#also while doing this i found out ade had a sitcom with david mitchell that was lost for years but is now on youtube :) (drs and nurses) | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

papermoonloveslucy · 3 years

Text

‘MY GOOD WIFE’ v ‘MY FAVORITE HUSBAND’

June 23, 1949

"My Good Wife," an added starter on KNBC, 6:30 p.m. PST Fridays, is another comedy about a young married couple, as if we needed another one. I must admit this one is a little different. This married couple, Steve and Kay Emerson, are not nearly so fast with a wisecrack as, say, Lucille Ball and her husband on "My Favorite Husband," 9:00 p.m. PST the same night on KCBS. Great night for matrimony, Fridays, and if those two programs don't provide enough for you, tune in Dorothy Dix at 1:45 pm. (not broadcast in west). She'll tell you how to win back an erring husband.

I haven't yet made up my mind whether the Emerson's ineptness at repartee is deliberate - after all, not every young wife talks like Groucho Marx - or whether the script writer isn't very good at it either. Anyhow, whether by accident or design, the Emersons are a very restful young couple, possibly a little too restful to get anywhere in the entertainment world. In radio, they're a real novelty.

As a wife Arlene Francis who plays Kay Emerson, wins out on points over Lucille Ball In other regards - talent and looks, for example - Miss Ball is way out front. But how long could you live with a girl who says: "Oh, we don't miss television. I climb in the Bendix and sing and George looks at me through the little window." Imagine having a girl around the house who said things like that before breakfast. It'd curdle the milk.

STARTS OFF FAST

“My Good Wife" started out at a gallop two weeks ago, NBC deciding to set the stage and get everything out of the way all at once. The first program resembled one at those synopses of previous in installments in the popular magazines. Steve met Kay, quarreled with her, married her, taught her how to drive, learned he was about to become a father, and became one - all in 15 minutes. One minute later, the dialogue went like this:

"It doesn't seem like we've been married 12 years."

"We've been married 10 years."

"Well, that's why it doesn't seem like 12."

That, incidentally, Is a little brighter than the conversation around the Emerson household generally gets.

On the second show of the series, the pace settled down to a walk. During the first few minutes the Emersons and their neighbors lay lazily on the grass, not even talking very much. This may be taking realism too far. I mean there ought to be some crickets chirping or something. Things quickened a bit later when Mrs. Emerson decided she was going to help her husband out with his law practice and, of course, messed things up.

YALE, NO LESS

The Emersons are quite upper middlebrow as radio's young married folk go. He went to Yale, for heaven's sake, and she not only went to Vassar but led the daisy chain or whatever they do with that daisy chain. What is this - counter revolution? Oh, yes, they live in Larchmont up to their ears in other upper middlebrows. I don't know what else to tell you about the Emersons except they sound like a nice young couple to have over for a drink some time but conceivably a little mild to entertain you much on the air.

My favorite young married couple is still Ozzie and Harriet Nelson - I put Goodman and Jane Ace off in another category entirely - and while we're chatting about this sort of thing, I ought to point out Ricky and David Nelson, Ozzie and Harriet's children, are now playing themselves on that program which solves a lot of problems. I have a spy in the Nelson household, named - in case any congressional ears are pricking - Harriet Nelson, nee Harriet Hilliard, and she is not now and has never been a Communist nor worked on the atom bomb nor designed the B-36.

Anyhow, my spy informed the Nelsons had a little trouble with the kids. The real Ricky and David I listened to the radio Ricky and David and discovered them doing things they weren't allowed to do or wouldn't do voluntarily if they were allowed. Being children, they got confused over their own identities. Well now the real Ricky and David are the radio Ricky and David and the split personalities in the kids has been averted. You run into a lot of funny problems in radio.

# # #

FOOTNOTES FROM THE FUTURE

It seems pretty clear that NBC was counter-programming CBS’s “My Favorite Husband”. Not only are the names very similar, they were scheduled on the same night, as critic Crosby points out.

The episode of “My Favorite Husband” described above might apply to any domestic sitcom, but was actually titled “Budget - Mr. Atterbury” broadcast June 3, 1949. However, this newspaper is still calling Lucille Ball’s character Liz Cugat, when her name had changed to Liz Cooper in January 1949, to avoid comparison with the well-known bandleader (no, not Desi Arnaz).

Counter-programming by NBC would not stop on radio. When “I Love Lucy” was a juggernaut hit for CBS TV, NBC created a similar show titled “I Married Joan” for star Joan Davis. It was billed as “The adventures of the scatterbrained wife of a respected city judge.” Substitute “bandleader” for “Judge” (played by Jim Backus) - and you’ve got “I Love Lucy.” Like Ball, Davis was a film star of the ‘30s and ‘40s getting aboard the TV bandwagon. Like Lucy, Joan wanted to be in showbusiness. Many of the same situations that Lucy got into, Joan did too. The series even featured a few “I Love Lucy” refugees: Jerry Hausner, Elvia Allman, Bob Jellison, Margie Liszt, Shirley Mitchell, Ross Elliott, and many others. "Lucy” and “Joan” even employed the same director in each show's first season, Marc Daniels. "Joan” lasted three seasons, from 1952 to 1955 and is all but forgotten today.

Kay Emerson was not the first domestic radio role for Arlene Francis. In 1940, she took over the role of Betty on “Betty and Bob”, which had been the first successful soap opera. She was one of the hosts of the quiz show “What’s My Name?” beginning in 1938. The show was seen as a model for TV’s “What’s My Line?” which premiered in 1950. Francis would stay with the show for its entire run, including six mystery guest appearances by Lucille Ball.

The husband to “My Good Wife” was played by John Conte. From 1944 to 1946 he was married to Marilyn Maxwell (1944-46) who would later appear with Lucille Ball in the 1963 film Critic’s Choice. He had also been seen with Ball (and Maxwell) in As Thousands Cheer (1943). In 1960 he would work for Desilu in an episode of “The Untouchables” (1960).

Unlike “My Favorite Husband’s” mythical mid-Western Sheridan Falls, the Emerson’s livid in the real New York suburb of Larchmont, an affluent village located within the Town of Mamaroneck in Westchester County, New York, approximately 18 miles northeast of Midtown Manhattan. Nearby was the town of New Rochelle, whose most famous fictional resident was Rob Petrie on “The Dick Van Dyke Show” (filmed at Desilu Studios). Danfield, New York, another fictional town in the area, was the residence of Lucy Carmichael and Vivian Bagley for the first three seasons of “The Lucy Show.”

“My Good Wife” began airing in June 1949, and by April 1950 was nowhere to be found. In October 1949, Billboard reported on a new NBC Gallup Poll that placed the show dead last - with 32 stations voting it poor and only 8 saying it was excellent. The future of “Wife” was bleak. The sitcom was cancelled after 18 weeks to make room for the new Jimmy Durante show. Meanwhile, Ball’s “Husband” (on CBS), thrived. Coincidentally, the show was initially a replacement for Red Skelton’s show. Skelton and Durante had both worked with Ball on films.

Crosby’s quote from “My Favorite Husband”

"Oh, we don't miss television. I climb in the Bendix and sing and George looks at me through the little window."

was spoken by Lucille Ball in the episode titled “Television” on June 17, 1949. A Bendix is a brand of front-loading washing machine. The porthole-like window was similar to the size screen of early television sets.

Crosby’s observation that Liz talks like Groucho Marx is attributable to the show’s writers Bob Carroll, Jr., Madelyn Pugh, and Jess Oppenheimer. And let’s not forget that Lucille Ball acted opposite Groucho Marx in Room Service (1938)!

After making the obvious comparison to “My Favorite Husband,” Crosby lets readers know that neither “Husband” nor “Wife” will ever displace “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriett” in his domestic dome. The show launched October 8, 1944 and a total 402 radio episodes were produced. When it was optioned for television, it was upstart network ABC that made the sweetest deal to the Nelsons.

As Crosby alludes to, their real-life sons, David and Ricky, did not join the cast until the radio show's fifth year. The two boys were played by professional actors prior to their joining because both were too young to perform. Crosby’s allegations of possible identity crisis due to watching their parents with other sons on television, might easily apply to “I Love Lucy”, where the real-life Desi Arnaz often lived in the shadow of the young actors playing Little Ricky on television. Mrs. Ricardo and Mrs. Arnaz giving birth to both boys on the same day only added to the confusion - one that still lingers today.

Crosby declines to compare the aforementioned shows with the popular Goodman and Jane Ace. The real-life marrieds had a show titled “Easy Aces” Goodman Ace cast himself as a harried real estate salesman and the exasperated but loving husband of the scatterbrained, malaprop-prone Jane ("Time wounds all heels"). “Easy Aces” became a long-running serial comedy (1930–1945) but did not make a graceful transition to television, lasting only a few months on the ill-fated DuMont Network. Coincidentally, Martin Gabel, who married Arlene Francis in 1946, had a recurring role on “Easy Aces” during the 1930s.

In a more sarcastic shout-out, Crosby mentions capping off this slew of domestic dithering by listening to Dorothy Dix. Author Elizabeth Meriwether Gilmer (1861-1951) was widely known by the pen name Dorothy Dix. As the forerunner of today’s popular advice columnists, Dix was America’s highest paid and most widely read female journalist at the time of her death. Her advice on marriage was syndicated in newspapers around the world with an estimated audience of 60 million readers. Naturally, radio was not neglected, getting their Dix fix when her column took to the airwaves. Due to Lucy’s insistence on interfering in the Mertz’s personal affairs, Ricky compares Lucy to Dorothy Dix in “Fred and Ethel Fight” (ILL S1;E22) on March 10, 1952.

We haven’t yet mentioned this 1940 gem, but we’ll save that for another time!

#My Good Wife #Arlene Francis #John Conte #My Favorite Husband #Lucille Ball #radio #1949 #I Married Joan #John Crosby #Dorothy Dix #Ozzie and Harriett #Easy Aces #Groucho Marx #Desi Arnaz Jr.#Larchmont NY

2 notes · View notes