The Women Who Made Television Funny: Ten Stars of 1950s Sitcoms

363 Pages·2007·15.59 MB·English

by  David C. Tucker

Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Gracie Allen
2. Eve Arden
3. Lucille Ball
4. Spring Byington
5. Joan Davis
6. Anne Jeffreys
7. Donna Reed
8. Ann Sothern
9. Gale Storm
10. Betty White
Appendix I. Cast and Credits
Appendix II. Chronology
Appendix III. Ten More Leading Ladies
Chapter Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index of Terms
The Women Who Made Television
Funny
Ten Stars of 1950s Sitcoms
David C. Tucker
McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Jefferson, North Carolina, and London
Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
Tucker, David C., 1962–
The women who made television funny : ten stars of 1950s sitcoms / David C.
Tucker.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-7864-2900-4
1. Television comedies—United States. 2. Television actors and actresses—
United States—Biography. 3. Actresses—United States—Biography. I. Title.
PN1992.8.C66T83 2007
791.4502'8092273—dc22 2006101681
British Library cataloguing data are available
©2007 David C. Tucker. All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by
any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from
the publisher.
Cover photograph: Gracie Allen from “The George Burns and Gracie Allen
Show,” 1950–1958 (CBS/Photofest) McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640
www.mcfarlandpub.com
To my mother
Louise Curtis Tucker
with love, admiration, and gratitude
Acknowledgments
I’m grateful to a number of people whose help and encouragement enriched this
book and kept its author on track. It was my great privilege to interview two of
the leading ladies celebrated in these pages. Gale Storm was not only as
charming and delightful as Margie Albright herself, but candid, funny, and
extremely generous with her time. Betty White, a true class act, responded
within days to my interview request, and kindly filled in some gaps in my
understanding of her early television work.
Since many of their fellow 1950s sitcom stars are no longer with us, I am
especially grateful for the family members and colleagues who agreed to share
recollections. Douglas Brooks West, himself a busy screenwriter and producer,
talked with me about his mother, Eve Arden. Actor Robert Fuller played phone
tag with me for several days not so that he could talk about himself or his own
career, but so as to sing the praises of his late friend and co-star Spring
Byington. I was also fortunate to speak with the legendary comedy writer
Sherwood Schwartz, who refreshed his memory on working with Joan Davis by
pulling from his office bookshelves bound volumes of I Married Joan scripts he
penned more than fifty years ago.
For most of my adult life, I’ve been privileged to work at the DeKalb County
Public Library, and a better group of colleagues would be tough to find. My
longtime boss and friend Magda Sossa, who has been supportive of me in many
ways over the past ten years, spent hours proofreading and critiquing this book.
Her efforts are much appreciated, as is the encouragement of people like Jane
Richards and Emile Worthy, who make the workday at the Library Processing
Center so much more enjoyable. DCPL’s Kristi Gregory and Graham Reiney
were helpful with research assistance and obtaining needed library materials, and
Tamika Maddox contributed superior indexing skills. Resources available in the
Woodruff Library at Emory University, and the University of Georgia Libraries,
were valuable as well.
Family and friends have enriched my life in more ways than I can recount here.
Among those who deserve a nod—at least—are Edward and Louise Tucker,
Donna Sassone and the fabulous Sassones (Torry, Tim, and Danny), Ken
McCullers, Bennie Crudup, the Gelmini clan (David, Heather, Andrew, and
Tyler), Jennifer Myers, Ron Roberts, Jacquie Roch, Joann Sexton, and Ethel
Watson. A new friend, scholar and Kay Francis biographer Dr. Lynn Kear,
Watson. A new friend, scholar and Kay Francis biographer Dr. Lynn Kear,
shared her publishing expertise with me.
Finally, for reasons any media researcher or collector who reads this will surely
understand, my sincere thanks to Mr. Pierre M. Omidyar, founder of eBay.
David C. Tucker
January 2007
Introduction
This book pays tribute to ten prominent television actresses who played lead
roles in popular comedy shows of the 1950s. Pioneers in the television industry,
these women created memorable characters that would have a long-standing
influence on TV comedy.
Naturally any list of early female sitcom stars would have to include the
magnificent Lucille Ball, and her timeless I Love Lucy, and indeed she and her
show are prominently featured here. But Lucy was by no means the only
comedic actress to headline a popular TV sitcom of that era. Among her peers
who captured the attention of audiences are Gracie Allen (The George Burns and
Gracie Allen Show), Eve Arden (Our Miss Brooks), Spring Byington (December
Bride), Joan Davis (I Married Joan), Anne Jeffreys (Topper), Donna Reed (The
Donna Reed Show), Ann Sothern (Private Secretary and The Ann Sothern
Show), Gale Storm (My Little Margie and The Gale Storm Show: Oh! Susanna),
and Betty White (Life with Elizabeth). All starred in popular shows that debuted
between 1950 and 1959—in fact, most of these shows ranked among the top 25
in ratings at least once during their run—and all are profiled here.
Television comedy of the 1950s provided great opportunities for the comedic
actress who could front her own show. The women featured here headlined their
own sitcoms and were, with one exception, the top-billed stars of those shows.
These actresses and their characters were the primary laugh-getters on some of
the most highly rated sitcoms of the 1950s, shows that were noteworthy not only
for their popularity, but for their innovation and creativity in the then-young
medium of television. Female sitcom stars of a later generation—Marlo Thomas,
Mary Tyler Moore, even Roseanne—owed a debt to these talented women who
clearly demonstrated the drawing power of a funny woman.
But while Lucille Ball is still enormously popular with audiences, some of her
peers from the 1950s prime time TV schedules have been neglected in recent
years. December Bride, a Top Ten–rated CBS sitcom from the Desilu factory, is
virtually unseen today, and its star, Spring Byington, is not widely known to
viewing audiences. The same is true of Joan Davis, once radio’s highest-paid
comedienne, whose TV sitcom I Married Joan has suffered a similar fate. While
I Love Lucy is being released season by season on DVD, with episodes lovingly
restored and series history and trivia carefully preserved, Joan scarcely exists on
today’s consumer DVD market, and is no longer rerun.
Like many baby boomers, I first encountered several of these actresses and their
hit shows of the 1950s in syndicated TV reruns of the late 1960s and early
1970s. I Love Lucy and Lucy Ricardo have been part of my consciousness for so
long, as they are for millions of Americans, that I can no longer remember when
I first encountered that show—it’s always been there. But I do remember, at the
age of eleven or twelve, a local TV station’s summer reruns of Our Miss Brooks,
where I was instantly drawn to the distinctive style and dry comic delivery of
Eve Arden. A year or two later, another station’s rerun schedule introduced me
to Topper, which intrigued me not only for its ghostly happenings and unique
special effects, but also for its captivatingly beautiful and seductive leading lady,
Anne Jeffreys.
And who could watch Burns and Allen without falling under the spell of the
marvelous Gracie Allen, and her distinctively illogical logic? (It’s infectious—
one day recently, having just watched an episode, I heard someone say that their
professional specialty was termite repair, and found myself thinking, “I didn’t
know you could repair termites.”)
Back then, I was dimly aware of Joan Davis and her Lucy-esque sitcom I
Married Joan, but never caught more than a few glimpses of that show, which
was not so often repeated; nor was I well acquainted with December Bride or My
Little Margie. One of the chief pleasures of researching this book has been the
chance not only to reacquaint myself with some of the shows I loved back then,
but also to discover others equally enjoyable and worthy of attention.
By the early 1970s, while the sitcoms of an earlier day were still commonly seen
in syndicated reruns, the prime time sitcom landscape was increasingly the
province of Norman Lear (All in the Family, Maude, Good Times, etc.) and other
producers who, with less skill, sought to ride the coattails of his success. Also
riding high was The Mary Tyler Moore Show, a gently realistic workplace
comedy that was seen as groundbreaking for its depiction of a contentedly single
career woman. That highly successful show paved the way for a host of other
female characters who said and did things seldom before shown on TV—
Beatrice Arthur’s Maude, who underwent the sitcom world’s first abortion, and
Ann Romano (played by Bonnie Franklin) of One Day at a Time, considered
controversial by CBS executives in 1975 because she was a divorcee raising
children alone.
Unfortunately, the advent of more realistic sitcoms in the 1970s sometimes came
at the expense of disparaging the work of those who had come before them. The
gifted Beatrice Arthur, winding down her six-year run as Maude Findlay in
1978, said, “For the very first time, we presented somebody who wasn’t just a
bubblehead out to get laughs.”1
Understandable as Ms. Arthur’s viewpoint was, it does a disservice to the shows
—and their leading ladies—who had preceded her. For all that they adhered to
certain social norms of their time, the female characters of 1950s sitcoms, and
the actresses who played them, were often trailblazers, if for no other reason
than that the medium of television, and the situation comedy genre, was so new.
Tracing the broadcast history of The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show, for
instance, gives us the chance to watch the TV sitcom flourish and grow, going
from a live broadcast that included integrated commercials and musical
interludes, to a polished sitcom on film that still has the power to delight us with
its wit and charm today.
In reading this book, you may be surprised by the variety of interesting women
who were depicted in 1950s TV sitcoms. You’ll meet smart and sassy career
women Connie Brooks (Our Miss Brooks) and Katy O’Connor (The Ann Sothern
Show), successfully negotiating the hazards of the male-dominated workplace
with class and humor in a way that the 1970s heroine Rhoda might have
appreciated. Lily Ruskin, the attractive sixty-ish widow who’s the title character
of December Bride, demonstrated that an older woman’s life can still be vital,
fun, and full of adventure while The Golden Girls were still little more than girls.
And then there’s Marion Kerby (Topper), who went a step further, still
glamorous, seductive, and playful from beyond the grave.
The work these women did in the 1950s is still remarkably fresh and inventive
today. Admirable as Norman Lear’s campaign for realism in television was, and
as skillfully as his shows were crafted, they often relied on references to current
events that today make All in the Family seem more dated than I Love Lucy—
and, to me, it’s no contest as which is more fun to watch. Unable to fall back on
strong language, racial or sexual epithets, or shock value, the shows of the 1950s
entertained us because of the gifts of the actors, writers, and producers who
created them, and the best of them still do so today, when we have the chance to
see them.
For each sitcom star profiled in this book, a career sketch is given, concen-
trating primarily on her television work but also noting particular achievements