I just watched the episode, "Boarding School" a short while ago. This was the first episode following the departure of Jean Hagen from the series. Margeret, supposedly, has died, but you would never know it. The whole episode is lighthearted, other than the premise of the kids being sent away to boarding school realizing they don't want to go. At no point in this episode is it stated that Margaret has died or that Danny is now a widower. The closest they come is a statement that Danny makes that he "has had to be both mother and father" to his kids "for more than a year." I assume he is referred to as a widower in future episodes, but from watching this episode, one can easily assume that Margaret just packed her bags and ran away. I guess it was too much in 1956 for a sitcom to address the issue of death directly. On the other hand, that seems to be exactly what viewers at the time actually wanted. As this article reveals, fans of the show wanted Margaret Williams either dead or severely maimed:

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2206&dat=19560505&id=PQxgAAAAIBAJ&sjid=HukFAAAAIBAJ&pg=2159,1869350

Brutal stuff there. Instead she just vanished and nobody batted an eye.

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1368&dat=19561007&id=0EtQAAAAIBAJ&sjid=fQ8EAAAAIBAJ&pg=3190,3726966

They set the first episode a year after Margaret's death - after the initial stages of grief had passed - so the show could stay lighthearted. They did the same thing with "Valerie's Family" and "Eight is Enough" when the mothers on those shows died, too.

As for that story - interesting. The fans wanted Margaret killed off because they didn't want her to divorce Danny.

Interesting read, especially the second article that among the Danny Thomas talk also praises Jackie Gleason's return to live television after a year of filmed shows. Filmed shows which, the writer says, belongs in Limbo.

They set the first episode a year after Margaret's death - after the initial stages of grief had passed - so the show could stay lighthearted. They did the same thing with "Valerie's Family" and "Eight is Enough" when the mothers on those shows died, too.

As for that story - interesting. The fans wanted Margaret killed off because they didn't want her to divorce Danny.

It's not only that they wanted her killed off, but they wanted her death to be violent. It wasn't enough for her to die peacefully in her sleep; it had to be something brutal. And then there was that suggestion that she be kept alive after a car wreck, but being so badly maimed that she looks like a different person. I wonder if people were expressing anger at Jean Hagen for leaving the show? I imagine Danny Thomas had to have been very sensitive to these suggestions given what had happened to his brother the year before (see the other thread I started about his brother, Paul Jacobs.

http://www.sitcomsonline.com/boards/showthread.php?t=327237


Interesting read, especially the second article that among the Danny Thomas talk also praises Jackie Gleason's return to live television after a year of filmed shows. Filmed shows which, the writer says, belongs in Limbo.

Gee, I'm glad those filmed shows didn't stay in limbo but survived for us to see. I'm sure this writer was coming from a very different perspective, having been able to see Gleason's shows actually performed live, while all we get to see of those shows are inferior kinescope copies. The Honeymooners sketches from those live shows I've never been able to enjoy as much due to the video quality, which I find a distraction. Absent that distraction, they probably did come across as superior because they were not forced into a half-hour format like the 39 filmed shows. Usually they're about 10 to 20 minutes long, so it probably seemed to this writer that they were stretching these skits to fill up a half hour. I'm guessing that's part of the complaint, that the half hours didn't seem as breezy and vibrant. And clearly he enjoyed seeing Gleason's other characters, which he put on the backburner to do the Honeymooners series.

I find it interesting to read these perspectives from 60 years ago. MRFD was a very popular show during its time but is not nearly as well known now. (Though I argue that Danny Thomas is probably best known as founder of St. Jude than this series, something that I think he would be proud of.) My parents know and remember the Marjorie Lord shows but never knew about Jean Hagen because they were not old enough to see those shows when they were on. And maybe in hindsight totally ignoring the Margaret character as the show went on was wrong - and if done today her memory would live on in mentions of "your mom" - but this was new territory of killing off characters. And let's face it, who would have guessed we would be talking about this today?!?!

I find it interesting to read these perspectives from 60 years ago. MRFD was a very popular show during its time but is not nearly as well known now. (Though I argue that Danny Thomas is probably best known as founder of St. Jude than this series, something that I think he would be proud of.) My parents know and remember the Marjorie Lord shows but never knew about Jean Hagen because they were not old enough to see those shows when they were on. And maybe in hindsight totally ignoring the Margaret character as the show went on was wrong - and if done today her memory would live on in mentions of "your mom" - but this was new territory of killing off characters. And let's face it, who would have guessed we would be talking about this today?!?!

I agree with your point that Danny Thomas is best remembered as the founder of St. Jude. I was thinking the same thing. I imagine that would give him the greatest pride, as well it should. After that, I think his greatest legacy is as a producer. He and Sheldon Leonard are responsible for some of the greatest television classics, shows that people DO remember. But Make Room for Daddy itself doesn't really stand out as a timeless classic; rather, it is a show clearly of its own time. But that's fine. Had it not been for the success of this show in its day, all those later achievements as a producer, that left us with shows like The Andy Griffith Show and The Dick Van Dyke Show, would not have happened. And as I wrote in another thread, many of the early episodes MRFD are still funny. It's just hampered a bit by the frequent attempts to teach a moral because much of what was being taught at that time is not what we today would consider the proper lesson. Case in point: I just watched an episode where the moral of the story was that the purpose of a woman is to build up her man and make him feel strong and important.

I myself don't find the Honeymooners kinescopes a distraction, especially since these (and other live 1950s programs) are programs we are fortunate to have, given their rarity and the fact that they were not rerun right away. The live Honeymooners sketches were often more than 30 minutes long, so it wouldn't be that the writer thought the 39 filmed programs were too long. As was said, he seems to have missed Gleason's other characters.