Why Dorothy Loudon Flopped while Charlotte Rae Succeeded as Den Mothers in sitcom TV.

[TMC]

Two sitcoms about a middle-aged woman who served as a sort of den mother for a quartet of rambunctious boarding school girls debuted in 1979.

The Facts of Life starred Charlotte Rae & Dorothy starred Dorothy Loudon as teacher / surrogate mother figure. Both Rae and Dorothy Loudon were Broadway veterans – they knew each other, had vied for some of the same roles.

CBS executives saw in Annie and thought she would be PERFECT for a TV sitcom about a den mother.

What no one had told CBS was something that the company of Annie had discovered very quickly: that Loudon, in the words of the show’s composer Charles Strouse, “really, genuinely, sincerely, hated children . . . . She was very ill-natured, in that respect.” Loudon would shoo away not only the many little girls in the show’s cast but also the dog, Sandy, whom she also despised. Doubtless she was less than thrilled that, in her bid for more widespread recognition, the baggage of Annie made youngsters an unavoidable part of the package.

While Loudon’s pedophobia might have been perfect for the larger-than-life hostility of Miss Hannigan, it couldn’t work for a den-mother sister to Mrs. Garrett. “Dorothy really didn’t like the kids, I don’t think,” director Alan Shayne said. “And although she was at war with the kids, you had to feel that she also loved them. That didn’t really work. Dotty was a tough lady, you know. She had a lot of hostility.” Loudon’s husband, a television arranger and composer named Norman Paris, had died unexpectedly just six weeks after she won the Tony for Annie, upending her personal life just as she reached her professional peak.

Kip Gilman also observed Loudon’s discomfort around her young co-stars, and thought that Linda Manz (the "Jo" character in Dorothy) – a casting director’s off-the-streets discovery whose experience up to that point had been limited to Terrence Malick’s highly idiosyncratic style of moviemaking – was especially ill-at-ease with the demands of performing comedic material in front of a live audience. Gilman suggested that, as a consequence of all that, the other three episodes may have been altered to reduce the girls’ roles and build up the screen time of the (still underdeveloped) faculty characters.

See link for more https://classictvhistory.wordpress.c...11/05/dorothy/

[Gemini_89]

There was no "Tootie"!! No color whatsoever! LOL.

['80sSitcoms]

Wow, I've never even heard of Dorothy, lol.

[RetroGuy2000]

Originally Posted by '80sSitcoms

Wow, I've never even heard of Dorothy, lol.

Few people have: the show only ran for four episodes, and was a pretty blatant rip-off of The Facts of Life.* Set at an all-girls' boarding school, specifically in the dorm, the show featured four girls, a headmaster, two other faculty members, and a redheaded star (Dorothy Loudon) who was to be the girls' mentor.

Dorothy Loudon was a stage performer whose talents were somewhat limited to musical numbers, hence the piano in the dorm common room, which was used for musical numbers. She also reputedly hated working with children.

The scripts were built around Dorothy's musical numbers, rather than anything of substance, and viewers quickly tuned out.


*Although CBS's Dorothy debuted slightly before The Facts of Life, NBC had aired the backdoor pilot months earlier.

[RetroGuy2000]

Originally Posted by Gemini_89

There was no "Tootie"!! No color whatsoever! LOL.

No Tootie and no Blair, either. This is why casting on FOL was so much better: the girls on Dorothy, except for a "Jo"-like character, were completely interchangeable. Eve Brandstein deserves sooooo much credit for the success of FOL, as the girls she cast weren't interchangeable. Charlotte, too, deserves props for insisting on bringing in Mindy.

['80sSitcoms]

Oh wow! Episode 3 was written by Rick Hawkins and Liz Sage! Two powerhouses behind Mama's Family!

[RetroGuy2000]

After watching a couple of episodes, I can see why this show never attracted an audience: the girls feel interchangeable, the scripts are rough, and Ms. Loudon is hamming it up in many scenes. It's hard to imagine why this was ever green-lit, except possibly as a way for CBS to forestall any success FOL might have had, over on NBC, with their own FOL clone.

[kadeliah]

Originally Posted by '80sSitcoms

Oh wow! Episode 3 was written by Rick Hawkins and Liz Sage! Two powerhouses behind Mama's Family!

That’s an interesting connection to FOL. Weren’t both Mama’s Family and Facts of life both created by Jenna McMahon & Dick Clair? Now I’m curious on the timeline of it all. Seems the networks really were trying to provide direct competition between the 2 shows.

['80sSitcoms]

Originally Posted by kadeliah

That’s interesting connection to FOL. Weren’t both Mama’s Family and Facts of life both created by Jenna McMahon & Dick Clair? Now I’m curious on the timeline of it all. Seems the networks really were trying to provide direct competition between the 2 shows.

Well, Dick & Jenna created the "Family" sketches on The Carol Burnett Show in 1974. Since Mama's Family used some of those characters, they had to credit Dick & Jenna as the creators of those characters, in essence creating the series, and they created new characters around Mama to write the first episode, "Vint and the Kids Move In".

The FOL connection with Dick & Jenna has always been a quiet, mysterious little "Easter egg" for me. I don't recall really ever having heard anything about how they created it.

---UPDATE---

Ahh, just as I suspected...they were involved in writing the DS backdoor pilot for FOL, "The Girls' School", with Howard Leeds & Ben Starr. Yet by the time FOL went to series, yes, Dick & Jenna are listed as "creators". Perhaps the 4 GS writers agreed that D&J would get "creator" credit, while Howard & Ben got "developer" credit (and Jerry Mayer was also a producer).

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[kadeliah]

Originally Posted by '80sSitcoms

Well, Dick & Jenna created the "Family" sketches on The Carol Burnett Show in 1974. Since Mama's Family used some of those characters, they had to credit Dick & Jenna as the creators of those characters, in essence creating the series, and they created new characters around Mama to write the first episode, "Vint and the Kids Move In".

The FOL connection with Dick & Jenna has always been a quiet, mysterious little "Easter egg" for me. I don't recall really ever having heard anything about how they created it.

---UPDATE---

Ahh, just as I suspected...they were involved in writing the DS backdoor pilot for FOL, "The Girls' School", with Howard Leeds & Ben Starr. Yet by the time FOL went to series, yes, Dick & Jenna are listed as "creators". Perhaps the 4 GS writers agreed that D&J would get "creator" credit, while Howard & Ben got "developer" credit (and Jerry Mayer was also a producer).

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Ohhh! See, I’m glad you replied! I never really understood the difference between the creator and developer and what certain title credits meant. I suppose they just came up with the concept of the show as perhaps the head writers for the pilot? I assume that means they got paid for every episode of the show thereafter. Not a bad deal if so. I remember seeing their names on the Carol Burnett show as well... I think as writers.

['80sSitcoms]

Originally Posted by kadeliah

Ohhh! See, I’m glad you replied! I never really understood the difference between the creator and developer and what certain title credits meant. I suppose they just came up with the concept of the show as perhaps the head writers for the pilot? I assume that means they got paid for every episode of the show thereafter. Not a bad deal if so. I remember seeing their names on the Carol Burnett show as well... I think as writers.

Yeah, I'm guessing that as well. And perhaps Dick & Jenna created more of the bare concept, while Howard & Ben developed the characters and premise in detail.

Yes, Dick & Jenna were writers on Carol's show. They wrote Mama and Eunice (and Ed and Philip) in a "Family" sketch that was meant to be just a one-time thing. They wrote it from both Dick & Jenna hating their mothers! (an attitude Mrs. Garrett would not condone, lol) But then Dick & Jenna hated what Carol did to the sketch, and to their characters, and threw a fit---but it was Carol's show, and she did it how she wanted it. And after that, the audience couldn't get enough of it, and bombarded the studio with fan mail! So, as Carol and Vicki say, after what poor Dick & Jenna thought was a one-time "exorcism" out of mother hatred, they then had to write for these characters again and again and again, lol.

[RetroGuy2000]

Originally Posted by kadeliah

Weren’t both Mama’s Family and Facts of life both created by Jenna McMahon & Dick Clair?

That is the official story. However, in Charlotte's later years, she disputed that the show was created by McMahon and Clair. She stated that a writer friend of hers came up with the idea of the girls' school, etc., but that she didn't feel secure enough to challenge the claim.

['80sSitcoms]

Originally Posted by RetroGuy2000

That is the official story. However, in Charlotte's later years, she disputed that the show was created by McMahon and Clair. She stated that a writer friend of hers came up with the idea of the girls' school, etc., but that she didn't feel secure enough to challenge the claim.

Oh yeah, that...well, that wasn't coming up with "FOL" per se, but a very similar idea before FOL (it was for a different show). Dick & Jenna could have created the idea for the episode without knowing about it. Or, they could have been given the assignment to create such a show, and did, and then it was handed off to the developers.

[RetroGuy2000]

Originally Posted by '80sSitcoms

Oh yeah, that...well, that wasn't coming up with "FOL" per se, but a very similar idea before FOL (it was for a different show). Dick & Jenna could have created the idea for the episode without knowing about it. Or, they could have been given the assignment to create such a show, and did, and then it was handed off to the developers.

That's not at all the impression I got from Charlotte's Foundation Interview, where she stated her friend came up with the idea and pitched it to Tandem Productions, who then used it without credit to him. That part of the interview starts at 13:20.

['80sSitcoms]

Well I just now checked the pages I kept from Charlotte's book, and during the part about Rowland she says that Al Burton was the creator of FOL. So now I don't know how the hell Dick & Jenna wound up credited as creators. (hey, if Mrs. Garrett can elicit a "damn", I can say a "hell", lol)