Showing posts with label sitcom. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sitcom. Show all posts
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| Dennis O'Keefe |
This sitcom starring popular actor Dennis O'Keefe lasted for one season in 1959. The premise had him as a newspaper columnist with one son, Randy (Ricky Kelman), and a housekeeper named "Sarge" (played by Hope Emerson after she was replaced on Peter Gunn). The very lovely Eloise Hardt plays a sometimes girlfriend, Karen. Three episodes from this lost, pretty much forgotten series are available at the Internet Archives, and two more on youtube. In "June Thursday" 42-year-old Hal Towne (O'Keefe, who was actually a somewhat older-looking fifty-one at the time)) tries to make a star out of a talented cigarette girl. In another episode Randy sends a note to a cute little girl, but her grandmother (Zazu Pitts) thinks the note is for her and that it was sent by Hal! In "Counterfeiters" two elderly counterfeiters buy tickets from Randy with phoney bills, leading to complications. In another episode Hal tries to romance his son's teacher, upon whom he has an unrequited crush, while another teacher (Nancy Kulp, who was eternally cast as the homely "other woman) tries to get a date with him. The best and most amusing episode you can find on line [on youtube], "The Regency Club," has Hal romancing a snobbish society lady who's only dating him so she can dump him, but he goes her one better with some help from his son, housekeeper, and Karen [why Hal would want any other woman when the very attractive, classy yet down-to-earth Karen is available is the question]. Judging from these episodes, there have certainly been worse sitcoms than The Dennis O'Keefe Show and much better ones as well. The cast is appealing, O'Keefe is fine, Emerson amusing, Kelman a cute kid, and Jerome Cowan scores, as he generally does, as a rival columnist. O'Keefe was in Hold That Kiss, Weekend for Three, and many, many other movies.
Verdict: No I Love Lucy, but O'Keefe fans may enjoy. **1/2.
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| "I am the queen of the gypsies..." |
SQUIRE/FRED MERTZ: "There's lots of ale and stout upon the shelf.
And I take a drop or two myself"
PEASANTS: "A drop, he says! The squire's got the gout.
The stout makes him ail, and the ale makes him stout."
Needing to quickly replenish the treasury of the Ladies Wednesday Fine Arts League (or whatever the heck it's called), Lucy decides to write and put on an operetta entitled "The Pleasant Peasant." Since Ethel can sing much better than Lucy, she is given the lead role of Lily, while Lucy has to be content with Camille, "the snaggle-toothed old queen of the gypsies." To drown out Lucy's awful singing, the cast has been instructed to join in every time she opens her mouth. The costumes and scenery have been rented, everything's going well on opening night, but as always when Lucy Ricardo (Lucille Ball) is in charge, things don't go quite as expected ...
Asked who wrote the songs, Lucy replies "Did you ever hear of Victor Herbert?" Of course, Lucy wrote the songs herself. When I first saw this in reruns as a child, I thought the rather tuneful music really was composed by Victor Herbert -- it's in his melodious style -- but I've never been able to determine who really did the music. [I Love Lucy has credited composers such as Eliot Daniel and Wilbur Hatch but they did general music for many episodes.] In any case, all of the songs are surprisingly memorable, including Ethel/Vivian Vance's delightfully-performed number "Lily of the Valley" ["when other girls go walking on their arm they've got a swell beau; whenever I go walking on my arm is just my elbow"], Ricky's love song to Lily, the drinking song, the Squire/Fred's number, and so on. I assume the clever and amusing lyrics were written by the Lucy writing team, Jess Oppenheimer, Madelyn Davis and Bob Carroll, Jr. The episode was directed by Marc Daniels.
Ball, Vance, Desi Arnaz, and William Frawley are all in top form, aided and abetted by Myra Marsh as the club president and the other ladies, especially the woman who interrupts the performance to sing to Lucy about a bounced check, and whose identity I can't determine [she isn't listed on imdb nor even on the I Love Lucy DVD], although I have definitely seen her elsewhere, possibly other Lucy episodes.
Verdict: Classic comedy. ****.
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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.