I used to love the sitcom "Our Miss Brooks".
It starred Eve Arden. She was great.
By the time she did "The Mothers-In-Law", her timing was shot.
She over-emphasized every word she had.
But on "Our Miss Brooks", her timing was impeccable.
Richard Crenna played the role of his career---Walter Denton, the geeky-voiced high school student
and confidante of Miss Brooks.
He was hilarious.
As was Jane Morgan, the actress who played Mrs. Davis, Miss Brooks screwy landlady.
And this was where Gale Gordon broke in what later became Mr. Mooney on the Lucy Show as
Principal Osgood Conklin, with even more bombast than Mr. Mooney ever had.
I hadn't seen the show in over fifty years, but had nothing but fond memories of it.
Recently, MeTV decided to add "Our Miss Brooks to it's Monday through Friday lineup.
As soon as I found out about it I set the Tivo for it to see as many episodes as I could.
I was really jazzed by the thought that somebody would think to do this
All the good things I said about it still applied, but it was overwhelmed by its horribl.e writing.
Every episode involved the type of scheming and misunderstanding that was the hallmark of every episode of "Three's Company".
As a viewer, you can't be ahead of them in terms of storytelling.
On this show, you always are.
Way too predictable. Constantly.
My taste was a little less sophisticated fifty years ago.
But as well as well performed as it is, that's how unbearable it is to watch now.
So I've just removed it from my Tivo.
I've now watched enough of them to realize that it's not going to get any better.
Sometimes you can't go home again.
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My books, "Show Runner" and it's sequel, "Show Runner Two", can be found at the Amazon Kindle Store.
Along with the newer ones, "The Man Is Dead", and "Report Cards".
They are all compilations of blog entries that have since been removed from the blog.
So this is the only way you can find them.
You can search by typing in my name, Cindy Williams, Laverne and Shirley, The Odd Couple, or Happy Days.
Check them out.
You don't need a Kindle machine to download them.
Just get the free app from Kindle, and they can be downloaded to an IPhone, IPad, or Blackberry.
The paperbacks, "Mark Rothman's Essays" and my new novel, "I'm Not Garbo" are not e-books.
But they are available for people without Kindle.
I have many readings and signings lined up for those, and the thing about Kindle is you can't sign one.
If you'd like one of the paperbacks, personally autographed, contact me at macchus999@comcast.net
And now, we've got my reading of my "Laverne and Shirley Movie" screenplay on YouTube.
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Wednesday, September 28, 2016
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About Me
- mark rothman
- Hi. I am, according to my Wikipedia entry,(which I did not create) a noted television writer, playwright, screenwriter, and occasional actor. You can Google me or go to the IMDB to get my credits, and you can come here to get my opinions on things, which I'll try to express eloquently. Hopefully I'll succeed. You can also e-mail me at macchus999@aol.com. Perhaps my biggest claim to fame is being responsible, for about six months in 1975, while Head Writer for the "Happy Days" TV series, for Americans saying to each other "Sit on it."
but why is it, on some level, that something like the three stooges does hold up?
ReplyDeleteand because i've always loved shirley booth, i can still watch "hazel" and find some amusement.
ReplyDeleteI can only watch the three stooges in very small doses. I never really found them funny.
ReplyDeleteHazel was my mother's favorite show. She WAS Hazel. We only had one TV set.
There were so many things I would have rather watched.
Irrelevant, perhaps ...
ReplyDeleteBack in the '70s-'80s, when the networks were heavily into reunion/revival specials, I had an idea for such a show, reuniting "Our Miss Brooks".
The premise would be that Connie Brooks was retiring from her post at the high school, and a testimonial assembly was held, at which everything would go wrong ... you know how that works.
This would have fallen within the lifetimes of Eve Arden, Gale Gordon, Bob Rockwell, and however many of the "kids" were still around (now well into adulthood).
The capper would be Richard Crenna, who would be introduced as "Dr. Walter C. V. Denton", the high school's most distinguished alumnus, now an Ambassador or visiting professor or corporate mogul or whatever.
And when "Dr. Denton" (OK, cheap laugh, whatever works) takes the podium, we see Richard Crenna, now a dramatic actor of distinction, in a well-tailored three-piece suit, styled hair, perhaps the mustache he occaionally had at that point -
- and when he starts to speak, out comes Walter Denton's cracking adolescent cackle, unchanged after all those years.
Crenna could still do that voice well into his later years, to the delight of talk show hosts (the old radio skills never leave you).
I would have gotten a kick if the speech had at some point included the word "maturity" - into which Crenna would doubtless have put the biggest crack midway through.
Never happened, never will ...
Funny, I felt the same way about 'The Mothers-in-Law' when Decades did a recent marathon. Reminded me of 'I Love Lucy' as a kid. Reminds me of 'Here's Lucy' as an adult.
ReplyDelete