She and the Chimps

Quick—name Peggy Cass’ TV series! No, I don’t mean To Tell the Truth.

There may be some old sitcom die-hard fans who can name the show. It never (to the best of my knowledge) appeared in reruns because it only lasted one season. On paper it must have looked like a winner.

The monkeyshines of J. Fred Muggs turned into moneyshines for NBC’s Today, as some credit the chimp with boosting the show’s ratings. Then the Marquis Chimps scored hits whenever they appeared on TV, including a memorable appearance with Jack Benny. Someone watching at Screen Gems must have thought, “Hey, let’s give these monkeys their own show.”

They did. ABC picked it up. And they put it down again after 26 episodes.

Cass and Jack Weston were signed to co-star. But despite the work of some top former radio comedy writers, assisted by a ubiquitous laugh track, there was really only one joke—chimps were treated like human kids. Cass, who proved in the movie Auntie Mame that she really was funny, soldiered through as best she could.

Here’s a piece from King Features’ TV Keynotes column dated September 23, 1961.

Chimps Steal Scenes
By STEVEN H. SCHEUER
HOLLYWOOD — It's a good thing Peggy Cass has a lot of confidence in herself because she's going to need it in her new TV series, "The Hathaways," to be seen on Friday nights this fall with Jack Weston and the three Marquis chimps. The chimps, Enoch, Charlie and baby Candy get bored routine four times for jelly beans or ice and then they quit.
The other day on the Columbia stage, Weston and Cass fumbled their lines or missed cues. Peggy stumbled over her line for the fourth time and Charlie the chimp walked off the stage in disgust.
"I was so embarrassed," said Peggy.
Miss Cass can really take care with stunts. They will do the same of herself, but she isn't going to attempt to swipe scenes from the chimps.
Enoch's Scorn
"If I get a laugh on the set," said Peggy, "Enoch turns his head to a camera and he seems to say, 'Tell the big, shiny lady to shut up.' "
The chimps can't talk, but they can make sounds to fit a vocabulary of 100 words—"not all the best ones, either," says Miss Cass.
Hearing that pilots never sell, Peggy decided to take the plunge last winter for money and work with animals. The day she signed the papers she appeared on her favorite Jack Paar Show and there was a chimp.
"It was an omen," said Peggy.
Sure Laugh Getters

Chimps, sure laugh getters, are going to be in a lot of shows this season. Joey Bishop, among others, will have a monkey guest for insurance.
Learning this, Miss Cass' Irish dander rose. "Listen, there's going to be a bed check on my chimps," she said with snap. "I'll have you know, my chimps are the originals."
She thought a moment. "We have the world's best, so why worry. Let the others try and imitate Enoch, Charlie and Candy."
Miss Cass expects to be known on TV as The Monkey Lady and according to the storyline she and Jack Weston have merely adopted the three monkeys.
Train Wreck Survivors
Peggy says the producer still hasn't told her how she obtained her three "babies". "No one told me about their background so I've made it up. I say there was a train wreck outside of town and some of the cars were carrying circus animals. Jack and I go down to the accident and rescue the three chimps. Now they're our family."
As Mom, Peggy has scenes putting curlers on baby Candy's head with lines like, "Oh, I wish my hair were as thick as yours." She plays croquet with the chimps and she thinks this could be dangerous. "They're stronger than I am and they were using real mallets. One bang on the head and I'm through." A true Mamma, Peggy has fallen in love with her "children."
"The chimps pay little attention to you if you don't work with them," she says. "They're particular. You ought to see them greet their trainer Gene Detroy. They fly into his arms in the morning."
Night Club Act
Peggy would like to do a nightclub act with the chimps. "I'd crack the jokes and they'd clap," she said. "I'd call it 'Peggy's Revenge.' "
While Peggy dreams, her mother brings her back to reality. She saw her daughter's pilot and came out nodding. "Well, Peggy, the kids will love it, but don't let them photograph you from the side. You have some beak for a nose, my dear."
Peggy is watching for this and at the same time she keeps an eye on the three scene stealers.
She also hopes to cut down on the one line gags she's been receiving. "I'm not that kind," she says. "I need image humor, you know.
"I don't worry about the chimps, just me. But they are dear. And looking at 'em, you just have to believe Darwin. I see my friends and my rel—— ." She broke off. "Well, it's true!"

Since most of you reading have little interest in an obscure sitcom bomb, here’s another story about Cass from the Schenectady Gazette of August 29, 1963. There’s a reference to Pauline Frederick. My recollection is she anchored some of those minute-or-so updates on NBC during the daytime but she was also a regular reporter from the U.N. for quite a while. In those days, women had to be pretty feisty to get a piece of the on-air action in network television news. In a way, I get the impression that description could be applied to Peggy Cass. I can’t see her taking crap from anyone.

Now Sojourning in 'Sandwich Land'—Witty Peggy Cass Likes Talking
By PEG CHURCHILL
Gazette Reporter
A warm and wildly witty woman from the Land of the Bean and the Cod, comedienne Peggy Cass is sojourning in another country now . . . Sandwich Land.
* * *
"I CALL THIS 'Sandwich Land'," she explained yesterday over a corned beef-on-rye at the Thruway Motel in Albany, "because I haven't had anything to eat but sandwiches since I arrived here Tuesday."
"This may turn out to be the Kosher week of my life," she quipped, surveying her luncheon fare. "I've had more corned beef here than I ever have in New York." "You're from Schenectady. What kind of a name is that?," she asked, and quickly added, "Boy, any kid has to learn how to spell to live in that town."
Told that Schenectady is the home plant of General Electric Co., her blue eyes widened in familiar Cass-fashion as she remembered: "When I was in Syracuse I had the General Electric suite of the motel where I was staying. When I walked in five of the lamps didn't work. I thought the last man to check in must have been Mr. Westinghouse."
* * *
LUNCH WITH Peggy Cass is a zany occasion. She may not try to be funny, but it's a habit which has stayed with her since she "had them in stitches down at the Gulf gas station when I was five years old." That was in Cambridge, Mass., outside Boston.
"And, I like baked beans and cod fish, especially sprinkled with pork scraps. I just got a new New England cook book. I'm going to get busy with it in the fall and ruin a lot of Friday evenings."
"I'm a talker," admitted Peggy in what might have been the understatement of the hour-long conversation. "I just can't stop. My mother always told me to shut up 'cauz talking could get me into a lot of trouble. Boy, was she wrong."
* * *

TALKING brought Peggy Cass to the attention of millions who saw. her guest appearances on the old Jack Paar Tonight show. She became a regular guest on the late-evening television show after scoring a Broadway success as Agnes Gootch in "Auntie Mame" in 1956.
The auburn haired actress enjoyed her guest spots with Paar, but she was "terrified" by them as well. "It was like going to the block every time, you went on. You had to have all your own material. If you weren't funny, what then?"
Miss Cass shivered as she thought of the trip she made with Paar to the Berlin wall, a trip which caused considerable furor.
"I WENT ALONG as the pauper's Pauline Frederick," she remarked. "I was just plain people. When Jack told me there was going to be a senate investigation, I broke out in goosepimples. I just wanted to be the nice girl next door again, the one the women will invite over for coffee."
The wife of Carl Fisher, business manager of current Broadway hits "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum" and "She Loves Me," Peggy is the "girl next door" to her neighbors on Manhattan's fashionable east side.
THE FISHER family also includes Peggy's stepdaughter, a Radcliffe College student now traveling in Japan, and the comedienne's two black poodles — Schroeder (named after the character in the Peanuts comic strip) and Freddie "it's as good a name as Charlie, isn't it?").
Schroeder and Freddie, constant traveling companions, are with Miss Cass now while she appears at Colonie Summer Theater in "She Didn't Say Yes." Actress Joan Caulfield also stars in the comedy being given a pre-Broadway trial on the summer stock circuit.
THIS IS THE ninth and final week of the tour. Next week, Miss Cass will leave for Ireland where she has relatives . . . "and how." She said she's going to Europe to think about whether she will be in "She Didn't Say Yes" when (and if) it has its scheduled November opening on Broadway.
"I have my choice of this show or a serious part in another dramatic show. There wouldn't be too many laughs in the dramatic part and a lot of crying. It appeals to me: After all, I don't want to be a female Jackie Leonard."
Peggy Cass is outspoken in a fresh and funny way about everything from the lack of ice machines in a motel ("it's a disgrace") to Richard Burton ("If he gets married again, there's sure going to be a line of applicants").
* * *
SHE THINKS of her humor as "a way of looking at the world." Sometime, she notes, "I say something and people fall down laughing and I don't even think it's funny."
If she's going to be funny, Peggy likes best of all to be funny on the New York stage.
"I'm happy when I'm on stage," she confessed. "I love it." Without trying, and perhaps without even knowing it, the down-to-earth Miss Cass is "on stage" all the time.
Despite her mother's prediction, all Peggy has to do is talk.

Cass continued to do a lot of stage work and, since she was in New York, she was in the home of the Goodson-Todman game show empire. In 1960, besides appearing with some regularity on Jack Paar’s Tonight show, Cass was filling in for both Polly Bergen and Kitty Carlisle on To Tell the Truth. Bergen left for other show biz ventures and Cass eventually became a regular into the 1980s. Also appearing on the Broadway stage and on Goodson-Todman panels was Anita Gillette. She, too, detoured to California’s TV-ville to co-star on a sitcom bomb called Me and the Chimp.

We can imagine what they said if they compared notes.