The Rise of Tim O'Hara

Not every television actor gets typecast.

One example is Bill Bixby. He starred in My Favorite Martian, The Courtship of Eddie's Father and The Incredible Hulk. Other than Bixby’s presence, those three shows don’t have anything in common with each other.

Not only that, after a start in industrial films, he was cast in musicals. In February 1961, the earliest I can find any mention of him in the papers, he replaced Byron Palmer in the sketch revue Max, which also starred Dick Kallman. That summer, he was cast in a very successful production of Under the Yum Yum Tree (it ran more than a year), then in November was hired to be the romantic juvenile lead in a Los Angeles production of The Fantastiks. Declared Charles Stinson of the Los Angeles Times: “Bill Bixby, as the Boy, is excellent—a real find as either a leading man or a light comic. He throws lines away wonderfully well. And his voice is strong and true.”

The same year, he began his television career. The “Castings” column in the Hollywood Reporter talks of two appearances on The Danny Thomas Show, produced by Sheldon Leonard, who just also happened to be picked to direct the pilot of My Favorite Martian.

Almost a year before the series debuted, the Hollywood Reporter stated that Bixby had been signed for the series, and the pilot would be filmed Oct. 25, 1962. The Pittsburgh Press reported on Feb. 2, 1963 that CBS had picked up the show. (At the same time, a Phil Rapp-produced sitcom called I Married a Martian was shooting at Desilu. It starred Bob Cummings and Julie Newmar and, I suspect, morphed into My Living Doll).

The Chicago Tribune interviewed him before the series debuted. Here's what the paper published on June 14, 1963.

There’s a Martian Coming to TV This Fall
By Walter Oleksy
JUST HAD lunch with Bill Bixby. You may not know him yet, but you will. Bill's a good-looking, sandy-haired young actor who has snared a co-starring role in what may be the most original and funny show on television come September, CBS' My Favorite Martian.
Bill plays the part of a West Coast newspaper reporter who befriends a real live martian whose space ship crash-lands near Bill's bachelor apartment. Bill puts him up, but keeps it a secret. Why? Well, would anyone believe you if you said you had a martian stashed away as a house guest?
"The show has been presold sight-unseen to run in England and Japan," said Bill. "That's a 'first' of some kind." He was in town to appear on At Random, but at the last minute had to jet back to Hollywood for more conferences. Lew Koch, At Random producer, said he'd have Bill on the show in the near future.
"The martian show is being written for adults," Bill said, and we said we liked that fresh approach. "We want to get in a lot of social satire," he added.
"Satire?" we asked, delighted. "Social satire on TV? We're going to watch every episode!"
Before we went on to a special screening of the pilot film, we asked Bill to tell us about his background and how he got the martian show.
"Well, I was a lifeguard at the Hollywood-Roosevelt hotel three years ago [he's 29 now, and like the TV character "Tim O'Hara" in the martian show, a bachelor], and someone asked me to stand next to a Jaguar. The car, not the cat.
"I found out they were shooting a television commercial and they called the work I was to do ‘modeling.’ I shied back, but when I learned they'd pay me $100 for three hours work, I let the cameras roll. I was able to turn in my bathing suit at the hotel and study acting.
"My big break came on the Danny Thomas show, when the producer-director, Sheldon Leonard, gave me the part of a millionaire grocery boy. The part and I clicked and I did it for several weeks running. Then I became a regular on the Joey Bishop show, and from there played in just about every series on TV. Every time a producer wanted someone to play a kookie millionaire kid, they'd call me."
His two most recent appearances were on Eleventh Hour, as Robert Walker's college roommate in "Try to Keep Alive Until Next Tuesday," and on Twilight Zone in a submarine adventure with Peter Falk.
For those who saw the movie "Lonely Are the Brave," they may remember Bill as the helicopter pilot who relentlessly pursued Kirk Douglas. He has roles in two new movies, "Irma La Duce" and "Under the Yum Yum Tree," both starring Jack Lemmon.
“Jack’s my idea of the perfect actor," Bill said. "He does the best combination of drama and comedy, and that, incidentally is what we're trying to do on My Favorite Martian.
"The show is directed by Sheldon Leonard. I had worked with him before, and he said he had me in mind for the reporter part from the first. The martian is played by Ray Walston, the pixish, poker-faced comedian who was so good in 'South Pacific' and 'Damn Yankees.’”
Then we went to the screening, and the thing which most intrigued this writer about the show is its freshness. There are subtleties in the script that come over like a breath of fresh air after viewing so many insipid TV situation comedies. There isn't one "cute" moment in the show to offend a viewer, except maybe Herbert Rudley's televisionese caricature of a disgruntled army officer. Maybe that can be toned down before fall.
Bill, furthermore, plays no Sunset Strip hero. He's not a "pretty boy," and when he tries to win the sexy girl next door, he really tries to win her. And the martian, fondly called "Uncle Martin" by Bill, has his antennae set on the girl's attractive widow mother.
The script writers have allowed themselves worlds of latitude for developing the comedy. Uncle Martin is a professor of anthropology at a Mars university who specializes in our "primitive planet." He has extra-sensory perception, and can make himself invisible. He has to stick around on earth long enough to repair his space ship. "And most of the parts I'll need haven't been invented here yet," he adds coyly.
Desilu filmed the pilot, produced by Jack Chertok. We're looking forward to more episodes. This is a series with a plot and two fresh stars that should really be entertaining.

Social satire? Other than a parody of spy films, with the great Larry D. Mann as Butterball, the show was reduced to ridiculous Bewitched-esque story-lines such as body swapping, (yeah, I know, this was a comedy movie plot some years later), a bunch of trips into the past, and reconstituting a squirrel into a human.

Martian went into reruns after it finished three years on the air in 1966. Bixby signed a TV and recording contract (!) with Columbia, made some movies (including one where, afterward, he told a reporter “Elvis is no actor”), appeared on game shows like You Don’t Say and on stage in The Owl and the Pussycat.

As for fame, here’s a humbling syndication service story from July 11, 1966:

Bill Bixby's Name Gives Him Trouble
By JOAN CROSBY
NEW YORK (NEA)—MGM has finally learned to spell Bill Bixby's name, and with that knowledge has come an MGM film role for Bill.
The costar of My Favorite Martian, the CBS-TV series which is disappearing from television after this year, is presently making "This Way Out, Please" with George Hamilton and Sandra Dee.
When the Martian cast moved to MGM last season (the series had been filmed elsewhere before that,) Bill drove into the parking lot where all the stars have their names printed on their very own parking space.
"My name was spelled Bixbley. I told them my name was misspelled and the next day they had corrected it to Bixley. So then I said I don't think they understood, and they apologized and fixed it—to Bixbey. Once again complained and they found no another way of spelling my name. This time it was Bixly.
"Then, one day, a new policeman at the gate didn't want to let me in. But there were some fans hanging around the gate and they recognized me. So I got to work that day. It's just that, for awhile, I had a parking space with a sign with an awful lot of scratched-out names.”

I can’t find any quotes from Bixby about the series when it met its demise but, in a 1979 interview, he gave it his approval, saying “My shows are the kind children can watch with their parents, without embarrassment. And parents can watch with their children, without embarrassment. I like that.”

A non-parental moment on the Martian set happened not on the air, but during a Christmas party. Ray Walston recalled that Bixby told him to check his dressing room for a gift. “There stood two beautiful girls in trenchcoats. As I opened the door, they dropped the coats, bowed, and said ‘Merry Christmas’.”

Cancer that spread from his prostate killed Bixby in 1993 at age 59.