The Joan Davis Show: The Double Love Triangle (CBS, 1946)
Joan Davis should have had a better career. Gifted at comic timing both verbal and physical, between her classically flat comic voice and her nimble physical style, deeply enough respected by her peers and elders, likeable enough to audiences in theaters, in front of radio, and in front of television sets, she certainly deserved it.
The problem was that once she moved into broadcasting—following a film career in which she made a promising name for herself as a slapsticker (in the Abbott & Costello vehicle Hold That Ghost, and in numerous others, usually B films, between 1935 and 1941)—Davis was usually the proverbial day late and dollars short. She was hardly unpopular on the air, but most of her radio vehicles never bore quite the distinctiveness or the cleverness of those in which the like of Jane Ace, Gracie Allen, Fanny Brice, or Eve Arden featured. She seemed too content to follow, too edgy about leading.
The exception seems to have been when Abe Burrows, the co-mastermind of Duffy's Tavern and a genuinely singular wit, took on the job of her head writer, particularly for Joanie's Tea Room. In Burrows's hands, Davis shone as she should have. She may not have been a ratings titan, but she was allowed the best possible conduit for comic life on the air, even if Joanie's Tea Room seemed more awkwardly interrupted by its musical interludes than most similar comedies of the 1940s.
Joan was an amazing lady. For a long time she had been a knockabout comic, playing a low-comedy clown. In films she always played the funny-looking friend of the heroine. So I was startled when I first met her in person; she was a poised and very attractive woman. Ther's a picture of Joan on my office wall, and people keep saying to me, “Who's that beautiful blonde?”
. . . When I saw how attractive Joan was, I started to write mateiral for her that was different from what she had been doing. It turned out to be very successful. John Crosby—who used to be a top radio critic and now is a successful novelist living in London—wrote a review of the show I was writing for Joan, and said, “Abe Burrows has done for Joan Davis what Flo Ziegfeld did for Fanny Brice.” I was proud of that mainly because I thought of it as a tribute to Joan.
—Abe Burrows, from Honest, Abe: Is There Really No Business Like Show Business? (Boston: Atlantic Little, Brown, 1980; 369 pages.)
When Davis eventually made the move to television, long since separated from Burrows's clever writing (he had moved onto his own radio show and, then, writing legendarily enough for Broadway), her two signature gifts had the unfortunate problem of far weaker writing and Lucille Ball's coattails, and not necessarily in that order. Desperate for their own I Love Lucy, NBC and sponsor General Electric commissioned I Married Joan (1952-55), a sitcom in which Davis as a likewise attractive but scattered wife entrapping her hapless family court judge husband (Jim Backus) in various schemes and mishaps was only too obvious a Lucy clone.
The show's rather grandiose introduction only damaged her credibility in the face of Ball having put a vise grip on the introduction's claimed crown: America's favourite comedy show! Starring America's queen of comedy, Joan Davis! Davis on television suffered far weaker writing, though she certainly had the guts to smile and plow through it like the trouper she always was. She was notoriously uncomfortable with her appearance on the small screen: I don't get it, unless my mirror lies to me, I'm not bad looking—but let me get one look at that face on the screen and I'm sick for a week. But the guts factor may have been the real reason why I Married Joan had a three-year television life with nothing near the TV afterlives Ball, Allen, and Arden would enjoy.
Davis's frequent appearances on Tallulah Bankhead's radio variety extravaganzaThe Big Show (1950-52), and the better of her own radio programs, only make I Married Joan look like that much more of a mistake. Considering how impossible it was to marry her slapstick to her verbal deftness on the listening-only medium, not to mention the likely unfairness of trying to squeeze her into a Lucy-lite vehicle, it simply punctuates the point of how much better Davis probably deserved. So does her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame—which recognises her film career alone.
She died of heart failure in 1961, at 53, after failing to turn three television pilots (all called The Joan Davis Show, though with different premises) into regular series following I Married Joan's demise. Her life was only slightly less young than her career. In perhaps the most grotesque postscript in the history of show business, though one can always be wrong about that, Joan Davis in death would be followed two years later by her mother, her daughter (Beverly Wills, who played her kid sister in I Married Joan), and her grandsons . . . all of whom died in the fire that destroyed their home.
Tonight: Andy (Russell) and Harry (Von Zell) want to break away from the tea room early, but for different reasons—Andy has a hot date and Harry's trying to duck his girl friend—while Joan (Davis) has plans to rid herself and Heppie (Shirley Mitchell) of a rival for the affections of their intended targets, Andy and Harry, who have plans of their own when they discover the mastermind who established a wife Andy doesn't have.
Rosetta: Verna Felton. Heppie: Shirley Mitchell. Announcer: Harry Von Zell. Music: Paul Weston Orchestra. Andy Russell. Director: Dick Mack. Writers: Jay Somers, Jack Harvey, Si Wills.
FURTHER CHANNEL SURFING . . .
Adventure
Escape: Papa Benjamin (CBS, 1948)—A bandleader (Frank Lovejoy) exploits a sacred New Orleans voodoo chant in a futile bid to revive his failing nightclub show, but the theft ultimately backfires on him thanks to his failure to understand precisely the chant's significance. Papa Benjamin: Luis van Rooten. Commissioner: Harry Bartell. Judy: Joan Banks. Music: Cy Feuer. Director: William N. Robson. Writer: John Dunkel, based on the short story by Cornell Woolrich.
Bold Venture: A Comeback Can Kill You (Syndicated, 1952)—Slate (Humphrey Bogart) and Sailor (Lauren Bacall) are amused by elder film legend Ricky Reed's (Paul Frees) request to use the Bold Venture for an island trip to get a new film project's background shots, his hope to restore his standing in the business, but there's no amusement when the third of his six wives (Natalie Schaefer), who still loves and obsesses with him, fears he may be a potential murder victim—a fear that may be realised when the island turns out inhabited by a shady and embittered hunter (Gerald Mohr). Soapish even with the Bogarts. King: Jester Hairston. Laszlo: Fritz Feld. Announcer: Dan Seymour. Music: David Rose. Director: Henry Hayward. Writers: Morton Fine, David Friedkin.
Comedy
Fibber McGee & Molly: Piano Lessons (NBC, 1941)—A piano concert the night before, courtesy of Mrs. Uppington (Amanda Randolph), has the Songbuzzard of 79 Wistful Vista (Jim Jordan) bent on learning to play the instrument (The problem I have is these pedals under me—I don't know which one's the brake and which one's the clutch) which has languished in his home little touched for long enough. Molly: Marian Jordan. The Old-Timer: Bill Thompson. Gildersleeve: Harold Peary. Announcer: Harlow Wilcox. Music: Billy Mills Orchestra, the King's Men. Writer: Don Quinn.
Easy Aces: Jane Helps the War Effort (CBS, 1943)—When it comes to radio comediennes acting naturally, every last one of them has to see and raise Jane Ace (who never really wanted to be any kind of actress, movie-star pretty though she certainly was) and damn few of them had the facility, never mind the inclination, to try, and tonight the evidence is abundant: Jane and girl friend Dorothy (Betty Garde) hire on as wartime bus drivers, part of a program putting the ladies into the workforce while the gentlemenfolk fight the war or provide for it, but guess who's going to drive the bosses to drink faster than she gets the workers to their wartime jobs—especially after roping them into a classic debate on manhours versus womanhours, which beats the leaving bejesus out of any debate into which Abbott & Costello ever fall. Additional cast: Unknown. Announcer: Ford Bond. Writer/director: Goodman Ace.
The Bob Hope Show: Eisenhower’s Inauguration; or, Just Be Calm and Cool—Like I Am (NBC, 1953)—This may come as a bit of a shock, but once upon a time Zsa Zsa Gabor really did perform. The fact that it may have been as far back as the Eisenhower Administration is completely irrelevant, even in light of her host having his usual arch fun over Eisenhower's inauguration. Additional cast: Margaret Whiting. Announcer: Bill Goodwin. Music: Les Brown and His Band of Renown. Writers: Al Josefsberg, Hal Block, Larry Marks, Albert Schwartz.
Bob & Ray Present the CBS Radio Network: Lawrence Fechtenberger; Intimate Dance Steps (Your Guess is as Good as Ours, 1960)—Musing on the Bob & Ray dance contest and Bob & Ray impersonators, which is probably as good as it gets for pure chutzpah; the less-than-dynamic duo preview a network detective series; and, following an emergency landing on Venus, the intrepid interstellar officer candidate and his crew enjoy some pleasant surprises among the flora and the fruits of the vines. Writers, it is alleged: Bob Elliott, Ray Goulding.
Variety
The Big Show: Bitchcraft, the Continuing Story (NBC, 1951)—It opens and continues with Dame Tallulah and Gypsy Rose Lee (Bankhead: I've played before every man and woman in the world; Lee: I must admit, honey, I've only played to half your audience), which is one way to open a fine evening with Fred Allen, Eddie Cantor, Portland Hoffa, Judy Holliday, Vaughn Monroe, Patrice Munsel, and Meredith Willson. Announcer: Ed Herlihy. Music: Meredith Willson and the Big Show Orchestra and Chorus. Writers: Goodman Ace, Fred Allen, Selma Diamond, Mort Greene, Frank Wilson.
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