The Danny Thomas Show (1962)

 

One of the pioneering examples of the television situation-comedy, The Danny Thomas Show was conceived, as documented in Danny Thomas' biography below, as a way to get the real-life Thomas off the road as a traveling nightclub entertainer so that he could be more involved in the lives of his growing children, who referred to him as "Uncle Daddy" because he was away from home so much. "Uncle Daddy" would be the name of the pilot episode for the series Make Room for Daddy, which premiered in the fall of 1953. In a way, Make Room for Daddy borrowed from other, more-established television comedies. Filmed at Desilu Studios, it borrowed some of the broad slapstick comedy conventions that were the trademark of I Love Lucy. And Thomas played a fictionalized version of himself, as did Desi Arnaz on I Love Lucy, and Jack Benny did on The Jack Benny Program, though Thomas' character has a different last name and is not portrayed in such sharply unflattering terms as Benny. Though he was not the show's producer at the outset, it should be noted that director and later producer Sheldon Leonard also had a Benny connection in playing a semi-recurring bit as The Tout who would provide Benny with unsolicited advice on conducting mundane activities. Jean Hagen was cast as Danny Williams' wife Margaret with Sherry Jackson and Rusty Hamer playing his children Terry and Rusty, respectively. However, after Hagen's contract expired at the end of Season 3, she left the show, being unhappy with her character and working with Thomas. Thomas and Leonard decided to have Hagen's character killed off to explain her absence at the beginning of Season 4--reportedly the first time this had been done on a sit-com. The show was also renamed in Season 4 as The Danny Thomas Show and muddled through a season of Thomas playing a widower trying to raise his children, but since ratings suffered, Thomas and Leonard decided they needed to have Danny Williams remarry, so late in Season 4 they had Rusty come down with the measles and so that Williams is forced to hire nurse Kathy O'Hara, played by Marjorie Lord, to take care of Rusty while he works. O'Hara is a widow herself and has a daughter Linda, played initially by Leilani Sorensen, from her previous marriage. Naturally, Williams and O'Hara become attracted to each other and by the end of the season are engaged.

Due to the disappointing ratings from Season 4, The Danny Thomas Show was dropped by ABC, but because CBS had just lost I Love Lucy, they picked up The Danny Thomas Show and inserted it into the old Lucy time slot, which made it an instant ratings winner. By the time Season 5 began, Williams and O'Hara were already married and now on their honeymoon, and Sorensen as Linda was replaced by Angela Cartwright. Sherry Jackson, who later said she was a close friend of Hagen and wanted out of her contract after Season 3, left the series at the end of the fifth season when her contract expired. Penney Parker was brought in briefly to replace her in 1959 and then had her character married off in 1960, never to be heard from again. However, as the series continued over the years and Thomas became busier handling off-screen business affairs, including producing other series with Leonard, more and more characters were added, some regular cast members, others occasional recurring roles. Midway through Season 6 Sid Melton was introduced as Charley Halper, owner of the Copa nightclub where Williams is the star attraction. Then early in Season 9 Pat Carroll was added as Halper's wife Bunny. In Season 3 Hans Conried first appeared as Williams' eccentric Lebanese uncle Tonoose and would show up 20 more times in the role over the series' duration. Leonard himself would appear 16 times as Williams' agent Phil Brokaw beginning in Season 4. And Bill Dana, who had exploded in popularity as Jose Jimenez after a 1960 appearance on The Garry Moore Show, was added as an elevator operator at the end of Season 8, though after 8 appearances over 2 years, he was spun off into his own series. There were a number of other semi-recurring characters added and then deleted in the years prior to 1962, which is the focus of this post. In short, either because of the off-screen demands on Thomas or the feeling that the show would benefit from a wide cast of characters who offer more comic possibilities beyond that of a nightclub entertainer and his family, the series tried to stay fresh by providing abundant variety.

And, in fact, casting Williams as a nightclub entertainer provided a built-in mechanism to exploit the benefits of the variety show in a sit-com format. Thomas himself frequently sings a number during many episodes, often in the context of trying out a new number he wants to add to his nightclub act, such as in "Hunger Strike" (March 12, 1962) in which he rehearses "The Nearness of You." Other times he bursts into song in response to what is happening in that episode's story, such as "Useless Charley" (January 8, 1962) in which he sings a song to Halper about what a wonderful thing a daughter is after Halper insists that the baby he and Bunny are about to have needs to be a boy. We also get occasional episodes in which we see Williams performing at the Copa, which provides another excuse to introduce other well-known guest stars who just happen to be performing there. When Rusty runs for class president on "Rusty for President" (November 5, 1962), Williams gets the grand idea of holding a rally for Rusty at the Copa headlined by The Smothers Brothers, who just happen to be booked there, and we, the audience, are treated to an abbreviated version of a typical Smothers Brothers performance. In "Jose's Protege" (March 26, 1962) we get a performance from then-popular child flamenco dancer Michael Davis, who is cast as Jose Jimenez's nephew hoping to break into show business, and Jose manipulates Williams into giving him an audition at the Copa. Davis is just the sort of act that was a staple on variety shows such as The Ed Sullivan Show at the time. Speaking of nephews, Williams' own nephew Don Penny, playing a brash young stand-up comic, gets his own audition, courtesy of Tonoose, in "The Smart Aleck" (April 30, 1962), which does not go well, but after he and Williams come to terms, we get to see his stand-up routine at the Copa that evening. As part of the Season 10 story arc about Williams traveling to England for a series of performances at the Palladium, his agent Brokaw hires as his temporary replacement at the Copa legendary stand-up comedian Jack Carter in "Danny's Replacement" (October 8, 1962). Carter not only demonstrates that he thinks Danny is an inferior comedian but then completely upstages him on his home turf when Danny introduces him as his fill-in at the Copa. Carter's manic, zinger-filled routine is the exact opposite of Thomas's slow-building story-telling that leads up to his single punch line, but the point of his appearance is to provide a contrast, i.e., variety, from the show's normal fare. Undoubtedly the best stand-up routine from the 1962 episodes comes in "Danny and Bob Get Away From It All" (April 2, 1962), which begins like a variety show sketch featuring Danny and his old pal Bob Hope deciding to hide out from the pressures of show business in a remote rural town, only to discover that no one notices them, which severely bruises their egos. Oh so coincidentally, they happen to be staying in this small village on the evening when the yearly local talent show is held, and they can't resist entering the contest, during which Hope gives a fantastic stand-up routine much funnier than one would imagine from someone considered these days to be an old-school corny comic.

Even with the plethora of ringer talent that the series was able to draw on, and the large cast of characters on which to base a number of different plot situations, the series continued searching for ways to keep its lofty ratings position with new story arcs to break out of its normal routine. In Season 9, the last two-thirds of the season center around the Halpers anticipation of their first child, beginning with "A Baby for Charley" (January 1, 1962) in which Bunny discovers that she is pregnant but is afraid to tell Charley because he has expressed disparaging opinions about what a nuisance children are. This story is followed by "Useless Charley" (January 8, 1962) in which Charley tries to follow ridiculous advice about babies from his sister, "Charley Does It Himself" (February 5, 1962) in which Charley tries redecorating a room in their apartment as a nursery for the baby, and finally "Baby" (May 7, 1962), which employs the well-worn comic cliches about the nervous expectant father who is more stressed out than the mother and closes with Thomas giving a sentimental fireside chat telling us that the Halpers had a boy followed by a syrupy ode to what a wonder boys are. Though Season 10 opens with another baby story--"The Baby Hates Charley" (October 1, 1962)--it quickly transitions to the story arc suggested by Leonard in which Danny goes to England to play the Palladium, beginning with the aforementioned episode "Danny's Replacement." This is followed by "What Are Friends For?" (October 15, 1962), an overstretched rationalization to set up the Halpers baby-sitting the Williams children while living in the Williams' apartment, and Danny and Kathy finally arriving in England in "The British Sense of Humor" (October 22, 1962). The trip to England also allowed the series to introduce a whole new series of characters played by British actors not familiar to American audiences, thereby expanding its variety troupe, such as Cecil Parker, Dennis Price, and Richard Wattis in this first British episode. Veteran British comic actor Jimmy Edwards plays a rascally poacher in "A Hunting We Will Go" (November 12, 1962), and we meet Kathy's Irish relations in "The Ould Sod" (December 3, 1962), played by Noel Purcell, J.G. Devlin, and Barbara Mullen. But in "Danny's English Friend" (December 17, 1962) we first meet another character who will be brought back on a semi-recurring basis, Alfie Wingate, played by Bernard Fox. Wingate is an inept waiter who leaves his brother's pub, which Danny and Kathy visit on their trip, and moves to America to seek his fortune. Alfie's brother asks Danny if he can help his brother get started in America, so Danny hands him a business card with Charley's name, thinking that the recommendation is only for Alfie getting a nice table when he visits the Copa. But naturally the intention is completely bungled into Alfie thinking Danny is providing a job reference, leading to Charley hiring Alfie as a waiter at the Copa, and hilarity ensues. Fox would appear in 3 more episodes as Alfie in Season 11. However, the series still had a sizable cast to keep employed on the home front, so the British-set episodes are interspersed with others showing what is going on back in New York, usually introduced with flimsy devices such as telephone calls or letters from the children, or in one case Danny and Kathy feeling homesick and Danny imagining that a bulldog he sees being walked in the park below their hotel looks a lot like Charley in "Jose Rents the Copa" (October 29, 1962). While the series certainly broadened its palette in juxtaposing the England-based episodes with the ones set in New York, it also made the series a bit disjointed since the atmosphere and characters were radically different from week to week. But the strategy didn't hurt the program in the Nielsen ratings, as it finished in a tie for 7th in 1962-63, essentially unchanged from finishing in 8th place for 1961-62.

One more episode from 1962 deserves its own separate examination. We noted above that the show's origins were based on a problem Thomas faced in his personal life--trying to balance a hectic but successful professional life with the need to be a father to his children at home. Doubtless many of the themes treated in the fictional Danny Williams' home life had some equivalent in Thomas' real home life, which is what makes the episode "A Nose by Any Other Name" (February 19, 1962) so interesting. In this episode Williams tries out a new series of jokes about his prominent nose for his wife Kathy, but she finds them upsetting because she thinks they are demeaning to her husband (never mind that jokes about Thomas' nose are sprinkled throughout many other episodes). Williams mistakenly feels that she is upset because she is embarrassed by his nose, and he goads his children into saying things that he can interpret as meaning they are also embarrassed. So he decides that he is going to get a nose job to spare his family any more embarrassment and visits a plastic surgeon to insist on having the surgery performed immediately. The surgeon is reluctant but finally agrees when Williams threatens just to find anybody who will do the job. When Williams returns home with his nose heavily bandaged, his family is even more upset at what he has done without letting them know. They offer profuse testimony that they loved him just the way he was and were never embarrassed of him. Linda tells him he is no longer the daddy she loved, and the entire family refuses to speak to him for several days, but when the surgeon shows up at the family apartment to remove the bandages, we see that he never performed the surgery because he recognized that Danny was in emotional turmoil and not in the right frame of mind to make such a life-altering decision. The entire family is overjoyed that the Danny they have always known and loved has not changed. While it is possible that this episode could be alluding to Thomas being told at the beginning of his movie career by Louis B. Mayer that he needed a nose job to be a successful leading man, the timing of this episode airing in 1962 might be also connected to Thomas' daughter Marlo deciding to get a nose job somewhere between her role as Stella Barnes on The Joey Bishop Show in 1961-62 and the launch of her own hit TV series That Girl in the fall of 1965. Marlo Thomas has never publicly commented about her plastic surgeries, so it's unclear exactly when she had her surgery or for how long she was considering it before having it done. Still, it could have been upsetting to her father that she would want to change her appearance to be less like his, given that his nose was his most commented-upon facial feature and his own history of standing up to Mayer. Of course, it is pure speculation that this episode is in any way connected to Marlo's decision or the timing of it, but it would be understandable if there were such a connection.

The music for The Danny Thomas Show was composed and arranged by Herbert W. Spencer and Earle Hagen. Spencer is profiled in the 1961 post on The Joey Bishop Show, and Hagen is profiled in the 1960 post on The Barbara Stanwyck Show.

The complete series can be streamed on Tubi TV (with commercials).

The Actors

For the biography of Hans Conried, see the 1960 post on Rocky and His Friends.

Danny Thomas

Born Amos Muzyad Yaqoob Kairouz on January 6, 1912 on his family's horse farm in Deerfield, Michigan, Thomas was the fifth of nine children of Maronite Catholic immigrants from Lebanon. His family was so poor that Thomas was baptized without shoes, and was raised by an aunt because his mother was in poor health. When the aunt and her husband moved to Rochester, New York, they insisted on taking Thomas with them at a time when he didn't realize who his real parents were. He would later recount that he didn't know he had siblings until he was 7 years old. By the time he was returned to his natural family, they had moved to Toledo, Ohio where he attended school while also working from the age of 11 selling candy at a burlesque theater, where he decided he wanted to pursue a career in show business. Also in Toledo Thomas first met Catholic Bishop Samuel Stritch, who performed his sacrament of confirmation and would be a lifelong spiritual mentor who would figure prominently in his later charitable endeavors. Thomas and his brother Raymond developed a vaudeville act that they performed in Toledo, but when Raymond grew up and got married, then moved away, Thomas was not deterred in his career ambitions and worked a number of jobs, including as a punch-press operator's assistant and a busboy, to save enough money for some suits and shoes to be used as an entertainer. He hitch-hiked his way to Detroit, eventually finding work as a singer on a radio program called The Happy Hour Club in 1932 using an anglicized version of his birth name Amos Jacobs Kairouz. There he met Rose Marie Mantell and escorted her home every night from work for three years before finally proposing marriage. They were married in 1936, and Thomas began working as a dialiect comedian in low-rent clubs for $2 a night. Around the time of the birth of his first daughter Margaret (now Marlo)--accounts differ whether this happened before or shortly after her birth--his wife pleaded with him to leave show business for more stable and lucrative work, so Thomas prayed to St. Jude, the patron saint of the hopeless, to show him the direction he should choose for his life and vowed that if he found success he would open a shrine to St. Jude. Shortly thereafter, Thomas met Maury Foldare, who would serve as his publicist for nearly 50 years, and his fortunes improved with better-paying gigs at more reputable venues. In 1940 the family moved to Chicago, where Thomas took his celebrated stage name after two of his brothers' first names, reportedly so that his family back in Toledo would not know he was back working in nightclubs. From there he moved on to New York, working his way up to $500-a-week engagements before being brought to Hollywood to play the character Jerry Dingle on Fanny Brice's The Baby Snooks Show radio program. He also hosted his own 30-minute variety program on ABC from 1942-43 and on CBS from 1947-48. Then the movie studios came calling, but Louis B. Mayer told him that in order to become a leading man in pictures he would have to get a nose job. Thomas was taken aback and asked his agent Abe Lastfogel what he should do. Lastfogel advised him there would still be plenty of opportunities with his unaltered nose, and by 1947 he made his feature film debut in The Unfinished Dance. In 1948 he appeared in Big City, and had two more feature films in 1951--Call Me Mister and playing songwriter Gus Kahn opposite Doris Day in I'll See You in My Dreams. In 1952 he starred in a remake of The Jazz Singer opposite Peggy Lee but afterward largely turned to television, beginning with the variety program All Star Revue hosted by Jimmy Durante which Thomas left disgruntled in 1952, calling television a "workplace for idiots." He returned to performing in nightclubs, but a year later he had already grown tired of being away from his family and missing his children growing up. When he was visited by producer Lou Edelman and writer Mel Shavelson with a script for a proposed TV series, he turned down the script they brought but pleaded with them to help him find a way to work from home so that he could spend more time with his family. When he described to them how his children had taken to calling him Uncle Daddy because he was home so infrequently, how he didn't know things like what size clothes they wear, and how Marlo had written an essay for school about how he was always promising to do things with them tomorrow but that when tomorrow finally comes it will be empty, Edelman said he had just described the perfect premise for a TV series, and from there they quickly created Make Room for Daddy (whose pilot episode was titled "Uncle Daddy") with Thomas playing a fictionalized version of himself named Danny Williams.

During the series' 11-season tenure, Thomas made good on his vow to St. Jude, but in his conversations about the project with Bishop Stritch, they decided to make the "shrine" a hospital for children with cancer, turning no child away because of financial need. At the suggestion of Stritch, born in Nashville, the hospital was founded in his home state in Memphis. Thomas campaigned tirelessly for financial contributions, contributed his earnings as a TV commercial pitch man for Maxwell House Coffee, and enlisted the help of pathologist Dr. Lemuel Diggs and auto tycoon Anthony Abraham for additional support. The hospital opened in 1962 at a time when the survival rate for children with acute lymphocytic leukemia was 5%. At the time of Thomas' death in 1991, that rate had risen to above 50%. Thomas' eponymous TV series was the highpoint of his acting career. He won his first Primetime Emmy in 1955 for Best Actor Starring in a Regular Series (his second Emmy, the Bob Hope Humanitarian Award, was awarded posthumously) and was nominated in the same or equivalent category three more times. The series itself ran for 11 seasons, while none of Thomas' later series lasted more than a single season. Still, despite placing high in the Neilsen ratings until the very end, the demands of anchoring a weekly series began to weigh on Thomas at least by Season 9, and his time was increasingly being taken up as a producer on other successful series, beginning with The Real McCoys and continuing with The Andy Griffith Show, The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Joey Bishop Show, Gomer Pyle: USMC, and The Mod Squad. There were also some duds: The Bill Dana Show, The Tycoon, and Rango, to name a few. But Thomas couldn't stay away from the camera--he hosted specials on his roots in The Wonderful World of Burlesque in 1965 and On the Road to Lebanon in 1966. He followed these with a variety show, The Danny Thomas Hour, in 1967-68. And in 1970 he reunited much of The Danny Thomas Show cast for a sequel series Make Room for Granddaddy, but this also lasted only a single season.  Five years later he tried playing a character not based on himself in The Practice, a medical sit-com co-starring Shelley Fabares. After that show was canceled after one season in 1977, he returned in 1980 with I'm a Big Girl Now in which he played a divorced dentist whose daughter also gets divorced and moves in with him. Thomas made one more stab at sit-coms in 1986, this time playing a retired comic who inherits a household of orphaned kids in One Big Family. After that he made but a few guest appearances on the series It's a Living and Empty Nest, the last being in 1991, the year he died from a heart attack at age 79. His producing credits had mostly stopped at the end of the 1970s. He was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal by Ronald Reagan in 1983, had two different PGA golf tournaments named after him, and was an original co-owner of the Miami Dolphins professional football team. As a member of the Catholic church, he was knighted by two different popes. He was elected into the Television Hall of Fame in 1990.

Marjorie Lord

Marjorie Wollenberg was born in San Francisco on July 26, 1918. She began taking ballet lessons at age 5, and acted in school plays and little-theater productions growing up in San Francisco. When she was 15,, her father, a cosmetics executive, was transferred to New York, and Marjorie was enrolled at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts to study acting and the Chaliff School of Dance to continue her ballet studies. In 1935 at age 16 she landed a replacement role in the Broadway production of The Old Maid starring Judith Anderson. She stayed with the production for over a year, including when it was taken on the road, but during this time she also signed a contract with RKO Pictures, making her feature film debut in 1937 in Border Cafe starring Harry Carey, Sr. She appeared in four more features that year, including two Bert Wheeler & Robert Woolsey comedies--On Again-Off Again and High Flyers. She then played in a traveling stock production of Edward Everett Horton's Springtime for Henry, with the tour ending in San Francisco. There she immediately joined another theatrical production of The Male Animal where she met actor John Archer. The two would marry in 1941 and have two children--son Gregg Bowman and daughter Ann Archer, who would become an Oscar-nominated actress for her role in Fatal Attraction. Meanwhile, Lord's performance in Springtime for Henry caught the attention of director Henry Koster, who signed her to a contract with Universal Studios, with her first feature for her new studio coming in 1942's Escape From Hong Kong with Andy Devine. She appeared in a number of B movies for Universal over the next two years, the most notable being Sherlock Holmes in Washington with Basil Rathbone, and starred in what she termed in a 1961 TV Guide cover story "some Broadway flops and some pretty bad shows on the road." After a 4-year hiatus during which she gave birth to her two children, Lord returned to movies in 1947 and made her television debut on an episode of Public Prosecutor. By 1949 she began appearing on a number of drama anthology series such as Lucky Strike Theater and Your Show Time and by the early 1950s her work in television began to outstrip her feature film work, which continued to be mostly of the B-grade variety. In 1951 she and Archer separated and were finally divorced in 1954 or 1955--accounts differ. Now the primary breadwinner for her two children, she pursued and landed more and more television work on series such as Ramar of the Jungle, Hopalong Cassidy, Climax!, and The Lone Ranger in addition to racking up hundreds of theatrical performances in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and La Jolla, California from a long-running production of Anniversary Waltz. It was during a Los Angeles performance of this play that she was spotted by Danny Thomas when he was searching for a replacement for Jean Hagen, who had left Make Room for Daddy in 1956. During this time she also met producer and theater owner Randolph Hale, but the two delayed getting married until she was firmly ensconced on The Danny Thomas Show in 1958.

Lord struggled when she first joined The Danny Thomas Show in part because she wasn't used to the sort of loud, aggressive criticism dished out by Thomas and producer Sheldon Leonard, and partly because the writers on the show were still providing her with material more suited for Hagen, a bigger, more brash actress. Eventually Lord and the rest of the crew grew familiar with each other's style and strengths, and she remained with the show for the rest of its run, which ended in 1964. During this time, her only other work came as playing her role of Kathy Williams on other programs such as The Joey Bishop Show and The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour. When the show's termination was announced, Lord remarked in a newspaper interview that she looked forward to future acting opportunities but not another role as a wife. She considered television wives too meek and wanted something more assertive. That never really materialized. After playing Bob Hope's wife in the 1966 feature film Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number! she largely kept busy on the dinner theater circuit with an occasional appearance as Kathy Williams on The Danny Thomas Hour and the series reboot Make Room for Granddaddy. After Hale died in 1974, she returned to occasional TV work on TV movies and series such as Fantasy Island and The Love Boat. In 1976 she married banker Harry J. Volk and largely retired from acting to devote herself to charitable work for cultural organizations in the Los Angeles area, but she did return to TV in a semi-recurring role as Joyce Holden on Sweet Surrender in 1987, starring Dana Delaney, though the series lasted only 6 episodes. After a role in the 1988 TV movie Side by Side, Lord was officially done with acting. After Volk passed away in 2000, Lord appeared at fan conventions and published her memoirs, A Dance and a Hug, in 2005. She passed away at age 97 on November 28, 2015.

Rusty Hamer

Rusty Hamer was the prototypical child actor unable to transition to life off-screen, and his suicide prompted another former child actor, Paul Peterson of The Donna Reed Show, to found his support group A Minor Consideration to help other former child actors adjust to life outside of show business. Born Russell Craig Hamer in Tenafly, New Jersey on February 15, 1947, Hamer was the son of a shirt salesman and a former silent movie actress Dorothy Chretien. Since his parents were active in local theater productions, Rusty and his two older brothers were also trained as performers, with Rusty reciting stories and performing in skits from when he was a toddler. The family moved to Los Angeles in 1951, and by 1953 Rusty  and his older brother John had been noticed by an agent, who attended one of their Santa Monica theatrical productions, and signed to contracts. Rusty had made his feature film debut that same year in Fort Ti and on television in an episode of Fireside Theatre. Rusty was also noticed by Danny Thomas' secretary Janet Roth when casting was underway for what would be Make Room for Daddy and brought in for an audition, which he won due to his precocious ability to memorize lines and his innate sense of timing. Thomas would later remark that Hamer was the best boy child actor he had ever seen. However, about 8 months after Hamer was cast as Rusty Williams, his father died, and Hamer looked to Thomas as a kind of second father. Like most of the rest of the cast, Hamer didn't do much work elsewhere during the show's 11-year run, the one exception being a supporting role in the 1956 Abbott & Costello feature film Dance With Me, Henry. He did briefly attempt a singing career with the release of a single on Mercury Records in early 1960, but the review of the record in Billboard Magazine said that Hamer sounded about 8 years old when he was actually then nearly 13.

When The Danny Thomas Show was coming to an end in 1964, Hamer was quoted in a newspaper interview published in The Reading Eagle that he hoped he wouldn't fall into obscurity. He was then 17 and finishing his senior year at Palisades High School with plans to enter college the next fall on Thomas' advice. Hamer was also hoping for more dramatic roles on series such as Dr. Kildare, Ben Casey, Arrest & Trial, and Mr. Novak, but all that materialized was more appearances as Rusty Williams on The Joey Bishop Show, Danny Thomas' variety show The Danny Thomas Hour, and the many reunion specials. In 1965 he was resigned to making public appearances at tourist attractions such as the Western theme park Six-Gun Territory in Ocala, Florida. On December 27, 1966 he was rushed to the emergency room in Santa Monica after accidentally shooting himself in the abdomen when a gun of his slipped from its holster and fired as he was returning from a hunting trip. Since acting roles were few and far between, Hamer took whatever odd jobs he could find--working for a messenger service and as a carpenter's apprentice, for example. In June 1968 he married actress and stunt woman Regina Parton, but the marriage lasted less than a year. After a one-off appearance in a 1969 episode of Green Acres, Hamer's only acting role was again playing Rusty Williams, now a married medical student, on the sequel series Make Room for Granddaddy. When he could no longer find acting work of any kind, he moved to Deridder, Louisiana where his brother John was running a cafe and caring for their Alzheimer-afflicted mother. John would later describe Rusty as embittered over the end of his acting career. He took more odd jobs working on oil rigs, delivering newspapers, and as a short-order cook in John's cafe, but also became reclusive, alcoholic, and delusional. John also noted that he suffered from debilitating back pain but refused to see a doctor about it. Finally, on January 18, 1990, he shot himself in the head in his trailer at the age of 42.

Angela Cartwright

Angela Margaret Cartwright was born in Altrincham, Cheshire, England on September 9, 1952. When she was 1 year old, her family moved to Los Angeles, and despite being 3 years younger than her actress sister Veronica, Angela broke into show business first at age 3 when she was "accidentally" sent on an interview for a child model for Sparkletts Water and got the job. She had many more modeling jobs thereafter, continuing through her teens and into early adulthood. Also at age 3 she made her feature film debut playing Paul Newman's daughter in Somebody Up There Likes Me. In 1957 she had an uncredited part in the Rock Hudson & Sidney Poitier feature Something of Value. Shortly thereafter she auditioned for and was cast as Danny Thomas' soon-to-be step-daughter Linda on The Danny Thomas Show, staying with the program through its remaining 7 years on the air. During these early years Angela and Veronica both took dance lessons from famed teacher Ernest Belcher, father of actress and dancer Marge Champion.

During her tenure on The Danny Thomas Show, Cartwright was limited in outside projects, but she did release an LP of children's songs, Angela Cartwright Sings, in 1959 and had two TV guest appearances in 1960--one with Veronica in an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents and another on Shirley Temple's Storybook. In 1962 during a hiatus from The Danny Thomas Show, she had a starring role in the children-oriented feature film Lad: A Dog, which also included Carroll O'Connor. Just before The Danny Thomas Show ended, Angela auditioned and won the part of Brigitta Van Trapp in The Sound of Music, even getting permission from Thomas to skip his show's last episode to begin work on the film. But unlike her castmate Rusty Hamer, Angela had no difficulty finding more roles after Danny Thomas, though she was a good deal younger and perhaps more popular due to an entire line of clothes and toys promoted while she was playing Linda Williams. After guest starring on My Three Sons and The John Forsythe Show, she was cast as Penny Robinson on Lost in Space, which ran for three seasons from 1965-68. Another appearance on My Three Sons plus one on Medical Center proceeded a temporary move to Italy, where she did more modeling, but she came back Stateside to reprise her role as Linda Williams on Make Room for Granddaddy in 1970. After that series was canceled, she found occasional guest spots on Adam-12, Room 222, and the TV series version of Logan's Run as well as some theatrical productions (one of which reunited her with Marjorie Lord) before her next big feature film--1979's Beyond the Poseidon Adventure. Meanwhile, she married Steve Guillon in 1976 and the couple had two children, a son Jesse, a screenwriter and actor, and a daughter Becca, a producer. With the birth of her children, Cartwright's film work decreased dramatically, she had only 4 credits in the 1980s, the most notable being the 1983 TV movie High School U.S.A. alongside many other former TV stars such as Dwayne Hickman, Bob Denver, Dawn Wells, Tony Dow, Elinor Donahue, David Nelson, Ken Osmond, Frank Bank, as well as more recent stars like Michael J. Fox and Crystal Bernard. Since then she has had only a couple of cameos in Lost In Space reboots (including the 1998 feature film and 2019 TV series) as well a couple of voice roles in animated productions. From 1977 to 1999 she ran a boutique in Toluca Lake called Rubber Boots filled with what she called "unusual things." But after closing the store, she devoted much more time to her artwork, photography and painted photography, which she had begun creating back when she was 16. Her work began to be featured in art and craft-related magazines in 2004 as well as studios in the Los Angeles area. More recently, she has co-authored a number of books including scrapbooks for The Sound of Music and Lost in Space (with Bill Mumy), a fantasy novel (also with Mumy), two books about fashion from the Twentieth Century Fox film archives, and several books about her artwork and the techniques she uses. She has also led tours in 2024 and 2025 of The Sound of Music film locations in Austria and Bavaria, Germany.

Sid Melton

Sidney Meltzer was born in Brooklyn on May 23, 1917, the son of Yiddish comedian Isidor Meltzer. At age 22 in 1939 he made his theatrical debut in a traveling production of See My Lawyer, the same year his older brother Lewis had his first screenplay produced for Golden Boy. Thanks to his brother's Hollywood connections, an agent got Melton an interview with MGM which led to a supporting part in the 1941 feature Shadow of the Thin Man. From then on, Melton would never lack for work, racking up nearly 150 credits over a nearly 60-year career. Many of Melton's screen appearances in the 1940s were uncredited, such as in Blondie Goes to College, Hey, Rookie, A Wave, a WAC and a Marine, Lady at Midnight, White Heat, and On the Town, to name but a few. He also had credited parts in Dr. Broadway, Girls in Chains, and Kilroy Was Here. After returning from entertaining the troops during World War II, Melton was sent by fellow actor Harry Berman to see screenwriter Aubrey Wisberg for a part in the feature Treasure of Monte Cristo for low-budget studio Lippert Pictures. After Melton appeared in a nightclub revue at Ciro's in Hollywood, he was summoned for another Lippert 1949 production Tough Assignment. Melton then returned to New York and found work in the play The Magic Touch only to be contacted by Lippert associate Murray Lerner to tell him that Robert Lippert wanted to sign him to a contract. So he returned to Hollywood and thereafter served as comic relief in a variety of roles for nearly every Lippert production, including the 1951 science fiction cult classic Lost Continent. He would also occasionally be loaned out to other studios for features such as Bob Hope's The Lemon Drop Kid, though Melton would later reveal that Lippert continued paying him his measly salary of $140 per week and pocket the difference from what he got from Paramount for Melton's services. Melton also appeared in Samuel Fuller's The Steel Helmet in 1951. But by 1954 he began finding more work in television on Our Miss Brooks, a number of anthology series, and his first recurring role as Ichabod "Icky" Mudd on Captain Midnight. At the same time he made 4 appearances as Harry Cooper on It's Always Jan, and by 1956 had also returned to feature film work, often uncredited in films such as Designing Woman, This Could Be the Night, The Joker Is Wild, and The Geisha Boy. He had frequent guest spots in the later 1950s on programs such as Date With the Angels, The Silent Service, The Jack Benny Program, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and Dragnet. His first appearance as Charley Halper on The Danny Thomas Show came during Season 6 in 1959, though at the same time he was also playing Hal Miller 3 times on The Gale Storm Show, Harry 4 times on Bachelor Father, in addition to a number of other appearances on M Squad, The Millionaire, Whirlybirds, and The Tab Hunter Show.

Melton would stay with The Danny Thomas Show through the rest of its run, only appearing once on another program during that span playing, naturally, Charley Halper on The Joey Bishop Show. After The Danny Thomas Show finished, he appeared on other Thomas/Leonard-affiliated productions as a guest star, such as The Andy Griffith Show, The Dick Van Dyke Show, That Girl, Mod Squad, and 4 times as incompetent con man Friendly Freddy on Gomer Pyle: USMC. After a single appearance as Ed Ferguson in Season 1 of Green Acres, he was added to the cast as semi-recurring character Alf Monroe, appearing 30 times in the role from 1965-69. He also found time to guest star on other programs during the later 1960s such as The Phyllis Diller Show, Daktari, and I Dream of Jeannie. He reprised his role as Charley Halper on Make Room for Granddaddy while also showing up on Love, American Style, The Chicago Teddy Bears, and The Doris Day Show. In 1972 he had a supporting role playing the character Jerry in Diana Ross' feature film debut Lady Sings the Blues, which led to other feature film roles in the early 1970s in Hit!, Sixpack Annie, and Game Show Models. Though the amount of work slackened beginning in the late 1970s, Melton continued working mostly in television up through the end of the 1990s, with his most significant role playing Estelle Gettys' late husband Salvatore Petrillo in flashback scenes on The Golden Girls from 1987-91. He also had multiple appearances in different roles on Nurses, Blossom, Empty Nest, and Brotherly Love. His last credit came starring and directing the 1999 feature film ...And Call Me in the Morning whose cast included Frank Sinatra, Jr., whom Melton later related was obsessed with Lost Continent. Melton died from pneumonia on November 2, 2011 at the age of 94. According to his obituary in the New York Times, he was married in the 1940s but the marriage was annulled. His brother-in-law is quoted as saying that after that he just kept wire-haired terriers.

Pat Carroll

Patricia Ann Carroll was born in Shreveport, Louisiana on May 5, 1927. Carroll first got the acting bug at age 5 when her family was living in El Paso, Texas and the family maid took her to a play in Mexico, which she later said mesmerized her. The family then moved to Los Angeles in 1933, and when Carroll was 12 she embarked on her theatrical career by looking up an acting company in the Yellow Pages and convinced them to cast her in their production of Our Town. At this time Carroll's father was working for the county water department and her mother worked at times as a real estate agent and at others as an office manager. After graduating from Immaculate Heart High School, Carroll wanted to move to New York to begin her acting career, but her parents refused. So for a time she attended Immaculate College in Los Angeles and taught drama at a Catholic high school before finally landing a supporting role in a 1947 summer stock traveling production of A Goose for the Gander starring Gloria Swanson. In 1948 she enlisted in the U.S. Army as a civilian actress technician and attended Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. while also appearing in over 200 stock productions around the country over the next three years. That same year she also made her feature film debut in the low-budget Hometown Girl about an unplanned pregnancy. In 1950 she appeared in the off-Broadway revue Talent '50 and performed in nightclub venues. She made her television debut a year later on an episode of Goodyear Playhouse. Red Skelton added her to the cast of his variety show in 1952 after seeing her in one of her nightclub appearances, but she left a year later and joined the cast of The Red Buttons Show. That would be followed by 7 appearances on The Saturday Night Revue and a single appearance on The George Gobel Show in 1954 before she made her Broadway debut in the revue Catch a Star! in 1955, which earned her a Tony nomination. That same year she had her first regular stint as a game-show panelist on Who Said That?, a role she would play on many game shows in the 1960s and 1970s. The year 1955 was also momentous because Carroll married Lee Karisian; the couple had three children including actress Tara Karisian before divorcing in 1976. After Catch a Star! she became a regular on the sketch comedy series Caesar's Hour playing opposite Howard Morris, for which she won the 1956 Emmy Award for Best Supporting Performance by an Actress. She would be nominated again the next year in the same category but this time lost out to Ann B. Davis of The Bob Cummings Show. Carroll stayed with Caesar's Hour until 1957 while also occasionally appearing on other shows, both scripted and variety, including Studio 57, The Mickey Rooney Show, and The Jimmy Durante Show. In the late 1950s she appeared on a number of other variety shows such as The Tennessee Ernie Ford Show and The Dinah Shore Chevy Show, the Password-like game show Keep Talking, and anthology series General Electric Theater and The DuPont Show With June Allyson. In 1959 she appeared in a Broadway revival of Our Town, this time playing Hildy the cab driver. In 1961 she served as a panelist on the game show To Tell the Truth, the same year she was cast as Charley Halper's wife Bunny on The Danny Thomas Show.

Carroll remained with the series for the rest of its duration while also expanding her game-show appearances to programs such as Talent Scouts, Your First Impression, Missing Links, and The Match Game. Before The Danny Thomas Show ended, she was cast in her first animated voice role as Jane Jetson opposite Morey Amsterdam on The Jetsons, but both were replaced with no explanation after recording a single episode. Since she had signed a contract and was irate about not being told why she was fired, Carroll filed suit against Hannah-Barbera, knowing she would lose the suit but feeling that she had been treated unfairly. Reportedly, the two were fired because of sponsor conflicts between The Jetsons and Carroll and Amsterdam's other programs The Danny Thomas Show and The Dick Van Dyke Show. Carroll had no trouble staying busy after The Danny Thomas Show, though the bulk of her work was on more game shows, such as Password, You Don't Say, The Object Is, Stump the Stars, The All New Truth or Consequences, I'll Bet, and What's This Song? In 1965 she played the role of evil step-sister Prunella in a TV movie version of Cinderella with Lesley Ann Warren in the title role and got her first voicework for animation to actually air the following year on The Super 6. In 1968 she reunited with Morris, who directed her in the Doris Day feature comedy With Six You Get Eggroll. In the early 1970s she found occasional guest spots on show such as Arnie, The Marry Tyler Moore Show, The Interns, and My Three Sons, as well as more game-show work, and a few appearances on The Carol Burnett Show before landing her next recurring role playing Rita Simon on the Bobby Sherman sit-com Getting Together, which ran for a single season of 14 episodes in 1971-72. Through the mid-1970s she guest-starred on a number of TV series, the most notable being the 1976 episode of Laverne & Shirley in which she played Shirley's mother. She then had another recurring role playing mother Pearl Markowitz to Adam Arkin in Busting Loose, which ran for two seasons and a total of 21 episodes, all of which aired in 1977. After a few more guest spots on show like The Love Boat, in 1979 she launched a one-woman show Gertrude Stein, Gertrude Stein, Gertrude Stein, for which she won a Drama Desk Award as well as a Grammy for the recorded version in the Best Spoken Word, Drama or Documentary category. She continued her prolific work on game-show panels throughout the 1970s on several shows mentioned above as well as Match Game, Celebrity Sweepstakes, The $10,000 Pyramid, Hollywood Connection, and Liar's Club, but this work declined in the 1980s, though she did appear on Super Password and Family Feud. Her work on live-action TV series also declined in the 1980s as she turned her attention more toward the stage, except for two recurring roles as Hope Stinson on Ted Knight's Too Close for Comfort in 1986-87 and supporting Suzanne Somers by playing Gussie Holt on She's the Sheriff from 1987-89. But in the latter half of the decade, she began finding more work doing voices for animation, including the voice of Ms. Biddy McBrain on Galaxy High School, Hazel on Foofur, and Katrina Stoneheart on Pound Puppies. Her most celebrated animation role came when she was cast to voice the evil Ursula in the 1989 Disney blockbuster The Little Mermaid, a role she would reprise many times for various video games, shorts, and a 1993-94 TV series. The producers originally wanted Joan Collins for the role, but she declined, as did Bea Arthur. Roseanne Barr, Nancy Marchand, Nancy Wilson of rock band Heart, Charlotte Rae, and Elaine Stritch all auditioned for the part but were turned down. In 1990 she drew raves for playing the male character of Falstaff in a production of Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor. She appeared in other classic theatrical productions in the 1990s such as Volpone and Mother Courage as well as other voicework and the occasional TV guest spot on Evening Shade and Designing Women. Her performance in the 2000 feature film Songcatcher earned her a nomination for an Independent Spirit Award, and she appeared in a few more feature films--Outside Sales, Freedom Writers, Nancy Drew, Bridesmaids, and BFFs--over the next 14 years. She also appeared 3 times as Rebecca Chadwick on ER in 2005, but the bulk of her work was reprising Ursula or voicing other characters in animated productions of one kind or another, such as Old Lady Crowley in the 2017-18 TV series Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure. Her last credit came in yet another Disney video game released in 2022, the same year she died at age 95 from pneumonia, just like her TV husband Sid Melton.

Amanda Randolph

Amanda E. Randolph was a trailblazer for African-American women both in music and in radio and television. Born in Louisville, Kentucky on September 2, 1896, Randolph was the son of a Methodist preacher and daughter of a teacher, both born before the Emancipation Proclamation. Her younger sister Lillian would also become a prominent Black actress, most remembered for her role as Annie in It's a Wonderful Life. By 1900 the family was living in Ponchatoula, Louisiana, but by the time Amanda was 14, they were living in Cleveland, where Amanda first worked playing piano and organ. In 1919 she recorded piano rolls for the Vocalstyle company in Cincinnati, the only such rolls known to have been recorded by a Black woman. At the time, she was also working as a musician at the Ohio Lyric Theatre. She recorded music under the name Mandy Randolph for Gennett Records and six sides as part of a duet with Sammie Lewis. In 1924 she was invited to join the Sissle and Blake musical Shuffle Along as well as their next effort The Chocolate Dandies, which played Broadway. She appeared in other musicals at Harlem's Alhambra Theatre until 1930, when she traveled to Europe for 9 months as part of Scott & Whaley's variety act and then returned to perform in Black vaudeville including the hit musical revues Chilli Peppers, Dusty Lane, and Radio Waves. In 1932 she interrupted her career to get married to Harry Hansberry, who ran the notorious Harlem gay speakeasy The Clam House frequented by many show business professionals. But after 4 years, she returned to show business performing at The Black Cat in Greenwich Village. Also in 1936 she recorded 6 sides for Bluebird Records billed as Amanda Randolph and Her Orchestra which can be found on the Timeless Records CD The 30s Girls (1932-1940). After appearing in the 1936 short Black Network she made her feature film debut in Oscar Micheaux's Swing! She would appear in two more Michaeux productions over the next two years: Lying Lips and The Notorious Elinor Lee. In 1940 she appeared in the Broadway production of The Male Animal starring Leon Ames and future Hazel cast member Don DeFore. She would have two more Broadway shows with Harlem Cavalcade in 1942 and The Willow and I in 1942-43. Using connections she made at The Clam House, Randolph then launched her radio career, appearing on programs such as Young Doctor Malone, Big Sister, The Romance of Helen Trent, Abie's Irish Rose, Kitty Foyle, and Aunt Jenny. She had a regular role on Aunt Hattie, which starred Ethel Barrymore, and would sometimes appear on The Great Gildersleeve where her sister Lillian had a regular role. Beginning in 1944 she began working as a voiceover performer in cartoon shorts beginning with Eggs Don't Bounce, playing the character Mandy in several more shorts that year. In 1948 she began another series of cartoon voiceovers, playing Petunia in Famous Pictures' series of Little Audrey cartoons. That was the year she also became the first Black woman to have a regular role on a TV series when she played Martha on The Laytons, a series that lasted only two months. But it led to Randolph hosting her own daytime variety series Amanda, which also was a short-lived experiment by the DuMont Television Network but marked the first time a Black woman had hosted a TV program. With Lillian now living in Hollywood, Amanda finally moved out west in 1949, initially to appear in the feature film No Way Out, which marked the screen debut of Sidney Poitier. The following year she began playing Ramona Smith, mother of Sapphire on The Amos 'n' Andy Show, both on radio and television. She took over the title role on The Beulah Show from Lillian in 1953. The role had been originated by Ethel Waters who had been succeeded by Hattie McDaniel and Louse Beavers before the Randolph sisters took their turns. Amanda also found several feature film roles in the early in 1950s, sometimes uncredited, in She's Working Her Way Through College, Bonzo Goes to College, Bomba and the Jungle Girl, and Mister Scoutmaster. Around the same time that her stint on The Amos 'n' Andy Show came to an end, she made the first of her 74 appearances as maid Louise on The Danny Thomas Show during its second season. That same year, 1955, she opened her own restaurant Mama's Place in Los Angeles, where she reportedly did her own cooking.

Since she did not appear every week on The Danny Thomas Show, she also sought out work elsewhere, making occasional guest appearances on other series such as The Loretta Young Show, Playhouse 90, Whirlybirds, The Thin Man, How to Marry a Millionaire, and The Untouchables in the late 1950s. In 1961, her husband Hansberry died from a heart attack, and she returned to New York for his funeral. The couple had been estranged for some time after having two children, Joseph and Evelyn. She continued taking occasional TV guest work in the early 1960s on programs such as The Man From Blackhawk, The Barbara Stanwyck Show, The New Breed, Perry Mason, and Cheyenne as well as a couple of uncredited feature film roles. After The Danny Thomas Show went off the air in 1964, Randolph attempted retirement while staying active with church and charity work, but in 1966 Jet magazine reported that she was in financial difficulty because she was just one credit short of qualifying for a Screen Actors Guild pension. A month later the magazine reported that a role was being created specifically for her so that she would qualify for the pension--very likely her 1967 appearance on That Girl courtesy of his old boss' daughter. She passed away after suffering a stroke on August 24, 1967 at the age of 70. After her death, she appeared in three projects filmed earlier that year: an episode of CBS Playhouse, an uncredited part in the feature film The Last Challenge, and one more turn as Louise on an episode of The Danny Thomas Hour. She was buried next to her sister Lillian in Hollywood Hills.

Bill Dana

Born William Szathmary on October 5, 1924 in Quincy, Massachusetts, Dana was the youngest of six children. His father immigrated from Hungary and worked as a printer's assistant and at one point owned a hotel that was destroyed by a fire during the Depression. His mother worked as a milliner of hats. The family was quite wealthy up until the Depression, though Dana said that he never felt the loss of wealth like his older siblings did since he didn't know any other existence. Most of his siblings had distinguished careers as well. His brother Irving was a prominent musical arranger who worked for Paul Whiteman in the mid-1930s, composed the first dance arrangement of Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue," and composed the theme music for Get Smart. His brother Arthur, whom Dana credits with engendering his awareness of languages and dialects that factored in the creation of his character Jose Jimenez, became a Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University. His sister Fanny, after a long marriage and period raising her children, returned to school, graduated from UCLA, and became the head law librarian at USC. His brother Sidney became a violinist for decades with the Indianapolis Symphony. Dana said that he himself was a terrible student in grammar school and high school and only managed to graduate through the help of his sister Fanny. From an early age he became interested in comedy--Danny Kaye was a favorite of his on radio, and he partnered with schoolmate Larry Vincent (who would go on to create the character of horror movie host and heckler Seymour on local Los Angeles TV and radio stations in the late 1960s and early 1970s) and then with Gene Good, with whom Dana formed a comedy duo early in his career. After graduating from high school, he had tried to enlist in the U.S. Navy, but before his papers were processed, he was drafted into the Army and through a stroke of fate narrowly missed boarding the ill-fated Leopoldville troop-carrier ship that was sunk by a Nazi submarine and was also spared fighting in the Battle of the Bulge where so many American soldiers were killed. Instead, he served as a mortar-man and machine gunner in action farther south, earning a Bronze Star. After the War, he and Good enrolled at Emerson College in Boston and helped launch the campus radio station, but after graduating he moved to Los Angeles hoping to break into show business there. He worked a series of odd jobs but never found any work in the entertainment business; however, he was able to bluff his way through an interview at Douglas Aircraft in Santa Monica, relying on past experience laying out electrical cables in a Boston shipyard, to get hired as the head of equipment and manpower files on top secret jobs such as the Nike missile project. He then got a letter from Good, who was now working as a page at NBC, telling him that he was performing small comedy bits for a show called Broadway Open House, and persuaded Dana to move back to New York to team up with him. Dana also got a job as an NBC page, and the duo made their first television appearance together on Date in Manhattan with Ed Herlihy. The duo's comedy bits often involved "what if" scenarios based on historical events and figures, but while the two performers saw themselves as comedic equals, their audiences began to see Dana as the comic and Good as the straight man, which eventually irked Good and prompted him to disband the act. It was during this time that Dana took his stage name, figuring that his last name was too hard to pronounce, so he came up with Dana as a variation of his mother's first name Dena. He found work performing on The Imogene Coca Show and The Martha Raye Show, but after aggravating a back injury, he decided to concentrate on writing. His managers teamed him up with a young comic named Don Adams, and Dana encouraged Adams to adopt his trademark clipped manner of speaking after seeing him using something similar while impersonating actor William Powell in one of his routines. Dana was also the one to develop Adams' "Would you believe?" series of jokes. When Dana accompanied Adams to one of his appearances on The Steve Allen Show, Dana was invited by writers Herb Sargent and Stan Burns to join their staff, and once they left, he became, for a time, the sole writer on the show. As head writer on The Steve Allen Show, Dana came up with a routine called The Answer Man in which Allen would reveal the answers before being asked the questions, just as Johnny Carson would later do with his Great Carnac routine. Dana also brought Don Knotts over to the Allen Show, after working with him on The Martha Raye Show, at a time when Knotts was considering leaving show business. During the summer of 1958 Dana also wrote for the replacement variety show The Steve Lawrence-Eydie Gorme Show, whose guests included Don Knotts, Don Adams, and Pat Carroll. In 1959 Dana came up with his signature character, Jose Jimenez, in a skit in which he portrays an instructor at a Santa Claus school. According to Pat Harrington, Jr., Dana had been toying with the Jimenez character for over a decade after meeting a man in Puerto Rico who seemed to be saying he was the Dutch representative for the country when he was actually saying he was the Dodge representative. The sketch became an instant hit, and Dana received an Emmy nomination for his writing on the show. Besides reprising the role many times on The Steve Allen Show, Dana was invited to perform it on other shows and recorded an album containing some of the skits from the Allen Show. On one such appearance on The Garry Moore Show in 1960 Dana and writing partner Don Hinkley decided to make Jimenez an astronaut on the suggestion of Moore Show writer Neil Simon. Since these were the days of the nascent U.S. space program in its rush to beat the Russians, Jose the Astronaut became an even bigger sensation, so much so that he was invited to perform the bit at President Kennedy's inaugural gala, released a top 20 single and top-selling LP, and was made an honorary member of the U.S. space program. He was hired to produce and write for the 1961 summer replacement program The Spike Jones Show on which he would occasionally appear as Jimenez. Then Lou Edelman, producer for The Danny Thomas Show, came up with the idea of "adding flesh and blood” to the Jimenez character by having him work as the elevator operator in Danny Williams' apartment building.

Dana would appear 8 times on The Danny Thomas Show before being spun off into The Bill Dana Show in 1963, on which Jimenez now worked as a bellman at a prestigious hotel. Dana later said in an interview that he was doing his act at the Cal Neva resort when he got a phone call from Sheldon Leonard informing him that NBC was offering them a guaranteed 39 weeks of The Bill Dana Show without even seeing a script or shooting a pilot. Jimenez's boss on the program was played by future Lost in Space star Jonathan Harris, and Don Adams was brought in to replace Gary Crosby as the clueless hotel detective, fore-shadowing his future fame as inept secret agent Maxwell Smart. Dana later said that he did not envision himself remaining the star of the series long-term and that his idea was transition it to a show in which Adams was the star. The series ran for two seasons and a total of 42 episodes, with Dana receiving an Emmy nomination for writing before being canceled in January 1965 after the sponsor Proctor & Gamble decided the ratings were not good enough and decided to replace it with the Chuck Connors western Branded. During the series' run and for several years afterward, Dana made many appearances on variety shows as Jimenez, including The Ed Sullivan Show, The Tonight Show Starring Jack Paar, The Red Skelton Hour, The New Steve Allen Show, The Linkletter Show, The Hollywood Palace, The Jack Paar Program, and The Dean Martin Show, to name but a few. In 1966 he wrote and played the part of the White Knight in an animated version of Alice in Wonderland, appeared as Jimenez in the cartoon I Want My Mummy, which he also co-wrote, produced The Milton Berle Show, and made a cameo as Jimenez on an episode of Batman. In May 1967 he hosted a live talk show Las Vegas on the United Network, intended to be a major network to compete with the Big 3, but by the end of the month, the network went bankrupt still owing Dana some $25,000. In 1968 he had his own special, Jose Jimenez Discovers America sponsored by Bell Telephone, for whom Dana was then a spokesman. But after doing a commercial for Southwestern Bell in which Jimenez said, "Let your fingers do the walking through the jello pages," Dana caught a lot of flack from Latino organizations for stereotyping their community, which Dana considered unfair because he maintained, years later, that Jimenez was a mere character, a good person who only wanted to help people, not a derogatory figure, and that among his fans were many prominent Latinos, including Ricardo Montalban and Cantinflas, and that he had helped host the early meetings of La Causa as well as doing fund-raising for the movement. Rationalizing that he had other projects to work on, Dana decided, and later regretted, to kill the Jimenez character by announcing in the spring of 1970 at a rally for the Latino Community in front of 11,000 people at the Los Angeles Sports Arena that Jose Jimenez was dead. He was stunned by the universal cheering and applause he received, figuring that there would be at least some people sorry to see his beloved creation die. He was hired to produce and write the Don Knotts' Nice Clean, Decent, Wholesome Hour, but suffering from depression over the demise of Jimenez, as well as not being hired for any other appearances since everyone equated Dana the person with Jimenez the character, he abruptly left the Knotts program and moved to Hawaii, which he later said meant he was invisible to Hollywood. Eventually he tried to get back into show business by calling old friend Norman Lear and asking if he could suggest an episode that he would write for All in the Family. Lear was apprehensive at first but then told Dana that if he could come up with a way to have the real Sammy Davis, Jr. make a visit to the Bunker household, he would let him write it. The two threw ideas back and forth, and Dana came up with the idea that since Archie moonlighted as a cab driver in New York, he could have Davis be one of his fares who leaves a briefcase behind in the cab, which he then has to visit the Bunker home to retrieve. Even though the episode was nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Single Program, and the series won a number of other Emmys that year, including Best Comedy Series and Best Director for John Rich specifically for that episode, Dana was not invited to the ceremony because his agent's secretary sent the appropriate form to the wrong organization. That year, 1972, Dana married the actress Maura McGiveney, but the couple divorced less than 6 months later. Although he got a couple more writing assignments on Bridget Loves Bernie and Chico and the Man as well writing for the entire Donny and Marie series over the next few years, Dana's career never returned to the heights he reached in the 1960s. He had occasional guest acting spots in the 1970s on The Snoop Sisters, Police Woman, McMillan & Wife, Ellery Queen, and Rosetti & Ryan, to name a few. In 1980 he wrote and appeared in (as Jonathan Livingston Siegle) the Get Smart reboot feature film The Nude Bomb. In 1981 he remarried to Evelyn Shular and the couple eventually settled in Nashville. But other than writing a few random episodes here and there, most of his career from then on was in acting: in the 1980s he had guest spots on Fantasy Island, Too Close for Comfort, and The Facts of Life in addition to a recurring role as Mr. Plitzky on the very short-lived sit-com No Soap, Radio and 3 turns as Jonas Fiscus on St. Elsewhere. Beginning in 1988 he appeared 6 times as Sophia Petrillo's brother Angelo on The Golden Girls over the next 4 years. His final screen credit came in a 1994 episode of Empty Nest. In 2004 he established The American Comedy Archives at his alma mater Emerson College. He died on June 15, 2017 at the age of 92.

Sheldon Leonard  

Sheldon Leonard Bershad was born in Manhattan on February 22, 1907, the son of lower-middle-class Jewish parents. His family moved about New York City so that Leonard spent time in Brooklyn, the Bronx, and even the suburb of Bellevue, New Jersey, where he said in a 1996 interview he experienced antisemitic bigotry that made him hostile and even a bully for a time. He also said he had no friends growing up, so he spent a great time reading books such as Horatio Alger and Tarzan stories, which developed his sense of imagination that was useful in his show business career. At Stuyvesant High School, his best friend was the future actor J. Edward Bromberg, who because of a heart condition could not engage in athletics, so the two gravitated to literary and dramatic activities, encouraged by teacher and future Broadway producer Gustav Blum. After graduating high school, Leonard attended Syracuse University, which had a renowned Performing Arts department. He graduated in 1929 and went to work on Wall Street, but with the stock market crash later that year, he began looking for other work and decided on a career as an actor. However, it took him 5 years to make it to Broadway, debuting in the poorly reviewed Hotel Alimony in 1934, though Leonard's performance received mild compliments. He continued on Broadway in The Night Remembers (1934), Fly Away Home (1935), Having a Wonderful Time (1937-38), and Kiss the Boys Good-Bye (1938-39), the last two being bona fide successes that led to offers from Hollywood. At the same time he was making his mark on Broadway, he began getting small supporting parts in film shorts such as My Mummy's Arms (1934) starring Shemp Howard, as well as the Hatian voodoo thriller feature film Ouanga (1936). His feature film career really launched in earnest after being brought to Hollywood for the role of murder suspect Phil Church in Another Thin Man in 1939. Though he returned to New York afterward to resume his Broadway career, live theater there was in decline due to competition from the rise in popularity of feature films, with some theaters converting to movie houses. Leonard's managers recommended he move to Hollywood and pursue a film career, where his thick Brooklyn-styled accent and dark looks led to typecasting as a variety of heavies throughout the 1940s and early 1950s, from racketeer Chink Moran in Buy Me That Town in 1941 to Vichy policeman Lt. Coyo in To Have and Have Not to surly bartender Nick in It's a Wonderful Life to Harry the Horse in Guys and Dolls. Concurrent with his film career, Leonard found work in radio, where he first played the semi-recurring tout character on The Jack Benny Program, a role he would also play on the television version of the show, in which he would act like the stereotypical horse racing tout but instead give Benny advice on mundane matters such as what type of chewing gum he should buy. He was a regular cast member on radio programs such as Damon Runyan Theatre and The Martin and Lewis Show and would appear as a guest actor on programs such as Dragnet, The Adventures of the Saint, and The Adventures of Maisie starring Ann Sothern. His work in radio provided him an opportunity to begin writing scripts for the shows on which he was appearing, and in the early days of television he was approached by a friend working in the medium asking if he could use some of his scripts for TV productions. Leonard agreed but was then dismayed when he saw the finished product, which he said had butchered the comedic effects of the original scripts, telling his friend he could not use any more of his scripts. So instead he was offered the chance to direct his own scripts on television, thus launching his successful career as a TV director on series such as Your Jeweler's Showcase, General Electric Theater, Lassie, and Make Room for Daddy, which he began directing in Season 1, Episode 7. Leonard says that he was hired for the program by Norman Brokaw of the William Morris Agency since he had already established himself as a successful TV director. After three years of poor ratings on ABC and the departure of Jean Hagen as Thomas' wife, the show moved to CBS and was renamed The Danny Thomas Show with Leonard now as producer as well as director. He would win two Emmys, in 1957 and 1961, for his directing on the program. At the same time, his distinctive voice garnered work in cartoons such as Kiddin' the Kitten, Sock a Doodle Doo, and A Peck O' Trouble. His acting work also began transitioning to TV programs such as The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show, I Married Joan, and I Love Lucy. In 1954 he had his first regular recurring role as Sam Marco on the summer replacement series The Duke about a former boxer now running a nightclub. After appearing in a Season 1 episode of The Danny Thomas Show as a character named Gus, Leonard began to play the character Phil Brokaw, Danny Williams' agent, beginning in Season 4, appearing a total of 16 times in the role over the duration of the series.

Though he would continue his acting career on a more modest scale from then on, his collaboration with Thomas on directing and producing other series began to take off in 1957, when he directed 6 of the first 8 episodes of The Real McCoys. Leonard is often unofficially credited with introducing the back-door pilot strategy, beginning with the introduction of Andy Griffith as Sheriff Andy Taylor on a 1960 episode of The Danny Thomas Show, which was then spun off into its own series, The Andy Griffith Show that fall. The same strategy was used to launch The Joey Bishop Show, The Bill Dana Show, and Gomer Pyle: USMC. Leonard also deserves credit for recognizing that Carl Reiner's sit-com about a TV comedy writer would be better served by removing Reiner from the star role and replacing him with up-and-coming comedian Dick Van Dyke, thereby transforming the pilot for Head of the Family into The Dick Van Dyke Show, launched in the fall of 1961. He is also credited with persuading network executives at NBC to cast Bill Cosby as co-star with Robert Culp on I Spy in 1965, the first time an African American was cast in a lead role on American television. But not all of his shows were smash hits: besides The Bill Dana Show folding after 42 episodes, other less successful series included Accidental Family (1967-68), Good Morning World (1967-68), My Friend Tony (1969), My World and Welcome To It (1969-70), which won the Emmy for Best Comedy Series in 1970 but was still canceled after a single season, From a Bird's Eye View (1970-71), Shirley's World (1971-72), and The Don Rickles Show (1972). Still, having launched and/or led four of the most successful TV sit-coms in television history earned Leonard legendary status. In 1975 he returned to a leading role on television with the series Big Eddie in which he played an ex-gambler now running a sports arena but constantly being tempted to return to his shady past. The series ran for only 10 episodes before being canceled. In the 1970s he along with Mickey Spillane were the first two TV commercial spokesmen for Miller Lite beer. Thereafter he would make very rare appearances on series such as Sanford & Son, The Cosby Show, The Facts of Life, Matlock, Murder, She Wrote, and Cheers, as well as reprising his role as Sam Marco in the very-short-lived remake of his 1954 series The Duke in 1979, this time starring Robert Conrad. His last credit came in a 1992 episode of Dream On. That year he was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame, and 3 years later was given lifetime membership in the Directors Guild of America, though he famously quipped, "Giving a lifetime membership to a guy 88 years old...Big fucking deal!" He died January 11, 1997 at the age of 89. In 2007 Chuck Lorre, co-creator of TV series The Big Bang Theory decided to name the show's two leading male characters Sheldon Cooper and Leonard Hofstadter in honor of Sheldon Leonard.

Notable Guest Stars

Season 9, Episode 14, "Useless Charley": Hope Summers (shown on the far left, see the biography section for the 1961 post on The Andy Griffith Show) plays Copa nightclub cleaning woman Jenny.

Season 9, Episode 15, "Linda, the Tomboy": Scott McCartor (shown on the right, appeared in The Unsinkable Molly Brown and Rattlers) plays Linda's crush Scotty Parks. Sally Smith (daughter of actress Virginia Lee) plays Linda's rival Eloise Johnson.

Season 9, Episode 16, "The Big Fight": Hope Summers (see "Useless Charley" above) returns as Copa nightclub cleaning woman Jenny. Tom Cound (Beasley on The Beverly Hillbillies) plays a Copa waiter.

Season 9, Episode 17, "Casanova Tonoose": Ann Tyrell (shown on the left, appeared in Bride for Sale, Once a Thief, The Girl in White, and Take Me to Town and played Violet Praskins on Private Secretary and Olive Smith on The Ann Sothern Show) plays marriage bureau client Mrs. Marshall. Amzie Strickland (Mrs. Phillips on The Bill Dana Show and Julia Mobey on Carter Country) plays marriage bureau client Mrs. Hotchkiss.

Season 9, Episode 19, "The P.T.A. Bash": Olan Soule (Aristotle "Tut" Jones on Captain Midnight, Ray Pinker on Dragnet (1952-59), Cal on Stagecoach West, the Hotel Carlton desk clerk on Have Gun -- Will Travel, and Fred Springer on Arnie and voiced Batman on The All-New Super Friends Hour, Challenge of the Superfriends, The World's Greatest SuperFriends, and Super Friends) plays provisional school principal Phelps. Robert Nash (Dr. Jenkins on Days of Our Lives) plays school superintendant Mr. Whitehall. Nancy Kulp (shown on the right, see the biography section for the 1962 post on The Beverly Hillbillies) plays school board member Mrs. Keltner. Maudie Prickett (see the biography section for the 1961 post on Hazel) plays school board member Mrs. Brown.

Season 9, Episode 20, "A Nose by Any Other Name": Lyle Talbot (shown on the left, see the biography section for the 1960 post on The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet) plays plastic surgeon Dr. Crawford.

Season 9, Episode 21, "Casanova Junior": Pamela Baird (shown on the right, see the biography section for the 1961 post on Leave It to Beaver) plays Rusty's girlfriend Sally. Ann Barnes (Cookie on Blondie) plays ingénue Darlene Dorsey. Jimmy Baird (Rodney "Pee Wee" Jenkins on Fury) plays Darlene's boyfriend Tommy.

Season 9, Episode 24, "Bunny Cooks a Meal": Louis Nye (shown on the left, see the biography section for the 1962 post on The Beverly Hillbillies) plays Charley's cousin and famous chef Herman Halper.

Season 9, Episode 25, "Jose's Protege": Herbie Faye (shown on the right, played Cpl. Sam Fender on The Phil Silvers Show, Waluska on The New Phil Silvers Show, and Ben Goldman on Doc) plays mailman Herbie Perkins.

Season 9, Episode 26, "Danny and Bob Get Away From It All": Bob Hope (shown on the left, legendary comedian who starred in Road to Singapore, Road to Zanzibar, My Favorite Blonde, My Favorite Brunette, The Paleface, and Bachelor in Paradise) plays himself. Stanley Adams (Lt. Morse on Not for Hire and Gurrah on The Lawless Years) plays a cafe waiter. Renie Riano (appeared in Tovarich, 4 Nancy Drew features, Li'l Abner, and 5 Maggie and Jiggs features) plays an autograph hound.

Season 9, Episode 28, "Kathy, the Pro": Minerva Urecal (shown on the right, see the biography section for the 1960 post on Peter Gunn) plays actress Henrietta Bixby.

Season 9, Episode 29, "A Promise Is a Promise": Art Linkletter (shown on the left, host of People Are Funny, Here's Hollywood, Hollywood Talent Scouts, The Linkletter Show, The Art Linkletter Show, and Life With Linkletter) plays himself.

Season 9, Episode 30, "The Smart Aleck": Don Penny (shown on the right, played Toby Ballard on The Brighter Day, Lt. Stanley Harris on The Lieutenant, and Charles Tyler on The Wackiest Ship in the Army) plays Danny's cousin Don Penny.

Season 9, Episode 31, "Baby": Joan Tompkins (shown on the near left, see the biography section for the 1962 post on Sam Benedict) plays a hospital admitting nurse.

Season 10, Episode 1, "The Baby Hates Charley": Benny Rubin (shown on the right, see the biography section for the 1961 post on The Dick Tracy Show) plays a tramp. Joe Devlin (Sam Catchem on Dick Tracy) plays a policeman.

Season 10, Episode 2, "Danny's Replacement": Jack Carter (shown on the left, legendary stand-up comedian, appeared in The Horizontal Lieutenant, The Happy Hooker Goes to Washington, and History of the World: Part 1, and played Glenn Wallace on Santa Barbara and Stan on Shameless) plays himself.

Season 10, Episode 4, "The British Sense of Humor": Cecil Parker (appeared in A Cuckoo in the Nest, The Man Who Lived Again, Storm in a Teacup, The Ladykillers, and Swiss Family Robinson) plays British comedian Sir Harry Barkley. Dennis Price (appeared in A Canterbury Tale, The Bad Lord Byron, I'm All Right Jack, School for Scoundrels, The V.I.P.s, The Magic Christian, and Vampyros Lesbos and played Col. Basil Trumper on Colonel Trumper's Private War and Jeeves on The World of Wooster) plays men's club board member Sir Howard Bakersby. Richard Wattis (shown on the right, see the biography section for the 1961 post on Danger Man) plays board member Sir Daniel Fortescue. Newton Blick (Gabriel Varden on Barnaby Rudge and Sir Charles Harmon on Compact) plays board member Sir Nigel Spencer. Anthony Dawes (Inspector Bridges on Follow That Dog and the Headmaster on Who, Sir? Me, Sir?) plays a hotel manager. Margaret Flint (Mrs. Grant on Somebody's Daughter) plays a hotel chambermaid.

Season 10, Episode 5, "Jose Rents the Copa": Stanley Adams (shown on the left, see "Danny and Bob Get Away From It All" above) plays maintenance worker Harry. Peter Leeds (Tenner Smith on Trackdown and George Colton on Pete and Gladys) plays maintenance worker Fred. Allan Melvin (Cpl. Steve Henshaw on The Phil Silvers Show, Sgt. Snorkle on Beetle Bailey, Sgt. Charley Hacker on Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C., Sam Franklin on The Brady Bunch, and Barney Hefner on All in the Family and Archie Bunker's Place and was the voice of Magilla Gorilla on Magilla Gorilla, Drooper on The Banana Splits Adventure Hour, and Thun and King Vultan on Flash Gordon) plays a third maintenance worker and friend of Jose.

Season 10, Episode 6, "Rusty for President": The Smothers Brothers (shown on the right, played themselves on My Brother the Angel and hosted The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour) play themselves.

Season 10, Episode 7, "A Hunting We Will Go": Jimmy Edwards (shown on the left, starred in Helter Skelter, Bottoms Up, and Nearly a Nasty Accident and played Ernie Briggs on Bold as Brass, John Jorrocks on Mr. John Jorrocks, James Fossett on The Fossett Saga, Sir Yellow on Sir Yellow, Father Glum on The Glums, and the various Jim characters on The Seven Faces of Jim, Six More Faces of Jim, and More Faces of Jim) plays poacher Jimmy Cartwright. Raymond Huntley (Det. Insp. Austin on Operation Diplomat, Det. Insp. Kenton on A Time of Day, John Chester on Barnaby Rudge, Uncle Charles on Uncle Charles, Emanuel Holroyd on That's Your Funeral, Sir Geoffrey Dillon on Upstairs, Downstairs, Henry Parish on The Square Leopard, and Justice Downes on Crown Court) plays landowner Lord Spratling. Vanda Godsell (appeared in Konga, A Shot in the Dark, The Wrong Box, and The Pink Panther Strikes Again and played Katie Heenan on The Newcomers, Edith Bishop on General Hospital, and Mrs. Partington on I Didn't Know You Cared) plays waitress Mavis Micklethwaite. Harold Goodwin (Horace Martin on United!, Alf on The Newcomers, Hawkins on Rogue's Rock, Harry on Oh No It's Selwyn Froggitt, Wilfrid Willis on That's My Boy, and Josh Shackleton on Coronation Street) plays a hotel bellhop. David Ensor (played the Judge on The Verdict Is Yours) plays a judge.

Season 10, Episode 8, "Ten Years Ago Today": Paul Dubov (shown on the right, played Michel on The Ann Sothern Show) plays Charley's assistant at the Copa Felix.

Season 10, Episode 9, "Jose the Scholar": Virginia Gregg (shown on the left, starred in Dragnet, Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing, Operation Petticoat and was the voice of Norma Bates in Psycho, Maggie Belle Klaxon on Calvin and the Colonel, and Tara on The Herculoids and Space Stars) plays Jose's night school teacher Miss Brown.

Season 10, Episode 10, "The Old Soud": Noel Purcell (shown on the right, appeared in The Crimson Pirate, Lust for Life, Shake Hands With the Devil, Mutiny on the Bounty, and The MacKintosh Man and played Mr. Finucan on Never Say Die) plays Kathy's Irish uncle Francis Daly. J.G. Devlin (appeared in Captain Lightfoot, Darby O'Gill and the Little People, and The Caper of the Golden Bulls and played Herbert Button on The Newcomers and Father Dooley on Bread) plays her Uncle Shamus. Barbara Mullen (appeared in Jeannie, So Little Time, Innocent Sinners, and It Takes a Thief and played Janet MacPherson on Dr. Finlay's Casebook) plays her Aunt Molly.

Season 10, Episode 11, "Tonoose, Life of the Party": Trudi Ames (shown on the left, appeared in Bye Bye Birdie, Gidget Goes to Rome, and The Impossible Years and played Candy on Karen) plays one of Rusty's party guests.

Season 10, Episode 12, "Danny's English Friend": Noel Drayton (Mr. Hardcastle on Family Affair) plays London pub proprietor Bert Wingate. Bernard Fox (shown on the right, played Tom Norton on Sixpenny Corner, Malcolm on Three Live Wires, Dr. Bombay on Bewitched, John Watson on The Casebook of Charlotte Holmes, and Nigel Penny-Smith on General Hospital) plays his brother Alfie. Roy Roberts (Capt. Simon P. Huxley on The Gale Storm Show, Admiral Rogers on McHale's Navy, John Cushing on The Beverly Hillbillies, Mr. Cheever on The Lucy Show, Frank Stephens on Bewitched, Norman Curtis on Petticoat Junction, and Mr. Botkin/Bodkin on Gunsmoke) plays syndicated columnist Sam Washburn. Shirley Mitchell (Yvonne Sharp on Sixpenny Corner, Kitty Devereaux on Bachelor Father, Janet Colton on Pete and Gladys, Marge on Please Don't Eat the Daisies, and Clara Appleby on The Red Skelton Hour) plays his wife Betty. Benny Baker (appeared in Blonde Trouble, Stage Door Canteen, and Paint Your Wagon and played Pete the bartender on F Troop) plays Copa customer Mr. Foster. Paul Dubov (see "Ten Years Ago Today" above) returns as Charley's assistant Felix.

Season 10, Episode 13, "Bunny, the Brownie Leader": Joan Tompkins (see "Baby" above) plays Brownie administrator Miss Barclay. Margaret Hamilton (shown on the left, appeared in The Farmer Takes a Wife, The Wizard of Oz, My Little Chickadee, The Invisible Woman, The Sin of Harold Diddlebock, and Angel in My Pocket and played Aunt Eva on Ethel and Albert, Mrs. Sayre on Valiant Lady, Katie on The Secret Storm, Granny Frump on The Addams Family, and Miss Peterson on As the World Turns) plays experienced Brownie troop leader Miss Flora Fenwick.

Season 10, Episode 14, "Charley the Artist": Charlie Cantor (shown on the near right, see the biography section for the 1962 post on The Jack Benny Program) plays Copa employee Fred. Herbie Faye (see "Jose's Protege" above) plays chimpanzee trainer Noodles. Fritz Feld (appeared in One Hysterical Night, Bringing Up Baby, Phantom of the Opera (1943), The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, 4 for Texas, and Hello, Dolly!) plays Bunny's art instructor Professor Schmidt.