Mary Kay And Johnny: Mary Kay And Johnny Stearns - Sitcoms Online Photo Galleries

This is an original studio issued publicity still from the TV Show Mary Kay And Johnny, circa 1947.

Mary Kay And Johnny aired from November 1947 until March 1950 on Dumont, NBC, and CBS.

This live domestic-comedy was also the very first network situation comedy. It revolved around young New York newlyweds Mary Kay and Johnny Stearns. She was pretty, pert, and something of a screwball, while he was more serious and always getting her out of various dilemmas. Johnny worked in a bank, but the setting for the action was usually the couple's apartment in Greenwhich villiage. The Stearns who were also married in real life, had a baby boy in December 1948, whom they named Christopher. The blessed event was worked into the script and Infant Chris was added to the cast less then a month after his birth, appearing in his bassinet. He was surely one of the youngest regular cast members on any show in tv history. Howie ( Howard Thomas) was Johnny's best friend, while Nydia Westman played Mary Kay's mother.

In addition to being the very first network situation comedy , the series was notable for it's longtime sponsor Anacin, which even in 1948 was using an ouline chart of a human figure with flashing lights to show the product bringing fast, fast relief to every corner of the body.

That sponsors were quite uncertain of the effectiveness of tv at this early stage , however, is illustrated by the following. A few weeks after the program premiered, the sponsor who had no way of knowing whether anyone was watching ( there were no audience ratings yet), decided to conduct a test by offering a free mirror to the first 200 viewers who wrote in their comments on the program. Just to be safe, the company ordered an extra 200 mirrors, so as not to disappoint anyone; 8,960 letters were received.

Here's a newspaper article printed in 1997 celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the sitcom.

Friday, November 14, 1997

50 years later, Mary Kay and Johnny recall TV's first sitcom

Friday, November 14, 1997

NEW YORK (AP) -- It would have been the perfect November "sweeps" ratings-getter: "Bill Cosby and the Olsen Twins Salute 50 Years of TV Sitcoms ... with Special Guests Mary Kay and Johnny Stearns!"

Or maybe, "A Golden Sitcom Celebration, Starring Kelsey Grammer and Roseanne ... with Special Guests Mary Kay and Johnny Stearns!"

The sitcom's big Five-O arrives just weeks into a TV season gorged with more sitcoms than ever before. Consider: 62, on top of the half-century of sitcoms that preceded them. If you had a dollar for every one, you'd have almost as much money as Jerry Seinfeld earns from his.

But history's very first sitcom, predating "I Love Lucy" by four years and "The Honeymooners" by eight, premiered at 9 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 18, 1947.

"Mary Kay and Johnny" was created by and starred Mary Kay and Johnny Stearns. Like their sitcom doppelgangers, they were happy young marrieds building a life together in the Big Apple. But, more than that, they were TV pioneers beyond imagining.

"I didn't realize the anniversary was coming up," says Mary Kay. Now 72, she lives with her husband in Corona del Mar, Calif.

But once upon a time she was a winsome young actress who had moved from her native Los Angeles to Manhattan, where she fared well on Broadway and landed roles in summer stock -- not to mention meeting and marrying a Boston-born actor named Johnny Stearns.

Then she lucked into a sideline: Modeling junior wear on a weekly TV show sponsored by the garments' manufacturer. "Television was just one of those things that you did to help pay the rent while you were looking for a real job in the theater," Mary Kay explains. But Johnny smelled potential.

Now 81, he still remembers his pitch to the sponsor: What about starring Mary Kay in a brand-new TV series, something a little splashier, with a cast of characters, a storyline, even a few laughs?

"I said there are a lot of very successful domestic comedies on radio, but that nothing had ever been done like that on TV." Even radio's popular "Ozzie and Harriet," which featured the Nelson family light-heartedly playing themselves, wouldn't begin its long TV run until 1952.

"We got the go-ahead to try one episode," says Johnny. "So I went back to our apartment in the Village, and I wrote a little script about a young married couple -- WE'D only been married a year -- and played it for comedy."

The 15-minute "Mary Kay and Johnny" originated live on the DuMont Network, and quickly proved itself not just a trailblazer, but also a hit, winning "several popularity awards from the tele fan mags," as Variety would note.

Today no kinescopes of those broadcasts exist. But thanks to countless sitcoms drumming similar themes in the decades that followed, your mind's eye can now see "Mary Kay and Johnny" about as clearly as viewers once saw it on their Crosley set's 9-inch screen.

Just picture it: Johnny worked at a bank. Mary Kay, a homemaker, was as cute as a button and somewhat of a screwball. Johnny had "brunet sobriety" while Mary Kay displayed "blonde vivacity," as a feature story put it at the time.

"The show hit very close to home," says Johnny, who would write all the scripts. "If Mary Kay one day got stuck in the elevator, well, it would give me an inspiration about us getting stuck in an elevator."

Or maybe Mary Kay pretended to wow Johnny by playing her harmonica while, out of sight, a delivery boy actually performed the tunes. Or maybe Mary Kay left the apartment with a cake in the oven, leaving the culinarily-challenged Johnny to finish the task.

"The program has an unforced quality of naturalness, which is its greatest asset," wrote Variety in a 1949 review.

Indeed, the program's naturalness reached into the realm of procreation. When real-life Mary Kay was expecting, so was TV Mary Kay. "The whole program is based on our actual married life," Johnny remembers thinking, "so why not write the pregnancy in?"

The blessed event occurred Dec. 19, 1948. Mary Kay, who missed that night's broadcast, had given birth to Christopher William Stearns a half-hour before airtime. Then viewers watched a comically anxious Johnny pace the waiting room, anticipating word of his newborn, who would also be a boy named Christopher.

Thus did "Mary Kay and Johnny" predate the parallel pregnancies of Lucille Ball and "I Love Lucy"'s Lucy Ricardo. And unlike that series' TV son, who was played by a child actor, Christopher played his parents' child on TV from the age of 10 days.

Mary Kay's second pregnancy spelled the end of the series -- that, and the growing fatigue she shared with Johnny. One whole summer, they had produced a show every weeknight while "Kukla, Fran and Ollie" took a break.

So "Mary Kay and Johnny," by then airing Saturday nights on NBC, bade its fans farewell on March 11, 1950.

A few years later, the Stearns family moved to the West Coast, where Johnny directed and produced TV programs.

He still does, when he gets the urge. "But once in a great, great while, someone will stop Mary Kay and me on the street," he says, "and recognize us from the TV show."

For TV sitcoms' First Couple, recognition is richly deserved.

Here's Johnny Stearn's Obituary From The New York Times

Johnny Stearns, 85, Half of Star Sitcom Duo

Published: December 9, 2001
Johnny Stearns, half of the duo in one of television's earliest sitcoms, ''Mary Kay and Johnny,'' died Dec. 1 of complications from a fall. He was 85.

''Mary Kay and Johnny'' had its debut in 1947 on the old DuMont Network, moving to NBC the next year, CBS the year after that and then back to NBC for the rest of its run, which ended in March 1950.

The show was an instant hit.

It was so popular that when its sponsor, Anacin, tried to gauge ratings in the pre-Nielsen era by offering a free mirror to the first 200 people who wrote in to say they watched the show, the company was deluged with 8,960 letters.

The 15-minute program starred Mary Kay and Johnny Stearns as newlyweds starting a life together in New York. The couple, who were newlyweds when the show began, were married for 55 years, Mrs. Stearns said on Wednesday.

Mr. Stearns was one of the original producers of the ''Tonight'' show when Steve Allen was the host.

For a history of the situation comedy which started with Mary Kay And Johnny go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sitcom

To watch the Archive of American Television Mary Kay & Johnny Stearns go to http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=mary+kay+and+johnny&search_type=&aq=f