The Mothers-In-Law (1967)

Garbanzo Beans ala King!

Paul Lynde!

BTW, The Paul Lynde Halloween Special is on Amazon Prime as well. WOW!!!!

I had totally forgotten that I had actually watched it when it first aired in 1976.

The Seeds perform "Pushin' Too Hard" in the Mothers-in-Law living room while Deborah Walley go-go dances frantically in a miniskirt.

I adored this show as a young gayling and was crushed when it was cancelled..

The switch from Roger C Carmel to Richard Deacon in the second season was just bizarre. They were NOTHING alike.

One of my faves. I can still hear the opening theme song and the psychedelic titles.

Remember when the twins were born? They were named Hildy and Joey, after the grandmothers’ maiden names - Hildegard and Giuseppe or some such. And didn’t one of the gals get a different actor to play her husband halfway through?

The actor who played Eve's husband was very good-looking for an older guy.

Why did they replace Kay's husband?

Wikipedia says:

[quote]Despite being sandwiched between Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color and Bonanza, the show never garnered the ratings NBC had hoped for. The network considered canceling the show after the first season, but agreed to renew it for the same price as the first season (after sponsor Procter & Gamble had announced plans to move the series to another network). All cast members agreed to do the second season for the same money except for Carmel, who was replaced with Richard Deacon. (Officially, Carmel had a salary dispute with producer Desi Arnaz, although, according to rumors, he was fired because his drug use interfered with production.)

He always seemed like a big old queen.

The actors were told they had to take a pay cut if they were to be renewed. All of them accepted it, except Carmel. I think he was seeing if they were bluffing. They weren't.

Drug use! That guy?

Someone needs to Wiki that out of there. Rumors don't belong on an official Wikipedia profile.

[quote]He always seemed like a big old queen.

And they replaced him with an even BIGGER old queen.

Deborah Walley was in 1965’s Ski Party along with Batgirl and Lesley Gore.

An awful show. I thought it was unfunny even as a kid. Awful recycled writing. Eve Arden and Kaye Ballard just didn't click and the husbands were kind of irrelevant.

Kaye was up for the role of the mother on "Everybody Loves Raymond." When she refused a screen test because she felt her years on "Mothers-in-Law" displayed her talent, they hired Doris Roberts.

R16, a smart move. Roberts was perfect as Marie Barone. I liked Ballard, but she was too broad and hammy for ELR.

It would have been funny to see Kaye as Marie shriek, “Oh God, I’m a lesbian!”

I loved it as a kid. I bought the DVD set when it came out and watched the whole thing on a trip to Europe and back. When jet lag had me wide awake at 4 am, a couple of episodes of THE MOTHERS-IN-LAW was just the ticket

That sounds fun, R19!

Kaye Ballard was born in 1925, Eve Arden in 1908 - and they were both playing grandmothers in 1967?

Was the young grandma / old grandma issue addressed on the show, or just ignored?

P.S. I had a young grandma and an old grandma in real life. The old one lived the longest.

Loved this show in reruns when I was 11 years old.

The way Kaye would yell, "EE-EEH-EE-EVE!" and bite her hand.

I would constantly imitate that and bite my hand like she did.

I was such a baby fag!

R14 She was also the original Gidget.

Deborah Walley was a cutie.

[quote]She was also the original Gidget.

Excuse me?

Theme song is tough to get out of your head. The opening credits always made me laugh too. The clips they used promised so much hilarity!

WHET Jerry Fogel?

Luckily I don't see the posts of the Scat Troll ^^

When he was younger he totally sported BDF!

R22 I still do that! I forgot I picked it up from Kay Ballard. Her cousin used to be governor of Ohio. His wife a lesbianic.

[quote] WHET Jerry Fogel?

Still alive at 83. I guess he's the only member of the cast still alive.

He's undergone treatment for lymphoma. I guess he's doing okay.

Deborah Walley came from a figure skating family. The 'walley' jump was named after her grandfather or something.

It was strange that all the lead actors used their first names for their characters -- except Deborah Walley who played "Suzy."

Actually, R33, she was supposed to be called 'downtown Suzie', but the network thought that was too provocative. Also appreciate that Kaye Ballard and the lead singer of The Seeds have the exact same Prince Valiant haircut.

r4

Awful

The series was the return to weekly television by Desi Arnaz, which he details in his excellent autobiography "A Book".

I remember reading that Kaye Ballard had her teeth capped right before the series began.

R4 it cracks me up that kaye ballard and that lead singer of that rock band had the exact same Stupid haircut.

Was it a running gag, or just a one-off, when Jerry called his MIL "Mother Hubbard"? And she responded "We have GOT to figure out something else for you to call me."

I liked the show, as I'd always been a Eve Arden fan(a very much under-rated actress)

Kaye reminded me of some of my relatives. Very OTT, much with the hands and always imploring heaven when something went wrong.

The show seemed popular in reruns in the early to mid 70s and then vanished until more than 30 years later with the DVDs and later Amazon.

I started watching it after school in the 80s when I was a little kid and loved it. Then it went away. I bought the DVD box set when it came out. It is written by all of the same people who wrote for Lucy, but I think she fired them and they created this show. It is very "Lucyesque". It's basically what would happen if Lucy and Ricky's kid married Fred and Ethel's kid.

I didn't know this was that old. I remember enjoying the show with my older sisters, but that would make me only 3 yrs. old.

I also remember Laugh-In, The Smothers Brothers, The Girl With Something Extra, Love American Style and Room 222.

[quote]It was strange that all the lead actors used their first names for their characters -- except Deborah Walley who played "Suzy."

Well, not in season 2.

I loved this when I was a kid but watching it now is painful because it’s too much like one of Lucy’s shows. They always want singing in it.

The Mothers-In-Law was pretty much the last of the great slapstick shows on TV before they moved on to sophisticated comedy in the early 1970's.

I loved the show and it's great seeing it in reruns. I thought that Eve and Kaye were excellent together.

The cast.

56 episodes of the show was filmed.

[quote]The Mothers-In-Law was pretty much the last of the great slapstick shows on TV before they moved on to sophisticated comedy in the early 1970's.

Excuse us?

Would any of you eat Kay Ballard out?

[quote]56 episodes of the show was filmed.

Oh, dear.

There is a related thread here for eating Kaye Ballard out.

Desi Arnaz on the show.

By '70 - '71 TV was getting a lot grittier. Shows and movies about "Issues" took over. All the 'country' shows got the axe (Mayberry, Petticoat, Beverly, Gomer, Andy, Green Acres...).

There was some genuinely funny moments but c'mon Arden and Ballard were comedy pros. The garage door and the piano in the rain are laugh out loud funny.

I thought it was one of the funniest sitcoms ever. I'm gonna find it on Amazon Prime!

I love the meatball episode at the college where Eve and Kaye believe that Susie's ring is inside one of them and keep stealing them in various ways being unseen, and ultimately creating a huge mess when they have to hide them from Roger and Herb. There's also "Count the Blimpies" which creates a huge mess when they get wet.

Eve is hysterical in a 1944 comedy called "The Doughgirls" where she has an outrageous Russian accent (preceeding Nita Talbot & Marian Mercer who did those accents for years) and claims that "I would like a fish". Jane Wyman asks, "Live?" "No, dead", Eve says completely deadpan.

I picked up the DVD of the entire series very inexpensively not too long ago. Hadn’t seen it since childhood, when I remembered it with affection. There are some funny episodes with a definite Lucy influence — like the garage door and meatball ones mentioned upthread. But it’s VERY broadly played, and the musical episodes that came later have not aged well.

Walley was very cute — the pilot was originally shot with Kay Cole (later of Broadway’s “A Chorus Line”) but reshot with Walley. Cole can still be briefly glimpsed in a couple of long shots (easy to tell, because her hair was short and Walley’s was long.)

The DVD does have some nice extras — a lengthy video reminiscence with Kaye Ballard, some behind the scenes shooting with commentary, commercials/promos, plus a couple of other pilots produced by Desi Arnaz, including an excruciating “Carol Channing Show”.

[quote]plus a couple of other pilots produced by Desi Arnaz, including an excruciating “Carol Channing Show”.

I would love to see this bit of excruciatia.

R58, on “The Carol Channing Show”, Channing plays an aspiring actress named Carol trying to make it in the big city. Kind of like “That Girl”, but with Channing in the role, and a lot of scenes of her talking to the camera, it’s really bizarre.

[quote]plus a couple of other pilots produced by Desi Arnaz, including an excruciating “Carol Channing Show”.

Unfortunately NOT sponsored by Green Giant's Niblets. ]

r58 Ask and ye shall receive.

Thank you, r60!

It always looks like Kaye was hitting Carmel really hard,

Desi Arnaz was the producer, hence the similarities to the Lucy show, including the set.

Eve and Kaye are not as good at reading the cue cards as Lucy was. Sometimes they stumble and they were so eager to get out of there they didn't even do a pickup. And the production values often look so incredibly cheap in the way THE LUCY SHOW did at its worst (ironically, it looked cheapest in the years after Desi left)

[quote]Desi Arnaz was the producer, hence the similarities to the Lucy show, including the set.

I've been watching a few eps a day since this thread started so which set is similar to Lucy's because I see none.

It is weird and wonderful how they keep switching the clips in the opening credits. That was more effort than necessary.

But the still photos seem to be selected for how unflattering they are.

Agreed, R66, some of the still photos used in the opening credits seemed to be freeze-frames of the actors, sometimes when there were speaking, and they looked strange.

The Debbie Reynolds Show and the Doris Day Show were also in this era, anyone remember them? I guess all the old movie gals were trying sitcoms then. I remember Debbie's opening theme "With a little love, just a little love...." Doris' was a swinging version of "Que Sera, Sera" as I recall.

More people know the Monty Python parody of the Debbie Reynolds Show opening than know the original.

And most people do not know the Monty Python parody.

Alas R69 I never heard of the parody. I grew up in the boondocks and never watched Monty Python, because that channel didn't "come in" on our TV, as we used to say back then. It was always just an odd-looking listing in the TV guide. To this day, I know very little of Monty Python and share none of my generation's affection for the show.

Never watched "Sesame Street" either - thank god, from what I've seen of it.

NBC was the channel that came in most clearly, and so most of my childhood TV references are NBC shows. Never watched Walter Cronkite on CBS either, so he means absolutely nothing to me. Funny how that works.

R47's photo is a perfect example of the understated nuance that can be found in a typical Kaye Ballard performance.

R70, you can see the parody in the first few minutes of the Monty Python episode linked.

If you google the actual opening of the Debbie Reynolds Show you can see that the running, the swing, the softball game---all those elements were taken right from the real show

The opening of "The Carol Channing Show" at R60 is excruciating. Carol comes off like every drag queen who has ever impersonated her. The self-parody is so heavy-handed, and yet induces howls from the laugh track, which Carol then laughs along with.

I noticed this was on Amazon Prime with a lot of other late 60s/early 70s era stuff.

Family Affair and That Girl are the two that I remember off the top of my head, but I'm sure there are more.

Thanks, R72 - yep, they nailed it.

R73, maybe that is why the series never got picked up.

Eve Arden will be on a rerun of Dick Cavett on Decades tonight.

I did not know about the Debbie Reynolds Show/Monty Python thing until just now!

A fun opening, fun and cool graphics.

Don Chastain (Deb's husband on the show) was SO hot.

He was cute, R80.

Looks like he was on a bunch of the NYC soaps back in the day, but I don't remember seeing him before.

I was quite the little TV-watching 60s kid, and I have zero recollection of the Carol Channing show.

The execratory results of all the eating is the true unspoken horror of the show.

Because it never aired, R82. That is an unaired, unpicked-up pilot.

Oops R83 here, apologies - That was meant for The my 600 pound life thread. Oopsie.

Don Chastain. He died when he was only 66.

He had a hot ass but he couldn't live forever.

Kaye Ballard just looks awful with that hair.

Was Carol Channing anorexic?

[quote]Was Carol Channing anorexic?

Carol Channing was very particular about what she ate, to say the least. She touted "health food" long before it became popular in the culture to do so. She used to take containers of her own food to restaurants. I remember seeing her on the Mike Douglas show, and Mike, being the lame-ass, middle-brow interviewer he was, was trying to get her to admit she would love, just once, to eat a chocolate brownie. She looked at him like he was an insect and said she'd be no more tempted to eat a brownie than to drink a bottle of ink. She clearly thought he was an idiot. She definitely seemed a lot less fun that she was in the opening of her failed attempt at a sitcom.

Well that's pretty much proof she was OCD and a food fetishist, and a likely Anorexic. I don't say this to mock her, but I've noticed how skinny and tiny she was for decades from middle age, on.

I mean, skinny to the point of being unattractive as a women. Vera-Ellen skinny, really.

And we were seeing Vera-Ellen after the movie cameras had added 10 pounds.

[quote]Well that's pretty much proof she was OCD and a food fetishist, and a likely Anorexic. I don't say this to mock her, but I've noticed how skinny and tiny she was for decades from middle age, on.

In James Kirkwood's book about "Legends!", he wrote that she brought Tupperwares of bluefish to every rehearsal and performance. She subsisted on the stuff.

Carol died just a couple of weeks short of her 98th birthday, so maybe she was on to something.

That bringing containers of food to a restaurant is so weird and obnoxious. But I suppose they were happy to have Carol Channing in their joint, so....

[quote]How do you get the smell of bluefish out of Tupperware?

Yeah, I'd like to know as well.

It’s just bluefish!

Chief, it’s just a school of bluefish! Bluefish!

R88

The hair has nothing to do with the awful

Test

On the DVD interview Kaye Ballard says Desi had her play so broadly when she didn't want to.

I find Eve's physical humor a surprise. In the scene where she gets locked in the bathroom, the way she walks out is hilarious. "I met an old friend in there - my claustrophobia!"

[quote]He always seemed like a big old queen.

The biggest and the queeniest. Roger Carmel just loved attractive young men, and could always be counted on buying dinner and a couple of drinks for the young men he wanted to score with that night.

I hate the way they walk into each other's houses without knocking. I assume this as a comedy convention of the time and it saves time but it is annoying. It would have been nice to have this behavior said to be allowed in the beginning as in , "Since we're neighors you can just come right in."

When I was six or seven years old, I used to watch this show in syndication all the time, circa 1976. I'm so gay, I think I wanted to BE Eve Arden. I remember I would try to talk to adults about Mothers-In-Law, and none of them knew what the show was, even in 1976.

Eve's wigs look cheap.

[quote]I think I wanted to BE Eve Arden

In 1976, every gay boy wanted to be Eve Arden. Some of us still do.

I just wish the show was about Eve and Kaye and the rest were dumped. I know comediennes need 'straight' men but the others are so subpar.

[quote]I hate the way they walk into each other's houses without knocking. I assume this as a comedy convention of the time and it saves time but it is annoying. It would have been nice to have this behavior said to be allowed in the beginning as in , "Since we're neighors you can just come right in."

It wasn't new, Fred & Ethel did it all the time a decade earlier.

We worked for Barry Krost, briefly, in 1985.

Barry then lived right next door to Eve Arden.

[quote]It wasn't new, Fred & Ethel did it all the time a decade earlier.

But there were a couple of episodes where Lucy referred to it: "Since when do you have to knock?" was one of them, on an episode when Fred & Ethel did, indeed knock.

R105 Didn't you hate that? I mean trying to engage adults about pop culture back then, when most didn't really pay attention the way people do now. I was that frustrated kid, too.

I never saw this in it's original run but for some reason whenever there were technical difficulties on TV one of the stations always put the Mothers In Law on (Or Classical Gas if it was short issue) until they fixed the problem, so for about a 2 year span as a child I went through life seeing about 10 to 20 mins of this show never seeing how it ended.

[quote]I'm so gay, I think I wanted to BE Eve Arden. I remember I would try to talk to adults about Mothers-In-Law, and none of them knew what the show was, even in 1976.

Same thing happened to me.

Except it was 1986 and I was 10 yrs old... and I wanted to be Kaye!

I used to bite my hand, too.

Always at the dinner table, too.

R90...Well, we know she liked corn!

I loved the show as a kid. I have the DVD and it was a disappointment. The direction is not great. I am surprised no one did a pants drop follow by a rimshot. But, I love Ballard and Arden. They deserved better material.

R105 I think most adults would find it uncomfortable talking to a 10-year-old boy about his love for Eve Arden. Especially in 1975.

R118 well, they denied ever even hearing about the show. I Love Lucy they all knew. I loved Mothers-In-Law and Shirley Booth in Hazel.

We had a really great thread about "Hazel" a couple of years ago.

For a while Deborah Walley was a popular lightweight 60s cutie pie actress. Albert Goldman devotes several pages to her in his scurrilous biography of Elvis Presley (she's was in one of Elvis's cruddy movies). He tells of how she was a trained and accomplished young actress, meant to have a successful and fulfilling career on the stage, but instead was "picked up like a toy train and put down on a new set of tracks leading precisely in the opposite direction to that on which she had set her heart" after she got "sucked into the movie business." She then goes on to make movies like "Gidget Goes Hawaiian", "Beach Blanket Bingo", "Sergeant Deadhead" and "Spinout", the movie with Elvis Presley. According to Goldman, Elvis lavished attention on her and became like a teacher/mentor/spiritual advisor to her (they didn't sleep together). And before you know it little Deborah is dropping acid and and having an affair with a rock drummer (she's married) and going to rock concerts and doing all that crazy hippie stuff. Goldman said she got so heavily into drugs that she was "risking her sanity", having a nervous breakdown and ending up hospitalized. Eventually she recovered and went on to write and work in children's theater. Goldman comments that it was a "quite a trip on which Elvis launched her" and that her association with him was "mind blowing." Yeah, it was all Elvis Presley's fault that Deborah Walley got into drugs and rock music...during the sixties! I don't think she needed much prodding from Elvis to do that kind of thing. It was the fucking 60s, for God's sake.

Deborah Walley's film and tv career was relatively brief. Her career was totally sidelined from a while due to her drug use, which she recovered from. She died at age 59 from cancer of the esophagus. By the standards of Datalounge, she came to a "bad end."

Was all this Deborah Walley drama after the Mothers-In-Law or before?

"Spin Out" was in 1966, so I guess little Deborah got into drugs after that. But I don't think it was Elvis Presley's fault, as Goldman believed. She was no different from most young celebrities from that era; they ALL got into drugs to some extent.

Trivia: Deborah was married three times, and gave birth to a son with each husband.

Do we ever see any more of Kaye's husband other than the bedroom?

^ Kaye's house I meant!

[quote]Trivia: Deborah was married three times, and gave birth to a son with each husband.

SCANDALOUS!!!

That must feel a little weird, to be pregnant by all those different people.

Yes, Kay's house was dark wood and orange, very Cooky's Steak Pub like.

Having watched some more episodes at the end of season 1 I see they finally showed Kaye's living room.

R128, Eddie Murphy has 10 children by 5 different mothers.

I like Richard Deacon better than Roger C. Carmel as Roger.

I did too, R132. He was an interesting mate for Kay.

I have been watching the show in sequence and was struck by the episode in Season 1 where Eve suspects a rekindled romance between Herb and his old flame played by Beverly Garland. Unlike the prior episodes this one was funny all the way through.

I remember the show from it's original airings and bought the DVD as soon as it came out. Yes, the stars deserved better material, but they elevated it way beyond what the writers delivered. Watching the show as an adult what sticks out for me is how horribly sexist the material was. Women can't handle money. Women can't/shouldn't hold a job. Women can't be trusted. Women spend all day gossiping, etc. The episode that dealt with race is just plain uncomfortable to watch today. But overall the series was fun because Arden and Ballard were old pros with great timing who knew how to play off each other. I know the kids had to be around, or they couldn't be mothers-in-law, but the show always played at its best with it was just Eve and Kaye.

Rivaled only by Bewitched for the most cast members acknowledged or rumored to be non-hetero. Not surprising the show is so well remembered on DataLounge. :)

R135 Who were gay? Kaye and Deacon for sure. Are you implying Eve was gay too?

Roger C. Carmel was gay, too.

Acknowledged: Roger C. Carmel Kaye Ballard Richard Deacon

Rumored: Eve Arden

Well Kaye never married which is a clue but Eve was married twice and had 4 children.

Most of the lesbians I know have kids -Marriage and kids don't mean much, especially back in the day.

Jerry Fogel stopped working in 1980. Wonder what happened. He doesn't even have a Wiki page.

....

Eve allegedly fucked Bob Hope when they were on Broadway together.

[quote]Eve allegedly fucked Bob Hope when they were on Broadway together.

She'd have had more fun if she'd been spit-roasted by the Nicholas Brothers.

R132 I enjoyed Deacon very much on "Beaver" and "Dick Van Dyke," but this show was zany and over the top, which I think Carmel was better at.

[quote]I enjoyed Deacon very much on "Beaver"

I never got anywhere near a beaver!

Roger Carmel was a coked out mess. HOWEVER he did have something interesting to say about Desi. After the first year Desi said the money wasn't coming in, no money for raises. Eve and Kaye tried to convince Roger to stay, but hell: Desi was taking a cut as creator, actor, producer, AND acter to their one cut. He noped outta there.

One sure sign of a good comic is how they do crying. Eve and Kaye make theirs funny but Deborah Walley is just cringe-worthy at it.

That Desi was a greedy fuck. I mean a cut for both actor AND acter?!?!?

Geesh!

Roger Carmel was stupid to turn down another season. It's not like he was fabulously wealthy and getting jobs right and left. He needed the work. He just shot himself in the foot by quitting.

[quote]I enjoyed Deacon very much on "Beaver" and "Dick Van Dyke," but this show was zany and over the top, which I think Carmel was better at.

To me Carmel came off mean.

Did they do an episode showing how the couples met each other individually? I know there is one showing how the neighbors met when they were all first married.

R150 I agree. Don't get these people who quit shows and break up bands. The odds of success are so astronomical. Tough it out!

Desi's out of print autobiography has recently been released on Audiobook. His is a fascinating story, he was a brilliant businessman. If he hadn't been such a lush and a pussy hound, he could have gone a lot further than Desilu.

Ballard is very hard to take, onstage and especially on screen. She was a bit toned down on MIL but she was just too abrasive. Whenever she was on the Merv Griffin Show, it was real torture.

A lot of Desi"s book is fabricated, which many of the people associated with ILL admit. Some didn't want to tell stories because they contradicted what Desi said in his book which were not true.

They changed the set in the second season. The Hubbard House was downsized. This annoyed me to no end.

Kaye's living room was shown in early episodes of S1, not just later ones.

Walley is just awful. I DO cringe when she is on.

Carmel seemed like a real character, despite the "meanness" someone mentioned. He was a great actor and made "Roger" a consistent character.

What was with Eve's baby voice? Ugh! Was that something she was famous for on radio or something? This show has her utilize it often.

R154 I listened to Desi's autobiography, and he's not honest about his personal demons, but is eager to set the record straight about what a genius he is It's one brag after another, and there's nothing humble about it. And he even has the nerve of complaining that Lucy played around on him during their marriage.

He also casually uses gay slurs throughout the book, including calling a man he hated an "assfucker". And this comes from a guy who took it up the ass for Cesar Romero when he was trying to get a start in show biz (that's not in the book, of course).

Really, r158? The story Cesar himself related (in that Hollywood Gays book) was that Desi let Cesar service him, but the impression was it was after ILL started.

Yes I noticed the Hubbard house's front door opens in the opposite direction from Season 1 to 2. What a strange change.

Did Hilarie Thompson ever guest star???

[quote] Kaye Ballard was born in 1925, Eve Arden in 1908 - and they were both playing grandmothers in 1967? Was the young grandma / old grandma issue addressed on the show, or just ignored?

There was something about Kaye and Roger that made them seem older than the actors' physical ages. While it was clear the couple was certainly younger than Eve and Herb, it didn't seem a generation's difference. When I watched the DVD, I figured Kaye & Roger were in their late 40s and Eve and Herb were meant to be in their mid-50s. Remember, people looked a lot more mature and matronly at a younger age back then.

[quote] What was with Eve's baby voice? Ugh! Was that something she was famous for on radio or something? This show has her utilize it often.

I wondered this, too. I found it incredibly annoying, and not the least bit funny.

I just watched the "Two on the Aisle" episode where Teri Garr has a small role billed as Terry Garr. This is another well-written one from Sydney Zelinka, who also did "Jealousy Makes the Heart Grow Fonder".

Aside from Eve’s and Kaye’s obvious wigs, Walley’s hair looks super fake as well.

Yes in the first season her style suddenly jumped from short to long.

A ponytail wig.

Kaye said she made low cal fudge - “I left out the nuts!”

But when they show her eating it, the fudge clearly is packed with nuts.

God, that Carol Channing pilot was excruciating. Did they really expect America was going to buy 43 year old Channing as a young, fresh off the farm ingenue whose small town took up a collection to send her to NYC so she could make it big in show biz?

[quote] It was strange that all the lead actors used their first names for their characters -- except Deborah Walley who played "Suzy."

That's because the original actress cast to play Suzy was Kay Cole and they couldn't have two characters named Kay. When they replaced Cole with Walley at the last minute, they didn't bother to change the character's name to Deborah.

R169, There she was, thrown out of her hotel and not able to buy food, yet dressed like she just came from a fashion shoot.

Wanna buy a ticket to the first filming of the series? Bidding starts at $650.

Starring

EVE ARDEN

Also Starring

Kaye Ballard

59 year old Eve was THE STAR of 'The Mothers-In-Law,' with Kaye just one of the "Also Starring" regulars.

The pilot was filmed nine months before the show premiered. That's a neat find, R172!

It's interesting that the ticket to the filming has a "CBS eye" logo on it, but the series was shown on NBC. I assume CBS had first dibs and passed.

All networks create shows and can only keep a certain percentage for their own network.

Touchstone/ABC produced 'The Golden Girls' but it was shown on NBC.

That is part of the TV business.

[quote] Touchstone/ABC produced 'The Golden Girls' but it was shown on NBC.

Disney did not buy ABC until 1996. The Golden Girls was off the air for several years by then. ABC had nothing to do with producing The Golden Girls.

The CBS logo is on the ticket because Arnaz shot the show at Desilu, which was on the CBS lot.

R176 Actually, Lucy bought-out Desi's interest in Desilu years earlier and was in the process of selling Desilu to Gulf+Western (Paramount) at the time. Desi shopped the show to CBS, but despite his years with the network, CBS passed, so it went to NBC.

[quote] [R176] Actually, Lucy bought-out Desi's interest in Desilu years earlier and was in the process of selling Desilu to Gulf+Western (Paramount) at the time. Desi shopped the show to CBS, but despite his years with the network, CBS passed, so it went to NBC.

I know that. I didn't say Desilu produced The M-I-L, I said the show was shot on their stages.

I have a question for Eve fans - is Gale Gordon as insufferable in Our Miss Brooks as he is in the Lucy shows?

R179 No, he's younger and funnier. It's basically the same overbearing windbag character he used on the Lucy shows but he didn't mug and overact as much.

Kaye pretends she's Streisand.

In that episode Eve gets revenge on Kaye for taking her theatre tickets by announcing that Streisand is in the lobby signing autographs. That makes Kaye run out to see her and leave the seat free for Eve to take. But anyone who knows Barbra knows she would never be in a foyer to sign autographs.

Golden Girls was produced by Buena Vista Television, if I'm not mistaken. It was a Disney show for sure.

Kaye and The Nanny were both desperate for Barbra tickets, decades apart.

When my family went to Disney World in the summer of 1991, the Golden Girls house was part of the tour of Disney/MGM studios...

[quote] Golden Girls was produced by Buena Vista Television, if I'm not mistaken. It was a Disney show for sure.

[quote] When my family went to Disney World in the summer of 1991, the Golden Girls house was part of the tour of Disney/MGM studios...

No one is disputing it was under the Disney umbrella. It's the ABC part. Disney did not acquire ABC until long after the Golden Girls was canceled. TGG was never an ABC produced show.

Has anyone seen The Eve Arden Show which only ran for one season after Our Miss Brooks?

The actor who played Jerry was really unattractive. His face wasn't terrible, but he had this big lumpen body that had all the wrong proportions. High waisted and huge hips. I can't imagine how bad he must have looked naked.

^^ You are so right about Jerry Fogel. He looked like he was 40 when he was supposed to play 20. And he looked ridiculous standing next to teensy Deborah Walley.

I sampled 4 episodes of The Eve Arden Show was which also a Desilu production. Eve got saddled with two obnoxious teenage girls but there was one interesting episode which explored her appeal as a woman when the cover of a book she wrote had her face imposed on a sexpot's body and men chased her thinking she had enormous breasts. Although the teleplay scored points off Eve as being not a sexpot the show's costumer dressed her flatteringly.

Jerry Fogel just pass today on so we won't get a reboot called The Great Grandfather-In-Law.

There's already been another thread on this, and I'm not just saying this either. Do you not understand the search feature? Yeah butt hole, everyone knows it doesn't work that well, but could have at least tried it and google first. I hope you rot in hell.

Years ago when they used to have the "Jump the Shark" website up, someone posted for this series a hilariously gross story about Eve Arden trying to seduce him in the Seventies when he by chance sat next to her in a movie theater. It involved Eve letting out during the movie "a silent, juicy, rank old-lady fart," and then lewdly winking at him when he looked over at her in horror. I can't ever think of her now without thinking of that story. I can't imagine it was true, which makes the story even weirder.

Watching the second season now, and there's a huge retcon that the Bulls and the Hubbards lived nest to each other for over 22 years and that they knew each other the entire time.

During the first season, the Hubbards act like they've only known the Buells since Suzie started dating Jerry, i.e., within the past few years.

Also, both of Kaye's husbands HAD to be flaming queens? But Eve got the hot husband? Herbert Rudley acted pretty gay sometimes, too, but he was very good-looking. Kaye got the overweight queens to play her husband.

R194 Yes, both Roger C Carmel and Richard Deacon were gay. Kay Ballard was probably gay, too.

Kaye was gay and lived for decades with her partner, a former actress, in Rancho Mirage, in a house she bought from Desi Arnaz during MIL.

Was Kaye Ballard really Italian?

Ballard was born Catherine Gloria Balotta in Cleveland, Ohio, one of four children born to Italian immigrant parents, Lena (née Nacarato) and Vincenzo (later Vincent James) Balotta. Her parents immigrated to the United States from Calabria, a region of southern Italy.[2]

I think Roger Carmel was sexy in a bear sort of way. I'm sure he was very hairy, he had hair sticking out of his collar.