Yogi Berra's famous words might not have drawn so much laughter if he'd been talking about reruns...then he would've been spot-on.
In 1937, a beautifully written and acted radio series for children, was syndicated to local stations in time for the Christmas holidays. The Cinnamon Bear had a pair of children following a talking stuffed bear into a wonderland, looking for their stolen aluminum star that was supposed to go atop their Christmas tree, and finding a number of memorable characters in the process. This audio "cartoon" aired 15 minutes each weekday evening and was usually sponsored by local department stores to advertise themselves as destinations for Christmas shoppers, and children who wanted to sit in Santa's lap. The series was repeated by many radio stations every year, some as late as the early 1950s.
While long forgotten or completely unknown by most people (except old time radio fans who talk it up heavily every November and December), it nonetheless pioneered at least two things we take for granted in modern day television. One of them is the annual Christmas special for children "of all ages," like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (which arrived just in time for Baby Dixon's first Christmas) and A Charlie Brown Christmas. The other thing it did was to revolutionize the fact that people would make appointment listening out of something they've heard before, perhaps even because they've heard it before.
For all intents and purposes, it looks like The Cinnamon Bear invented the syndicated rerun as a viable force in broadcasting. It proved reruns were more than just schedule filler, they could be very real ratings grabbers, and could be programmed as such.
Groucho Marx once took credit, in a book he wrote, for joining producer John Guedel in inventing the network rerun--both types. He recorded his radio comedy-quiz You Bet Your Life in advance instead of doing it live, recording lengthy interviews with contestants and only using his funniest jokes. (That's exactly how Who's Line is It Anyway? was videotaped as late as the 1990s.) And it was his recorded show that appeared to be the first to go into in-season reruns on radio, as opposed to taking the summer off in favor of another, short-lived show. Then, in the late 1950s, when NBC radio was looking for filler material for its Monitor series, they dusted off old You Bet Your Life and People are Funny radio programs, both produced by Guedel, for that very purpose. This, as the network did the same for the TV versions, making the two shows the first game shows to ever go into reruns.
There are two others: the now-gone (or now evolved?) daytime network rerun, and the syndicated rerun.
Syndicated Reruns
If it weren't for syndicated reruns, sold directly to local stations, I might've never been well acquainted with Lucy Ricardo, Ralph Kramden, Beaver Cleaver, or Jim Anderson's entire family. I might've known Lassie only as the pretty collie who hung out with a forest ranger named Corey, with no clue she ever belonged to a little boy on a farm (actually, two consecutively). And I might've never heard about that fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man, The Twilight Zone. During the "baby boomer" years we got to know this phenomenon as "Rerun Heaven," the idea that once a network was finished with a good enough show, it could live "forever" in reruns. In the logic of our perverse, couch potato universe, it was something of a badge of honor, to see the shows that looked so pristine coming down the network lines just a year earlier, now with occasional dust, film splices, vertical jumps from malfunctioning film chains, and top-corner "cigarette burns" to cue the commercial breaks.
A look through the Kentucky edition of TV Guide for the week of January 11-17, 1964, shows these shows in syndicated rotation: The Ann Southern Show, The Amos 'N' Andy Show, Our Miss Brooks, theatrical shorts featuring the Three Stooges, The Mickey Mouse Club, Science Fiction Theater, Highway Patrol, Adventures of Superman, Thriller and Mr. Lucky.
A New York City edition from January 18-24 yields a bumper crop. These are always very fascinating to see, as the stations include three independents who had to feed the beast with as many reruns as they could find. This included prime time, where they competed with current day fare by using recent cast-offs, like Sugarfoot, Lawman, Hawaiian Eye, Checkmate and Boris Karloff's anthology series, Thriller. A peek into the daytime shows The Phil Silvers Show and the forerunner to all of those fantasy shows of the 1960s, the 1950s ghost sitcom Topper.
A peek at a Pennsylvania edition from the last week of the month adds a raft of westerns, populating Rerun Heaven with the western craze of 1955-63: The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, Cheyenne, The Rifleman, Maverick, and even Jack Lord's short-lived, modern-day western, Stoney Burke. Add to that Sea Hunt, Leave It to Beaver, Adventures in Paradise, and Love That Bob! (the syndication re-title of The Bob Cummings Show). There, also in the mix, is the man who claimed the dubious title of "inventor of the rerun," Groucho Marx, whose TV version of You Bet Your Life was running as The Best of Groucho. The Groucho films were heavily cropped, leaving the De Soto/Plymouth logos out of the frame, with a little graphics "cloud" covering up the NBC letters on Groucho's microphone.
In the Kentucky edition, I'm struck by two shows, competing against each other in early afternoon reruns, that had things in common and then, couldn't be more different from one another. The Amos 'N Andy Show and Our Miss Brooks. both originally ran on CBS in the 1950s (even sharing one season together, 1952-53) and both began on radio. (In fact, the network radio versions of both outlasted the TV versions, even continuing on radio afterwards.) And you won't find either one in reruns anywhere anymore. The similarities end there.
The Amos 'N Andy Show was removed from syndication in 1966 after years of controversy. And it's easy to see why: the characters are racist stereotypes. The two title characters are co-owners of a little-seen taxicab company. Andy is slow-witted, and quick to be fooled by the always conniving con artist, George Stevens, the "Kingfish" of the Mystic Knights of the Sea Lodge. Amos is the more intelligent member of the cast who narrates most episodes but is rarely seen. And the dialect is cringeworthy to put it mildly: "I's a-going to de lodge" is an example, and "I's regusted wid de whole thing" is actually the closest thing the show had to a catchphrase. The actors acted over the top with their characterizations, mainly because the show's white creators told them to do it that way. Worst of all, it was the only show on television at the time with an all black cast, the only show to portray any type of life in the black community. And that's a shame: on the plus side, those creators, Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll (who actually voiced these characters on radio) clearly had a lot of affection for these characters (however misguided they may have shown it), and the actors, say what else you will about them, have pretty good comic timing. The writers, Joe Connelly and Bob Mosher (who'd go on to create Leave It to Beaver and The Munsters) actually had a lot of very funny, non-racist lines buried in all of this.
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| Spencer Williams as Andy and Tim Moore as the Kingfish |
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| Alvin Childress and Spencer Williams as Amos and Andy. |
But I did find the show's best loved, and arguably least offensive, episode: its December 1952 Christmas show. I suspect this was meant to be rerun every year in the holiday season, had the show not been cancelled in 1953. It's a remake of the annual Christmas show from radio. It opens with a flashback to nine years earlier, when Amos' daughter was born, and he and Andy are pacing in the waiting room, Andy, the godfather, expecting it to be a boy and acting even more nervously. But Arbadella was, of course, a girl. Then, present day, Andy and Arbadella are looking in a store window at all the toys, in a very nostalgic set piece (just 12 years removed from the setting of the movie "A Christmas Story"). The dimwitted Andy pretends to know, for instance, that an artists' easel is a hat with a tassel that keeps their heads warm. (His lack of education is one of the most offensive parts of the show.) She then spots a talking doll that she'd love to have for Christmas, but her father already told her Santa couldn't afford to bring it this year.
(My friend Lee Withers points out that on radio, Arbadella was played by Barbara Jean Wong, who played Judy in the aforementioned Cinnamon Bear radio show. On TV Arbadella was played by African-American child actress Patti Marie Ellis.)
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| Nick O'Demus (left) played Lightnin'. |
Andy manages to get hired as Santa Claus--making one of television's earliest Santas, black. He hears children ask for jet planes, tanks, machine guns, and a little girl asking for some masculine toys...for her younger brother, who's sick. There's a running joke where Andy calls for a floorwalker everytime there's a problem--like not knowing where Santa gets the oranges and bananas that he puts in stockings, and not knowing the answer to a request for a baby sister. It's actually a very well-written scene.
Andy finishes his assignment, and the manager gives him the doll Arbadella requested. After Andy delivers it, comes the show's crowning touch. Amos goes to visit his daughter in her bedroom on the night of Christmas Eve, and she can't sleep from the excitement. So she requests the radio be turned on. It's at that point, as a chorus sings the words, Amos explains the Lord's Prayer to his daughter. When he finishes, it suddenly starts snowing outside--as I explained in the post about Lassie, this is a metaphor that means God is listening and granting His blessings. No matter what you think of the rest of the series--this is a very sweet, tender scene, and a television rarity now and even back then. An atheist once told me this touched him more than anything else he ever saw on television.
From there, we got to a show that had zero controversy that I know of...it's simply not seen anymore because, presumably, its shelf life expired.
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| Robert Rockwell as Mr. Boynton and Eve Arden as the title character in Our Miss Brooks |
She, Walter and Mr. Boynton head to Mr. Conklin's house with the radio to make sure he's okay, as they hilariously try to make sense out of the weather bulletins, calling for "lashing down of all ox carts" and "sending the natives to the hills." The announcer demands that windows be boarded up with...you guessed it...bamboo, with Mr. Conklin almost in tears as his new furniture gets destroyed. Everyone finally starts to figure something is up with the warning to "tether your elephants." "Tether your ELEPHANTS??!! Whooooo keeps elephants??" Conklin bellows.
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| Richard Crenna and Gale Gordon in Our Miss Brooks |
So the cannon goes off, Conklin temporarily loses his hearing, and the pieced together speech is read to the superintendent by Connie while an unknowing Conklin nods his head in approval. "This august body is composed of a group of able members, and these baboons grow to a height of four feet," goes one sample line, with Conklin adding "Believe me, every word comes right from my heart." "These members of the board of education make very good pets, as they don't hardly bother nobody as they're all the time busy making love," goes more of the speech that's being read with a straight face to the school superintendent.
Our Miss Brooks lasted four seasons, its final one being a "jump the shark" year in which the setting is changed to a private elementary school. It ran in reruns as late as the 1970s (the one I just cited on Youtube ending with the Viacom "V of Doom" logo from the late 1970s) but has now, sadly, mostly disappeared. It's definitely a candidate for preservation on DVD, along with The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show and the rest of The Phil Silvers Show...both of which, too, were in syndicated reruns in 1964.
Network Daytime Reruns
...So if you're asking, "Wait! Where's Lucy in all of this?" there's a very good answer. Lucy was a major player. Her reruns were considered even more special than anything you'd see spooling through the film chain at a local station. Seven years after the last first-run episode, and four years after Lucy and Desi got divorced, they were still ratings magic and still rained money for the network. That's why CBS held onto them as tightly as they could.
CBS had always wanted to keep the show going, in fact. That's why they talked the cast into continuing the storyline as monthly specials from 1957 to 1960, and why they tried to get William Frawley and Vivian Vance to star in their own spinoff in 1960. Unfortunately the two hated each other in real life and were pretty much done with having to work together. In-season reruns didn't actually begin until 1955, and even then, on a different night of the week, Sunday. There were also other rerun series including 1960's Lucy in Connecticut (featuring the rural-themed episodes from the series' final season), and a 1962 summer rerun of the 1957-60 monthly specials, now dubbed The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour. As late as 2013, two colorized 1956 episodes--the Christmas-themed clip show and "Lucy's Italian Movie"--were actually rerun as a prime time special. (The once "lost" Christmas show never even got a second broadcast until 1989 and was never part of the rerun package.)
So important was the show for CBS' daytime lineup, that when NBC and ABC were showing hearings on the Vietnam War in 1966, CBS stuck with Lucy, and CBS News President Fred W. Friendly (who was once Edward R. Murrow's right hand man) quit in protest. The episode in question was the one featuring Tennessee Ernie Ford as visiting "Cousin Ernie"; perhaps CBS wanted to keep this one since Ford was hosting a daytime variety show on ABC at the time. (Ironically, Lucy left CBS for syndication the following year.)
The week I was born in January 1964, kicked off the 1956 storyline about the Ricardos heading to Europe. On Monday, Lucy got seasick aboard the Staten Island Ferry and found herself at the mercy of a fussy passport clerk; by Friday she was off on a fox hunt. (The classic "grape stomping" episode, "Lucy's Italian Movie," would be rerun two weeks later.) The day I was born was a rerun of the one where Lucy misses their cruise ship, the SS Constitution, when she runs back to the dock to kiss Little Ricky one more time. Unfortunately, her dress gets caught on a messenger's bicycle. The episode is all about her many attempts to then catch the pilot boat, then a helicopter. My favorite bit was when a dispatcher (Jack Albertson) tells her she's out of luck, since the last helicopter just left to pick up some crazy lady who missed the Constitution. ("I'm that crazy lady! Bring it back!") Desi Arnaz once said it was the show's most expensive episode to produce.
At the time I was born, all three networks programmed reruns of former prime time favorites. And make no mistake, they were put there as programming strategy, not to plug holes or as placeholders for something else. For instance, game show scholar Steve Beverly has commented before on game shows that were cancelled quickly because they had the misfortune of being scheduled against daytime reruns of The Andy Griffith Show and The Dick Van Dyke Show. Both would begin their daytime runs later in 1964, as Andy of Mayberry and The Dick Van Dyke Daytime Show.
Billy Ingram's TV Party website does an excellent job of describing in detail how the idea of daytime network reruns got started: a 1956 show on NBC called Comedy Time. The idea of a rerun was still fairly new at the time, so the network wasn't sure how the audience would respond to seeing old shows shown over and over. So to hedge their bets, they rotated several shows in and out of the timeslot, starting with one of the network's more successful prime time sitcoms, I Married Joan. Other rotating series ranged from successful fare like the supernatural comedy Topper and Ann Sothern's Private Secretary, to far less successful shows like It's Always Jan and the disastrous Charlie Farrell Show. A short-lived Blondie series was also seen at this time and would be brought back later. Comedy Time was a surprise success until ABC counterprogrammed with more reruns, such as Adventures of Superman and The Adventures of Sir Lancelot. CBS added Lucy in 1958, and ABC kicked off 1959 with reruns of The Gale Storm Show and Love That Bob!
When NBC dropped Comedy Time, they picked up Make Room for Daddy reruns from CBS (and presumably even earlier episodes from ABC), and would hold onto this show for five years. It ended up being one of the more formidable reruns of that era in terms of ratings.
In the winter of 1963-64, CBS had a block of three back-to-back reruns kicking off at 10:30: I Love Lucy, The Real McCoys and Pete and Gladys. NBC offered afternoon reruns of Make Room for Daddy and The Loretta Young Show. ABC was rerunning Fathers Knows Best every day at 1:30 EST; at 4 EST they were rerunning Major Adams, Trailmaster, retitled episodes of Wagon Train. ABC snatched up the rights to the show from NBC while it was actually the #1 show on television, and as new episodes rolled across the network's prime time lineup, they ran the older NBC episodes in the daytime. The reruns were later retitled Trailmaster to reflect Ward Bond's character, Major Adams, being written out of the show.
The story of just the reruns of Father Knows Best is especially interesting. The show's producers, including its star Robert Young, had decided to end the show in 1960, despite its still-decent ratings. At that point in the series, both Betty and Bud were high school graduates and in college, with Kathy being the only remaining stay at home child. Young was concerned the children were growing older, and the whole idea of a father knowing best to a group of grownups would make it a sad, outdated joke. (Obviously it's a bit outdated today for much different reasons.) So, it joined I Love Lucy, The Phil Silvers Show and The Honeymooners among the rare group of shows of that era, to be discontinued by its own producers and creators as opposed to being forcibly cancelled.
But the lack of new episodes didn't seem to lessen the demand for the show. ABC quickly snatched up the rerun rights to the show and even reran it in prime time from 1960 to 1963. (Prime time reruns weren't unusual in those days. For instance, when Gunsmoke expanded to a full hour, CBS began rerunning the half hour episodes in prime time, as Marshal Dillon.) And those reruns actually held their own in the ratings up against new shows on the other networks. In 1963, the show switched to ABC Daytime and stayed there for four years, until it (and I Love Lucy) both left for syndication. What's interesting is, the original series' first run episodes switched from CBS to NBC and back during its six season run. But the show actually lasted seven years on ABC just in reruns.
I've previously written about how an ABC Father Knows Best rerun clashed so sadly with the Kennedy assassination news bulletins. The network continued to air its episodes in order from that point, and the 1957 fourth season outing, "The Good Neighbor," aired on ABC the day I was born. It's a rare episode that wrestles with Margaret's traditional role in her 1950s household, and it's an unusual one that's one of my favorites.
As we begin the show, the four older members of the Anderson household are opening mail. Bud (who often got some of the show's best lines) remarks about Betty getting a letter from her boyfriend, and remarks, "Why is it whenever Betty gets a letter, she runs up to her room to read it, like a dog hiding to gnaw on a bone?" But Margaret (Jane Wyatt, who most people know now as either Spock's mother from Star Trek or Dr. Auschlander's wife from St. Elsewhere) got something far more substantial: her parents mailed her the deed to a rental property across town. Her first impulse is to hand it over to Jim (Robert Young, the only cast member to make the jump from the original radio version) and let him handle it. "I think it's a marvelous opportunity for you to learn about real estate," Jim assures her. Margaret responds, "Well, it's a much better opportunity to me to learn about cooking," and quickly heads to the kitchen to start dinner. Welcome back to the '50s, 1964 daytime TV viewers.
The show, never known for its progressive attitude toward women, actually takes an awkward step forward with this scene. "Strike a blow for independence!" Jim implores. "I don't want independence, I want to depend on you!" Margaret says back. In some dialogue that appears rather cringeworthy in 57-year-later hindsight, Jim laments how women demand equality, "which we men are freely willing to give them" (his exact words), but aren't willing to accept the responsibilities. A feisty Margaret takes this as a challenge, and accepts it. (This is a very important moment for a show that, during the same season, finds Margaret cluelessly trying to figure out how to drive a car, even though we clearly saw her driving one years earlier.)
Unfortunately Margaret meets the neighbor, the exceptionally crabby (even by his own admission) Mr. Boomhauer. He doesn't want anyone touching his roses, which actually extend beyond his property. He doesn't like Bud's hotrod, doesn't like renters, and doesn't like being forced beyond his will to make small talk with people. (He's a retired mailman whose route was often delayed by blabbermouths and he never forgave any of them.) The show's writers are actually very good at character development, giving a guest character a backstory and clearly displaying his contradictions (for a man who hates to talk to people, he sure does like to run his mouth). So, you can imagine his reaction when Margaret announces plans to widen the too-narrow driveway of the rental property, which would take out the rose bushes that go beyond his property line.
Sure enough, Boomhauer sues Margaret when the workmen show up, and just being served the court summons is enough to traumatize poor Margaret. Her first instinct (and it's one my own parents often had growing up) is to try to keep the news from her children, lest it conflict with her lessons about getting along with people. But when she burns dinner because her mind is so preoccupied, she comes clean, and they all rally to her side.
Alas, one more visit to Mr. Boomhauer to settle out of court goes terribly, revealing that in addition to all of his other many faults, he's a misogynist. His real problem is that she's not letting the men folk handle her real estate issues, actually saying "We men made two mistakes: we gave women the right to vote and to open charge accounts." This infuriates Margaret who vows to see him in court.
But Margaret ends up having a nightmare the night before the court appearance (and this is actually very funny, plus highly unusual for this show to take such a flight of fancy; it's what makes this episode a favorite of mine) that plays out her issues of not only being forced into a conflict she never sought, but also some latent anxieties about her assigned role in the household and by extension, society. In her dream, Margaret envisions a courtroom in which a maniacally laughing Boomhauer is still spraying insecticide on roses on the table in front of him; the judge is also Boomhauer, and so is the entire jury, with actor Joseph Sweeney suddenly wearing multiple costumes as old ladies, retired military men, even a guy with a beanie making a throat-cutting motion to another lookalike juror.
The Boomhauer judge, who refuses to hear her evidence and declares it an "open and shut case" even before hearing the jury's verdict, says her punishment for "failing to be a good neighbor" (translated: asserting herself and not just deferring to a man) is to "get off the earth" and serve out her time in a sky-prison that has her drifting all over the place.
She visits with her family, who judge her for being such a severe disappointment in getting along with people, with Bud only saying he misses her because he can't find his argyle socks. "I think they're in my sewing basket," she replies from her prison bars in the clouds, just before a wind starts to take her away and end visiting hours.
The next morning, she and the entire family are in non-dream court and everything works out the exact opposite of her dream, right down to Boomhauer not even showing up. The case is quickly dismissed and Boomhauer has to pay all court costs. Margaret appears very uneasy at winning the case and being in the driver's seat (again, foreseeing her "learning to drive" episode a few weeks later), so she goes to Boomhauer and proposes cutting the driveway expansion in half and his helping her maintain rose bushes. The episode ends with Bud throwing a fit about her wanting to appease a crabby man who had to be forced to respect her rights, only to have Boomhauer show up at the door with a dozen roses. Margaret declares she really did win, because she made a friend.
This show gets a lot of rightful guff about its outdated views on women; Jim Anderson even calls his daughters submissive names like "Princess" and "Kitten" but calls Jim Jr. "Bud," implying an equality the daughters don't have. Still, this episode actually lays bare the fact that Margaret (and perhaps by extension, the 1950s housewife in general) no longer envisions her universe to consist of the kitchen and wherever she does her sewing, and is perhaps chafing to get out. Sure enough, later episodes of the fourth season have her taking classes, setting out to win something for the trophy case, and suddenly emerging as a secret-keeper and a problem-solver. I have to wonder how the Margaret-centric episodes like these, in which she takes some awkward steps away from her kitchen, played to 1960s daytime audiences consisting mostly of housewives.
The fact that Father Knows Best was so popular for so many years in network reruns implies that we didn't suddenly get forced out of the Father Knows Best era when the series aired its last first run episode in 1960; we had to evolve out of it. Jim's and Margaret's twin beds began to look out of place as newer shows had Darren and Samantha Stephens, Oliver and Lisa Douglas and even Herman and Lily Munster, all sharing beds. The show slowly stepped back out of favor due to its era, but perhaps held on as long as it did because of the warmth and likability of the characters, the crabby neighbors perhaps acting like a gator-filled moat around a real world full of say, the resistance to school desegregation.
I remember loads of network reruns over the years: The Beverly Hillbillies, Gomer Pyle U.S.M.C., All in the Family, Happy Days, both of Lucille Ball's later series, and The Jeffersons. I honestly believe there were four reasons ABC's General Hospital took off as such a phenomenon in the late 1970s: Luke, Laura, an expanded budget...and the loss of one of its fiercest competitors, when M*A*S*H reruns left CBS Daytime for syndication. On the other hand, network reruns in general are non-existent now; The Golden Girls and Full House were apparently the last of them, as affiliates began to demand more time back for their own, lucrative daytime programming, which, ironically, often included reruns. Then again, it could be that cable has picked up the slack at all hours; Frasier and Mad About You, for instance, appeared to be highly successful in daytime for cable, as did the aforementioned Golden Girls. In prime time, network officials even went as far at one point as to blame their declining shares on reruns of NBC's Law & Order that were now competing on cable. TV Land apparently became the later "assisted living complex" of television syndication, but even now appears to be relinquishing that role to channels like Antenna TV and MeTV, which is giving a lot of new life to old favorites.
And as for syndication we've since found out that when it comes to "Rerun Heaven"...there is no God, and nothing lasts forever. Perhaps it's more of a "Rerun Limbo" as shows await before going to either DVD or obscurity. Apparently the more correct shelf life is 10-20 years, with "eternal" shows like I Love Lucy and The Andy Griffith Show being the rare exceptions. A syndicated rerun today will more likely be either a recent show like The Office or even one that's still in first run, like The Big Bang Theory. And if that's the case, that means reruns aren't simply holdovers from other eras, or leftovers from those that just passed, they're actually part of the era in progress. It could be that if television, like the rest of pop culture, from a certain time tells us who we are as people, then perhaps the more popular reruns tell us, for better or worse, whatever it is we want to hold onto for a little while longer.
Availability: I Love Lucy and Father Knows Best are available entirely on DVD, while 102 episodes of Lucy are on Hulu. Your best bet to find The Amos 'N' Andy Show and Our Miss Brooks is still Youtube. Ironically, those things tell us even more about how drastically reruns have changed over the years...the days of waiting an entire syndication cycle for Lucy to stomp through the grapes are over.
Next time on this channel: East Side/West Side.
Billy Ingram's TV Party website does an excellent job of describing in detail how the idea of daytime network reruns got started: a 1956 show on NBC called Comedy Time. The idea of a rerun was still fairly new at the time, so the network wasn't sure how the audience would respond to seeing old shows shown over and over. So to hedge their bets, they rotated several shows in and out of the timeslot, starting with one of the network's more successful prime time sitcoms, I Married Joan. Other rotating series ranged from successful fare like the supernatural comedy Topper and Ann Sothern's Private Secretary, to far less successful shows like It's Always Jan and the disastrous Charlie Farrell Show. A short-lived Blondie series was also seen at this time and would be brought back later. Comedy Time was a surprise success until ABC counterprogrammed with more reruns, such as Adventures of Superman and The Adventures of Sir Lancelot. CBS added Lucy in 1958, and ABC kicked off 1959 with reruns of The Gale Storm Show and Love That Bob!
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| Rusty Hamer and Danny Thomas of Make Room for Daddy |
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| Ward Bond in Wagon Train, retitled for ABC Daytime as Major Adams, Trailmaster |
But the lack of new episodes didn't seem to lessen the demand for the show. ABC quickly snatched up the rerun rights to the show and even reran it in prime time from 1960 to 1963. (Prime time reruns weren't unusual in those days. For instance, when Gunsmoke expanded to a full hour, CBS began rerunning the half hour episodes in prime time, as Marshal Dillon.) And those reruns actually held their own in the ratings up against new shows on the other networks. In 1963, the show switched to ABC Daytime and stayed there for four years, until it (and I Love Lucy) both left for syndication. What's interesting is, the original series' first run episodes switched from CBS to NBC and back during its six season run. But the show actually lasted seven years on ABC just in reruns.
I've previously written about how an ABC Father Knows Best rerun clashed so sadly with the Kennedy assassination news bulletins. The network continued to air its episodes in order from that point, and the 1957 fourth season outing, "The Good Neighbor," aired on ABC the day I was born. It's a rare episode that wrestles with Margaret's traditional role in her 1950s household, and it's an unusual one that's one of my favorites.
As we begin the show, the four older members of the Anderson household are opening mail. Bud (who often got some of the show's best lines) remarks about Betty getting a letter from her boyfriend, and remarks, "Why is it whenever Betty gets a letter, she runs up to her room to read it, like a dog hiding to gnaw on a bone?" But Margaret (Jane Wyatt, who most people know now as either Spock's mother from Star Trek or Dr. Auschlander's wife from St. Elsewhere) got something far more substantial: her parents mailed her the deed to a rental property across town. Her first impulse is to hand it over to Jim (Robert Young, the only cast member to make the jump from the original radio version) and let him handle it. "I think it's a marvelous opportunity for you to learn about real estate," Jim assures her. Margaret responds, "Well, it's a much better opportunity to me to learn about cooking," and quickly heads to the kitchen to start dinner. Welcome back to the '50s, 1964 daytime TV viewers.
The show, never known for its progressive attitude toward women, actually takes an awkward step forward with this scene. "Strike a blow for independence!" Jim implores. "I don't want independence, I want to depend on you!" Margaret says back. In some dialogue that appears rather cringeworthy in 57-year-later hindsight, Jim laments how women demand equality, "which we men are freely willing to give them" (his exact words), but aren't willing to accept the responsibilities. A feisty Margaret takes this as a challenge, and accepts it. (This is a very important moment for a show that, during the same season, finds Margaret cluelessly trying to figure out how to drive a car, even though we clearly saw her driving one years earlier.)
Unfortunately Margaret meets the neighbor, the exceptionally crabby (even by his own admission) Mr. Boomhauer. He doesn't want anyone touching his roses, which actually extend beyond his property. He doesn't like Bud's hotrod, doesn't like renters, and doesn't like being forced beyond his will to make small talk with people. (He's a retired mailman whose route was often delayed by blabbermouths and he never forgave any of them.) The show's writers are actually very good at character development, giving a guest character a backstory and clearly displaying his contradictions (for a man who hates to talk to people, he sure does like to run his mouth). So, you can imagine his reaction when Margaret announces plans to widen the too-narrow driveway of the rental property, which would take out the rose bushes that go beyond his property line.
Sure enough, Boomhauer sues Margaret when the workmen show up, and just being served the court summons is enough to traumatize poor Margaret. Her first instinct (and it's one my own parents often had growing up) is to try to keep the news from her children, lest it conflict with her lessons about getting along with people. But when she burns dinner because her mind is so preoccupied, she comes clean, and they all rally to her side.
Alas, one more visit to Mr. Boomhauer to settle out of court goes terribly, revealing that in addition to all of his other many faults, he's a misogynist. His real problem is that she's not letting the men folk handle her real estate issues, actually saying "We men made two mistakes: we gave women the right to vote and to open charge accounts." This infuriates Margaret who vows to see him in court.
But Margaret ends up having a nightmare the night before the court appearance (and this is actually very funny, plus highly unusual for this show to take such a flight of fancy; it's what makes this episode a favorite of mine) that plays out her issues of not only being forced into a conflict she never sought, but also some latent anxieties about her assigned role in the household and by extension, society. In her dream, Margaret envisions a courtroom in which a maniacally laughing Boomhauer is still spraying insecticide on roses on the table in front of him; the judge is also Boomhauer, and so is the entire jury, with actor Joseph Sweeney suddenly wearing multiple costumes as old ladies, retired military men, even a guy with a beanie making a throat-cutting motion to another lookalike juror.
The Boomhauer judge, who refuses to hear her evidence and declares it an "open and shut case" even before hearing the jury's verdict, says her punishment for "failing to be a good neighbor" (translated: asserting herself and not just deferring to a man) is to "get off the earth" and serve out her time in a sky-prison that has her drifting all over the place.
She visits with her family, who judge her for being such a severe disappointment in getting along with people, with Bud only saying he misses her because he can't find his argyle socks. "I think they're in my sewing basket," she replies from her prison bars in the clouds, just before a wind starts to take her away and end visiting hours.
The next morning, she and the entire family are in non-dream court and everything works out the exact opposite of her dream, right down to Boomhauer not even showing up. The case is quickly dismissed and Boomhauer has to pay all court costs. Margaret appears very uneasy at winning the case and being in the driver's seat (again, foreseeing her "learning to drive" episode a few weeks later), so she goes to Boomhauer and proposes cutting the driveway expansion in half and his helping her maintain rose bushes. The episode ends with Bud throwing a fit about her wanting to appease a crabby man who had to be forced to respect her rights, only to have Boomhauer show up at the door with a dozen roses. Margaret declares she really did win, because she made a friend.
This show gets a lot of rightful guff about its outdated views on women; Jim Anderson even calls his daughters submissive names like "Princess" and "Kitten" but calls Jim Jr. "Bud," implying an equality the daughters don't have. Still, this episode actually lays bare the fact that Margaret (and perhaps by extension, the 1950s housewife in general) no longer envisions her universe to consist of the kitchen and wherever she does her sewing, and is perhaps chafing to get out. Sure enough, later episodes of the fourth season have her taking classes, setting out to win something for the trophy case, and suddenly emerging as a secret-keeper and a problem-solver. I have to wonder how the Margaret-centric episodes like these, in which she takes some awkward steps away from her kitchen, played to 1960s daytime audiences consisting mostly of housewives.
The fact that Father Knows Best was so popular for so many years in network reruns implies that we didn't suddenly get forced out of the Father Knows Best era when the series aired its last first run episode in 1960; we had to evolve out of it. Jim's and Margaret's twin beds began to look out of place as newer shows had Darren and Samantha Stephens, Oliver and Lisa Douglas and even Herman and Lily Munster, all sharing beds. The show slowly stepped back out of favor due to its era, but perhaps held on as long as it did because of the warmth and likability of the characters, the crabby neighbors perhaps acting like a gator-filled moat around a real world full of say, the resistance to school desegregation.
I remember loads of network reruns over the years: The Beverly Hillbillies, Gomer Pyle U.S.M.C., All in the Family, Happy Days, both of Lucille Ball's later series, and The Jeffersons. I honestly believe there were four reasons ABC's General Hospital took off as such a phenomenon in the late 1970s: Luke, Laura, an expanded budget...and the loss of one of its fiercest competitors, when M*A*S*H reruns left CBS Daytime for syndication. On the other hand, network reruns in general are non-existent now; The Golden Girls and Full House were apparently the last of them, as affiliates began to demand more time back for their own, lucrative daytime programming, which, ironically, often included reruns. Then again, it could be that cable has picked up the slack at all hours; Frasier and Mad About You, for instance, appeared to be highly successful in daytime for cable, as did the aforementioned Golden Girls. In prime time, network officials even went as far at one point as to blame their declining shares on reruns of NBC's Law & Order that were now competing on cable. TV Land apparently became the later "assisted living complex" of television syndication, but even now appears to be relinquishing that role to channels like Antenna TV and MeTV, which is giving a lot of new life to old favorites.
And as for syndication we've since found out that when it comes to "Rerun Heaven"...there is no God, and nothing lasts forever. Perhaps it's more of a "Rerun Limbo" as shows await before going to either DVD or obscurity. Apparently the more correct shelf life is 10-20 years, with "eternal" shows like I Love Lucy and The Andy Griffith Show being the rare exceptions. A syndicated rerun today will more likely be either a recent show like The Office or even one that's still in first run, like The Big Bang Theory. And if that's the case, that means reruns aren't simply holdovers from other eras, or leftovers from those that just passed, they're actually part of the era in progress. It could be that if television, like the rest of pop culture, from a certain time tells us who we are as people, then perhaps the more popular reruns tell us, for better or worse, whatever it is we want to hold onto for a little while longer.
Availability: I Love Lucy and Father Knows Best are available entirely on DVD, while 102 episodes of Lucy are on Hulu. Your best bet to find The Amos 'N' Andy Show and Our Miss Brooks is still Youtube. Ironically, those things tell us even more about how drastically reruns have changed over the years...the days of waiting an entire syndication cycle for Lucy to stomp through the grapes are over.
Next time on this channel: East Side/West Side.
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