"The Doris Day Show" (1968) TV series 1968-1973

User Rating:

7.2/10   

Creator:

James Fritzell

Seasons:

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

Release Date:

24 syyskuu 1968 (USA)

Genre:

Comedy

Plot:

After spending most of her life in big cities, widow Doris Martin decides to move back to the family ranch.

Plot Keywords:

Magazine | Widow | Son | Sitcom | Secretary

Awards:

Nominated for 2 Golden Globes.

Cast

Doris Day	...	Doris Martin (128 episodes, 1968-1973)
Philip Brown	...	Billy Martin (79 episodes, 1968-1971)
Todd Starke	...	Toby Martin (79 episodes, 1968-1971)
Denver Pyle	...	Buck Webb (55 episodes, 1968-1970)

Runtime:

30 min (128 episodes)

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Australia:G | Singapore:PG | Australia:PG (some episodes)

Filming Locations:

650 California Street, San Francisco, California, USA

Company:

Arwin Productions

Trivia:

At the end of this series' fifth season, with CBS ready to renew it for at least another year, Doris Day in effect "cancelled" her own series. She held a press conference and announced that in five years, she believed "all that could be done with this material" had been done, and she was uninterested in continuing to work on it. Afterwards Doris Day retired from acting and has not acted since. (2008).

Movie Connections:

Featured in "The O'Reilly Factor: (2008-02-22)" (2008)

Soundtrack:

Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be)

The sit-com that tries to find itself

THE DORIS DAY SHOW (CBS, 1968-73), stars Doris Day in her only weekly comedy show of her career. Making her movie debut in 1948's ROMANCE ON THE HIGH SEAS for Warner Brothers, she became an instant hit, with her subsequent films ranging from Technicolored musicals to light black and white comedies, and occasionally showing her ability as a dramatic actress with non-singing roles as STORM WARNING (WB, 1950), MIDNIGHT LACE (Universal, 1960), an excellent biographical role as Ruth Etting in LOVE ME OR LEAVE ME (MGM, 1955), among others. She found her screen persona as a virgin-type career woman in romantic sex comedies, memorably opposite Rock Hudson in PILLOW TALK (Universal, 1959), which earned her an Academy Award nomination. Day followed the Pillow Talk-type formula through most of the 1960s, but by 1966, the sameness was creeping in and her comedic formula was wearing thin. After twenty years on the big screen, she ended her cinematic career with WITH SIX YOU GET EGGROLL (1968), opposite TV actor Brian Keith in a motion picture with sit-com elements extended to about 90 minutes. At this point, Doris Day's movie career was over, until she found herself employed once more, working for the little screen, that being the set of television.

THE DORIS DAY SHOW, which premiered on CBS in September of 1968, opens with her theme song, "Que Sera Sera." The first season finds the widowed Doris Martin (Doris Day), a city girl, moving in with her white haired, bearded father, Buck Webb (Denver Pyle) on the family ranch with her two little blonde-haired boys, Billy (Philip Brown) and Toby (Todd Starke). Toby is the little guy with a buck tooth. With similarities to the recent TV show, GREEN ACRES, Doris is a city girl now back on the farm. Supporting her father is a hired hand country boy named LeRoy B. Simpson (James Hampton). There was also a maid, Aggie (Fran Ryan), and later Juanita (Naomi Stevens). The first season followed the tradition of other sit-coms of that time, sugar sweetness with country humor, never rising above the number one TV show of that season, THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW. Doris, in 1960s fashionable clothes, always looked too glamorous as a farm girl, but the first season succeeded well enough to go on another year. The second season found Doris Martin continuing to live on the farm, but this time commuting to the city and landing a job at TODAY'S WORLD MAGAZINE in San Francisco as a secretary to Mr. Nicholson (MacLean Stevenson). Also in support is Myrna Gibbons (Rose Marie, best known for her role as Sally Rogers on THE DICK VAN DYKE SHOW). Rose Marie's character became an added plus to the show, although her character, a single woman always looking for the Mr. Right, was actually no different from her character on Van Dyke's show. The one thing missing was Morey Amsterdam. Myrna and Doris were given a second banana character in the carnation of Ron Harvey (Paul Smith), a bachelor co-worker on the trail of beautiful female companionship. Humorous but not hilarious as Amsterdam. With this change, the show was slowly finding itself. In season three, Doris moves out of her father's farm, takes with her the boys and their sheepdog, Lord Nelson, and moving to San Francisco in an apartment over an Italian restaurant run by Angie and Louie Palucci (Kaye Ballard and Bernie Kopell). Doris continues to work as secretary at TODAY'S WORLD MAGAZINE, with this format echoing the storylines to THE LUCY SHOW, with the boss and secretary stories, but minus the yelling, misunderstandings and slapstick. Denver Pyle as Doris' father, Buck, made a guest appearanace or two during this third season, and was no longer a series regular. While still working woman, Doris manages to find quality time with her boys, especially with one episode that focuses on the youngest Toby, in an episode where she on a camping trip with him, even though it's supposed to be a weekend for the fathers and sons, with Doris being the only female pitted against some upsetting fathers. Up to this time, THE DORIS DAY SHOW improved, showing both humor and heart to the character and plots. But it was still trying to find itself.

As a youngster growing up during this period, I always enjoyed shows like this, especially whenever they included kids. But the big change came with seasons four and five when Mrs. Doris Martin, who continues to work for TODAY'S WORLD MAGAZINE and living in the same apartment on top of Palucci's Italian Restaurant, becomes Miss Doris Martin, a bachelor girl. Following the more liberated woman-type shows, and the current CBS hit of THE MARY TYLER MOORE SHOW, the format shift gears, eliminating the Martin boys, their dog, and contradicting everthing from the previous years, but regardless, the show finally found itself. Of course there were occasional characters reprising their roles from the first three seasons, such as Lew Ayres, Van Johnson and Billy DeWolfe (hilarious as Mr. Jarvis), so obviously this is the same character now with amnesia, and same show with different writers. Another difference, which is true to life, is Doris now working as a staff writer for a new boss, Cy Bennett (the mustached John Dehner), supported by a co-worker pal named Jackie (Jackie Joseph). Changing her boss from a handsome and easy-going man to a stuffy middle-aged meiser is a fine change, paralleling once again with THE LUCY SHOW (CBS, 1962-1968) with secretary Lucy Carmichael (Lucille Ball) and her daily working relationship with her stingy boss (Gale Gordon), which found Doris sometimes at wits with Cy Bennett. So with these final two seasons sees a combination of both LUCY and MARY TYLER MOORE shows. But the final two seasons is the format that has lasted the longest. Denher is a good counterpart to Doris, at times doing a good impersonation of 1930s leading man, Warren William.

This new format would have worked for me had Doris Martin remained what she has been previously, and mentioning in the first episodes of the fourth season that her boys have been sent away to boarding school would have explained the emptiness of her apartment. I was surprised she didn't rename this revamped format, THE NEW DORIS DAY SHOW. But what did happen is that Doris Day succeeded in making this dramatic change work. But for me, the working girl/family episodes from the second and third seasons are the best. The worst episodes are the latter ones that features Doris appearing as a model in an annual fashion show. And those fashions, clothing and hairstyles, especially from the 1970s, are awful then and awful now. Mediocre episodes are the ones featuring Larry Storch, who, to me, was never very funny, sorry to say. There was even one episode, I believe the final show from its third season, that had Doris appearing only in the opening segment where she comforts a troubled teen named April (played by Meredith Baxter). Baxter tells her story where the flashback segment takes up the entire rest of the show. Whether this was supposed to be a pilot episode to a new series, or an introduction to Miss Baxter, who would find a career on TV in later years, is uncertain. But this is one I least liked but somehow remember the most. I can also recall Doris Martin, of seasons four and five, having a romantic love interest, a middle-aged doctor, played by silver-haired Peter Lawford.

There's one episode, which I feel might be the one closest to Doris Day's heart, is the one in which she goes on trial for releasing a group of dogs locked in an automobile parked in the hot sun with shut windows. After being taken to court by the owner, she, of course, gets acquitted following her plea in the courtroom for the safety of dogs and other creatures, and her willingness to do what she did again even if it meant jail time. It's a possibility that this would be labeled Doris Day's personal favorite episode for that this is more Doris Martin being Doris Day, an animal rights activist.

THE DORIS DAY SHOW lasted 128 episodes, making its final first run in 1973. There was no final episode to end it all, but very few shows at that time had an episode that ended like a movie, which alls well that ends well. All the episodes were done on film and in color, but interestingly, it seldom got revived on reruns in later years. Maybe a small local TV station in the southern or midwestern states carried this program, airing it at the graveyard shift of 4 a.m., but I was reacquainted with the show when cable's Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN, now The Family Channel) revived it, along with other shows from that era, as GREEN ACRES, for example, in the 1980s. The show has dated, of course, but again, the drastic format change from seasons four and five might have worked had Doris Martin always been a single working girl. But then again, one cannot change the course of history. After a few years on CBN, the show disappeared again, leaving it to the memory to those who had watched this now almost forgotten sit-com on a regular basis back in the days of clean, wholesome television featuring a major movie star on the small screen. If this program should ever resurface again, possibly it would be from TV Land.