(This is the seventh chapter of a book-in-progress, “Television, and How It Got That Way.” For the previous chapters, scroll down in “Stories.”)
In a logical world, “I Love Lucy” would have launched a revolution in clever comedies.
TV, of course, lacks logic. It would be a couple decades before Mary Tyler Moore (shown here), Archie Bunker and others propelled the first golden age of comedy.
During the “Lucy” years, networks mostly had minor comedies, often bearing characters’ names. There was “Stanley” and “Sally,” “Willy” and “Meet Millie.” There was “Hey Jeannie” and “It’s Always Jan,” “Dear Phoebe” and “Honestly Celeste,” “Leave It to Larry” and “Meet Mr. McNutley.” And that’s not to mention “Colonel Humphrey Flack” and “Adventures of Hiram Hoke.”
Many lasted for a year or two; most were soon forgotten.
Certainly, there were some clever folks then. Danny Thomas had a situation comedy; so did George Burns and Gracie Allen. Others – Jack Benny, Sid Caesar, etc. — had sitcom elements inside variety shows.
But things were sputtering … and hit a detour with James Aubrey.
Aubrey had boosted ABC with a surge of cowboy shows. Then he became CBS’ president in 1959.
Tall and handsome, he was a former Princeton football player with a nature that was variously described as decisive and arrogant. The good news was he knew what he wanted; the bad news was he just wanted quick ratings.
His formula was described by writer Andrew Grossman as “broads, bosoms and fun.” His soul was described by writer David Halberstam as a “huckster’s huckster.” His persona was described by many people as “the smiling cobra.”
His approach was big on profits, not prestige, Metz wrote. “Under Aubrey’s aegis, CBS attracted the biggest audiences and banked the highest profits in TV history.”
For the 1963-64 season, it had 14 of the 15 top-rated shows. (NBC’s “Bonanza” was the only exception.) But that was built on rural shows and on gimmick ones: “Beverly Hillbillies” was No. 1, “My Favorite Martian” was No. 10. “Mr. Ed” (the talking horse) was also around.
Some of these shows had catchy gimmicks that soared quickly. But, as John Rich (a director of “All in the Family” and other shows) pointed out: “Quick starters tend to be quick finishers.”
Amid all that, Metz wrote: “There were exceptions to the usual pap Aubrey fed the public. The Dick Van Dyke series is still regarded as a landmark.”
Carl Reiner, one of the key people in Caesar’s show, had written and produced a comedy that jumped between Rob Petrie’s two worlds – at home with his wife and son and at work as a comedy writer.
The pilot was rejected, but then Sheldon Leonard – yes, the namesake for Sheldon and Leonard on “The Big Bang Theory” – intervened.
Leonard was already producing comedies built around Danny Thomas and Andy Griffith. This script was good, he said, but Rob needed to be recast
This didn’t please Reiner, because he was playing Rob. He agreed, and instead played (occasionally) the boss.
Van Dyke, fresh from a Broadway musical, became the new Rob. Playing his wife was Mary Tyler Moore … best-known for playing a receptionist – with only her legs on camera – on “Richard Diamond, Private Detective.” This new version was a hit … eventually.
The first season, misplaced behind the half-hour version of “Gunsmoke,” sputtered. Aubrey decided to cancel it.
“CBS was guilty of a network sin that is still being committed today,” Grant Tinker wrote in “Tinker in Television” (Simon & Schuster, 1994). “Lackluster, first-year ratings results were given greater weight than overwhelmingly positive critical reaction” and potential.
Leonard was convinced of the potential. A commanding presence – as an actor, he was best at playing gangsters – he made personal pitches to executives at Procter & Gamble and P. Lorillard.
Both agreed to take a half-sponsorship of the show. Aubrey – wary of offending two big advertisers – relented.
He also nestled the show into a new spot behind “Beverly Hillbillies.” In its second season, the Van Dyke show leaped to No. 3 in the Nielsen ratings. It also won the Emmy for best comedy series … and continued to win it for the rest of its five-year run.
That lesson – if a show has potential, stick with it – was soon ignored by many people, but not by Tinker.
During the Van Dyke years, he was merely a spectator, married to Moore. Later, he became the NBC president and showed the sort of patience that others had lacked.
When “Cheers” started slowly, NBC’s Brandon Tartikoff reportedly suggested it be canceled. Tinker’s reply: “Do you have anything better?”
He didn’t, of course. “Cheers” stayed.
“Throughout its first season, ‘Cheers; ranked near the bottom of Nielsen’s prime-time list, some weeks finishing dead last,” Tinker wrote. The solution: “staying with ‘Cheers’ until the audience found out how wonderful it was.”
In its third year – with “The Cosby Show” starting the night, “Cheers” was No. 12. It would spend the next eight years in the top-five, finishing No. 1 in its ninth season. It was nominated for best comedy series every year, winning in its first two seasons and three more times.
But that was later, during the second comedy golden age. First was a key question: Would “The Dick Van Dyke Show” (like “I Love Lucy”) be a mere anomaly, followed by mediocrity? Or would other worthy comedies follow?
Tinker worked out a deal: CBS would give him a 13-week commitment — no pilot film needed — for “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.” The MTM company was born.
There were network objections, Tinker recalled. The pilot did poorly with test audiences. After meeting the show’s writer-producers (Jim Brooks and Allan Burns, fresh from ABC’s “Room 222”), a network programmer told him: “Hire someone else, someone we can deal with.”
He didn’t and the show clicked when it debuted in 1970. In each of its seven seasons, it was nominated for best comedy series; for the final three, it won. It spent three seasons in the Nielsen top-10 and three more in the top-22.
And it kept spawning spin-offs – “Rhoda,” “Phyllis,” even “Lou Grant” … a comedy character spinning off into a drama. By 1977, MTM had shows starring Bob Newhart, Tony Randall and Betty White.
It “had a growing reputation as a place where quality counted …. We were simultaneously beloved by Nielsen and by the critics,” Tinker wrote.
MTM molded TV’s first golden age of comedy … or, actually, half of it.
Two years before “The Mary Tyler Moore” show debuted, Norman Lear read about a British comedy in which a bigoted dad spouted about his family and the world. To Lear, that was a lot like his own father. “I loved him,” he once said, “but I didn’t always like him.”
Lear bought the rights and prepared to Americanize it. The wife would become much more lovable; so would her husband, Archie Bunker.
“It was very important to me that Archie have a likable face,” Lear wrote in “Even This I Get to Experience” (Penguin Press, 2014). “The point of the character was to show that if bigotry and intolerance didn’t exist in the hearts and minds of the good people, the average people, it would not be the endemic problem it is …. I rarely saw a bigot I didn’t have some reason to like. They were all the relatives and friends.”
So he cast Carroll O’Connor and Jean Stapleton as Archie and Edith. Lear shot one pilot in October of 1968, recast the daughter and son-in-law and did another four months later. The rest was up to ABC, then led by Elton Rule and Leonard Goldenson.
“Elton and I knew ‘All in the Family’ was funny,” Goldenson wrote in “Beating the Odds” (Scribner’s, 1991), “but felt it would antagonize certain ethnic groups. We also had serious doubts that advertisers would support the show.”
There was another factor, which Michael Eisner – then an ABC clerk, later the head of Disney – recalled in Goldenson’s book.
In an attempt to reach young audiences, ABC had scheduled “Turn On,” a comedy show from “Laugh-In” producer George Schlatter.
The result bombed instantly and was canceled after one episode. (“Not even one,” Schlatter once said, sort of gleefully. “One station owner stopped it at the commercial break.”)
“Everybody was still shell-shocked from ‘Turn On,’” Eisner wrote. “I think if it hadn’t been for that, they would have put the show on the air.”
So “All in the Family” was ditched and Lear was ready to sign a three-picture deal as a movie writer/producer. Then he got a call from Bob Wood, the new CBS president, who said he’d just seen “the Archie pilot.”
Bud Yorkin, Lear’s business partner, had visited CBS on another matter, when one of the people mentioned “All in the Family.” Yorkin promptly brought out a tape and laughter ensued.
CBS ordered one more pilot – the third – this time with Sally Struthers and Rob Reiner as the daughter and son-in-law. Then “All in the Family” debuted on Jan. 12, 1971, just four months after “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.”
At first, it was in a mismatch behind “Beverly Hillbillies,” “Green Acres” and “Hee Haw.” The next fall, it moved to 8 p.m. Saturdays and soared. For five years, it was No. 1 in the Nielsen ratings, sometimes by large margins.
The effect was huge, Lear wrote. “Five years later, we had seven series on the air and Mike Wallace was introducing me on ‘60 Minutes’ as the man whose shows were viewed by more than 120 million people each week.”
Some of Lear’s shows – “Maude,” “Good Times,” “The Jeffersons” – shared the “All in the Family” knack for stirring controversy. Some – “Sanford and Sons,” “Diff’rent Strokes” – were just silly fun. At least one, “All That Glitters,” failed instantly with critics and viewers.
But mostly, these were smart, sharp shows, as were the MTM ones.
The two comedy factories were opposites in some ways: Lear’s shows were more topical and more diverse.
But they were similar in the important ways: They were funny, distinctive and mostly immune to network meddling.
Combined with a few other shows – especially “MASH,” which started in 1972 – they gave TV it’s first golden age of comedy.