Vintage Television Comedies One Misses

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The Dean Martin Show for sure.

But what I really hated to see canceled lo these many years ago was "NBC News Overnight" with Linda Ellerbee and Bill Scheckner. Best news show that ever hit network TV but as with so much good TV over the years, it didn't play in Peoria so that was that.

What a great double feature that was when it was happening--The totally on-the-fly "Tomorrow" (was that really just tobacco Tom was smoking?) followed by Linda & Bill.

And if you were still not ready to call it a night, there were the public domain-genre all night movies with Old Sourdough and his native American friend whose name I can't spell, brought to you by 3M Carpets. Or after all of that smoking, patty melts at the 24 hours Sambo's on the corner.
 
I liked The Mary Tyler Moore Show, especially the first season. That Girl was good too and was probably a prototype for MTM.
 
Don't worry, it's only Margo

I second The Good Life! What a great show. Just finished another run through the complete series. Margo cracks me up just like Hyacinth does.
 
The Flintstones
Beverly Hillbillies
Get Smart
That Girl (I watched it for Ted Bessell, not Marlo)
Batman (That older/younger thing always appealed to me)
Gidget (For the surfers, not Gidget)
Laugh-In
MPFC
Bob Newhart Show
Carol Burnett Show
Brady Bunch
Courtship of Eddie's Father
My Favorite Martian
Family Affair

In the non-comedy genre, I really miss Adam-12 (Kent McCord was the hottest thing ever on TV), Mission Impossible and Hawaii Five-O.
 
Oh, Man....

....There are so many.

First and foremost, I miss CBS's powerhouse Saturday night lineup of the early '70s, which included my personal all-time favourite, The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

That same night, you'd get:

All In the Family
The Bob Newhart Show
The Mary Tyler Moore Show
The Carol Burnett Show

And one other half-hour sitcom, which changed over the years. One I remember with especial fondness was Bridget Loves Bernie, with David Birney and Meredith Baxter, before she turned into The Great Stone Face of cheesy made-for-TV dramas.

Others include:

The Mothers-In-Law
Make Room for Daddy
December Bride
Pete 'n Gladys (a spin-off of December Bride)
The Dick Van Dyke Show
The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour
The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour
The Jack Benny Show (his 1958 violin competition with Gisele MacKenzie is one of the funniest things I've ever seen)
Laugh-In
Roseanne
Grace Under Fire

I've become very fond of Britcoms in recent years, because American television can't seem to come with good sitcoms any more, and because British shows manage to be both more civil and funnier than the ones over here:

Waiting for God
Are You Being Served?
To the Manor Born
As Time Goes By
Last of the Summer Wine
Yes, Minister
Yes, Prime Minister
Fawlty Towers
The Vicar of Dibley

My liking for British TV is not absolute; I have never liked Keeping Up Appearances, and if I never see another episode of My Hero, Red Dwarf, or A Fine Romance it will be perfectly fine with me.
 
The Carol Burnett Show
The Partridge Family (I have a big crush on David Cassidy)
I Love Lucy
Bewitched
Gilligan's Island
Green Acres
Petticoat Junction
The Bionic Woman (Original with Lindsay Wagner)
Maude
Soap
Wonder Woman
I Dream of Jeannie
Beverly Hillbillies
 
Part of my list

M*A*S*H----but only the Mike Farrell years

Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In

Mary Tyler Moore

My Britcoms:

As Time Goes By

Keeping Up Appearances

Waiting For God

Lawrence/Maytagbear
 
My Two Bits . . .

Green Acres and Absolutely Fabulous. I'm not much of a TV guy, outside of Perry Mason, but Green Acres and Absolutely Fabulous both make me laugh pretty hard!

Going back further in TV history, does anybody here remember Love That Bob with Bob Cummings? In the late '60s Channel 11 in Dallas would broadcast old '50s shows in the afternoon, and Love That Bob was one of the best, at least from the perspective of an elementary school kid. Part of the fun was that even then I realized how preposterous it was that the main character would have one girlfriend, let alone the two or three who always popped up at the same time.
 
By the Way....

....Here's a link to that Jack Benny/Gisele MacKenzie violin competition. I'm not sure if the full effect will come over watching it on the Web; Gisele's facial expressions are a lot of what makes it so uproarious. This is an AOL video; it's also on YouTube, so if you prefer that site, just search and it'll pop up.

The skit is one of the all-time greats. No meanness, no raunchiness, no slapstick - just consummate comedic skill and timing, plus a lot more musicianship than Jack Benny usually gets credited with.

http://video.aol.com/video-detail/gisele-mackenzie-and-jack-benny-legendary-violin-due/1792374479
8-29-2008-01-33-16--danemodsandy.jpg
 
Love That Bob

I watched this in first-run. Ann B. Davis, of "Alice"/"Brady Bunch" fame, played the assistant "Schultzy". In the first Brady Bunch movie, someone else played "Alice" but Ann had a cameo as a truck driver. She picked up her CB mike and said "This is Schultzy" and I hit the floor laughing. I was the only one in the show who got the joke, though.

Another TV show from that time was "The Stu Erwin Show" (or maybe it was called something like "Life With Father"). The characters had pretty familiar sitcom characteristics, with the exception of the younger daughter "Jackie". She was portrayed by Sheila James Kuehl as a bright, competent person unlike any other female kids I had ever seen on TV. Although Sheila found her greatest fame as "Zelda Gilroy" from the "Dobie Gillis Show", I prefer her as that earlier role.
 
Sheila Kuehl aka Zelda Gilroy has been a member of the California State Legistature for quite a number of years now. She has been out of the closet the whole time and pushing gay rights issues on a regular basis.

Sounds to me like her "bright, competent" Jackie character would have been a cinch for her even back then.
 
I LOVE "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman." The title role just couldn't belong to anyone besides Louise Lasser.

A couple of years back a local station (or was it cable?) had a MHMH marathon and I missed it.

What about the mini-series "Fresno" with Carol Burnett and Charles Grodin? That was the best spoof since "Airplane!" It was a shame when CBS re-ran it and felt the need to put a laugh-track on it. Criminy, Carol Burnett was the star so you'd think people wouldn't need to be reminded that they were watching a spoof. Shame on CBS! I taped the first run, but at the time I had a Betamax. I still have the tapes and the machine, only because it may be the only way to watch it again without the laugh track.
 
I remember it as well. I taped it on VHS but I couldn't find the tapes in under a month. (I have over 1500 tapes and most are in boxes in storage)

Mary Hartman was another favorite, for the first season or two anyway. My first exposure to Dabney Coleman, as the slimy Merle Jeeter.

The guy who played Tom Hartman recently resurfaced on a Nickelodeon kids show called "iCarly" playing Carly's grandfather. He looks lots older, but he is still pretty funny.
 
The Patty Duke Show

"There's Kathy who's lived most everywhere from San Sebar to Barkley Square.But Patty's only seen the sights a girl can see from Brooklyn Hights!What a crazy pair!But they're cousins.Identical cousins all the way!One pair of matching bookends.Different as night and day.

Where Kathy adores a minuet,the ballet roost and crepe suzette,our Paty loves to rock and roll,a hot dog makes her lose control! what a wild duet!

But they're cousins.Identical cousins and you'll find.They laugh alike,they walk alike,at times they even talk alike!You can lose your mind! When cousins are two of a kind!!!! I MISS THAT SHOW!!! I got some of the greatest ideas from watching her antics.Almost like Lucies but a bit more from the "now "generation from that fabulous era!!!Got me in lots of trouble too!!
 
Ward, you were a little tough on the Beaver last night...

Wally was my 1st teen crush; the re-runs still do it for me.

Say what you want about the cornyness of Leave It To Beaver, at least people spoke correctly and had manners. Even Eddie Haskell was polite to Mr. & Mrs. Cleaver. I wished that my mom was like June.

Funny thing about sitcoms, you hardly ever saw the characters WATCHING TV as part of the story line! Except maybe for Archie Bunker and George Burns. A lot of sitcom houses didn't even have a TV set.
 
Words One Learned From Archie Bunker

No offence meant to anyone:

Wops
Hebes
Coloureds
Pollacks
Faries
Krauts

And a whole other assorted and sundry horribly bigoted slang words.

Only Archie Bunker could string them all together in a phrase as well:

You don't know nothing about Lady Liberty, standing there in the harbor, with her torch on high, screaming out to all the nations in the world: Send me your poor, your deadbeats, your filthy, and all the nations sent them in here. They come swarming in like ants, Hispanics... your Japs, your Chinamen, your Krauts and your Hebs and your English fruits. They all come spillin' in here where they're all free to live in their own separate sections where they feel safe. And they'll bust your head if you go in there. THAT'S what makes America beautiful, buddy."
 
My favorites were:(not necessarily in any kind of order)

1.I Love Lucy
2.Here's Lucy
3.The Lucy Show
4.The Carol Burnett Show
5.The Jeffersons
6.The Mary Tyler More show
7.All in the family
8.Green acres
9.The Beverly Hillbillies
10.The Bob Newheart Show
11.Rowan and Martin's Laugh In
12.The Flip Wilson Show
13.Sony and Cher
14.Maud
15.The Golden Girls
16.My Mother the Car
17. The Munsters
18.The Adams Family
19.The Pruitts of South Hampden
20. The Patty Duke Show
21.The Petula clark show
22.The Andy Griffith Show
23.The Ghost and Mrs.Mure
24.The Flying Nunn
25.Rhoda
26.The Ed Sullivan show
27.The Real McCoys
28.The Pearl Baily Show
29.The Outer Limits
30.The Twilight Zone
31.Red Skelton
32.Perry Mason
33.Alfred Hitchcock
34.Ben Casey
35.Leave it to Beaver
36.Dennis the Mennace
37.Medical Center
38.Hawaii 5 0
39.The F.B.I.
40.Doctor Who
41.My Three Sons
42.Family Affair
43.Lassie
44.Sky King
45.Zoro
46.Maverick
47.Gunsmoke
48.Combat
49.Hogan's Heros
50.Hazel
51.Mr Ed
52.The Mod Squad
53.Lucy Desi Comedy Hour
54.Pettycoat Junction
55.The Big Valley
 
Recently PBS ran a program with many of the young actors from TV's "golden age" who are now in their 50's and 60's. They had some great insights into the shows they worked on, things they didn't think about as kids, and have a real respect for the standards TV shows were held to back then. I recommend it if you see something like that in the PBS listings.

It's clear that the writing from the golden age assumed a certain level of knowledge--even sophistication--on the part of the viewing public, it was often clever and witty, and that is what I miss. Today's TV fare for the most part appeals to the lowest common denominator and is indeed a more vast wasteland than its early detractors ever thought possible. Or maybe they did.
 
I Forgot:

Grindl, with Imogene Coca

The Bill Dana Show

The Colgate Comedy Hour, particularly the shows hosted by Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis

The Hathaways, with Peggy Cass and the Marquis Chimps

Ozzie and Harriet (Because of the Nelsons' fearsomely wholesome image, most people don't remember that they hold a little-known distinction; they were the first sitcom couple to share a double bed, two decades before any others did)

The Ann Sothern Show, plus its other iteration, Oh, Susannah!

My Little Margie, with Gale Storm (whose '50s recordings for Dot Records are not nearly as well-remembered as they should be)

The Ernie Kovacs Show, with the great Nairobi Trio performing (more or less) "Solfeggio"

That Was the Week That Was, a brilliant, short-lived political satire show often referred to simply as TW3

and while it wasn't strictly a comedy, it did have lots of clowns:

International Showtime, a summer replacement series showing circuses from all over Europe. Don Ameche was ringmaster each week, and Studebaker was the sponsor. To this day, I can't hear Alfven's "Swedish Rhapsody" on my local classical station without thinking of this show - it was used as the theme music.
 
I love the old tv shows

Steve and I both love watching the older tv shows. We have a collection of them on dvd. Here's a list of what we have. And I love watching them.

Adam 12
Adams Family
All in the Family
Andy Griffity
Bewitched
Bob Newhart Show
Car 54
Charles in Charge
Cheers
Chips
Diffrent Stokes
Doris Day Show
Dragnet
Facts of Life
Family Affair
Family Guy
Flipper
Flying Nun
Get Smart
Ghost and Mrs Muir
Gimmie A Break
Good Times
Green Acres
Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew Mysteries
Heres Lucy
Hazel
Highlander
Highlander The Raven
Honeymooners
I Dream Of Jeannie
Ironside
Johnny Quest
Laverne And Shirley
Law And Order C.I.
Law And Order S.V.U.
Mary Tyler Moore Show
My Mother The Car
Perry Mason
Quantum Leap
Quincy
Rocky And Bullwinkle Show
Smallville
South Park
Tabitha
Taxi
Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea
Will And Grace
WKRP In Cincanitti
Without A Trace
Wonder Woman

Theres a couple that are more modern, but still I think are very good.
 
Some thoughts...

The Hathaways, with Peggy Cass and the Marquis Chimps

-- for some reason I am incredibly creeped out by monkeys, chimps, and other simians interacting with people. I hated this show, and Lancelot Link, and others I can't remember now.

The Ann Sothern Show, plus its other iteration, Oh, Susannah!

--Ann Sothern's other show was "Private Secretary" (with Zazu Pitts). "Oh, Susannah!" was Gale Storm's show after "Margie". She was a cruise ship employee.

My Little Margie, with Gale Storm (whose '50s recordings for Dot Records are not nearly as well-remembered as they should be)

--Can anyone write in words the sound Margie would make when exasperated? (nngngngngaaaaa, or something....)

The Ernie Kovacs Show, with the great Nairobi Trio performing (more or less) "Solfeggio"

-- my Dad thought Ernie Kovacs was brilliantly funny. As I recall it, his show was not regularly presented, but appeared now and then maybe as a summer replacement. When ever it was on, we watched it.
 

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