Birthday Gale

The one and only Gale Storm was born on this date in 1922. Winning a radio talent contest in 1939, when she was 17 years old, took her from Texas to Hollywood. From there, she built a highly successful career as an actress and singer.

Get to know her in my book, Gale Storm: A Biography and Career Record, named by Classic Images magazine as one of its best books of 2018.

A New Look at "Margie"

Could we be in for a resurgence of interest in Gale Storm's life and career? The recent release of a two-disc DVD set, My Little Margie: The Complete First Season (Nostalgia Family Video) gives me reason to hope.

In recent years, fans wanting to get their fix of Margie, Vern, and the gang have usually had to make do with less-than-ideal DVD releases, often featuring grainy copies of episodes taped off a TV rerun. This new set, however, offers some of the cleanest, most spruced-up prints I've ever seen. It's available through several major online retailers.

That, along with the forthcoming release of a certain book on the subject, may help longtime fans celebrate Miss Storm all the more, and hopefully win her a few new admirers as well. She deserves nothing less.

That's My Little Margie!

Sixty-five years ago tonight, Americans had their first look at a television comedy series called My Little Margie. Airing Monday nights at 9 p.m. (EST), it was the summer replacement for TV's Number One show, I Love Lucy.

TV critics were not impressed, and predicted a hasty -- and well-deserved -- demise. But as one observer later said, "Nobody liked it but the people." The show caught on immediately, making leading lady Gale Storm a full-fledged television star. The series lasted four seasons, and played in reruns for decades afterwards.

Be on the lookout next spring for my book on the life and career of Gale Storm.

Happy Birthday, Margie!

In the heyday of classic TV, the month of June was usually marked by the arrival of summer replacement shows. Many would run a few weeks between June and August, never to be seen again. But others developed into popular hits that found a home on the regular year-round schedule.

One of my favorite summer replacement shows was My Little Margie, starring Gale Storm and Charles Farrell, which premiered (get ready!) 62 years ago today, on June 16, 1952. Critical response to the show was mixed, not helped by the fact that it was CBS' summer replacement for I Love Lucy. Lucy's first, groundbreaking season, when it became TV's top-rated show, set the bar high for whatever took its place, even temporarily. But if critics weren't enamored, viewers were. As Miss Storm herself would later say of her show, "Nobody likes it but the people." Given its popularity, the show had no difficulty lining up a sponsor for fall; it ultimately ran for three years, and produced 126 episodes. Once My Little Margie had run its course, Gale Storm returned to TV in 1956 for The Gale Storm Show: Oh, Susanna!, which lasted from 1956 to 1960.

Some years ago, when I was writing The Women Who Made Television Funny: Ten Stars from 1950s Sitcoms, I had the privilege of doing two telephone interviews with Miss Storm. She was lively, funny, and generous with her time. It was easy to see how she had charmed movie, television, and theater audiences over the course of her long career -- as she still does today, whenever we have the chance to enjoy her work.

My Christmas Reading List

I know you've been lying awake nights, tossing and turning, wondering what to get the author of this blog for Christmas. It would be churlish of me to make you guess, especially those of you who don't really know me all that well, so I decided to come right out and publish my list. I love reading thorough, well-researched, and readable biographies of show business figures whose work I admire. Here, alphabetically billed, are three such people whose biographies I would most like to read this holiday season:

Bea Benaderet (1906-1968) may be best-known as good-hearted Kate Bradley, proprietress of the Shady Rest Hotel, on TV's Petticoat Junction. However, before that late-in-life success, she was a prolific and highly respected character actress whose credits include the role of Blanche Morton on The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show, Iris Atterbury, best pal to Liz (Lucille Ball) on radio's My Favorite Husband, and the voices of characters such as Tweety Bird's Granny in Warner Brothers cartoons.

Willie Best (1916-1962) was a comic actor who appeared in more than 100 films between 1930 and 1950, and went on to play regular roles in two early TV sitcoms, My Little Margie and The Trouble with Father. Often saddled with the stereotypical characters assigned to other African American actors in that era, he nonetheless displayed a genuine talent that led Bob Hope, whom he supported in The Ghost Breakers (1940), to call him "the best actor I know."

Martin Kosleck (1904-1994) was a German-born artist and actor who left his native country in the early 1930s, as Nazism was on the rise. Landing in Hollywood a few years later, he built an impressive career as a character actor, ironically often cast as Nazis. Among his better-remembered roles are leads in two cult favorite horror films, House of Horrors (1946, pictured below) and The Flesh Eaters (1964).

If Martin Kosleck (center, sculpting Rondo Hatton) can create an original work of art, why can't you?

Don't those sound intriguing? There's just one slight hiccup, and that's why I'm giving you a couple of weeks extra notice before December 25th. Nobody's actually written these books yet. Granted, that does provide an extra bit of complication, but I have faith in you. Get to work, okay? I'm looking forward to a few days off work after Christmas, and it sure would be nice to curl up on the sofa and read your book.

A "Margie" Memento

A 45-page script for My Little Margie.

Here's a fun little collectible I acquired in researching my book The Women Who Made Television Funny -- a crew member's copy of an original My Little Margie script. Dated January 14, 1953, it's for an episode called "The Homely Margie," first aired March 5, 1953 on CBS. In this script by Frank Fox and G. Carleton Brown, Margie poses as Cousin Carolyn from Philadelphia, with a "goony voice," to resolve one of those crises only Margie and Vern Albright could find themselves in. Page One lists not only the cast regulars who will appear (and the phone numbers of stars Gale Storm and Charles Farrell -- imagine that today!) but also the guest players needed for the episode -- Joe Sparks ("handsome, Southern, 25"), Bill Houseman ("homely"), and Mr. Michaels ("bewildered"), the latter amended by hand to "Miss Michaels."

This particular copy of the script belonged to crew member Hazel W. Hall, who enjoyed a long career as a script supervisor on shows like Perry Mason and The Andy Griffith Show. Maintaining continuity was the major function of her job, and conscientious Ms. Hall has scribbled notes all over the script, noting exactly how actors made their entrances, what costumes they wore, and other details. Without careful attention to these, it might be difficult for multiple takes of the same scene, from different angles, to be successfully pieced together in the editing room. For one scene, she writes, "Open on Vern, seated reading. Margie enters from dir[ection] of b'room [bedroom], Xes [crosses] to Vern & kisses him. Leans elbows in divan as Vern turns to her." When dialogue is changed during a take, Ms. Hall writes a stern reminder -- "Margie's line 'Nite, Dad' is changed to 'Goodnight Uncle Vern' in closer three. This line must be used! in corrected 3-shot."

Would you think it took this much careful work to make one lighthearted episode of My Little Margie?