The TV Floor Director Who Made Good

Landing a gig on a successful, long-running sitcom (especially in syndicated reruns) is something most actors can only dream about. But two of them? There may be only a handful that can make that claim. And one of them is Bill Daily.

Daily has passed away at the age of 91.

Actually, Daily did more than that in his career. In the ‘70s, he starred in Bill Daily and His Hocus Pocus Gang, a syndicated children’s series where he went to amusement parks across the U.S. In the early ‘80s, there was another you’ll-miss-it-if-you-blink sitcom called Aloha Paradise which one reviewer compared to a tetanus shot. And there were a few other TV gigs in the ‘80s and ‘90s.

Daily’s humour was unique. On I Dream of Jeannie, he occasionally plotted against his buddy, Larry Hagman’s Major Nelson. But he wasn’t evil or nefarious. It’s almost like he just couldn’t help himself. As Howard the next-door neighbour on The Bob Newhart Show, he was no jokester. His comedic acting was low-key, almost apologetic.

Both Daily and Newhart got their starts in Chicago. Daily came from an odd background for a stand-up comedian—he was a director at a TV station. He landed his first comedy gig at the Blue Orchid, opening for singer Roberta Sherwood. Variety reviewed it on March 11, 1959:

BILL DAILY
Comedy
20 Mins.
Black Orchid, Chicago
Ranks of offbeat funnymen should easily accommodate Bill Daily, a low-key type whose stuff is largely situational. This is his maiden nitery stand, and he betrayed remarkably little nervousness at the initial spotlighting.
Promising as he is, with undeniable talent for the gentle whimsy, there is a disturbing derivativeness about the act, a factor that could hinder him less if he brought to his portrayals a strong personality characteristic or a deep-impressing material gimmick. Neither of these identifiers is present, so that much of the time Daily is reminiscent of established comedians in the same general genre.
For example, his soft-spoken "H'lo" gambit and subsequent meandering patter harks of Herb Shriner, including a quip about a plush restaurant where "you have to audition to eat there." One of his funniest sketches has to do with a shy guy new to the formal banquet circuit, and his attendant perplexity re apparel, which cutlery to use, for what course, etc. This one, as it plays, evokes the sturdy image of Sid Caesar.
Daily flashes a particularly keen imagination with an impresh of a newborn just home from the hospital. It's a delightful bit, but again invites comparison, this time to Jonathan Winters.
Yet, for all the suggestion of personalities in the same orbit, Daily is a sufficiently attractive and fertile performer to rate attention by the small rooms and tv potentates, especially for guesting on the variety formats.
Video, in fact, is familiar ground for Daily. He's a floor director for NBC-TV, Chicago, and made occasional appearances on the web's short-lived "Club 60" daytime stanza. He has a good "feel" for his stuff, and may in time give his own character the sharper definition needed to spell the difference between fair success and the upper rungs. Pit.

Variety also noted singer Duke Hazlett had been added to the bill because of a fear that Daily was so new, he wouldn’t be enough support.

Daily carried on at WNBQ until 1964 when he was signed to be a banana on Steve Allen’s syndicated show for Westinghouse to do the same kind of shtick that Louis Nye and Tom Poston (Ah! Another Newhart connection) had pulled off on earlier Allen variety efforts. His big break came in early December, when he was added to the cast of the pilot of I Dream of Jeannie. The show lasted five seasons. (Until it got on the air, Daily teamed with Ann Elder in a comedy act). Here’s a United Press International column about Daily at the start of season number four. It appeared in papers on September 21, 1968.

Supporting Actor Big Aid to 'Jeannie'
By VERNON SCOTT
UPI Hollywood Correspondent
HOLLYWOOD (UPI) – Bill Daily is one of the co-stars of “I Dream of Jeannie”—not the kind of star who makes you drop everything to catch the show, but whose performance is absolutely invaluable.
As with most successful series, it is the gem-like assists from supporting players that make “Jeannie” a hit.
As does Roger Healey in the weekly situation comedy, Daily frequently slips in nuggets of humor on his own. It is a natural extension of his moonlighting job as a writer of commercials for radio and television.
In addition to the series Daily writes commercials regularly for a potato chip firm and for a national bakery.
The actor and his wife, Pat, have been married 19 years and are the parents of Patrick, 10, and Kimberly, 8. Both are adopted.
The Daily family is poised to move into a brand new four-bedroom home in the hills of Studio City, a half-hour drive from Columbia Studios where the NBC-TV show is filmed.
There will be an office in the house where Bill can work on his commercials. Included on the grounds is a swimming pool for the children.
Working Day

Daily works four days in the series, rehearsing three and shooting on the final day. On a normal day he is on the set at 7 a.m., in makeup, in his Air Force uniform, and before the cameras until 7 p.m.
Pat, whom he considers a brilliant cook, has dinner waiting for him when he gets home.
“I’m a cook, too. A good one,” Daily claims. “I’m terrific when it comes to making spaghetti with clams.”
The barbecue chores fall to Bill when the family spends the summer in a beach cottage on Lido Island at Newport Beach about 50 miles down the California coast from their home.
On weekends Daily likes nothing better than packing Kimberly and Patrick into the family car and heading for the chartered fishing boats for deep-sea trolling. Recently, to Pat’s dismay, the children and their father returned home with almost a hundred pounds of bonita.
Mrs. Daily was grateful, however, that the catch was brought to the old house. She has plans to decorate their new home with antiques and as many of the Daily painting collection as possible.
“Our problem is that the new place has so many glass walls and draperies, we don’t know what to do with all the really fine paintings we’ve bought over the years,” Daily says.
A native of Des Moines, Iowa, Bill attended the Goodman Theater College in Chicago before becoming an NBC staff director. Later he switched to writing for the old “Club 60” television show starring Dennis James. Thereafter he formed his own comedy act and hit the Midwest nightclub circuit.
At the moment he is satisfied with working as an actor during the day and writing commercials at night—oh, yes, and fishing weekends.

After Jeannie, Daily enjoyed fishing and the occasional gig until he and Newhart got together for six seasons starting in 1972. His old castmate, Larry Hagman, went on to other things, too, becoming part of one of the most famous cliff-hangers in TV history. Seemingly everyone in 1980 was talking about who shot the evil oilman J.R. on the nighttime soap Dallas. Well, almost everyone. This is from the Associated Press, August 21, 1980.

Hagman’s ex-partner doesn’t watch ‘Dallas’
AKRON, Ohio (AP) – Bill Daily is one person who isn’t caught up in the mystery over who shot J.R. Ewing.

As Larry Hagman’s former co-star in the television show “I Dream of Jeannie,” Daily spent five years with Hagman in the series during the 1960s. The show, which also featured Barbara Eden, has been in syndication since production was stopped. Daily, in Akron Saturday for the 43rd annual All-American Soap Box Derby, played Roger Healy to Hagman’s Tony Nelson in the highly-successful comedy about an astronaut who found a female genie.
“I’ve never watched ‘Dallas,’ ” Daily said. He said he didn’t know anything about the show, that Hagman's character had been shot in the last episode this season or that the show has taken the country and parts of the world by rage.
“You’re kidding. Larry was on the cover of Time?’ ” Daily said. “This ‘Dallas' thing is the most bizarre thing I’ve ever heard in my life.”
Daily said he doesn’t watch much television, especially situation comedy. “If it is really great, I ask myself why I’m not in it, and if it’s lousy, I sit and ask myself ‘Why am I wasting my time watching this,’ ” he quipped. Still, Daily has made much of his livelihood through television “sitcoms." After “I Dream of Jeannie,” he had a run as Howard Borden in “The Bob Newhart Show,” He said he makes a pilot for a possible television show each year, but none have been purchased recently.
Lately, most of Daily’s work has been devoted to a play he wrote for the dinner-theater circuit. “Lover’s Leap” has been playing around the country since 1978. The show opens in St. Petersburg, Fla. on Tuesday.

Even when playing himself on The Match Game (and seemingly not matching contestants very often), Daley came across as a genuine guy, a little befuddled perhaps, and pretty likeable. That’s why you’ll find fan reminiscences about him on social media today.