Showing posts with label Don DeFore. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Don DeFore. Show all posts
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| Lee Phillips and Don DeFore |
Daddy-O was a situation comedy with a fairly unusual premise. Ben (Don DeFore of Killer Bait) is a carpenter who is working on a house for TV producer Albert Shapian (Lee Phillips). For some reason, never explained, Albert thinks Ben would make a good actor, and the fellow winds up in a show called Daddy-O, produced by Shapian, wherein he plays a hapless family man in slapstick situations. The show-within-the-show is a big hit, but despite all the money Ben is dissatisfied. He thinks his work is frivolous whereas before he was helping to build homes and thereby helping the nation. He wants to quit Daddy-O, but Shapian won't think of it. At a hospital where Ben's wife Polly (Jean Byron) volunteers, he meets an elderly female patient who tells him how much the show means to her and other lonely people of all ages, to whom it has given a family. Ben decides to stay with Daddy O, not realizing that the old lady was an actress paid by Shavian, although she tells the producer that she actually meant every word. Other characters in the show include Ben's two teenaged sons, and Shavian's dumb brunette but sexy secretary. In the opening sequence -- a scene from Daddy O -- Sheila James from Dobie Gillis plays his daughter. Shavian seems to have a bit of a thing for Polly.
This pilot was apparently aired but wasn't turned into a series. The actors are fine -- even bland DeFore -- but perhaps it was too critical of dumb sitcoms for its own good, and without delivering the major laughs that any good sitcom requires. A surprising scene has Shapian and his colleagues adjusting the laugh track on an episode -- the fact that sitcoms used laugh tracks was generally downplayed in this era. Still Daddy-O is amiable and has a few chuckles in it. Had this gone to series it might have developed into a memorable show. Phillips at least gives the project a little sex appeal, as does his uncredited secretary. Created and written by Max Shulman. DeFore wound up in the long-running Hazel with Shirley Booth.
Verdict: Had possibilities. **1/2.
Tom Adams (Michael Duane of Redhead from Manhattan) is framed for picking up Japanese in a boat, and wrongly convicted of collaborating with the enemy or something and sent to jail for several years. His fiancee, Nancy (Linda Darnell) not only vows to wait for him, but moves into a woman's residence right next to the prison where other wives and girlfriends wait patiently for their men to be released. The husband of the owner of the house, Maria (Sara Allgood) is in jail for life, and in the film's best scene, another wife, Mrs. Slade (Rosemary DeCamp), nearly collapses when her husband is executed at midnight. Other residents of the house include brassy Billie (Glenda Farrell), Winnie (Doris Dudley), Dora (Margaret Hamilton), and high-hattin' Gwen (Leslie Brooks of The Secret of the Whistler), who is dating Mr. Peters (Don DeFore) and hopes to learn where her husband (Sheldon Leonard) hid some money. Edgar Buchanan plays a shady lawyer who is ostensibly trying to help Nancy, but spends most of her money on booze. This is a "concept" movie that seems to have been cobbled together from cliches from other movies, and it's never convincing, becoming fairly ridiculous towards the end. Darnell is fine -- odd that she was cast in this bad "B" movie -- and Allgood, Farrell, DeCamp, and DeFore give very good performances as well.Years later Salkow directed Vincent Price in Twice-Told Tales.
Verdict: Not utterly terrible but not worth the time it takes to tell. **.