December 16, 1975: "One Day at a Time" Premieres

Left to right: Mackenzie Phillips, Bonnie Franklin,

Pat Harrington and Valerie Bertinelli

December 16, 1975: One Day at a Time premieres on CBS, a new creation of All In the Family producer Norman Lear. Bonnie Franklin stars as Ann Romano, a mother of 2 teenage daughters, picking up and starting over in Indianapolis after her divorce.

To give you an idea of how big this was: Franklin was a real-life divorced woman (but no kids, only stepchildren after remarrying), playing a divorced woman with 2 teenage daughters, and this was just 5 years after CBS gave Mary Tyler Moore, divorced with a child in real life, a show with her own name on it, but wouldn't let her play a divorced woman without kids.

The theme song, "This Is It," was written by legendary songwriter Jeff Barry and his wife at the time, Nancy Barry. (Jeff had long since divorced Ellie Greenwich.) Polly Cutter sang it.

The Romano apartment was said to be at 1344 Hartford Drive, a fictional address. Indianapolis was chosen because it was a big enough city to be recognized, but not one of the usual TV show locations, such as New York, Chicago or Los Angeles. (In 1977, Dan Wakefield created the show James at 15, selecting Boston for the same reason. Unlike Indianapolis, Boston would go on to become a popular location for TV show settings.)

Ann Romano begins the show newly divorced from Ed Cooper (Joseph Campanella), moving from Logansport, Indiana to Indianapolis with daughters Julie (Mackenzie Phillips, daughter of John Phillips of The Mamas & the Papas) and Barbara (Valerie Bertinelli). They move into an apartment building where the superintendent is Dwayne Schneider (Pat Harrington, who was usually credited as "Pat Harrington Jr." prior to this). At first, Schneider tries to romance Ann, who's not interested. Once he understands it's not going to happen, he takes a kind of guardian role for the Romanos.

In Season 1, Ann dated her divorce lawyer, David Kane (Richard Masur). This confused me as a boy, since I thought he was playing her ex-husband, and I wondered why they were getting back together. This impression further deepened when they broke up at the end of the season.

In Season 2, Mary Louise Wilson played Ginny Wroblicki, a cocktail waitress who lives in the same building, and becomes Ann's best friend. But Wilson didn't like what the show was doing with her character, and left after just the one season.

In Season 3, Shelley Fabares was introduced as Francine Webster, a work rival of Ann's. They eventually settled their differences, and opened their own advertising agency. Fabares' real-life aunt was actress Nanette Fabray (she kept the pronunciation, but not the spelling), and she was already a recurring character, Ann's mother, Katherine Romano.

In Season 5, Julie begins dating Max Horvath (Michael Lembeck), a flight attendant, who calls Ann "Shorty." (Franklin was 5-foot-3.) But Phillips' growing drug problem led to her being fired. As Season 6 began, it was explained that Julie and Max had gotten married. Phillips checked into drug rehab, with the irony that the recovery movement's theme is, literally, "One day at a time."

Ann begins dating Nick Handris (Ron Rifkin), who has a teenage son, Alex (Glenn Scarpelli). The character was definitely brought in to fill Julie's void, but was probably also brought in because CBS wanted to compete with ABC's success with the Chachi character on Happy Days. After just 1 season, Rifkin left the show. The writers explained that Nick had died in a car crash, and Ann took Alex in as a foster child.

In Season 7, Barbara, by now in college, begins dating Mark Royer (Boyd Gaines), a dental student. Phillips was briefly brought back, and Julie and Max became the parents of a daughter, Annie. But, again, Phillips' substance abuse issues got in the way. She appeared briefly in Season 9, and that was it.

By the start of Season 8, CBS' WKRP in Cincinnati had run its course, so Howard Hesseman became available to play Mark's father, Sam Royer. At the end of that season, Barbara married Mark, and Ann married Sam. Season 9 showed Barbara and Mark living in their own apartment, and the previous one was just Ann and Sam, as Alex had left, and it just wasn't the same.

The final episode aired on May 28, 1984. Ann moved to London for a job, and Schneider moved to Florida to take care of family (intended as a backdoor pilot that wasn't picked up), leaving Barbara and Julie, and their husbands, to each raise their 1st child.

Three castmembers were panelists on CBS' game show Match Game: Harrington had already been one before the show started, and Franklin and Bertinelli followed. At the age of 18 1/2, Bertinelli became the youngest panelist in the show's history. When it was revived on ABC in 2016, she became the only panelist from the 1973-82 version to appear as one, although Kirstie Alley appeared as one after having been a contestant in 1979.

Bonnie Franklin died in 2013. Pat Harrington died in 2016. Nanette Fabray and Joseph Campanella died in 2018. Howard Hesseman died in 2022.

As of December 16, 2022, Mackenzie Phillips, Valerie Bertinelli, Richard Masur, Mary Louise Wilson, Shelley Fabares, Ron Rikfin, Glenn Scarpelli, Michael Lembeck, Boyd Gaines, Jeff Barry, Nancy Barry and Polly Cutter are still alive.

In 2017, Netflix produced a remake, centered around a Cuban-American family living in Los Angeles. The divorced mother was now an Army veteran, and one of her daughters, rather than a later foster son, was named Alex. But aside from the basic premise, the 2 daughters, and the building super being named Schneider, the show had little in common with the original. It ran for 4 seasons, and was deeply embraced by Hispanic Americans, but white Americans basically ignored it, not even curious to see how a show they once loved could be modernized. Even having Rita Moreno play the grandmother didn't help.

*

December 16, 1975 was a Tuesday. This was also the day that Bill Veeck regained control of baseball's Chicago White Sox. I have a separate entry for that event.

Baseball was out of season. Football was in midweek. There were 6 games played in the NBA:

* The New York Knicks beat the Atlanta Hawks, 97-96 at Madison Square Garden.

* The Washington Bullets beat the Buffalo Braves, 100-94 at the Capital Centre in the Washington suburb of Landover, Maryland.

* The Golden State Warriors beat the Chicago Bulls, 91-87 at the Chicago Stadium.

* The Houston Rockets beat the Kansas City Kings, 111-100 at the Kansas City Municipal Auditorium.

* The Cleveland Cavaliers beat the Los Angeles Lakers, 123-103 at The Forum outside Los Angeles in Inglewood, California. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar led all scorers on the night with 34 points, and grabbed 22 rebounds.

* And the Philadelphia 76ers beat the Portland Trail Blazers, 105-98 at the Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Portland.

There were 2 games in the American Basketball Association. The New York Nets beat the Kentucky Colonels, 98-96 at the Nassau Coliseum. And the Spirits of St. Louis beat the San Antonio Spurs, 106-103 at the St. Louis Arena.

There was 1 game in the NHL: The Atlanta Flames beat the Kansas City Scouts, 3-1 at The Omni in Atlanta. There were 5 games in the World Hockey Association:

* The Quebec Nordiques beat the Calgary Cowboys, 7-3 at the Colisée de Québec.

* The Winnipeg Jets beat the Toronto Toros, 4-3 at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto.

* The Edmonton Oilers beat the Indianapolis Racers, 3-1 at the Market Square Arena in Indianapolis.

* The San Diego Mariners beat the Houston Aeros, 4-2 at The Summit in Houston. (It's now the Central Campus of televangelist Joel Osteen's Lakewood Church.

* The Denver Spurs beat the Cincinnati Stingers, 3-2 in overtime at the McNichols Arena in Denver.

January 27, 1961: Jackie Gleason Apologizes for "You're In the Picture"

January 20, 1961: You're In the Picture premieres on CBS. It quickly fell out of the Tiffany Network's picture.

Jackie Gleason was a CBS legend. The Jackie Gleason Show -- originally named Cavalcade of Stars, and broadcast on the DuMont Network from 1949 to 1952, and then on CBS through 1957 -- was one of the most popular variety shows in TV history. Its most popular sketch, The Honeymooners, had been spun off into one of the most beloved situation comedies ever. Like later athletes Roberto Clemente and Wayne Gretzky, Gleason became known as "The Great One."

But with You're In the Picture, right away, the odds were against the show. It aired on a Friday night at 9:30, a "death slot" for any show, because anybody who could afford it was out on the town, with a date, or their spouse if already married, or out with "the boys" or "the girls." Plus, John F. Kennedy had been inaugurated as President that day, and the other networks were showing the Inaugural Balls, complete with entertainment led by Frank Sinatra. Sinatra was a friend, as well as the biggest star in the world at the time, and Gleason knew he couldn't compete with him. So the ratings for the premiere were going to be bad, no matter what happened. At the least, CBS should have waited a week to show it.

You're In the Picture was a game show. A four-member celebrity panel would stick their heads into a life-sized illustration of a famous scene or song lyric with a hole cut out, then take turns asking yes-or-no questions to Gleason, to try to figure out what scene they were a part of.

If they were able to figure out the scene, 100 CARE Packages were donated in their name. If they were stumped, the packages were donated in Gleason's name. In other words, no matter who won, charity also won.

Live music was provided by a Dixieland band, under the direction of Norman Leyden, supposedly arranged by Gleason himself, who had some experience in "easy listening" arrangements outside his television work, selling millions of albums. He may have made more money off of that than anything else.

The celebrity panel for the premiere consisted of Pat Harrington Jr., then known as part of the ensemble on shows hosted by Steve Allen and Jack Paar; Pat Carroll, known for her work on Sid Caesar's shows; Jan Sterling, an actress known for her roles in the films Ace in the Hole and The High and the Mighty; and Arthur Treacher, a British actor then known for playing Jeeves in films based on P.G. Wodehouse's Jeeves and Wooster stories.

Among the tableaux-like backdrops featured in the premiere were Pocahontas rescuing John Smith, statues at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and three men staring at a girl in, in the words of a Number 1 hit song of the previous year, "an itsy-bitsy, teenie-weenie, yellow polka-dot bikini." (In spite of The Honeymooners' Ralph Kramden being a devoted, if argumentative, husband, the real-life Gleason had a reputation as a lecher and a womanizer.)

It didn't work. It wasn't funny, and the reviews were atrocious. And Gleason, who knew comedy as well as any human being alive, knew it. He knew he had to do something the next week. So...

January 27, 1961: At 9:30 PM, U.S. Eastern Time, on live national television, Jackie Gleason walked onstage, sat down on a stool... and apologized for the previous week's show:

* "There's nothing here, except the orchestra and myself."

* "We have a creed tonight, and the creed is honesty."

* "Last week, we did a show that laid the biggest bomb. It would make the H-bomb look like a two-inch salute."

* "You don't have to be Alexander Graham Bell to pick up the phone and find out it's dead."

* Having been in a few other flops -- stage shows, films, radio, TV -- he added, "I wish I didn't know so much about these things."

Then he launched into, basically, a talk-show monologue, which inspired what he used to fill the rest of the commitment that CBS had given to the show, through March 24. It was renamed, naturally, The Jackie Gleason Show, and it was a talk show, airing as if that was the plan all along, and as if You're In the Picture had never existed. This was smart: Whatever damage that would be done was unlikely to have been worse than what had already been done, and anything gained from the remaining 9 installments would have been a bonus.

You're In the Picture wasn't the 1st U.S. TV show canceled after 1 episode, especially since, technically, there were 2 episodes, counting the apology show. On June 25, 1951, CBS aired a game show titled Who's Whose, and it was so horribly reviewed that it was canceled after 1 episode.

Still, You're In the Picture was held up as the standard for single-episode bombs until 1969, when ABC tried to rip off NBC's Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In with Turn On, and some affiliates dropped it in mid-episode.

It's worth noting that, while the apology show is available on YouTube, the premiere is not.

Gleason rebounded. On September 25, The Hustler premiered, with Gleason and Paul Newman starring as competitive pool players. Gleason proved he was every bit as good with drama as he was with comedy. He moved down to Miami, and produced a new Jackie Gleason Show there from 1962 to 1970.

Johnny Carson, then known as a game-show host, was supposed to be on the premiere of You're In the Picture, but wasn't. Pat Carroll later confirmed it: "Johnny Carson was supposed to be on it. But he did one rehearsal, and we never saw him again. He knew better than we did. Ha!"

In 1962, Carson became the host of The Tonight Show on NBC. During Gleason's last appearance on The Tonight Show before his death in 1987, at age 71, Carson brought You're In the Picture up. For my generation, knowing Gleason mainly through reruns of The Honeymooners on late-night local TV, this was a mystery. He told the audience, "That show was the biggest bomb in the history of television!" He stretched out the word "bomb" as much as he could, to make the point.

Arthur Treacher was reintroduced to American audiences through playing Constable Jones in the Disney film Mary Poppins, became the announcer/sidekick for The Merv Griffin Show, and lent his name to a restaurant chain, Arthur Treacher's Fish and Chips. He died in 1975, and, like the Western movie and TV star Roy Rogers with his hamburger chain, the chip shops did not long survive their namesake.

Jan Sterling got a regular role on the CBS soap opera Guiding Light, and lived until 2004. Pat Harrington later become best known as handyman Duane Schneider on the sitcom One Day at a Time, and lived until 2016. Pat Carroll rebounded quickly, getting picked up by Danny Thomas for his sitcom Make Room for Daddy. She is now best known as the voice of Ursula in the Disney cartoon The Little Mermaid. As of January 27, 2022, she is still alive. (UPDATE: She died on July 30, 2022, age 95.)

*

January 27, 1961 was a Friday. It was the off-season for baseball and football. There were no NHL games scheduled for the day. There were 3 games in the NBA:

* The New York Knicks beat the Philadelphia Warriors, 130-119 at the old Madison Square Garden. The Knicks' Richie Guerin led all scorers on the night with 42 points.

* The Boston Celtics beat the Detroit Pistons, 140-111 at the Boston Garden.

* And the Syracuse Nationals beat the Cincinnati Royals, 138-126 at the Cincinnati Gardens. Dolph Schayes led the Nats with 28 points. In defeat, Jack Twyman scored 37. Oscar Robertson did not appear in the game.