Sheldon Leonard vs TV

For a while, Sheldon Leonard could do no wrong on television. He had given up on a screen career that seemed destined to have him play small time hoods for the new world of television production. He had a success right off the bat with “Make Room For Daddy” starred nightclub comedian Danny Thomas playing nightclub comedian Danny Williams.

Leonard brimmed over with self-confidence about his producing abilities, long before a string of consecutive hits in the early ‘60s. Here’s a 1954 article (May 11th) from the Brooklyn Eagle, written during the first season of “Make Room For Daddy,” the first of his huge successes.

TV Keynotes
Sheldon Leonard States His Views on Television
By STEVEN H. SCHEUER
Hollywood, May 11—“The basic trouble with live television,” volunteered Sheldon Leonard, “and I'm a guy who's basically a stage actor, is that you have to submit and print your first draft. With film, we can edit and change and throw out the dead wood.” We were on the set of tonight's Bob Hope Show, in which Leonard appeared as guest-star actor. Sheldon, incidentally, is director of the Danny Thomas Show (filmed). I agreed that film has certain technical advantages over live TV, but, then, why is live TV invariably better than its filmed counterpart?
“That's easy,” Leonard answered. “Conditions have always favored the author who writes for live TV.
Primarily, it's the problem of residual rights. Once the film is made, it's a permanent thing and all rights are relinquished. For live TV the rights are just leased for a particular showing. Naturally, live shows get the best material. It's a big problem and it's being fought over now. When we can solve it, films will probably get better material to work with.

“Everybody gives me advice on how to handle my career. My agency wants me to specialize. But I don’t want to relinquish acting—it's fun. It keeps me fresh and it's good for me as a director. No, I'm not going to specialize. “I don't want to sound egotistical, but nobody can tell me what to do in this business—nobody knows more than I do. The truth is, nobody knows very much. We can't learn anything from anybody, because we're doing it right now. We have to discover how because it hasn’t been done before. We make lots of mistakes, but don’t forget, we’re writing the book.”
Questioned about the Thomas show, Leonard told us it was shot in sequence, before a live audience. “It's like a play, a little cluttered by machinery.”
He's enthusiastic about “Make Room for Daddy,” and its surge to popularity justifies the enthusiasm. “I'm always battling with Danny about how to do some scene. If we don't argue, the show stinks. Sometimes we shoot a scene both ways to see who's right. Oh, we've done a lot of bad shows,” he continued, “but maybe that's because we're over-ambitious. Directing this show is the hardest work I've ever done in my life—but it's the most stimulating.
“I have no tolerance for mediocrity in this business,” he exploded before putting in a strong plug for his network (ABC) and his clients for granting the show relative immunity from interference. “There are too many talented people held back because of the mediocrity already entrenched. Show business is one of the few businesses a person can get into without talent and without aptitude.” (Leonard's opinion, not Scheuer's.)
“I bitterly resent the absence of standards to qualify people for this business. It has too many ramifications, it has too strong an effect on people to be permitted to operate on such a whimsical basis. But, how do you get around that? I don't know," said Sheldon, answering his own question, “I guess that's Utopia.”

Leonard learned the same thing Fred Allen learned 20 years earlier—executives at the networks fancy themselves experts at programming and invent reasons why shows should or shouldn’t work. Leonard saved “The Dick Van Dyke Show” from cancellation by going to the sponsors and directly pitching the show, telling them to give it a chance. It worked. And the show became a success. But that’s only one example of troubles that Leonard endured. Here’s a list, enumerated in an Associated Press column of January 3, 1969.

Sheldon Leonard a Successful Don Quixote of TV and Movies
By BOB THOMAS
HOLLYWOOD (AP) — Television producer Sheldon Leonard pictures himself as a tilter of network windmills, a dreamer of impossible programming dreams. Judging from his past performance, other producers should try the Don Quixote bit.
The latest of the Leonard lances is aimed at the Sunday spot now being vacated by the Phyllis Diller show. Leonard's new series, “My Friend Tony,” will be facing the formidable opposition of “Mission: Impossible” and ABC's Sunday night movie starting Jan. 5.
“I think we can make it,” he says confidently.
Maybe so. After all, Leonard himself made it from playing gangsters in wide lapels and snap-brim hats to being mentor of a long string of television successes. With each show he had to battle the ossified thought patterns of the industry's programmers. He catalogued:

1. The Danny Thomas Show. “I was told that in the heartland of America, viewers would find no identification with a man who told jokes in a night club for a living. I solved that by placing the emphasis on him as a husband and father.”
2. The Andy Griffith Show. “Now I was told the reverse: that a rural comedian would not register in urban America. But I had my research department look up the huge sales of records by Eddy Arnold; a large percentage were sold in cities. That proved to me Andy would go over in the urban areas."
3. The Dick Van Dyke Show. “An inside show about television show couldn't possibly interest a mass audience, they told me. In fact, Jim Aubrey, then head of CBS, tried to convince me to change Dick from a comedy writer to an insurance man.”
4. The Bill Dana Show. “This time they said I couldn't base a comedy show on a dialect comedian. The series failed—because I had tried to present a fantasy character against a realistic background.”
5. Gomer Pyle. “An audience gravely concerned about the draft and the Vietnam war would not watch a show about soldiers, they argued. I solved that by placing Jim Nabors in a military environment that had nothing to do with fighting a war.”
6. I Spy. “No show with foreign locations had ever succeeded, but I was willing to try.” Leonard also pioneered with a Negro co-star, Bill Cosby. The producer's challenge in “My Friend Tony” seems less profound than those which went before, but he claims it is a real challenge: “No series has ever had a foreign-speaking leading man.”
The new star is Enzo Cerusico, a handsome Italian Leonard chose for an "I Spy" segment in Rome.
“I interviewed 50-60 actors for the part, and he was the only one who couldn't speak English,” said Leonard. “I figured he must be good if the casting man would send him to me under those circumstances. And he was good.
“I put him under contract and brought him over here a year ago last June. Now his English is good. So good, in fact, that he is beginning to question why he does this and that in his scenes. I lose an hour or so a day because his English got good.”
James Whitmore also stars in the hour show as a UCLA criminology professor who helps solve crimes by scientific methods.

“My Friend Tony” wasn’t a hit and is remembered by perhaps a handful of people today. By now, Leonard’s track record wasn’t so hot—he lost with “Hey, Landlord,” “Accidental Family” and was on his way to failure with “My World and Welcome To It,” and comedies starring Pat Finley, Shirley MacLaine and Don Rickles before gaining a starring role in a show called “Big Eddie” that never found an audience.

Despite all that Leonard accomplished on television and his image as a gangster on film, he still may be best known for occasional appearances on radio when he said “Hey, bud, c’mere a minute,” to comedian Jack Benny playing comedian Jack Benny.