Comedy Classics
Of the ’50s and ’60s
Why are classic comedies still so appealing decades after they stopped filming? Simple: simpler days. Series like The Andy Griffith Show, Leave It to Beaver and Rowan & Martin’s
Laugh-in take us back to easier times when we could turn on the Magnavox and learn every word of “The Crawdad Song” from Andy, get a laugh and some gentle parenting advice from Ward and June Cleaver, and — if we we’re feeling groovy — frug away in the living room while learning a few knee-slappers from the titular Rowan and Martin and their who’s who of Hollywood guests.
Peruse the treasure trove from the golden age of TV sitcoms, and a few trends emerge. There were shows about traditional families, shows about nontraditional families, shows that put the country in the city or the city in the country (or everyone on a deserted isle), and shows that simply let funny men and ladies run loose with other funny men and ladies and (well, mostly) let the whole family laugh along.
Traditional Families
Series like The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet (1952-66), Father Knows Best
(1954-60), Leave It to Beaver (1957-63), The Donna Reed Show (1958-66) and The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961-66) featured proudly traditional gender roles, as the little missus held down the fort (and then some) while her mister trooped off to work. The kids got into gently comic scrapes that let Mom — who often subtly wore the pants in the family — and Dad work respectfully together to set them straight, setting a good example for their progeny and viewers in the process.
No kids? Different comic problems! A pair of the 1950s’ most iconic sitcoms won over audiences by portraying childless married New Yorkers just trying to get by. Before Little Ricky came along, I Love Lucy (1951-57) portrayed real-life showbiz marrieds Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz as apartment dwellers Lucy and Ricky Ricardo, who, along with their landlord besties Fred (William Frawley) and Ethel Mertz (Vivian Vance), gave comic life to the reality of showbiz dreams in the Big Apple.
Likewise, The Honeymooners
(1955-56) paired working-class couples Ralph (series creator Jackie Gleason) and Alice Kramden (Audrey Meadows) and Ed and Trixie Norton (Art Carney and Joyce Randolph), dreaming of fame, or at least fortune, from their own apartment building in Brooklyn. Iconic despite its single-season run, the show garnered both controversy and comedy cult status for Ralph’s affinity for his fist-waving empty threats. “One of these days … POW! Right in the kisser!” and “You’re going to the moon!” he’d warn, though audiences never doubted how he really felt about his girl: “Baby, you’re the greatest.”
Nontraditional Families
Warmhearted family laughers didn’t always involve beleaguered marrieds.
The Andy Griffith Show (1960-68) featured widowed Sheriff Andy Taylor (Griffith) raising impish little Opie (Ron Howard) with the help of his Aunt Bee and the Mayberry townsfolk, while
My Three Sons (1960-72) saw widowed engineer Steven Douglas (Fred Macmurray) raising his boys with granddad Bub O’casey and later Uncle Charley.
And sometimes it was the uncle outright doing the raising.
Family Affair (1966-71) featured Brian Keith’s dapper businessman bachelor
Bill Davis welcoming his late brother’s orphaned children — teenage Cissy (Kathy Garver) and little twins Buffy and Jody (Anissa Jones, Johnny Whitaker) — from Indiana to his Fifth Avenue high-rise apartment. His partner in childrearing? His elegant (but not unwilling to braid hair) valet Mr. French, played by Sebastian Cabot.
In some sitcom marriages, the ladies of the house didn’t have domestic superpowers — they actually were from another dimension.
I Dream of Jeannie (1965-70) starred Barbara Eden as a bellybaring 2,000-year-old genie who falls for Larry Hagman’s Capt. Tony Nelson, the astronaut who frees her from her bottle and becomes the object of her affection and well-meaning schemes to please her man. NBC execs encouraged the pair’s marriage in the show’s final season, much to Eden’s very vocal dismay.
Bewitched (1964-72) featured
Elizabeth Montgomery as a comely witch of indeterminate age who marries businessman Darrin Stephens (Dick York, replaced by Dick Sargent when York took ill) before letting him in on why her nose twitches signal more than a cold, resulting in family-comedy chaos.
City Meets Country... or Vice Versa
By the mid ’60s, sitcoms had gone country — sort of — thanks to veteran TV producer Paul Henning.
The Beverly Hillbillies (1962-71) featured poor mountaineer Jed Clampett (Buddy Ebsen), his domineering mother-in-law “Granny” (Irene Ryan), daughter Elly May (Donna Douglas) and perpetually famished cousin Jethro Bodine (Max Baer Jr.), who head West when Jed shoots at some food and unearths crude (oil) instead, making them millionaires. Though the show garnered “country bumpkin in the city” laughs, the Missouri-born Henning made sure the resourceful, morally centered mountain folk often displayed more sense than their citified counterparts. A year later, Henning’s Petticoat
Junction (1963-1970) turned back to the country. The show centered on the travails of widowed rural hotel owner Kate Bradley (Bea Benaderet) dealing with her business while also keeping tabs on her rascally uncle Joe Carson (Edgar Buchanan) and three spirited daughters, redhead Betty Jo, brunette Bobbie Jo and blonde Billie Jo. The latter’s oft-doffed petticoats signal their fondness for skinny-dipping in the local railway’s water tower and also account for the nearby train station’s name.
Petticoat’s sister series Green Acres (1965-1971) concerned disenchanted Manhattan lawyer
Oliver Wendell Douglas (Eddie Albert), who decides to realize his dream of becoming one with the land and spirits his pampered Hungarian wife Lisa (Eva Gabor) off to a farm in Hooterville. Lisa doesn’t quite cotton to domestic life but bonds with the new neighbors better than Ollie ever will.
Keeping up the fish-out-of-water theme, Gilligan’s Island (1964-67) placed the unlucky participants of an ill-fated three-hour boat tour — skipper Jonas Grumby, his bumbling first mate Gilligan, Professor Roy Hinkley, millionaire Thurston Howell III and his wife Lovey, movie star Ginger Grant and perky Kansas farm girl Mary Ann Summers — on a deserted island where no amount of ingenuity or guest stars could return them stateside.