Gale Storm

[papeetepatrick]

Another couple of days of deaths in entertainment and dance (Pina Bausch already posted). I'll follow up Cristian on this. I was a baby when "My Little Margie' was on, but I never missed it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/30/arts/tel...?ref=obituaries

[Marga]

I was a baby when "My Little Margie' was on, but I never missed it.

I was a little girl and enjoyed "My Little Margie", too. After that ended, I watched "Oh! Susanna", where she starred with "sidekick" ZaSu Pitts. I really liked that show. It ran until I was into my teens. I remember her singing "Please Help Me I'm Falling". Being a big fan of wordplay, I got a kick out of the name the studio gave her!

[bart]

Add to the "My Little Margie" kiddie fans.

The obit writer comments:

Critics dismissed the show as silly, but the public disagreed and the series ran for three full seasons.

To me at that age, "silly" was the soul of wit," and Charles Farrell was Oscar Wilde (or would have been if I'd ever heard of him).

In retrospect, these were such formulaic shows: tiny casts, primitive sets, almost identical plot structures week after week. As I recall, the basic situation involved Margie (a) trying to control her father's love life and, as a consequence, (b) getting into something way over her head. It was my first experience of "wacky" comedy. (Lucy was also on, but in those early seasons I often couldn't understand the dialogue or relate to the relationships, though I always got the slap stick.)

It's amazing how socially unifying these shows could be (for whites, anyway) at a time when there was so little choice, so little competition. There wasn't much on tv in those days, so literally everyone I knew -- in my extensive acquaintance of identically middle-class, suburban, white kids -- was a Margie fan.

[Paul Parish]

I LOVED Gale Storm. I thought she was hilarious. Can't remember much in detail, but the tone is still very strongly with me. She was funnier than Eve Arden, whom I also loved -- and back then for me, I was not crazy about Lucy.

Another couple of days of deaths in entertainment and dance (Pina Bausch already posted). I'll follow up Cristian on this. I was a baby when "My Little Margie' was on, but I never missed it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/30/arts/tel...?ref=obituaries

[bart]

Can't remember much in detail, but the tone is still very strongly with me.

It's amazing how memory works. I agree completely with this.

(I wish I were one of those people who remember plot details -- or details of ballet peformances -- for a lifetime. ) Maybe we need a thread on how our various memories work.

I wonder if, with My Little Margie, part of the appeal to the very young was its recurring situation: a "child" trying to manipulate the life of her parent. The conclusion was always safe and comforting: a reaffirmation of parental love, no matter what.

This is an attractive emotional subtext for the young, I think. I wonder what adult viewers saw when they sat alongside their children (as families did in those days) watching the identical show but from a very different life experience.

[carbro]

I wonder if, with My Little Margie, part of the appeal to the very young was its recurring situation: a "child" trying to manipulate the life of her parent. The conclusion was always safe and comforting: a reaffirmation of parental love, no matter what.

I think you're on to something there. Subversive but non-threatening?

... and back then for me, I was not crazy about Lucy.

Nor I. Lucy's humor was (and remains) too broad for me. And her wailing!!! OMG! For such a shrewd and independent businesswoman as Lucy was, her I Love Lucy tv persona was greatly in need of a few consciousness raising sessions.

[bart]

Lucy's humor was (and remains) too broad for me.

You have it precisely! I've often wondered why I never really enjoyed this as much as one felt one was supposed to. And why I never watched the reruns. Thanks.

Lucy also had a very broad and fawning laugh-track. EVERYTHING was hilarious as far as the laugh-track was concerned. it even helped the more dim-witted of us to follow the plot. For instance, whenever she was just ABOUT to get into trouble, the same woman could be heard warning us: "Oh-OOH!" I don't know how to write it, but I can still hear it. Week after week, the same woman, the same Oh-OOH!. Even as a child, I could recognize a sledgehammer when I heard one.

Did My Little Margie have a laugh track? I don't recall.

[richard53dog]

Lucy also had a very broad and fawning laugh-track. EVERYTHING was hilarious as far as the laugh-track was concerned. it even helped the more dim-witted of us to follow the plot. For instance, whenever she was just ABOUT to get into trouble, the same woman could be heard warning us: "Oh-OOH!" I don't know how to write it, but I can still hear it. Week after week, the same woman, the same Oh-OOH!. Even as a child, I could recognize a sledgehammer when I heard one.

Ball's mother was usually in the audience and provided a very vocal and pronounced element in "audience participation". Of course it wasn't really a "laugh track" in the strict sense of the word as we know it today, not something edited in to the video but rather the audience that was present at the filming.

I don't know if the mother was the Oh-OOH lady but she was always very enthusiastic!

[Quiggin]

Bart:

Did My Little Margie have a laugh track? I don't recall.

I think it did and it was "canned," whereas the Lucys would have been live since they were filmed before an studio audience. The director of photography for I Love Lucy was Murnau's cameraman for the Last Laugh, Karl Freund -- sort of an Emil Jannings-like let down for him from the days of high German Expressionist filmmaking.

Did Margie have a sidekick--other than her father's girlfriend?...The theme of all those shows seems to be that Father (Jim Backus, Desi Arnaz, the tennis playing Charles Farrell) doesn't know best, and, as Bart says, are outwitted by the string-pulling children. Meanwhile the Father is eaten up with anxiety about pleasing the boss and pretty much distracted by that battlefront. The whole genre may have culminated in "Bewitched," though "Our Miss Brooks," which Paul refers to I think, seems to have been pretty subversive.

There is an amazing moment in an episode of "Private Secretary" I recently saw on tv, in which Susie MacNamera (Ann Southern) turns to the audience and says very dryly --this is regarding a black cat they don't seem to be able to get rid of and which keeps reappearing in Mr. Sands office: "And where are Charles Baudelaire and Felix Vallotton when you really need them?"

[carbro]

Did My Little Margie have a laugh track? I don't recall.

I think it did and it was "canned," whereas the Lucys would have been live since they were filmed before an studio audience.

Which is not to say that the live laughter wasn't supplemented. Many sitcoms of the era, even many recorded before audiences, used laugh tracks. You wouldn't want the home audience to know that a line didn't go over as well as it should have, right?

[bart]

I suspect that the Lucy audience response was supplemented, as carbro suggests. The Oh-OHH was identical each time. I recall my parents commenting on it. We considered this audience member to be a regular character in the show. As to the laughter in general: The bursts of laughter (intense from the start, cut short so that the next lines would not be lost) are not of the sort one finds in real life. I would guess that the laughs were "live" -- then recorded -- then manipulated or insertion when needed in future shows.

Re the Private Secretary quote recalled by Quiggin: I suspect that there were some rather well-educated people who found themselves stuck in those writing jobs and found lines like these something of a relief, if they could slip them past the producers. A pop cultural history of the U.S. could probably be written based on changes in cultural allusions decade by decade. I wonder when Baudelaire or any 19th century poet disappeared forever from the list. (On the other hand, the film Moulin Rouge did feature imagery of the black cat.. So pictures endure in popular culture longer than names or words? The enduring power (comic as well as tragic) of the "dying swan" may be an example of that.)

Quiggan: where are they showing reruns like Private Secretary on tv? Are they nationally available?

[Quiggin]

Ah yes, Carbro, the audience laughter could have been topped off with phony recycled laughs. I think one of the unusual qualities of the Ernie Kovacs show is that it had no laugh track and was eerily silent. Canned laughter made the audience even more passive.

Bart, I saw Private Secretary on Nic at Night or some cable show not recently/recently but five or ten years ago. I think we had a short discussion here on Ballet Talk about Ann Southern.

[dirac]

I wonder when Baudelaire or any 19th century poet disappeared forever from the list.

Oh, they’re still around. If anything there are probably many more of such throwaway references today. Frasier specialized in them, The Simpsons used to dabble in them, too. Mystery Science Theatre 3000 used to toss in references to Gargantua and Pantagruel. Those are just shows I used to watch regularly and there are probably more current examples. I wasn’t a big fan of Lost, but it did much to promote the great cult novel The Third Policeman.

The theme of all those shows seems to be that Father (Jim Backus, Desi Arnaz, the tennis playing Charles Farrell) doesn't know best, and, as Bart says, are outwitted by the string-pulling children.

There was a PBS special on Bob Newhart not long ago, and Newhart notes that he was adamant about not having any onscreen children for that reason – he didn’t like those shows where Dad is the distracted doofus. So, no kids for Bob and Emily or Dick and Joanna.