in color, but at least some of the later shows were originally broacast by NBC in color. This is the first appearance of color television broadcasting in this little walk through TV history. And you can see that NBC really went out of their way to make it worthwhile in the early days. "Full Moon Over Brooklyn" with its circus elements and slightly whimsical story has a lot of color throughout. Purples, blues, and greens pop off the screen in an effort to show the contrast you get with color. This approach to color would really continue throughout the 1960s, and it's part of why series like Star Trek look the way that they do.

The Art Carney Show was a weird little showcase for Art Carney and on one hand it's a strange footnote in this parade of monumental television comedy. We've had big entertainers like Red Skelton, Jack Benny, and Danny Thomas, and landmark sitcoms like I Love Lucy. Where did this weird little anthology series come from? People often think about the 1960s really beginning with the assassination of President Kennedy. But as I watched these shows today, I could feel in microcosm the kind of attitude shift from the 1950s to the 1960s. Here's Art Carney, lovable goof of the 1950s now selling himself as a different actor. Here's a sharper, more sardonic comedy beyond just having a few laughs. Here are stories about societal ennui, and dissatisfaction with authorities who want to control your life. Things feel a little more adult. Celeste Holm even says "damn" at one point. In "Full Moon Over Brooklyn," the bear is named Igor the Inevitable. When asked why he's named that, we are told it was because "nothing is as frightening as the inevitable." That sentiment seems a great summation of what was to come in the new decade.

FAVORITE EPISODE: The Man in the Dog Suit (though admittedly this was from a very small sample size)
UP NEXT: The Jack Benny Program (again!)

EMMYS 1959: The Jack Benny Program (season 9)

NETWORK: CBS
SPONSOR: Lucky Strike

The popular American comic entertainer Jack Benny was a staple of radio for decades before supplementing his radio program with a television version in the 1950s, bringing along his regular recurring cast and announcer Don Wilson. A sort of comedy/variety series, it was finally awarded Best Comedy Series for its ninth season, as well as a win for writing for the episode with Ernie Kovacs.

The Jack Benny Program on television is a strange entity in that for years it was not a regular series. Jack had an infrequent schedule due to his many other commitments, and in the early days there were only a few shows produced. By the late 1950s, the series was aired every other week, alternating time slots with *Bachelor Father* or some other series. Thus, there were only 15 episodes this season in an era where most half-hour series regularly ran twice that. It must have been strange to only get to see the show every other week. But I suppose for regular radio listeners, the change wouldn't be so bad, and there were only three television networks anyway.

Also like most television programs of the day, the show was sponsored by big tobacco, this time Lucky Strike. So there were of course commercials and jingles for the sponsor. Jack often refers to it as "The Lucky Strike Program" on air. There was an episode where Jack was trying to shmooze his sponsors because it was time to renew the contract and he feared they would drop him. The episode ends with Benny signed for another year, though in reality sponsorship would change the following year to Lux soap.

Unfortunately, as with some previous series in this project, it was very difficult to easily procure episodes and I could not obtain a full season to watch. This is one of those series where select episodes circulate or segments or sketches are excerpted, but finding full episodes is difficult, and from a specific year even trickier. Ultimately, I was only able to view 6 of the 15 episodes to review here.

Due to the minimal sampling, it was difficult to get a handle on what exactly the format of the show was. It follows some of the variety show template, but sometimes has sitcom elements thrown in. Of the episodes I saw, it wasn't always clear that there was a consistent format at all. To sum it up, I'd say the show was Jack Benny, and sought to entertain you however he wanted that week. There was often (but not always) the general set-up of a monologue in front of a curtain, a celebrity guest star, some comedy sketches and possibly a musical performance. Sometimes the whole show was live, but sometimes sketches were filmed segments. For one show, Benny and his cast put on a parody of the movie Gaslight (called "Autolight"). But then at other times episodes would play out as kind of meta-narratives taking a sitcom-style approach to the backstage world of Jack Benny before or after the show. One such episode is all framed as the rehearsal day before broadcast. Jack is worked up over interactions he's had with a strange person, and Oscar Levant advises he sees someone about it. The person in question is played by character actor Frank Nelson, who you might immediately recognize if you heard him say, "Yeeees?" This is one of those voices and personas that if you've seen enough comedy from this era, or comedy that references it, is immediately recognizable. And it's still funny.

I was bummed that I was unable to find the episode where Phil Harris guested. Harris was Benny's former band leader in the early radio days, but to many modern audiences he is more familiar is a voice in many Disney films of the 1960s and '70s, notably Baloo in The Jungle Book.

It's a shame I was unable to see more of this season and really get more of a feel for Benny's comedy, but I liked the smattering that I saw, and it was interesting to see the award get back to a more variety show styled comedy series after being dominated by the sitcom. CBS has been sweeping the category year after year! Will it continue? The Jack Benny Program would win a second Emmy in its 11th season, but before that we come to the 1960 Emmys when things were weird.

FAVORITE EPISODE: Jack Goes to the Doctor
UP NEXT: The Art Carney Special (that is, if I can find it)

EMMYS 1958: The Phil Silvers Show (season 3)

NETWORK: CBS

The Emmys were strange in the mid-1950s. I neglected to get into this in the last post, but for the 1957 awards, series were not split into category by comedy or drama, but by running time. There were nominees for half-hour programs, which were mainly comedies, and The Phil Silvers Show won that category. There was a separate category for hour-long programs, which also went to a comedy series, Caesar's Hour, and a category for best single program, which was mostly episodes of anthology drama shows. For this reason, it's weird from a historical perspective knowing how to categorize these wins. Perhaps I should go back and review Caesar's Hour as well.

For the 10th annual awards the following year, there was again a designated Comedy Series category, and The Phil Silvers Show won for the third year in a row. And despite it being long into the series run, the third year is an extremely important moment in television history, though one that doesn't often get discussed. The third episode of the season was called "Hillbilly Whiz" and it was the story of a new recruit from somewhere down south who had a great pitching arm. Bilko conspires to get him scouted by the pros, and there are cameo appearances by Yogi Berra and other players of the 1957 New York Yankees. And this would be neat in itself, but from a historical perspective, the other guest star is more important. You see, that hillbilly pitcher role was the television debut of Dick Van Dyke.




Dick Van Dyke apparently made such an impression that he returned later in the season playing Bilko's cousin, also a similarly folksy drawling amiable guy. It's clear from his two appearances that he has a kind of comedic personality that lights up the screen, and he plays well off of Phil Silvers. In just a few years, CBS would give Van Dyke his own series and he would become a star.

While Van Dyke's appearances are the main highlights of season 3, they are not the only bright spots. The series has settled into a groove and it knows what stories it tells. There are continued appearances from celebrities of the day. It's funny how some celebrities remain household names and others don't. Last season was the appearance of Ed Sullivan and Bing Crosby, and that still holds today, but it's quaint watching everyone flip out over the appearance of Kay Kendall, when most modern viewers would scratch their heads and say, "Who?"

Some of the stories also start to get a little sillier.  Paparelli spends an episode in drag in order to use a vacation that he won in a contestant, not realizing it was for married couples. Doberman continues to be a source of humor, particularly in "Doberman the Crooner", where it turns out he has a gorgeous Irish tenor voice, but only when he's sick.

One issue I do have is that by season 3 Bilko is made out to be sort of a gambling genius, and this doesn't really hold with earlier depictions of the character. Yes, he consistently gets the better of guys like Ritzik or some of his men, but in the very first episode he had a gambling debt. This heightened confidence in his abilities does lead to a wonderful episode where Colonel Hall finally gets the better of Bilko by scamming him with a professional card manipulator, shattering Bilko's confidence. And that's one of the nicest things about this season, is the effort in a few episodes for Colonel Hall to no longer be just a bumbler but learn from his mistakes and he actually gets the better of Bilko several times. This is a nice reversal, and it pays off for long-time viewers. In another episode, Ritzik learns the secrets of Bilko's scams when he talks in his sleep. It's fun to see the master manipulator get one-upped every now and then.

FAVORITE EPISODES: Hillbilly Whiz, The Big Man Hunt, Bilko Talks in His Sleep, Bilko at Bay, Doberman the Crooner, The Colonel's Reunion, Bilko's Cousin

UP NEXT: The Jack Benny Program

It’s Jonny’s Birthday

EMMYS 1957: The Phil Silvers Show (season 2)

NETWORK: CBS

CBS continued its history of winning the Emmy when the award went to the second season of The Phil Silvers Show. Clearly, Silvers' personality and charisma as the Bilko character proved popular and still allowed for a number of stories. I did find that the series tends to go back to the well with the same three or four ideas, but the writing is so good that even a formulaic episode is still a lot of fun. It's like when a great band covers a familiar song.

One of those constant tropes is the "someone is sent to rid the platoon of gambling through the arts" story. The first season did this three or four times. But the clever way it was approached this season was fun because we'd been through the dance before so seeing someone try to outwit Bilko at it was fun. Another classic trope is the blue-blood rich looking down on the servicemen. This occurs twice in this season. It's telling that the series really takes a stand against the aristocracy, as if they are the enemy of the common man, and the highest form of common man is the American soldier. It's a reminder to the country to respect their servicemen. In a post-war era with conflicts beginning to heat up in other parts of the world, this is a nice sentiment.

The second season brings back Bilko's sometime love interest, WAC Sgt. Hogan. However, they have tweaked continuity. The series is definitely contemporary from all its references, and the year is explicitly identified in an amusing story where Bilko is audited. But Hogan was introduced to the platoon only last season, and now the series consistently says they've been dating for five years. I don't remember what the date references were last season, but I don't think there's a five year gap between. Chalk it up to new continuity. You could get away with that more often when there were fewer reruns.

We also gain a new recurring character with Sgt. Ritzik, and his catchphrase ("I knew it!"). Ritzik is a guy always trying to beat Bilko at a bet, but he's a born loser. So there's a lot of fun conflict between Ritzik and his wife over his obsession with beating Ritzik.

What remains consistent into the second year is Bilko's love for his men. He may rib them and use them, but he will preserve their dignity. Many stories continue this  thread, such as pulling scams to embarrass the blue bloods that embarrass his men, or trying his best to let Ritzik win for once.

The second season also cements the series' place in popular culture by having celebrity guest appearances. Bing Crosby turns up in one episode, and another is built around Bilko getting a spot on The Ed Sullivan Show. Sullivan actually appears in two episodes. The latter is a clever meta-story that features Phil Silvers as himself discussing last night's episode with his cast mates at dinner. He runs into Ed Sullivan and they discuss their episode, which turns into a series of sequences from previous episodes that had been cut for time. It's the kind of episode that's very ahead of its time, and a clever way to avoid doing a standard clip show. Instead of moments we'd already seen, we are treated to extended gag sequences we haven't already seen. Now, whether these were truly from the cutting room floor, I don't know. But I thought it was a smart change of pace.

Another episode that pays a nod to the times is "Rock 'n Roll Rookie" in which an Elvis stand-in named Elvin Pelvin joins the platoon. He just wants to be treated like everyone else, but Bilko tries desperately to record him singing so he can sell the record. It's fun to see the show take on Elvis, who was at his height at this time, with Jailhouse Rock releasing that year. The story also plays to all audiences by both kind of embracing the character but also having the older generation taking good-natured jabs at him.

In another nod to present-day goings on, there's a great quiz show episode where Bilko contrives to get one of the men on The $64,000 Question. A lot of TV shows have done "guy tries to cheat quiz show with secret radio" stories, and I was immediately reminded of that here. But of course there was also a real life quiz show scandal in this era, so it's funny thinking about in that context as well.

I regret that CBS started pulling some of the episodes from the online source I was using, so I was unable to watch a few of the last episodes. Still, on the whole I enjoyed the second season. While it played safe and predictable with a number of the set-ups, I found I liked certain episodes even more. The characters are coming into their own, with their own personalities and catchphrases, and some of the premises are consistently funny and remain fresh. Part of that is how Silvers continues to sell it with everything he has. So even if Bilko's running a similar scheme (getting a film made, getting a song promoted; starting a mink farm, starting a radio station) the energy and innovation continues to make it a blast to watch.

FAVORITE EPISODES: "A Mess Sergeant Can't Win", "Bilko's Tax Trouble", "Doberman's Sister", "Bilko Gets Some Sleep", "Bilko Goes to Monte Carlo", "Show Segments"
UP NEXT: The Phil Silvers Show (yet again!)

EMMYS 1956: The Phil Silvers Show (season 1)

NETWORK: CBS

For the 1955-56 season, the Emmy for Comedy Series went to the premiere season of The Phil Silvers Show. But that was not the original title. When it debuted, audiences were greeted with the announcement introducing "The Phil Silvers show 'You'll Never Get Rich'!" This is similar to other series of the time. In its initial run, I Love Lucy was always introduced as "The Lucille Ball Desi Arnaz show" before the title, as if you had to remind the audience who was in it every week. The original title of the series, You'll Never Get Rich, comes from a line from an old song:

You're in the army now

You're not behind a plow

You'll never get rich

By digging a ditch

You're in the army now!

The song is sung at various times throughout the season. While the title was certainly appropriate, it was eventually dropped and the series stuck with just highlighting its central star, becoming officially The Phil Silvers Show. I was unable to find clear information on when the original title was dropped, but it appears to have been during the first season. You might recognize the show by the name of his character, the name the series was sometimes broadcast in syndication under, Sgt. Bilko.

 

The Phil Silvers Show was sponsored by Camel cigarettes, so once again all of the original cigarette ads done by the cast have been cut out of later syndication run, and the original opening replaced with an animated version. Watching all of these shows in sequence, it's no wonder America smoked so much. It seems like the entire television industry was built on the back of big tobacco.

Phil Silvers portrays a somewhat bumbling and scheming bald-headed bespectacled army sergeant named Ernest Bilko who is in charge of the motor pool at Fort Baxter in Kansas. He's a fast talker, gambler, flirt, and jovial sort always out to make a buck, often at the expense of the other men at the base. He runs betting pools among his men, has frequent card games with other sergeants, and is the thorn in the side of the base's commanding officer. When the series begins, the initial set-up is that Bilko's outfit has been doing these things because he's let things get sloppy since they were so well-trained. To shake things up and keep Bilko busy with real work, they assign him a platoon of new recruits. Bilko then spends most of the first episode trying to swindle the men out of their money so he can pay off a poker debt. The series sticks with the premise for a few episodes before returning his original platoon to him with no explanation in episode four, and maintaining that for the rest of the season.

Bilko also meets his match when Sgt. Hogan, a new female sergeant comes to the fort. She's hip to his schemes and eventually that start an on-again off-again relationship. His platoon is racially integrated; there's a black man in the group. It's nice to see that in the mid-1950s, and there was never any comment about it. He was always just another one of the guys.

It's interesting setting a series in the army during this period. America was now ten years post-World War II and settling into a comfortable civilian life. Other popular series have focused more on this renewed domesticity. But here we have a show looking at the servicemen who are still serving their country. Bilko is a veteran of the war in the Pacific, and old war stories come up every now and then throughout the series, particularly in a hilarious episode with him as a consultant for a WWII movie, and a moving episode about a reunion with his old army buddies. His friends have moved into civilian life, and he's stayed in the service. I suppose it's also worth remembering that the Korean War had only just reached its stalemate a few years ago, and America's military was still poised to fight the red menace of communism. So it's neat to get a comedy set here as a time capsule of sorts. The general tone is similar in some ways to popular wartime comedy like Stalag 17.

The Phil Silvers Show was created and primarily written by Nat Hiken, who would later go on to create Car 54, Where Are You? The writing is sharp. And while a lot of episodes might revolve around similar premises, it doesn't get stale because they shake it up enough. Sometimes Bilko's looking to con his own guys, but in the end he still looks out for them as his men, and there will be other times he coordinates them as a group to pull something on someone who has wronged them. There's enough variety to keep the laughs coming, while allowing for character moments with Bilko or some of his men.

But what elevates it is the full-bodied performance of Phil Silvers. He takes on every action with gusto and quickly becomes a big television character of the best kind, the kind that's immediately recognizable and iconic. He peppers his lines with ad-libs and really hams up the extended bits where he's schmoozing or trying to pull a fast one.

In fact, it's funny looking back on it, but the Bilko character as portrayed by Silvers was a template for later TV characters. Most people are aware that The Flintstones was essentially a parody of The Honeymooners, but I wonder how many realize that Hanna-Barbera's Top Cat was essentially a riff on Sgt. Bilko. Sure, the setting is transposed from the army to a group of cartoon alley cats, but it's essentially the same thing. Top Cat's delivery and mannerisms are in retrospect very clearly modeled after Silvers.

I had been aware of the series for a long time. It ran briefly on Nick-at-Nite when I was a kid. But I had never really sat down and watched it. Having done so, I immediately saw a comparison to one of my cultural touchstones, Saved By the Bell. It is extraordinary how much Zack Morris is really just a '90s teen version of Bilko. I am certain there's a generation who grew up on that show that has no idea the debt it owed to this classic series. If you're a fan of Saved By the Bell, I recommend seeking out some Phil Silvers episodes and seeing for yourself. The entire series has been released on DVD, and there are also a number of episodes on YouTube.

FAVORITE EPISODES: The WAC, The Centennial, The Twitch, The Reunion, Hollywood, Kids in the Trailer, The Court Martial, Bilko's Hair
UP NEXT: The Phil Silvers Show (again!)

EMMYS 1955: Make Room For Daddy (season 2)

NETWORK: ABC


And now we unfortunately come to a bit of a snag in my grand scheme to watch every Emmy-winning season of television comedy. The next series to win the Emmy for Outstanding Situation Comedy was Make Room For Daddy. However, due to the series' complicated history which I will delve into below, only a small smattering of episodes are available to view, and I had to go scouring through YouTube to find them. Of the 30 episodes that originally aired, I was only able to watch six. This means I am unable to get a full sense of this season of the series, but I can discuss the series itself in general terms.

Make Room For Daddy was a seminal family sitcom starring Danny Thomas. What I Love Lucy does for the married couple, this series tries to do for the nuclear family. The series follows Danny, his wife, and his children in typical family sitcom style. Like I Love Lucy, the series' lead is an entertainer, in this case a nightclub comedian and musical performer. And also like the former series, there are often musical numbers peppered throughout to showcase Danny Thomas as a performer. This seemed to be very much the style for comedy in the 1950s, especially as television comedy was also split between the new sitcom format and variety shows.

Initially, the series aired on ABC. It was sponsored by American Tobacco (makers of Lucky Strike and Pall Mall cigarettes) and Chrysler. Episodes would alternate primary sponsorship. Even the end credits would be effected; for tobacco-sponsored shows the credits ran over a tobacco leaf, and for Chrysler sponsored ones over Danny and the family hopping into a car.

For the first three seasons, Danny's wife was named Margaret and she was played by Jean Hagen. You might know Hagen as the actress with the silly voice in Singin' in the Rain. Here she gets to play an entirely different role, which she does well with. The children, Terry and Rusty, are played by Rusty Hamer and Sherry Jackson.
 
It is very strange watching young Sherry Jackson here at 12 years old, as I know her best as the sexy android Andrea from Star Trek.
 

Jean Hagen was ultimately unhappy doing the series, and at the end of her three-year contract she wanted out. With her gone, the series was retooled and re-titled The Danny Thomas Show. You will find the series referred to under both names for its whole run. To explain the disappearance of Hagen, rather than simply recast the role of Margaret and to avoid the issue of divorce, the series killed her off and Danny was now a widower. I'm not certain, but this may have been the first time this was done on television, setting precedent for other series to follow (most recently, Kevin Can Wait). Ratings declined during season four with single dad Danny, but the season ended with a story arc that introduced Kathy, played by Marjorie Lord, a new love interest for the character, and she and Danny got engaged.

At this point, ABC cancelled the show. But with I Love Lucy reaching its end,  The Danny Thomas Show was picked up by CBS, now with Marjorie Lord as the wife, where it ran for another 7 years. It is these CBS years of The Danny Thomas Show, though often still called Make Room For Daddy, that are in frequent syndication, DVD box sets, and streaming. If you've seen the show in reruns, odds are it was one of the CBS episodes. The Jean Hagen years are all but swept under the rug, which is something of a shame. Sherry Jackson also left when her contract was up, and her role was eventually recast.

Now that we've gotten all of that complicated stuff out of the way, you can see why it was difficult for me to find and watch these episodes. When you think you've found episodes of season 2, they end up actually being season 6. The later years of the series were successful in their own right, with several crossovers with other popular sitcoms, and went on to spin off The Andy Griffith Show. Did you know that was a spin-off? But I want to focus on the shows that I watched, the ones that earned the Emmy.

The series had actually already won an Emmy for its debut season, for Best New Series (a category they seem to have since done away with). So it was not exactly a surprise for this to be the show that would take the crown back from I Love Lucy in its next year. As I had no background with the series, the first episode of season 2 is a little jarring. The story is of Danny in a funk, thinking he's a lousy performer, and taking it out on the family. I have to say, it was weird sitting down to watch this happy family sitcom about a father, and having his first appearance be surly and snapping at his kids! It's a good show ultimately, but not a good start to the season.

The humor is simple and wholesome as you would expect. If you've any watched family sitcoms in the last 50 years, you basically know what you are getting. The kids say cute things and get into trouble, the dad is a larger-than-life personality, the mom struggles to keep it all together with grace. It's a little safe, but it was pioneering the genre. There are episodes and stories in this season that would be constantly reused decade after decade on other shows. In fact, several of these early episodes would be redone in the later CBS seasons. Watching a show like "Rusty Gets a Haircut" I was immediately reminded of an episode of Full House. A daughter's first crush, a tonsillectomy, a two-parter about the promise of a new job, these are all now typical sitcom stories. But let's give a nod to Make Room For Daddy for digging that well.

There are a few supporting players in the cast, such as Danny's agent. The family also has a black housekeeper, though she appears very sporadically. I saw her in one episode, and then never again in the six that I watched.

There is what I assume was a two-part story (though I only got to see the second half) that follows Danny getting the opportunity to go to Hollywood and be in a movie. The family is excited for the opportunity and plans to buy new house, but things change when the producer of the film wants Danny to get a nose job. Ultimately he chooses to be himself rather than undergo surgery just for the fame. Apparently this storyline was based on something that actually happened to Danny Thomas. It was a rather moving episode.

Overall, I liked the cast and found the show relatively amusing. I would have liked to see more, and I am frustrated that these formative years are so difficult to see. But if you are in the mood and are interested, look them up on YouTube. Many are even complete with their original vintage commercials!

FAVORITE EPISODE: Hollywood Trip
UP NEXT: The Phil Silvers Show

EMMYS 1954: I Love Lucy (season 3)

Yes, the popular sitcom won the Emmy for best situation comedy for the second year in a row.

There's still a lot to love about the show going into its third season. By this point, the Ricardos are America's favorite family and that fame is commented on in a few ways. After Life magazine did a spread on Lucy and Desi, the Ricardos got a similar story done about them. And they used a real issue of Life onscreen, though of course the Ricardo story was a fake inserted by the prop department. Also of note, the back cover of that particular issue was a full-page ad for Lucky Strike cigarettes. The show was forced to do a fake back cover by the sponsor, Phillip Morris. Can't advertise the competition onscreen!

The Ricardos also now have a baby, and the series does a decent job juggling stories that do and don't involve parenthood (they conveniently have a neighbor to watch the baby whenever the plot calls for it). But of course this show was filmed pretty quickly without many reshoots and it's clear the twins playing Little Ricky do not like it! No Olson Twins, here; Little Ricky spends a lot of his screen time crying.

What I do want to single out in this season though is the music. Wilbur Hatch provides an awful lot of great incidental music. Of course, the series has always had good music in the club with Ricky's performances. The musicians in the club are great and Desi's a good performer. But there is a lot of incidental music in the series as well. We forget how much music there was in older television. Modern sitcoms might have a theme song and a guitar riff for scene transitions and that's it. But there is full orchestral score for I Love Lucy episodes. The best example of this is the dream pantomime sequence in "Ricky's New Girlfriend". The music is telling the story there, in a method very similar to what was popular in musical theater around that time.

One of my favorite moments of the season and perhaps the series was Ricky telling the story of Little Red Riding Hood in Spanglish to Little Ricky. It's hilarious. Worth noting as well if you look closely you'll see that in Little Ricky's crib he has a pillow or blanket with the cartoon images of Lucy and Desi from the opening title sequence.

As with last season, the show keeps seeking new ways to stay fresh. They had a few more celebrity guest stars. This included up-and-coming entertainer Tennessee Ernie Ford as Lucy's cousin (not actual relation, but it's complicated). He stays for a multi-episode arc. Is this the first two-parter in sitcoms? It also reminds me of a story arc on Friends which also featured a horrible roommate named Eddie who wouldn't leave. There was also an episode about redecorating the Mertz's apartment, which ultimately led to the Ricardos buying new furniture (again!). It seemed clear to me that this redecorating tactic was starting to wear itself out and they would have to look to other ways of shaking the show up. At the end of the season, we are teased with that possibility: the cast going on vacation and subleasing their apartment in the meantime. Later seasons will take the family on road trips and ultimately they will move out of that apartment for good. For a series that only ran 6 seasons (before morphing into a short-lived spin-off which is often counted as the later seasons of the show), they never stayed in the same set too long. Long-running sitcoms don't always seem to have this much shake-up in the environments today, but there seemed to be a concerted effort here to keep things different.

For all the good in this season, I don't think it is as strong as season 2 was. It's starting to feel its age, and the addition of the baby both helps and hurts it. There are still very good episodes and funny moments, but fewer outright classic ones. There are things that date the show a bit. I particularly noticed how often Lucy responds to Ricky with, "Yes, sir." Can you imagine that flying today without angry protests? But there are also some hilarious moments like the entire "Equal Rights" episode that I think in some ways still hold up. The girls object that women are treated the same as men, so Fred and Ricky agree to treat them the same as men for a lark. The women almost immediately are put off by the things they expect to be done for them (getting their coats, pulling out chairs, letting them order first), the preferential elements of society, are gone. It's a good conversation starter.

Though worth noting, during this season they re-broadcast "Lucy Does a TV Commercial", and not with the flashback structure employed in season 2. That probably makes this the first true re-run.

FAVORITE EPISODES: Ricky's Life Story, Equal Rights, Lucy Tells the Truth,  Too Many Crooks, Ricky Minds the Baby, Sentimental Anniversary, Home Movies, The Black Wig

UP NEXT: Make Room For Daddy

EMMYS 1953: I Love Lucy (season 2)

The second Emmy given for a comedy series was in a newly named category: Best Situation Comedy. This new television category could arguably be said to have been birthed by one popular sitcom, I Love Lucy.


I Love Lucy was the creation of real-life married couple Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. Like most early television programming, the series was actually an outgrowth of radio. Ball had a hit radio comedy series, My Favorite Husband, based on a book, which chronicled the adventures of husband and wife Liz and George Cooper, "two people who live together and like it!" When the possibility was floated to transition to television, Lucille Ball instead insisted that she get to do a show with her husband Desi Arnaz. CBS eventually agreed, and with writers from the My Favorite Husband radio show, Lucy and Desi created Desilu Studios and their filmed television comedy went into production. The new creation was I Love Lucy, and it made television history.

I Love Lucy was not broadcast live; it was shot on film and edited for broadcast. But it was filmed in front of a live studio audience, like a play, capturing all of their live reactions. To accommodate the filming while allowing for clear sight lines for the audience, a sophisticated camera and lighting set-up was devised, inventing what we now call the "three-camera sitcom" setup. This same method would be used to make television comedy for over forty years, and is still in use today for some series. Telling the story of the Ricardos, moderately successful Cuban band leader Ricky and his redheaded wife Lucy always scheming to get into the act, along with their friends and landlords the Mertzes, it soon became the number one show on television.

Its second season would also create a number of television firsts, and it's no surprise why it was awarded the Emmy. As filming got underway for this season, Lucille Ball became pregnant with their second child. After shooting a few episodes creatively costuming to hide the growing baby bump, it was decided to write the pregnancy into the show. Though the word "pregnant" was never uttered onscreen, Lucy Ricardo had a pregnancy on TV, leading up to the birth of the Ricardo's son, and future stories about motherhood. It would change the face of television and begin a long history of pregnancy on TV.

The pregnancy also inadvertently created another television milestone. Episodes were not aired strictly in order, and a number of episodes were shot but held over for Lucille Ball's maternity leave. Opening flashback sequences were shot to introduce stories that had been previously shot during her pregnancy and aired after the birth episode. But during those three months before new episodes could air, new sequences were also shot to present rebroadcasts of episodes from the previous season: I Love Lucy had essentially invented the rerun. Not only that, but one could argue the framing device was the godfather of all the clip shows that would come later using the "remember the time when..." device to run previously aired footage.

For all its innovation, it was also just a solidly funny show, generally taking place in either the Ricardo's apartment or at the club where Ricky worked. A number of episodes were reworked radio scripts from My Favorite Husband, allowing more episodes to be made, but also utilizing the television medium uniquely. There are a number of wonderful purely visual comedic moments in the series, even in adapted radio scripts. "The Courtroom" features a wonderful bit of physical comedy with Lucy and Ricky maneuvering a television down the stairs.

Desi never let the show get too stale. The entire set got a remodel in the second season not once but twice! Lucy wins a new furniture set in one episode, refurnishing the entire apartment, and later buys a new living room set. The Ricardos also end up moving apartments at the end of the season. All this variability allowed not only for the show to not become stale, but to reflect real life changes. And there was continuity! As much as episodes were often generally self-contained stories, season two brings a good sense of continuity from episode to episode that lent a reality to the Ricardos' lives and is more important to television than we sometimes realize. Lucy and Desi were doing "multi-episode arcs" in a way 50 years ago!

Speaking of the set, I'd like to comment on the bedroom. I always remember it as one of those classic television shows where a married couple have separate beds. But it's worth pointing out that in the earlier episodes, though they do still have twin beds, they are pushed together. They only get truly separate beds after the mid-season remodel. Then they are briefly together again to accommodate Little Ricky's crib before they move. I just find that interesting.

Also worth pointing out is that the familiar "heart on satin" opening titles known to many of today's viewers was created for syndication reruns and not original. Why was it changed? Because the series was originally proudly sponsered by Phillip Morris cigarettes, and that branding was all over the original title sequence. When you're aware of it, the product placement throughout the show is more obvious too; it isn't just "they smoked back then," they were actively selling cigarettes. So history has tried to expunge that and separate the series from its cancerous sponsorship. Which is a bit of a shame because the original openings were constantly rotating cartoons featuring a little stick figure Lucy and Ricky. The show would announce "Phillip Morris presents the Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz show, I Love Lucy!" In later episodes, Desi himself would appear from a curtain to do a quick commercial for Phillip Morris before introducing the show to "tell you why I love Lucy."At one point, there was even a plan to release a theatrical film, stitching together three episodes of the first season, with a new framing device of an audience attending a taping. The film was never released (though it eventually found its way to DVD), but even that film's opening titles featured the then-iconic cartoon characters. In recent years, some of the cartoon bits for commercial breaks were restored to the series for DVD and broadcasts. However, any and all Phillip Morris-branded content has remained excised, though available to view separately.



One of my favorite moments is when Ricky attempts to read a book and has trouble with the varying English pronunciations of words that seem to be spelled the same (bough, through, rough). It's a hilarious bit, and this series was so good about presenting ethnic humor but in a good-natured way. Ricky would comment on America, Lucy would gently rib his accent, but none of it was mean-spirited. We may overlook how important the depiction of cross-cultural love and understand was on the show, and what a statement it was that the lovable Lucy had a Cuban husband who would fall into Spanish when exasperated and that they had a good marriage. Of course, it still doesn't hold to some modern standards of cultural sensitivity ("The Indian Show", for example, would never be made today).

The musical element should also not be overlooked. Similar to The Red Skelton Show, I Love Lucy's format allowed for some musical performances. And why not? Ricky was a bandleader, after all. Sometimes the comedy gives way for music. But more often than not, the musical performance also lends itself to Lucy's shenanigans. The second season is notable for featuring the only performance of the lyrics to the "I Love Lucy" theme song. It was even released as the B-side of a record of Desi's song "There's a Brand New Baby at Our House", which on the show was written by Ricky for the Ricardo's son, but actually was written by Desi for the birth of their first child, Lucie.

Apart from the groundbreaking pregnancy storyline, the second season also features one of the most iconic sequences of television comedy, Lucy and Ethel working in a chocolate factory, unable to keep up with the conveyor belt. This moment from the episode "Job Switching" is so iconic now that it has been parodied, ripped off, and recycled in many subsequent series. And that's the case with so much of I Love Lucy. Knowing how far we've come, it's easy to forget that so many of the things done on this show were innovations. Let's remember to give it the credit it deserves. If you've seen a gag a thousand times now, you hadn't back then. Thankfully, and maybe not surprisingly, I Love Lucy has stood the test of time as one of the most beloved comedy series of all time.

FAVORITE EPISODES: Job Switching, The Operetta, Lucy is Enceinte, Lucy Hires an English Tutor, Lucy Goes to the Hospital, Lucy's Last Birthday, Lucy Wants New Furniture

UP NEXT: I Love Lucy (again!)

EMMYS 1952: The Red Skelton Show (season 1)

Last year I got the impulse to visit or revisit all of the series that have won the Emmy for best series. Because it's a little easier, I thought beginning with the comedies would be smart. So when the new year began, I began this new project: to watch ever Emmy-winning season that won for Outstanding Comedy Series.

When the Emmys began, there were fewer categories. And over the years, the categories grew strange, with designated Western and "Mystery" categories, rather complicating things. There was no designated category for comedy until the fourth year. I should also point out, this is specifically going to only cover comedy series, not variety series. While there is often a lot of overlap there, they are distinct categories and will be treated as such. But that brings us to the 1951-1952 season, and the very first Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series: The Red Skelton Show.

Of all the celebrated comedic performers of the 1940s-1970s, there are a handful that most people would immediately recognize: Bob Hope, Carol Burnett, George Burns, Lucille Ball. But somehow history has forgotten Red Skelton, and having now seen a number of his shows, I think that's a shame. Sure, you might have heard the name, but he was a true talent on the same level as the other greats and young people deserve to know who he was. The son of a circus clown, it's no hyperbole when the announcer introduces Skelton as "that clown of clowns." Skelton has certainly got that talent for making people laugh. He worked in vaudeville, radio, television, and films. And what I find really unique about Skelton is his comedy marries so many of the great notions of what comedy is.

The Red Skelton Show debuted on NBC in 1951. Like most television programs of the time, it was an outgrowth of an already popular radio show. But television allowed Skelton to truly put more of his talents on display; he was as much a visual comedian as a verbal one. He was a master of classic clown-style comedy, with broad facial expressions and pantomime. But he could also deliver classic one-liner jokes or sketch concepts. Truly, just in the first 20 episodes of the series, you would be blessed with stand-up monologues, sketch comedy, improv, mime, observational humor, slapstick, physical comedy, broad caricatures, verbal humor, sight gags, running gags, prop comedy. You name it, Skelton dabbled in it. Nearly everything comedic you turn on a television for had a place in Skelton's arsenal. For this reason alone he was truly a master and one of the greats. This was the show's first season, and when you watch it it's no surprise that even with competition from Burns and Allen and I Love Lucy the Academy chose to honor The Red Skelton Show.

Red Skelton also created a number of various character personas. Even as a kid, I knew the name Kadiddlehopper, but had nothing to connect it to, no context for it. Now, I finally do. Clem Kadiddlehopper was Skelton's village idiot character, often used on the series as an incompetent TV pitch man ("I'll give you the number to call later; we don't have time to give it now!"). Then there's Willie Lump Lump, the sad-sack drunk; San Fernando Red, the brash Southern politician; and Cauliflower McPugg, the punch-drunk boxer always hearing birds and bells ("Boy, a flock of 'em flew over that time!"). The series really highlights Skelton's versatility as a performer and some of the best sketches involve him playing multiple characters.

Every episode pretty much follows a standard formula. The series begins with Skelton delivering a monologue of jokes or impressions in front of a curtain, much like many other comedy or variety shows even today. The curtain would then open to a sketch usually featuring one of Skelton's characters. Following that would be a pre-filmed segment from "Skelton's Film Scrapbook." These sketches have the same chaotic energy as the rest of the show, and always turn out to be a clever commercial for their sponsor, Tide. In the early days of broadcasting, shows were brought to us by one sponsor, typically. And often they performers would end up doing a commercial somewhere along the way. But Skelton's very clever commercial segments are always fun and always work as comedy sketches too, and not just someone reading copy. Beyond that, Skelton seems genuinely appreciative of his sponsors and tries to do right by them. After that, there is often a musical performance of some sort by a singing group or dance performance (sometimes comedic, though not always; sometimes Skelton himself messes around with them.) Following the variety portion, we generally get one more sketch from "Skelton's Scrapbook", and then a final address to the audience before Skelton is yanked under the curtain from behind. In one episode, it is revealed the one yanking him is Bob Hope.

Of course, a series doesn't survive solely off of one performer, and The Red Skelton Show has a staple of a few actors and actresses for Skelton to play off of, particularly Lucille Knoch. It's also worth remembering that in the early days of broadcast television all of these shows were performed live every week. This meant anything could happen (and often did). People might flub a line or ad-lib a joke. One episode they actually went on the air when Skelton was just warming up the crowd beforehand and they didn't realize they'd been broadcasting for two minutes. If you're a fan of watching people make each other laugh during sketches, you'll love The Red Skelton Show. Skelton loves to play to the crowd, so sometimes he'll milk a joke, or something unexpected will happen and they'll play into it. Other times someone might drop a line and he'll point it out. Several times flubbed lines ruined a punchline and he just plays it off with a laugh. He really shines as a comedic presence; his costars often can't keep a straight face. In one episode, a gag with a man in a snowman costume fails to get the laugh. So Skelton brings that snowman back for the next several episodes as a running gag. It's a show that rewards frequent viewing as you pick up on Skelton's standby catchphrases ("Another writer just bit the dust!").

Some of the sketches or set-ups are also inspired. There's one very cleverly designed visual gag where Willie's wife as a prank has nailed all the furniture in the room sideways to the wall. The technical aspects of this sketch and the physical comedy are delightful. If you're a fan of Lucy's vitameatavegamin bit, Skelton pioneered a similar concept in vaudeville featureing a pitchman selling Guzzler's Gin.



While the show is appropriate for all ages, and the comedy works for many different age groups, it doesn't shy from a bit of more adult humor. There's a smart satirical sketch in one episode about the perfect marriage in which the husband is cheating on his wife, and then they reverse it to her point of view and she's cheating on him.

What also stands out is how genuine Skelton feels as a personality. As I mentioned, he truly seems to care about his show and his advertisers. He cares about his audience. He's always gracious to thank an article or a favorable mention of his show. What he wants most is to make people laugh. Repeatedly, he will close out his show by apologizing to the audience if he offended them in any way, because it was all in good fun. He speaks of the power of laughter to make you forget your troubles for just a little while. He was a true clown in the greatest sense of the word; not a scary grotesque in greasepaint, but a master of delivery, pantomime, and doing anything for a laugh.

The series might be difficult to find, but if you want to watch it, Shout Factory has them all up available to view on their website, ShoutFactoryTV.com. Some episodes and sketches are also on YouTube, and there are probably VHS and DVD collections out there somewhere.

T-I-D-E, Tide presents Red Skelton!



FAVORITE EPISODES: Episode 2, The Skeltons at Home (the Christmas show), Episode 14

UP NEXT: I Love Lucy