Why they were on Top

[johnbasalla]

I believe I have discovered the main reason that during the 1950s, "I Love Lucy", "The Honeymooners" and to a lesser extent "The Phil Silvers Show - aka - "You'll Never Get Rich" were the sitcoms of note, and the ones that have stood the test of time better then the many other shows that were on the TV landscape during that decade. They were laugh out loud funny, whereas many of the other shows were mild in comparison. Those other shows had few riotous laugh out loud moments, replaced instead by pleasant "snickers". So credit goes to the writers and actors. I remember my father saying that someone told him "You gotta watch Jackie Gleason's "Honeymooners". My dad put it on, and it instantly became appointment television. Shows like "I Love Lucy" also had more energy. My favorite 1950s sitcom is "Topper", yet I notice how low key it is and I often leave an episode thinking..."they could have made it funnier".

Other shows that are up there in the laughs department were "Amos and Andy" and "The Burns and Allen Show", although to me, Burns and Allen suffered a little in the energy department. I haven't seen enough episodes of "I Married Joan", but that may be a contender too.

 

[cd637299]

I was alerted over 10 years ago by a radio guy, to check out "Burns & Allen" (our TV stations did not show it much when I was growing up). He sent me 1 episode from the final season.....it was (I suppose) ahead of its time, especially as George talks to us during the action, not exactly, but something like: "I better get in there now, or else there's no plot"....

Now that (finally) Antenna TV has it, I am recording it when I can.

I wish I had seen more of "Dobie Gillis." Now I think it was way ahead of its time, as was B&A.....especially all the hyper-dialogue.

cd

 

[landtuna]

I haven't seen enough episodes of "I Married Joan", but that may be a contender too.

Don't bother. A very poor imitation of "Lucy" despite the presence of the very funny Jim Backus.

And, although the sitcom's of the 50's may not have hit the humor meter as have more recent shows there were a plethora of variety shows that did. Red Skelton, George Gobel, Steve Allen (and his wacky cast of characters) and, of course, Jack Benny.

 

[gregg75]

I watched a couple Dobie Gills episodes on Me-TV the other day. It was ok, but some of the
segments were pretty cartoonish. At the end it was almost like, well we're running out of
time..........how can we end this in 2 minutes.

I've noticed in a lot of the shows from this era PEOPLE ARE WEARING A LOT OF SWEATERS,
even the guys. There must have been some kind of sweater fad in the late 50's to early 60's.

 

[Markxxx]

I Love Lucy holds up because of the writing. I am a huge fan of OTR and a lot of the Lucy episodes are taken word for word from My Favorite Husband radio. It is just as funny on the radio.

I find Leave It To Beaver hold up well too. All though most people who knock it really haven't watched it much. I think it's amazing to have a show on that long and I can't recall one episode that focused on June or Ward. It was always the kids or Eddie or Lumpy.

I think I Married Joan was good in its own way. It's only when you compare it to Lucy that you get a false idea. Joan Davis was more physical and gawky in her comedy than, Lucille Ball, much like Cass Daley was.

Burn and Allen is a pale imitation of the radio show, as is Jack Benny both were hundreds of times funnier on radio.

The problem is both show had been around so long on radio they had too many inside jokes. And Jack Benny was even worse as he could start a show on one week and finish it on the next and there was not a lot of continuity between shows.

Gracie Allen was simply a genius and George pulled her strings. Gracie was not an ad libber and only spoke what was written but she pulled it off. When Chrissie "Three's Company" Snow or Rose "Golden Girls" Nyland, were confused but they came across as stupid and it wasn't always consistently so. Compare a similar show on radio called My Friend Irma, she was just stupid.

You actually believed Gracie had a thought disorder. Gracie didn't come across as stupid but simply illogical. This didn't transfer over to TV as well, because Gracie Allen was tired and sick (she had a weak heart)

My favourite example of this is Fred Allen. If you listen to him on radio he was hysterical, but it did not transfer over to TV well. If you saw the words come out of his mouth, it was offensive somehow.

 

[RicoGregg]

Gracie Allen was simply a genius and George pulled her strings. Gracie was not an ad libber and only spoke what was written but she pulled it off. When Chrissie "Three's Company" Snow or Rose "Golden Girls" Nyland, were confused but they came across as stupid and it wasn't always consistently so. Compare a similar show on radio called My Friend Irma, she was just stupid.

You're darn tootin' that Gracie Allen was a genius. She was arguably the greatest female TV comic ever. Certainly one of the greatest.

Chrissy Snow/Suzanne Somers doesn't deserve to be in the same paragraph as Gracie. She couldn't carry Gracie's syntax.

Another thing that made me was back "in the day" when Roseanne Barr was married to Tom Arnold, calling herself Roseanne Arnold, and being on the cover of TV Guide with red hair, and comparing herself to Lucy, Gracie, and other femme greats. Made me sick.

 

[Limp73]

Phil Silvers played Sgt. Bilko to the hilt.
Lucy and the writes made I Love lucy the timeless classic that it is.
From what I've read on the web, Joan Davis was hateful and arrogant and Jim Backus had a hellish time working with her.
Topper was lighthearted stuff for the older folks in the 50s. Remembered watching sydnicated reruns of that show in the late 60s, despite the pre-ercorded laughtracks and applause....but that was quite common in that decade. Lucy was hysterically funny enough it didn't need a laughtrack.

 

[firepoint525]

The "roller coaster" episode of Leave It To Beaver was one of my fave episodes of that show. I caught it on TV Land, then watched it again when I saw that they were going to air it again. I loved roller coasters as a kid (and still do!). While I was watching the roller coaster episode of Beaver on one of those occasions, my parents were also watching it at their home, and said that it reminded them of me! ;D

 

[cd637299]

The "roller coaster" episode of Leave It To Beaver was one of my fave episodes of that show. I caught it on TV Land, then watched it again when I saw that they were going to air it again. I loved roller coasters as a kid (and still do!). While I was watching the roller coaster episode of Beaver on one of those occasions, my parents were also watching it at their home, and said that it reminded them of me! ;D

I thought I saw almost every ep of Beaver....don't remember that one. Could you run it down for me, and in which season? (I would know the season by the openings.)

BTW "Dobie" & the 1952-58 episodes of "Burns & Allen" are *not* on DVD. Only the public domain stuff....Antenna TV must really be butchering B&A for commercials. Didn't B&A close each ep in front of a curtain ("Say goodnight, Gracie" "Goodnight, Gracie")? That part is totally gone. (Unless they did not do that for 1952-53.)

cd

 

[LKellerIII]

I think your thesis is right-on, johnbasalla. The high energy comedies that went for big laughs are timeless, and that makes sense. American culture hasn't really changed that much in terms of what people find funny. The old sitcoms that seem dated are the "mannered" and polite ones.

A good example is Life With Elizabeth. I checked out an episode or two a couple of years ago in the middle of all that Betty White mania. It was her first series. It has some amusing moments, but it moves like molasses, and seems very dated.

Here's a 1954 episode - I believe the announcer in the beginning is Jack Narz, later a game-show host: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzu-H6R3RG0

 

[Al Timiter]

To me, the biggest difference between the sitcoms then and now is that now everyone seems to have ADD. Because of that, the camera is not allowed to "linger" on a facial expression (think of the priceless takes from Carroll O'Conner on "All in the Family" and Don Knotts on "Andy Griffith."). Sitcoms now are never written that way...it's considered wasted time. The writers now bombard us with a constant barrage of one-liners. Every line has to be "hilarious." (of course they're not.) It's too bad. Some of the best Television from back in the day are the long takes of the two aforementioned actors and plenty of others.

 

[FreddyE1977]

You've gotta have something iconic that sticks in people's heads. Ralph Kramden in that space helmet or Lucy shoving chocolates down her blouse as the conveyor speeds up. And the shows need to be "evergreen" (i.e. avoid dating themselves insofar as possible)

 

[landtuna]

I've noticed in a lot of the shows from this era PEOPLE ARE WEARING A LOT OF SWEATERS,
even the guys. There must have been some kind of sweater fad in the late 50's to early 60's.

I don't think it was a fad but they seemed to be much more popular then than now. Especially in commercials. Almost every adult male pictured in a TV commercial was wearing a sweater instead of a shirt or jacket.

 

[firepoint525]

The "roller coaster" episode of Leave It To Beaver was one of my fave episodes of that show. I caught it on TV Land, then watched it again when I saw that they were going to air it again. I loved roller coasters as a kid (and still do!). While I was watching the roller coaster episode of Beaver on one of those occasions, my parents were also watching it at their home, and said that it reminded them of me! ;D

I thought I saw almost every ep of Beaver....don't remember that one. Could you run it down for me, and in which season? (I would know the season by the openings.)

I was never really a Beaver-holic, so I can't really answer this one for you, except that I think that Beaver's voice had not changed yet. (I recall the TV-Land announcer saying that the roller-coaster ride segment was one of the longest in that TV show NOT to contain any dialogue.)

 

[Toledo Eleven]

The "roller coaster" episode of Leave It To Beaver was one of my fave episodes of that show. I caught it on TV Land, then watched it again when I saw that they were going to air it again. I loved roller coasters as a kid (and still do!). While I was watching the roller coaster episode of Beaver on one of those occasions, my parents were also watching it at their home, and said that it reminded them of me! ;D

I thought I saw almost every ep of Beaver....don't remember that one. Could you run it down for me, and in which season? (I would know the season by the openings.)

I was never really a Beaver-holic, so I can't really answer this one for you, except that I think that Beaver's voice had not changed yet. (I recall the TV-Land announcer saying that the roller-coaster ride segment was one of the longest in that TV show NOT to contain any dialogue.)

It was the 2/24/62 episode (5th season) called "Beaver's Fear."

 

[cd637299]

^^^^
Interesting! I really doubt I watched this ep....also it was right around the time when Beaver changed his voice.

Thanks.

cd

 

[bpatrick]

I think it was on "60 Minutes" that Jackie Gleason, when asked
why "The Honeymooners" continues to hold up, gave a simple
answer: "They're funny." I'd say the same thing about Lucy,
Bilko, Burns and Allen, Groucho, and many of the variety shows,
especially Benny's, Hope's, Gleason's (before he started, in effect,
repeating what he'd done in earlier years), and Skelton's (although I
think Hope's shows deteriorated in quality significantly in his later years).
(Sid Caesar's I don't remember much about.)

Many of the big-name comedians of the '50s: Berle, Benny, Hope,
Groucho, to name a few, came out of vaudeville, where saying "damn"
was enough to get a performer fired. And you can ask someone like
Carl Reiner what it was like to face the content restrictions the networks
imposed in the '50s and '60s, and he'll tell you it made the writers of shows
like the Dick Van Dyke and Andy Griffith shows be really funny--no going for
the cheap laughs unlike so many of today's sitcoms.

And of course, it took comedians with a mastery of timing to put the jokes
over; Benny was arguably the master of timing. To give you an idea of how
a writer can write jokes but not necessarily put them over, ABC once had a
radio show on which comedy writers performed their own material. It was
pathetic; the writers may have been able to write jokes but they sure couldn't
perform them; they didn't have the experience of honing their timing in front of
live audiences. Maybe some veterans of the comedy clubs have that kind of
ability today, but I would argue that they and their writers have to keep the
laugh track going. So they wind up being what Milton Berle used to call "lappy"--
laying the jokes right in the audience's lap, many of which they wouldn't have
gotten away with even in the Norman Lear era.

There is one other comedian from the '50s who would have been on top had he
been given a few more years, and that's Ernie Kovacs; once "Laugh-In" caught on,
the audience would have come to realize that he was doing much the same thing.

Yet someday somebody is going to say "Two And A Half Men" is classic comedy.
I hope I'm not around when that happens.

 

[therealjm12]

BPatrick I agree with what you wrote about the 50's & 60's. What you wrote about the way shows were written & performed was very informative, especially to younger people who were not around to see the masters at work.
I do disagree with you about Two & Half Men. The show has one of the best writing staffs to come along in many years. You may not like the risque content but the writing and performances are as good as anything that's been on TV. The reaction shots are there. The jokes are sharp. Along with The Big Bang Theory, I would say it will be considered "classic TV" in years to come. Times change.

 

[landtuna]

I pretty much agree with BPatrick as well. I grew up with former vaudeville performers on radio and TV and there are very, very few later comics that could hold a candle to them.

One who I feel didn't make a good transition from radio to TV though was Bob Hope. On radio he was very good, especially when ad-libbing with one of his cronies of the day. On TV though he became way too topical and the pregnant pauses while awaiting the audience to acknowledge his greatness was embarrassing. Of all the old vaudeville comics Hope was probably the most true to the stand-up comedian. He was great when paired with Crosby et al., but a disappointment alone.

 

[LKellerIII]

I pretty much agree with BPatrick as well. I grew up with former vaudeville performers on radio and TV and there are very, very few later comics that could hold a candle to them.

One who I feel didn't make a good transition from radio to TV though was Bob Hope. On radio he was very good, especially when ad-libbing with one of his cronies of the day. On TV though he became way too topical and the pregnant pauses while awaiting the audience to acknowledge his greatness was embarrassing. Of all the old vaudeville comics Hope was probably the most true to the stand-up comedian. He was great when paired with Crosby et al., but a disappointment alone.

No disrespect intended toward Bob Hope - he was very talented. But he was just coasting on TV - especially the last couple of decades. His 'Specials" in particular were not very funny, poorly written (IMO), and amateurishly performed and edited. And Hope's joke delivery wasn't great, either. Good timing, yes - but he always seemed to be looking down and to the left at cue-cards. He'd make inside jokes about it, like he didn't care - perhaps he didn't. Contrast that, though, with Dean Martin, who was famous for being super relaxed and never rehearsing, but somehow came off looking professional.