There were sub-genres, too. There were sitcoms starring somewhat dopey, incompetent dads. There were sitcoms starring earnest, incompetent young men. And there were sitcoms starring teenaged girls dealing with troubles caused by either earnest or dopey incompetent teenaged boys.
Quiz shows ranged from the intellectual (Information Please) to the parody intellectual (It Pays To Be Ignorant) to the whoever-tells-the-best-sob-story-wins (Queen For a Day).
John Crosby of the Herald Tribune syndicate dealt with the latter in both categories in the first month of his columns in May 1946.
His first column appeared May 6th. The following is from May 7th. In case you’re not up on your station/network connections: WABC is CBS. WJZ is ABC. WOR is Mutual. WEAF is NBC. Queen For a Day made a very successful leap from Mutual to television, filling airwaves on two other networks with tales of personal woe involving poor health, unemployment or natural disaster until 1964. Crosby thought they were tacky, a viewpoint that is quaint compared to the reality shows of today.
Incidentally, cartoon fans will notice the title to Crosby’s column is a play on a Jam Handy industrial film from 1936. Whether that’s the origin, I don’t know.
A Sedan for CinderellaMay 9th’s column looked at two of the teenaged girl comedies, one on NBC and the other on CBS. Both made the jump to television for a short period. One became a feature film with Elizabeth Taylor. Both shows could probably have used the same scripts and just changed the names of the characters. The stars of both shows used their gushy teenaged voices later. The star of one became Judy Jetson. The voice was easy because Janet Waldo was naturally bubbly and it was practically her real voice. She could sound like a teenage girl even in her 90s!
TOO many programs of late are built on the questionable theory that philanthropy is an adequate substitute for talent. Four of them, one on each of the major networks, are so similar in aim and so uniformly in bad taste that they may as well be examined in a group. The four programs, any one of which may be heard from Monday through Friday, are Cinderella, Inc. (WABC 3:30 p.m.), Bride and Groom (WJZ 2:30 p.m.), Queen for a Day (WOR 2:30 p.m.) and Honeymoon in New York (WEAF 9 a.m.)
Every month, the sponsors of Cinderella, Inc. bring to New York a group of four women from various parts of the country. The girls are put up at the best hotels in town, taken to the Stork Club and the Statue of Liberty among other places and showered with gifts. During the day the Cinderellas are turned over to a stable of experts who strive to improve their posture, their diction and their hair-dos but not, apparently, their minds. At the end of the month, the one who improves the most in the opinion of the experts gets a new sedan. At least, that’s what she got last month.
Every day during the week the girls are on the air to relate what they did last night and how wonderful it all was. And each day there is more loot—electric ranges, toasters, sweaters, compacts, silver, everything. To earn these gratuities they perform little chores in front of the microphone, such as reading poetry to demonstrate their improved diction or making beds to how they haven’t forgotten how, a performance that doesn’t register well over the radio. At the end of the month the girls return to Wichita or wherever they came from and a new batch of Cinderellas take[s] over.
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Bride and Groom is a little different. At the outset of this program a young couple on the brink of matrimony are introduced to the radio and studio audience and then hustled to a nearby chapel for the ceremony. While they are away, the master of ceremonies dredges married couples, young and old, from the audience and plies them with questions. The principal question, the day I listened, was whether the husband or wife should wear the pants in the normal, happy marriage. The answers varied but the reward in each case was an expensive present. Any one who can fight his way to the microphone in these affairs gets something. Presently the newlyweds are back from the chapel to get their share of the largesse. This particular couple got a set of silver, a camera, a year’s supply of film, a vacuum cleaner and a makeup kit. The sponsor also blew them to a honeymoon.
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In “Honeymoon in New York,” when I tuned in, an aged couple, who were celebrating their fifty-fourth anniversary, were relating that they had known each other since they were two years old and had been separated only once for any length of time. They told the story with touching eagerness as if it were an old, old story that every one else had stopped listening to. Of course, they were repaid handsomely with a set of gold cuff links for the old man and a gold wristwatch and a set of dishes for his wife. “Oh, dear,” gasped the lady when the bounty descended.
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In “Queen for a Day,” the master of ceremonies selects a few girls from the audience and asks them to name what they want most at the moment. One girl, unless my ears were playing me tricks, said her heart’s desire was to dip her hands in fresh cement. Later one of the girls is nominated queen for that day and is given an expensive whirl of Hollywood night clubs and, of course, a lot of other things.
The four programs, all of them vastly successful, ought to be reviewed by a psychiatrist rather than a newspaper man. Exhibitionism is out of my line. However, the gifts are fabulous, and if your greed exceeds your inhibitions, get in the parade. You might win a roadster.
The Teen-Age Girl AgainWe talked a while ago about posting the early Crosby columns. Some are feature local or obscure programming, or are simply outdated. His May 6, 1946 review on Alan Young is HERE. May 10, 1946 on Fred and Tallulah is HERE. The May 17, 1946 column on kid adventure shows is HERE. Below, if you’re interested, are clickable versions of his columns for May 8, 13, 14, 15 and 16 in chronological order.
FOR REASONS I find difficult to understand, the teen-age girl has become the most celebrated exponent of her sex in our time. She has been glorified on stage and screen, on magazine covers and comic strips, and virtually beatified at various times by “Life” magazine. I don’t know who started all this, but I suspect Miss Sally Benson must shoulder much of the responsibility for her stories in “The New Yorker” which formed the basis for that very successful play (and later movie) “Junior Miss.”
After “Junior Miss” came a deluge of imitators and eventually, the teen-age girl was enthroned on a number of radio programs where she still reigns. There is no doubt that the teen-age girl, with her whims and exuberance and wide-eyed crushes, was once a suitable topic for comedy. But much of the freshness has been wrung from the subject, and, since comedy depends largely on its element of surprise, the teenager just isn’t that funny any more.
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Two of the teen-age programs are “A Date With Judy” (WEAF 8:30 p.m. Tuesday), which has been on the air a good many years, and “Meet Corliss Archer” (WABC 9 p.m. Sunday), which returned to the air recently to replace a far better program, “Request Performance.”
Miss Archer is the same girl who got slightly involved in pregnancy in the stage play “Kiss and Tell” and she is still tormenting her irascible father and her patient, harassed mother with similar, although milder, involvements. When I listened in, she had just started the “So Help Me Club” whose members were pledged to tell nothing but the strict truth, an idea which was thoroughly exploited in a play many, many years ago. Corliss, I’m afraid, is also inclined to say things like: “Oh, goodness, he’s elderly—he’s past thirty,” which has become a fixed idea in these girls. Even conceding its staleness, “Meet Corliss Archer” is a very limp and indifferently written attempt at comedy.
In “A Date With Judy,” the writers have apparently run through all the situations a teen-age girl can get into and are now concentrating on the eccentricities of her father. Next, I suppose will come mother’s eccentricities and then, possibly the maid’s. Even so, Judy is standard equipment—flighty, wide-eyed, passionately absorbed in trivia and rather worn with time.
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Somewhat hesitantly, I should like to submit my own idea as to why the teen-age girl has lost much of her charm. When Miss Benson was writing her stories for “The New Yorker” the world, particularly the teen-age world, was slumbering quietly I pre-war innocence. For all I know, teen-age girls behaved that way. They don’t any more, at least the ones I know, don’t.
During the war years, the teenager matured with alarming rapidity. Many of them got married and had children, much earlier than they would normally, and they accepted adult responsibilities which a gravity and poise that was astounding for their years. Meanwhile a different breed of teen-age girl was filling the juvenile courts with her escapades, which are not nearly so cute as they are depicted on the radio. On the other hand, there are many admirable girls who kept house while their mother was busy with the riveting. In any case, whether admirable or not, the teen-age girl, it seems to me, is a much tougher little cooky [sic] than the ones portrayed on the radio.
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If this idea is at all acceptable, I should like to add that these radio programs are guilty not just of imitation, which must be expected in radio, but of imitating something that has largely lost its point. Or maybe I know the wrong teen-age girls.
I wonder if Disney Channel's "Phil of the Future" might have originally been planned to be a "Sabrina..."-like sitcon starring fictional character Judy Jetson (with the character interacting with the present (with hi-tech "magic"))?
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