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I Married Joan

Lkeller said:
I've noticed that you rarely hear bad news about 90s child stars, other than the occasional bout of anorexia for some of the women...perhaps there have been greater legal protection for them and their assets in more recent times.
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Between that and the fact that in recent years few really cares about what the stars do in private. Not that they aren't interested just they don't care. For example the kids of the 70's were SHOCKED to learn that Jack Wild from HR Pufinstuff SMOKED CIGARETTES !! However the kids of the late 90's really couldn't care less that the Backstreet Boys did the exact same thing. In those days it was that "image" today..people for the most part are willing to accept that who they see on TV, hear on the radio, see at the theatre..well its acting.


RicoGregg said:
Elvis died from too many pills.

How could things turn out differently for them? What do you mean?
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In the case of Elvis Presley, Lisa Marie herself had said in the past that Elvis was on the paranoid side in his later years. Had he wasn't Elvis would had trusted a lot more people than just those inside his so-called Memphis Mafia and Colonal Tom Parker and perhaps he wouldn't had taken those pills from Dr. Nick.
 
Lkeller said:
[I first heard about Paul Peterson's work from a talk show he appeared on 15 or 20 years ago (Donahue, Oprah...can't remember). He appeared with a number of former child stars. One of them was Jay North, and he did come off as extremely angry - like a guy who could lose it and strike out without much provocation.

RE: the ones that turned out fine - I watched a PBS documentary on 60s comedies that included many of the former child stars. Many were doing fine, and it seems like the older ones (the ones that played teens on these shows) fared much better. Tony Dow had a successful but low-key career in TV behind the camera, and is an accomplished sculptor. Ken Osmond came off as a bitter guy, but I suspect that was as much due to his later career as an officer with the LAPD, when he was shot in the line of duty.

Another kid actor who turned out well is Jon Provost, who has been a successful businessman (real estate, I think) in the North SF Bay Area.
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Considering all the kids who did turn out fine, I'm wondering if Jay North's problem was his home life. I remember watching one of those shows like True Hollywood Stories on the E network (not really sure where I saw it) and Gloria Henry who played Dennis' mother Alice was also on it. I think he was sent out to Hollywood to live with a very mean aunt. I don't think he had issues with the rest of the cast, although I could be wrong.
 
mleach said:
...and speaking of Dennis The Menace...I did find this though not recent. Billy Booth who played "Tommy" has since past away and at a young age too.
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I did not know that. Thank you for listing it. It's even sadder when you learn of the passing of yesterday's stars as an afterthought (unlike the Michael Jackson or Anna Nicole Smith media circuses).
 
My early memories of I Married Joan were probably the first run of reruns. My parents really seemed liked they didn't like the show. They discouraged me from watching it "go outside and play". I think they just thought it was a rip off of I Love Lucy and resented it and thought it was just stupid.
For me it was just something to watch and was better than Army training films.
Joan Davis came out of the old studio system. Television certainly was not the studio system so she was a fish out of water in the new media.
She certainly was never a star. A "B" actress or whacky sidekick at best.
No one has mentioned Jim Backus role in Rebel Without a Cause. He played James Dean's ineffective father.
 
"To each his own, but for me I Married Joan" ! I used to sing the theme as a kid. I watched "Joan" first run. My family loved it. We never got into "Lucy" at all. I watched a couple of episodes posted on You Tube last week. Jim Backus was also a jock for a short period of time on KLAC 570 Los Angeles around 1959 which had a sort of top 40 format and had a minor hit record called "Delicious".
 
JON BRUCE said:
"To each his own, but for me I Married Joan" ! I used to sing the theme as a kid. I watched "Joan" first run. My family loved it. We never got into "Lucy" at all. I watched a couple of episodes posted on You Tube last week. Jim Backus was also a jock for a short period of time on KLAC 570 Los Angeles around 1959 which had a sort of top 40 format and had a minor hit record called "Delicious".
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I thought that was a fascinating bit of radio history, Jon, so I Googled it, and found this link to the LA Times website. It includes an original article from Don Page's Radio Beat column. It looks like this "variety" comedy format on KLAC was only on weekends, and included Jim Backus in the afternoon, comic Louis Nye (then a star on Steve Allen's TV show...Hi, ho, Steverino") in mid-day, and a second guy named Louis - Quinn, who played Roscoe the Bookie on 77 Sunset Strip. The 4th DJ was Dick Haynes ("...at the Reins")...a LA DJ veteran. It looks like that was Haynes' second time at KLAC. He returned a third time when KLAC went country in the 70s.

If you click onto the article, it will enlarge, and is readable.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/thedailymirror/2009/09/new-format-klac.html
 
therealjm12 said:
No one has mentioned Jim Backus role in Rebel Without a Cause. He played James Dean's ineffective father.
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...or his performance alongside James Cagney in Man of a Thousand Faces, as Lon Chaney's personal manager...
 
I found it interesting that in one episode she and Backus went to a hockey game (appeared to be a studio recreation with NY Ranger uniforms). The NHL had only 4 US based teams at the time, and very limited exposure beyond those markets. Interesting choice for the times.
 
And speaking of Jim Backus.....ThisTV just came to my town this week and I tuned in for the first time several hours ago to find Backus one of the cast members of a potboiler movie called "Operation Bikini" (which despite its title is not a comedy or anything related to bikini's but rather a standard WWII feature with pretty lame acting - including the aforementioned Mr. Magoo Backus.

It was nice to see him in something other than his familiar comedy roles although I'm sure he didn't list this movie as one of his favorites.
 
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