Eloise Wilson - Sitcoms Online Message Boards

schmave · 04-18-2019, 10:51 AM

Fourth-season episodes are running on Antenna TV at the moment, and it's noticeable throughout the season how Eloise's character was written at times be as much of an irritant to her husband, if not more so, than Dennis. Clearly it was a huge departure from her sister-in-law Martha, which maybe is why the show wrote Eloise that way to begin with.
Has anybody else ever noticed this? I was a big fan of Martha Wilson anyway, including the interaction between Gale Gordon and Sylvia Field in those limited episodes at the end of the third season. Eloise is just one of the characters on this show I never cared for all that much.

stevea · 04-18-2019, 10:23 PM

Now that you mention it, yes. Dennis is way less annoying in this season, and Eloise has taken his place. Like when she was insisting he go into the hospital for a checkup, for no particular reason. One thing she has in common with Martha is that they're both very nice to all the kids.

schmave · 04-19-2019, 10:57 AM

Absolutely. There was less of that grandmotherly aspect with Eloise, though. There seems to be much more than a 13-year difference between Sylvia Field and Sara Seegar, born in 1901 and 1914, respectively.
Oddly enough, Gale Gordon was a year older than Joseph Kearns, yet the John Wilson character always seemed to be portrayed as younger than George (at least IMO).

stevea · 04-27-2019, 08:26 AM

Based on another thread I'm in the minority, but I liked the John Wilson character portrayal better than George.

For one thing he had funnier, more comedic reactions that Kearns' version didn't have. For another George treated the kid like dirt, IMO. There was less of that with John, and when he was nasty to Dennis (like he was in the man of the house episode), he apologized later on.

Hazel Anyday · 04-27-2019, 11:09 PM

I never had a problem with Eloise's character except when she turns on her husband, which she does more often than not. That I don't like. And though I really like Gale Gordon in Great Gildersleeve as neighbor Bullard, and as Principle Conklin in Our Miss Brooks and of course in his crowning role as Mr. Mooney but as a replacement for Mr. Wilson he falls fall short. His John Wilson was too nice to Dennis, almost deferential to him at times. George Wilson would never treat Dennis as some sort of temperamental little King. John needed to take George Wilson mean pills.

OH Nuts! · 04-28-2019, 01:02 AM

Sylvia Field and Joseph Kearns were so great in their roles that no one could top them.

While Sara Seeger and Gale Gordon did a nice job, they still fell QUITE SHORT.

schmave · 04-28-2019, 04:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hazel Anyday

I never had a problem with Eloise's character except when she turns on her husband, which she does more often than not. That I don't like. And though I really like Gale Gordon in Great Gildersleeve as neighbor Bullard, and as Principle Conklin in Our Miss Brooks and of course in his crowning role as Mr. Mooney but as a replacement for Mr. Wilson he falls fall short. His John Wilson was too nice to Dennis, almost deferential to him at times. George Wilson would never treat Dennis as some sort of temperamental little King. John needed to take George Wilson mean pills.

Good analysis. Eloise wasn't written in every episode to be a pain in the behind, but she acted like one in a lot of episodes.
Dennis' relationship with either Mr. Wilson was bound to change in part as Dennis grew up, but in a handful of fourth-season episodes, Dennis came off as nothing less than a brat ("A Tax on Cats" and "The Lucky Rabbit's Foot" jump to mind immediately). I still maintain that Gale Gordon did the best he could in that situation with a character who couldn't just be a carbon copy of his brother, but one of those questions that will never be answered is how that fourth season would have transpired with Joseph Kearns still alive, whether it would be anything like the one we know.
I've always thought that dynamic would have to change simply because Dennis was maturing, and that the show was bound to end after four seasons no matter what for that reason.
George did defer to Dennis on occasion, including in "Miss Cathcart's Friend." He was truly sorry he'd hurt Dennis, even though that's a situation where George's actions were totally understandable.

stevea · 04-28-2019, 05:53 PM

Whenever John needed Eloise for some reason, she always had to run off to a dental appt. or the beauty parlor.

OT: The end of season 3 must have been a pretty chaotic time for that show. A starring regular dies. Yet they still managed to complete the season. EE Horton obviously was hastily subbed for Kearns in one episode (and Kearns was undoubtedly to be the baseball coach in the first episode after Kearns' death). And the writers hastily churned out a few new scripts, or altered old ones for Gordon. And I have to say, the first script, with John unable to find the right cushion, was a pretty good effort.

By the way, I agree with other posters that Mr. Mooney was THE role for Gale Gordon. I think I've read Lucy wanted Gale for the crabby banker role, but he was unavailable due to DTM. By the end of the season Charles Lane (who played the role in the 1962 season) was on Lucy's last nerve due to screwing up lines, so she was glad to get Gordon into the banker role for the second season.

schmave · 04-29-2019, 10:50 AM

My feeling about the end of Season 3 was that all of those scripts except "John Wilson's Cushion" and "Dennis and the Witch Doctor" were meant for Joseph Kearns and quickly altered for Gale Gordon. I think it's fairly easy to envision Joseph Kearns in those episodes.
That's what I've read about the 1962-63 season of Lucy's show as well. Once Dennis the Menace ended, Gale Gordon was free. Or maybe that was planned to be the final season all along? Always wondered about that.

stevea · 04-29-2019, 10:59 AM

Both Jay North and Billy Booth (who was in practically every season 4 episode) would have been too old for a fifth season. They probably told Gale G. it was a single season contract.

If the show had had extremely high ratings, maybe they could have figured out a bigger role for that kid who played Seymour. They wrote some really funny lines for him, and he had great delivery.

Bonniegirl · 04-29-2019, 02:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by OH Nuts!

Sylvia Field and Joseph Kearns were so great in their roles that no one could top them.

While Sara Seeger and Gale Gordon did a nice job, they still fell QUITE SHORT.

I totally agree!!

My favorite characters in Dennis the menace are George & Martha Wilson!

Esp. George!! Joseph Kearns was awesome !!

To me he made the show !!

Of course I like Dennis and his parents! Even John and Eloise, I mean I didn't dislike them , but they really couldn't hold a candle to George and Martha! The show lost a lot without them IMO! !

jon22 · 03-16-2020, 04:28 PM

Since the Dennis character was reaching middle school age, I think that the producers wanted to move the show in a slightly different direction with different story lines. The show still had life in it even after the untimely passing of Joseph Kearns. The John Wilson character was still employed and his career as a writer was used in the story lines throughout the 4th season. Maybe those episodes helped to offset the earlier episodes of the series that centered on the adventures of a seven-year-old Dennis who, in the 4th season, was now at an age were those ideas didn't fit any longer. Joseph Kearns and Gale Gordon were about the same age, but in the show one was retired and one was still working.

As for the Eloise character, she was meant to be different than Martha much like John was different than George. She was her own character. I agree with the OP that she was a little bit hard on her husband. I think she was meant to be a little tougher than Martha. Sara Seegar was a wonderful actress and I thought that she did the best that she could under the circumstances of the series. I remember watching the show as child about twenty-five years ago and thought it was very odd that she was suddenly there and Sylvia Field suddenly gone. That was the case in reruns. In real life, three months had passed moving into the 1962-63 season. The show needed a Mr. Wilson and the producers decided to keep Gale Gordon for the 4th season. So, the decision was made to give him a wife and let Sylvia Field go from the series. In one interview, Gloria Henry said that there was some tension with this transition and weren't very nice to Sara Seegar early on. However, the animosity eventually went away.

All that said, the 4th season was very interesting, but I thought that the magic was gone. Joseph Kearns and Sylvia Field were missed even though they were hardly mentioned in that season. I still commend the series for moving on with episodes tailored to John and Eloise. It is hard to even imagine Kearns and Field in the 4th season because of many of the story lines that wouldn't have fit their characters well.

schmave · 03-16-2020, 10:07 PM

Great post Jon. I started a thread some time back about fourth-season episodes that would have worked with either John or George, and the consensus was that about half would have, maybe a bit less.
One thing I missed for ages in the third-season episode "The Club Initiation" was the line where John says to Fred Ferguson about thinking of "bringing my wife and moving into this wonderful town of yours." So right there, with three episodes (including that one) left in Season 3, the idea of Eloise was planted, if not the actual character. I think by then, the show was going to come back for a fourth season and that was a slight hint to viewers that the show would transition to a new Mr. and Mrs. Wilson by the next fall.
By the time of "Dennis and the Witch Doctor," that was plainly obvious.

stevea · 04-03-2020, 07:43 AM

Another thing they did in the fourth season was to make more use of the Seymour character. The zingers he threw at John were really funny, and I think they had used him minimally with George. I think his first appearance was in the camping episode where George kept tying his shoe, but at that point I don't think he was identified as Seymour yet.

Like Billy Booth, I think I read someplace that Robert Pittman had died.

schmave · 04-03-2020, 10:32 AM

It was either that episode or the one where Dennis and Mr. Wilson learn to whistle. In that episode, Seymour was walking down the street whistling (obviously dubbed) and Dennis marveled that a kid who was little more than a toddler could whistle so well. He wasn't credited as Seymour but that's how I think of him whenever I see him.
[ETA: That scene is airing at this moment on Antenna TV.]
Just looked it up and Robert John Pittman died in 1990. He was only 34, which means he was just four when he first appeared in DTM. And IMDB does indicate the whistling episode was his first.

04-18-2019, 10:51 AM	#1
schmave Member Forum Regular Join Date: Mar 23, 2013 Location: Reynoldsburg, Ohio Posts: 653	Eloise Wilson Fourth-season episodes are running on Antenna TV at the moment, and it's noticeable throughout the season how Eloise's character was written at times be as much of an irritant to her husband, if not more so, than Dennis. Clearly it was a huge departure from her sister-in-law Martha, which maybe is why the show wrote Eloise that way to begin with. Has anybody else ever noticed this? I was a big fan of Martha Wilson anyway, including the interaction between Gale Gordon and Sylvia Field in those limited episodes at the end of the third season. Eloise is just one of the characters on this show I never cared for all that much.
	__________________ "hey when you're in the desert you don't complain that the champagne's not Korbel if you get my drift." - RightOnDude

04-27-2019, 11:09 PM	#5
Hazel Anyday Member Senior Member Join Date: Apr 12, 2002 Posts: 2,131	I never had a problem with Eloise's character except when she turns on her husband, which she does more often than not. That I don't like. And though I really like Gale Gordon in Great Gildersleeve as neighbor Bullard, and as Principle Conklin in Our Miss Brooks and of course in his crowning role as Mr. Mooney but as a replacement for Mr. Wilson he falls fall short. His John Wilson was too nice to Dennis, almost deferential to him at times. George Wilson would never treat Dennis as some sort of temperamental little King. John needed to take George Wilson mean pills.
	__________________ Haaazeelll!!

04-18-2019, 10:23 PM	#2
stevea 22 Years On Sitcoms Moderator Forum Legend Join Date: Aug 13, 2003 Location: Indy Posts: 44,178	Now that you mention it, yes. Dennis is way less annoying in this season, and Eloise has taken his place. Like when she was insisting he go into the hospital for a checkup, for no particular reason. One thing she has in common with Martha is that they're both very nice to all the kids.

04-19-2019, 10:57 AM	#3
schmave Member Forum Regular Join Date: Mar 23, 2013 Location: Reynoldsburg, Ohio Posts: 653	Absolutely. There was less of that grandmotherly aspect with Eloise, though. There seems to be much more than a 13-year difference between Sylvia Field and Sara Seegar, born in 1901 and 1914, respectively. Oddly enough, Gale Gordon was a year older than Joseph Kearns, yet the John Wilson character always seemed to be portrayed as younger than George (at least IMO).

04-27-2019, 08:26 AM	#4
stevea 22 Years On Sitcoms Moderator Forum Legend Join Date: Aug 13, 2003 Location: Indy Posts: 44,178	Based on another thread I'm in the minority, but I liked the John Wilson character portrayal better than George. For one thing he had funnier, more comedic reactions that Kearns' version didn't have. For another George treated the kid like dirt, IMO. There was less of that with John, and when he was nasty to Dennis (like he was in the man of the house episode), he apologized later on.

04-28-2019, 01:02 AM	#6
OH Nuts! Member Forum King Join Date: Feb 15, 2005 Posts: 133,383	Sylvia Field and Joseph Kearns were so great in their roles that no one could top them. While Sara Seeger and Gale Gordon did a nice job, they still fell QUITE SHORT.

04-28-2019, 05:53 PM	#8
stevea 22 Years On Sitcoms Moderator Forum Legend Join Date: Aug 13, 2003 Location: Indy Posts: 44,178	Whenever John needed Eloise for some reason, she always had to run off to a dental appt. or the beauty parlor. OT: The end of season 3 must have been a pretty chaotic time for that show. A starring regular dies. Yet they still managed to complete the season. EE Horton obviously was hastily subbed for Kearns in one episode (and Kearns was undoubtedly to be the baseball coach in the first episode after Kearns' death). And the writers hastily churned out a few new scripts, or altered old ones for Gordon. And I have to say, the first script, with John unable to find the right cushion, was a pretty good effort. By the way, I agree with other posters that Mr. Mooney was THE role for Gale Gordon. I think I've read Lucy wanted Gale for the crabby banker role, but he was unavailable due to DTM. By the end of the season Charles Lane (who played the role in the 1962 season) was on Lucy's last nerve due to screwing up lines, so she was glad to get Gordon into the banker role for the second season.

04-29-2019, 10:50 AM	#9
schmave Member Forum Regular Join Date: Mar 23, 2013 Location: Reynoldsburg, Ohio Posts: 653	My feeling about the end of Season 3 was that all of those scripts except "John Wilson's Cushion" and "Dennis and the Witch Doctor" were meant for Joseph Kearns and quickly altered for Gale Gordon. I think it's fairly easy to envision Joseph Kearns in those episodes. That's what I've read about the 1962-63 season of Lucy's show as well. Once Dennis the Menace ended, Gale Gordon was free. Or maybe that was planned to be the final season all along? Always wondered about that.

04-29-2019, 10:59 AM	#10
stevea 22 Years On Sitcoms Moderator Forum Legend Join Date: Aug 13, 2003 Location: Indy Posts: 44,178	Both Jay North and Billy Booth (who was in practically every season 4 episode) would have been too old for a fifth season. They probably told Gale G. it was a single season contract. If the show had had extremely high ratings, maybe they could have figured out a bigger role for that kid who played Seymour. They wrote some really funny lines for him, and he had great delivery.

03-16-2020, 04:28 PM	#12
jon22 Member Occasional Poster Join Date: Jul 04, 2003 Location: united states Posts: 5	Since the Dennis character was reaching middle school age, I think that the producers wanted to move the show in a slightly different direction with different story lines. The show still had life in it even after the untimely passing of Joseph Kearns. The John Wilson character was still employed and his career as a writer was used in the story lines throughout the 4th season. Maybe those episodes helped to offset the earlier episodes of the series that centered on the adventures of a seven-year-old Dennis who, in the 4th season, was now at an age were those ideas didn't fit any longer. Joseph Kearns and Gale Gordon were about the same age, but in the show one was retired and one was still working. As for the Eloise character, she was meant to be different than Martha much like John was different than George. She was her own character. I agree with the OP that she was a little bit hard on her husband. I think she was meant to be a little tougher than Martha. Sara Seegar was a wonderful actress and I thought that she did the best that she could under the circumstances of the series. I remember watching the show as child about twenty-five years ago and thought it was very odd that she was suddenly there and Sylvia Field suddenly gone. That was the case in reruns. In real life, three months had passed moving into the 1962-63 season. The show needed a Mr. Wilson and the producers decided to keep Gale Gordon for the 4th season. So, the decision was made to give him a wife and let Sylvia Field go from the series. In one interview, Gloria Henry said that there was some tension with this transition and weren't very nice to Sara Seegar early on. However, the animosity eventually went away. All that said, the 4th season was very interesting, but I thought that the magic was gone. Joseph Kearns and Sylvia Field were missed even though they were hardly mentioned in that season. I still commend the series for moving on with episodes tailored to John and Eloise. It is hard to even imagine Kearns and Field in the 4th season because of many of the story lines that wouldn't have fit their characters well.

03-16-2020, 10:07 PM	#13
schmave Member Forum Regular Join Date: Mar 23, 2013 Location: Reynoldsburg, Ohio Posts: 653	Great post Jon. I started a thread some time back about fourth-season episodes that would have worked with either John or George, and the consensus was that about half would have, maybe a bit less. One thing I missed for ages in the third-season episode "The Club Initiation" was the line where John says to Fred Ferguson about thinking of "bringing my wife and moving into this wonderful town of yours." So right there, with three episodes (including that one) left in Season 3, the idea of Eloise was planted, if not the actual character. I think by then, the show was going to come back for a fourth season and that was a slight hint to viewers that the show would transition to a new Mr. and Mrs. Wilson by the next fall. By the time of "Dennis and the Witch Doctor," that was plainly obvious.

04-03-2020, 07:43 AM	#14
stevea 22 Years On Sitcoms Moderator Forum Legend Join Date: Aug 13, 2003 Location: Indy Posts: 44,178	Another thing they did in the fourth season was to make more use of the Seymour character. The zingers he threw at John were really funny, and I think they had used him minimally with George. I think his first appearance was in the camping episode where George kept tying his shoe, but at that point I don't think he was identified as Seymour yet. Like Billy Booth, I think I read someplace that Robert Pittman had died.

04-03-2020, 10:32 AM	#15
schmave Member Forum Regular Join Date: Mar 23, 2013 Location: Reynoldsburg, Ohio Posts: 653	It was either that episode or the one where Dennis and Mr. Wilson learn to whistle. In that episode, Seymour was walking down the street whistling (obviously dubbed) and Dennis marveled that a kid who was little more than a toddler could whistle so well. He wasn't credited as Seymour but that's how I think of him whenever I see him. [ETA: That scene is airing at this moment on Antenna TV.] Just looked it up and Robert John Pittman died in 1990. He was only 34, which means he was just four when he first appeared in DTM. And IMDB does indicate the whistling episode was his first.