Let's be Family Affair

I'm the sadness.

I'm Robert Reed as Cissy's teacher who calls the twins "little monsters" when Uncle Bill invites him to dinner and the twins spill coffee on him.

I'm an early Christmas.

I feel sad watching it now.

I'm the three aunts from Terre Haute, Indiana each dumping a kid off at Uncle Bill's apartment in the first episode like they are Amazon returns.

I'm the super cool huge round door knobs on the super cool Manhattan apartment.

I’m Mrs. Beasley

I'm sexy ass daddy Uncle Bill.

I'm Cissy's pink princess phone.

I'm the walks in Central Park that Mr. French would take Buffy and Jody on.

I'm the episodes set in Spain where Jody and Buffy got on a bus without Uncle Bill, got separated from him, and were lost and alone by themselves, terrifying all young viewers of the show.

I’m the one child who grows up to be somebody you’d just love to burn 🔥.

I'm a fat, fat water rat.

R10 I'm the astroturf in the makeshift studio version of Central Park.

I'm the bread and sugar Buffy and Jody eat with the poor kids they befriend.

I'm this gem from the Dr. Demento Show:

Buffy, Buffy come back to me-eee Why'd you hafta go and O-Dee-eee Who will watch over Mrs. Beasley?

I'm Buffy, counting the days until I'm 18 and can move out and take drugs and begin a long, fulfilling adult life.

I'm the substitute teacher that looks just like Buffy and Jody's mother. Causing...great sadness.

I'm the insipid Cathy Garver

I'm Mr. Niles French filling in for my brother Mr. Giles French while he assists the Queen on a Royal Tour. I'm boring and there is zero family resemblance.

I'm the stench of Uncle Bill's cigarette smoke that fills the apartment.

I'm the Grim Reaper,

I'm the sad, haggard look on Brian Keith's face. Suicide is in my future.

I'm the 10 year old kid in the early 1970s who is sick at home with the flu watching reruns like Family Affair during the afternoon on the portable black & white TV my mother brought into my bedroom to help pass the time.

I'm the black girl.

I'm all the business deals Bill's company conducts with Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Oh, get real assholes. This is the Datalounge.

We are ALL Mr. French.

I'm "Unka Bee-yo! Unka Bee-yo!"

What happened to that little girl Annisa Jones? Another Jon Benet Ramsay situation?

Not at all, R29. She was 19, not 6, & died of a drug overdose, not a murder.

I'm the constant mispronunciation of Terre Haute .

I'm Peg Entwistle. I leapt to my death from the Hollywood sign. I was Brian Keith's stepmother for a few years.

I'm all the times Jody and Buffy were home aloned and had to fend for themselves.

R16. Thank you so much

106.7 KROQ

I'm Brian Keith's wife Judy Landon and I played Buffy's ballet teacher in an episode. I also play a ballet teacher in an episode of the Brady Bunch where Jan was sucking at ballet and most everything else she tried.

I'm Sebastian Cabot. And no, I'm not gay, just British.

I’m “The Buffy and Jody Show”.

Which is what my daughter called it in the 90s. She loved watching this when she wasn’t watching “The Dorothy Movie”.

R37. Is she back in the sanitarium?

ANOTHER show I didn't watch.

I am a gentleman's gentleman, which is not the same thing as a butler nor a valet!

I'm Unca Biww bellowing "FRENNNCH!" when Mr. French is in the next room.

[quote]I'm sexy ass daddy Uncle Bill.

It's Unca Bill.

I like yours better, R41.

I’m the Red Devils Anissa Jones popped like candy!

I'm Buffy's black friend Albertine, lying about my family because I'm poor and ashamed!

I'm Cissy's princess phone.

I’m Kathy Garver, once young and beautiful as Cissy, now a senior citizen doing commercials for people of my ilk losing their hearing.

I'm the elegant double doors in the Davis apartment, opening into a vista of puke-green berber carpeting, so emblematic of the times.

I'm the Yum Yum Donut Shop that Anissa Jones worked at after the show ended. She quit when she turned 18 and got her trust fund.

Cannot imagine the embarrassment of someone ordering coffee and donuts and then saying, "Hey, weren't you on Family Affair?"

I would be mortified.

[quote]I'm Mr. Niles French filling in for my brother Mr. Giles French while he assists the Queen on a Royal Tour. I'm boring and there is zero family resemblance.

That's because they weren't really brothers ... they were LOVERS!

God. I was obsessed with this show about five years ago. I bought the whole series on DVD. It really is the saddest little sitcom ever. Poor Cissy, always scheming to move out of the apartment so the twins don't have to be separated.

They used the WORST faked outdoor sets for “parks.” Ugh

I'm the one that just loves to learn.

[quote]We are ALL Mr. French.

Sorry but we all Cissy, all the time

I'm the old horse Jody and Buffy bought for Unca Biww as a gift. They pooled their money, 78 cents and 29 cents.

I am Brian Keith acting through the show like I had a lobotomy in comparison to my acting in the Parent Trap.

There's a great bit in one episode where all of Cissy's friends come over and dance in the penthouse, and they do that great odd style of dancing that TV sitcoms thought characterized teenagers in the late 1960s (think "My three Sons").

I'm Gregg Fedderson's hair.

I'm the Buffy shuffle

I'm the apartment, which in real life would probably be worth at least 10 million.

The show is on Pluto and Tubi if anyone wants to revisit it.

I’m Jody’s Ill-advised rock song about Santa.

The apartment was just about as good as a sitcom set gets. I'm surprised the rest of the sets were so dollar store.

I'm the ex-athlete gambler.

Maybe the teenaged Buffy would’ve grown into her looks.

I'm Buffy's taped down boobs.

I'm a depressed looking, dead behind the eyes twelve year old Anissa Jones just going through the motions in the last season while still sporting pigtails and schlepping around a doll,

I’m the sad feeling now. Remembering loving the show and only dreaming I had the lives of cissy and Jody , and my dad was Brian Keith .

Brainwashed child of the sixties, wishing I was in donna Reed show , father knows best.

Years later the sordid truths are revealed , causing me to really believe my mom who said be careful what you wish for.

No reason to hope for good things to happen. This has not served me well .

I'm the mother daughter dinner.

[quote]There's a great bit in one episode where all of Cissy's friends come over and dance in the penthouse, and they do that great odd style of dancing that TV sitcoms thought characterized teenagers in the late 1960s (think "My three Sons").

Both shows came from Don Fedderson.

Gregg Fedderson died of cancer, in 2002, at the age of 53.

Gregg's brother was hunky Mike Minor from "Green Acres." They were both nepo babies, as was Minor's one-time wife, Linda Kaye Henning.

As was their Acres co-star Meredith MacRae.

Johnny Whitaker still gets an acting gig now and again and does the "celebrity" meet-and-greet autograph circuit. A fan snapped this photo of him at The Hollywood Show in June 2024. He'll also show up at Sid and Marty Krofft shows for that series he did for them called Sigmund and the Sea Monsters.

Johnny Whitaker was the most annoying child actor ever. I can't imagine how he was ever allowed to appear in anything, much les a hit T.V. show.

I'm the awkward continuity and the reliance on telephone scenes because of the odd shooting schedule(Brian Keith did multiple episodes in short bursts) and the need to cram the scenes with the little kids into limited hours during the day. Garver and Cabot would find themselves being the only ones on set at the end of the day and would wind up in scenes that filled time for the show.

Johnny now looks like he could’ve been the love child of Brian & Sebastian.

He was no Bill Mumy.

I'm the hateration and holleration in this dancery.

I'm Aunt Fran.

I'm what Mr. French does every Thursday.

He was at the East Side Club.

I just watched the what Mr. French does on Thursdays episode. Cissy sure was nosy.

I'm the awesome mural above Unca Biwill's bed.

This thread made me think of the T shirt at link

One of my older sisters, when she was young and loved the show, named her cat Cissy in honor of this show.

Sad sister.

[quote]As was their Acres co-star Meredith MacRae.

She was also on "My Three Sons" as the wife of the eldest son, who completely disappeared from the series and was never mentioned again after he married her.

For good reason. He was on the DL.

Uncle Charlie bashed their heads in when they tracked mud in the house on their first visit. Best episode ever.

I'm Johnnie Whitaker's assaultive, off-key performance of "Any Little Boy Can Be President":

CAN BE PRESIDENT! CAN BE PRESIDENT!

OF THE UNITED STATES, THE UNITED STATES, THE UNITED STATES!

OF AMERICAAAAAAA ... !

family AFFAIR!

Did you really have an illicit affair with your family??

I'm the high hopes I always had for this show when staying home from school sick. After the mesmerizing kaleidoscope opening and the fabulous apartment, those sad sack characters always made me feel worse. Time to change the channel to Here's Lucy or That Girl.

I'm the warm colors of the den.

I'm one of Uncle Bill's many dates.

I'm Jody, making extra money with veal cake photos for the Spanish and Greek "art" markets.

And more!

A little drummer boy?!

I think it's from The Littlest Angel

Cum, he told me, pa rumpa-a-pum pum!

[quote] I'm one of Uncle Bill's many dates.

And just why hasn't Uncle Bill ever been able to find the right woman?

I'm the NY apartment building, actually located on Wilshire Blvd. in LA.

It was the establishment shot, not the literal place. …as in the same for a thousand shows or movies. Duh.

R102 I recall watching an episode a few weeks ago and knew there was no way any apartment building in Manhattan looked like that.

Wow, you are a genius. So you know, the exterior of the Seinfeld apt. building wasn’t on the Upper West Side. The Stevens house wasn’t in Westport. The Petrie house wasn’t in New Rochelle. The mind reels!

Did we ever see the exterior of the Petrie house?

R105 many TV shows did show a random exterior of a Manhattan home, but some did not.

I'm Cissy's first boyfriend. The grocery delivery boy. A LATINO!

Thanks for acknowledging my observation as being correct.👍🏼

It's pretty impossible to put into words how much preteen girls loved this show. The amount of merchandise you could buy that was licensed for this show was mind boggling

I'm Cissy's candy striper outfit.

R102. Carol Burnett used to live there

Why did Brian Keith kill himsekf ? Why did that doctor from ER kill himself? Why do I wonder ? Cause I want to differentiate myself from them so I won’t off myself

I'm a gentleman's gentleman. I slip into Sir Davis's room at night wearing nothing but a cock cage. Sir gives it to me every which way, and I thank him for the opportunity. Sir like to pretend it's the kids that keep him from finding a wife..

Didn’t he have a terminal disease, R113?

R113, his apparent suicide followed a whole string of crises: lung cancer, the suicide of his daughter six weeks earlier, and a financial reversal.

I'm Kathy Garver, unnamed on a current commercial for a phone with closed captions.

That commercial reminds me of a joke about a boy with no arms and legs.

I'm the web of inappropriate relationships.

Mr. French was worth his weight in gold. As a bachelor and man about town, Uncle Bill was fastidious about grooming. He relied on French to shave his back, sack and crack every other day. There was a special chair in Bill's bathroom for just that purpose. French's special touch is what got him the job in the first place.

I'm the kids running in and throwing their homework on the floor to the consternation of Mr. French. Note green carpet and urn lamp that was sometimes turned on.

R117, I love that commercial...

GARVER: Oh that's great!

GRANDPA: What position did you play?

BOY: Reverse Cowgirl

GARVER: That's what grandpa used to play!

I'm the pair of front doors with two big brushed aluminum doorknobs with circular back plates big enough for a steak plonked down right in the center of each door. Like it's Spain or something! (Maybe it's to do with Uncle Bill's business trip?)

But seen today, the walnuty wood veneer of the doors and panelling framed with brushed aluminum strips that I recalled as brass (more Billy Baldwin) chic and modern look downright dowdy and middle management office decor today.

The acres of avocado green wall-to-wall carpeting and that flanking pair of avocado green ZsaZsa side chairs on fussy turned brass legs do no favors either. In fact memory adds some charm and ran to what was a big but rather sad apartment.

I'm Nancy Walker stinking up the chemistry of the show.

Somebody's bitching blog about TV interiors.

Funk & Wagnalls spines are so very decorative, don't you think?

^ OMG! The Singing Lennon Cousins!

Watching it now I realize how truly awful it was. As kids we liked it of course. We named our kittens Buffy and Jody but my mom changed it.

FUN FACT: Both Brian Keith and Sebastian Cabot are buried at Westwood Cemetery, whose most famous resident is Marilyn Monroe.

Everyone at Westwood Cemetery is buried.

I miss the old Avco Cinema—adjacent to the cemetery entrance.

Westwood Memorial Park has all kinds of famous people from Richard Conte to Dean Martin to Eva Gabor

I’m the delightful opening theme song music. It is very festive.

[quote] One of my older sisters, when she was young and loved the show, named her cat Cissy in honor of this show.

The other children at my elementary school called me "Cissy," I resume also in honor of this show.

I'm Sebastian Cabot, opening most shows with a "Good evening. how nice of you to join us."

Sometimes the twins take over from me.

it's a family affair

I'm both younger kids locking our bedroom door every night to keep that fat Mr. French from coming in and diddling us in our sleep.

I'm Mrs. Beasley, who allows young Jody to practice his burgeoning cunniligus skills on me nightly.

Ooooooo, ohhhhhhhh.

I'm Cissy's overnight ski trip with her boyfriend (rather daring for the 1960s!) where the babysitter didn't show, leaving Buffy and Jody to look after each other overnight in an empty apartment.

Kindertrauma was really a major theme of this show.

I'm Cissy's side ponytail.

I’m chili sauce!

I'm the lens flare added to Brian Keith and Sebastian Cabot's names during the opening credits, making them all that more glamorous.

It seemed like a very depressing show even when I was a kid. I could see why people watched The Brady Bunch (which seemed dumb as a kid) with its silly plots and obvious laughs, but at least it was clearly meant to entertain and the old troopers like Florence Henderson Ann B. Davis, and grumpy Robert Reed played it as best they could.

It did seem depressing. The show runners believed Buffy and Jodie would be at their cutest if they looked very grave as much as possible, so they seemed like they almost never got over their parents's deaths. Cissy had very little to do--she was just a generic nice teenage girl.

I'm Brian Keith's shirts, brushing against his nipples all day long.

I wanted him to stick his Hardcastle into my McCormack.

I'm the huge hairpiece Cissy always wore on top of her head whenever she was trying to act mature.

[quote]I'm the sadness.

[quote]I feel sad watching it now.

[quote]I'm the substitute teacher that looks just like Buffy and Jody's mother. Causing...great sadness.

[quote]I'm the sad, haggard look on Brian Keith's face. Suicide is in my future.

[quote]memory adds some charm...to what was a big but rather sad apartment.

[quote]It really is the saddest little sitcom ever.

[quote]those sad sack characters always made me feel worse

[quote]It seemed like a very depressing show even when I was a kid.

[quote]It did seem depressing. The show runners believed Buffy and Jodie would be at their cutest if they looked very grave as much as possible, so they seemed like they almost never got over their parents's deaths.

A near consensus of sadness on DL.

It was an era of widows and widowers and custodians: 'The Courtship of Eddie's Father' and 'Julia' (each of which had a nearly identical run) were launched the same year or within a year of Family Affair. 'My Three Sons' and 'Bonanza' had a head start on the trend.

'Yours Mine and Ours' was a 1968 film (Lucille Ball, Henry Fonda, Van Johnson) about a widowed father of 10 who marries a widowed mother of 8.

Something was in the water...

Bachelor Father with John Forsythe was more interesting because he was at home all the time and the viewers got to see all the women he dated and how he was involved with day to day matters.

Family Affair suffered because so many of Brian Keith's scenes were filmed away from the rest of the cast in boring jungles where it was always raining.

I’m Mr French’s copious chest hair that jumped out of his open collared shirt during their trip to Hawaii. I gasped!

Julia and Eddie's Father weren't morbid. They were pretty typical sitcoms. Bixby was supposed to have suiters. Julia was a bit stuck with having to break barriers which often means very tame plot lines.

This show pulled at your heart strings like no other. They were shameless about it. That being said, I'm the boarding school in Connecticut Cissy pretended she wanted to go to. That way the twins wouldn't be separated.

This show was never funny. It aimed at being "awww" cutesy. The apartment was ok, they kept it fairly masculine, no frilly lampshades or the dreaded "early American" furniture. The "manufactured drama" was lame "kids not understanding the adult world" crap of so many 60s shows, only worse. I've tried watching it a few times more recently, and it's truly the bottom of the barrel. No entertainment value whatsoever. Maybe if one of the kids had grown up to be a big star, it would hold up better, but we all know that didn't happen.

The difference between this show and all the other dead parent(s) shows was the constant presence of the dead Davis parents. The others were barely mentioned once the setup was established. On Family Affair the deaths played a part in about 40% of the shows.

Weren't all of these 60s shows with widowed single parents just a cover for the rise of divorced parents? To actually have a divorced character on TV would've been scandalous in conservative 1960s America! After all, Ricky and Lucy had to sleep in twin beds (I know that was the 50s, but still-totally conservative and stupid).

John Forsythe did two sitcoms in which he played a single father, Bachelor Father and To Rome With Love.

[quote]I'm Mrs. Beasley, who allows young Jody to practice his burgeoning cunniligus skills on me nightly.

Which explains the blue lint between his teeth.

I’m Johnny Whitaker’s career.

I'm Mrs. Beasley's cameltoe!

Agreed, R153. Hollywood was no doubt ahead of the national curve on divorce and blended families and other consequences of family separations and reformations. The widow context painted a variation on these situations in s sympathetic light.

Then we had The Brady Bunch and The Partridge Family. R153 probably nailed it.

I’m the apartment layout that exists nowhere in New York City.

I’m the circular doorknobs.

Mary Richards’s character was originally written to be a divorcee. The network nixed that, believing viewers would think she had divorced Dick Van Dyke.

I'm Vienna.

Did anyone watch the reboot?

[quote]I’m the delightful opening theme song music. It is very festive.

It's MOAH than festive! It's LIVELY!

I LIKE that!

Was Tim Curry wearing a fat suit/padding in the reboot?

I'm Ming Lee

Why would anyone reboot this, of all shows?

Sad all right. I mean Mr Frenches dead fiance. Being killed in the blitz. Jesus H.

Even the stuffies are sad. Poor bereft WW11 survivor Bertie. Poor Mrs. Beasley, who fell off the terrace and next year lost an arm. Also, was she a widow or divorced?

Saddest show ever.

The most popular TV show in Israeli history.

[quote] John Forsyth... To Rome With Love.

Another Don Fedderson show

Here....

Cissy" Davis - Garver was cast at the last minute, in the middle of shooting the pilot, after the actress originally cast for the part gained 15 pounds on a trip to Europe.

From the Wikipedia page about the show.

Could u imagine gaining 15 pounds on a vacation and being fired from your show?

What did she do spend all of her time in patisseries, trattorias, and biergartens? Usually all the walking and running around works that off.

Fun fact: Bill Bixby ( like Michael Landon ) was constantly drunk.

You can see it if you watch for it, like Lauren "cocaine" Tewes on THe Love Boat.

There, but for the grace of God, go I

I'm the lunch box.

^ Mrs. Beasley looks like a Chucky doll, about to come alive and stab Buffy to death.

As a boy I found Bill Bixby so hot.

Bill was a college cheerleader in the late 50s, at Berkeley of all places….back when they had a decent football team. He was too busy to protest.

I remember Bill Bixby getting on his high horse over the gossipmongers who were out in full force over the suicide of his ex-wife, the mother of his minor child(ren). The same Bill Bixby who hosted lurid specials about whether the long-dead Elvis - the father of the then-minor Lisa Marie - was still alive.

Bill was so cute in My Favorite Martion

I was very disappointed to find out he was straight.

Has anyone mentioned the doornobs?

[quote]Gregg's brother was hunky Mike Minor from "Green Acres." They were both nepo babies, as was Minor's one-time wife, Linda Kaye Henning.

Both shows were set in Hooterville (or Hootersville, as Eva Gabor called it), but Mike Minor and Linda Kaye Henning were principal characters on "Petticoat Junction," not "Green Acres." They were married in real life and their characters were married on the show.

Just reading this thread has filled me with the same sense of dread and sadness I always got from watching the show.

I'm Mr. French trying to hold control of his rapidly growing stiffy as Cissy's groovy-haired boyfriend Gregg arrives to take her for a date.

I'm Nancy Walker and show up in the final season as housekeeper Emily. No one ever seems to remember Emily and I've wondered how the hell I wound up on this show when French was already around to clean.

Thank God for Ida Morganstern, who caused viewers to forget my role as Emily.

I’m Jill, the real-life doll who played Mrs. Beasley. My husband Jack wanted to be cast along side me as Jody’s doll, but the producer said, “No dolls for Jody— that would be too gay.”

I was born after Family Affair went off the air, however, my older cousins had a Miss Beasley doll and for whateverf reason that doll always scared the crap out of me when I was three or four years old. Of course, my cousins were total shits about it and used to try and force me to look at it whenever I went to their house. I don't know what it was about that doll but it really spooked me.

I'm the glittering kolidescope!

I'm the "Music by DeVol".

Kaleidoschkope!

Mike Minor and Corbin Bernsen were in an LTR.

Jody would saltburn the bath tub after Mr Bill had been in there.

Never heard of this show

I'm the astroturf on the balcony

I'm Unca Biww shaving in his bathrobe with a heater hanging out of the side of his mouth.

I gave a lot of young boys feelings they didn't quite understand yet.

[quote]Never heard of this show

And your life has had a lot less sadness in it as a result.

I'm Maureen O'Hara and starred with Brian Keith in The Parent Trap to this a Disney favorite. And Walt called me a bitch!

This thread inspired me to watch an episode on YT. I lasted about 4 minutes. How TF did a crappy show like this last 5 seasons?

I am the reason for the sparkly, bouncy kaleidoscopic opening credits with no clips from the show: there is too much sadness to create an upbeat montage.

I keep hearing that same background music from My Three Sons.