My Hero

[lilhave]

In 1952 Cummings starred in a 33 episode series, My Hero. Just got it in and watched two episodes. Kinda silly but cute.

Harvey

[TV Knowledge Fan]

...that was Bob Cummings' first TV series...and his first attempt at a situation comedy. I beileve he was trying to become the male equivalent of Lucille Ball.
And why not? He was also represented by her agent, Don Sharpe, who put this TV package together...and in the unaired pilot episode that sold the series, Bob's character's name was also "Don Sharpe"- it became "Robert S. Beanblossom" in the actual series (cute, huh?). This show was the by-product of "I LOVE LUCY" being such a huge success as a filmed sitcom...suddenly, in 1952, every network wanted their own "Lucy" [NBC already corralled Joan Davis for "I MARRIED JOAN" at the same time "MY HERO" debuted, but her show was more successful, for obvious reasons]...but this one had its roots in the traditional slapstick "two-reel"
theatrical comedy short, where things often didn't quite make much sense
and everyone got to make fools of themselves in frantic gestures and plots.
Example: while his boss, Mr. Thackery, is out of the office, Bob tries to impress a visiting official into thinking the real estate business he works for is "busy, busy, busy" and a big success...only the ruse works TOO well...and for the WRONG official- an IRS agent!!!. Then, after Bob imagines what his boss might do to him when he finds out (including an absurd vision of Bob being cooked in a cannibal's pot, his boss cackling away in native dress), and the "moment of truth", Julie [the faithful secretary and Bob's somewhat girlfriend] convinces Bob and his boss to make the next IRS agent think the business is TERRIBLE {AGENT: "I haven't seen anything like this since the Depression ended.." BOB: "You mean it's OVER??" THACKERY: "You see, if we had a nickel to buy a newspaper, we'd KNOW about these things!!"}....only the man happens to be from the government's Farm Bureau, whom Mr. Thackery was hoping to do BIG business with!!! Ah, but it all ends happily.....

Somehow, Cummings and Sharpe manged to sell this series to NBC and Philip Morris/Dunhill (their sponsor), and it was on Saturday nights at 7:30pm(et) in the 1952-'53 season. It went off the air because of competition from CBS' "BEAT THE CLOCK".....but "MY HERO", even though only 33 episodes were produced, became a success in syndication (through Official Films) over the next decade!!! It faded when more sitcoms became available in syndication in the early '60s, and the advent of color TV, later in the decade, made black & white series virtually obsolete to most stations.

[lilhave]

Originally Posted by TV Knowledge Fan

...that was Bob Cummings' first TV series...and his first attempt at a situation comedy. I beileve he was trying to become the male equivalent of Lucille Ball.
And why not? He was also represented by her agent, Don Sharpe, who put this TV package together...and in the unaired pilot episode that sold the series, Bob's character's name was also "Don Sharpe"- it became "Robert S. Beanblossom" in the actual series (cute, huh?). This show was the by-product of "I LOVE LUCY" being such a huge success as a filmed sitcom...suddenly, in 1952, every network wanted their own "Lucy" [NBC already corralled Joan Davis for "I MARRIED JOAN" at the same time "MY HERO" debuted, but her show was more successful, for obvious reasons]...but this one had its roots in the traditional slapstick "two-reel"
theatrical comedy short, where things often didn't quite make much sense
and everyone got to make fools of themselves in frantic gestures and plots.
Example: while his boss, Mr. Thackery, is out of the office, Bob tries to impress a visiting official into thinking the real estate business he works for is "busy, busy, busy" and a big success...only the ruse works TOO well...and for the WRONG official- an IRS agent!!!. Then, after Bob imagines what his boss might do to him when he finds out (including an absurd vision of Bob being cooked in a cannibal's pot, his boss cackling away in native dress), and the "moment of truth", Julie [the faithful secretary and Bob's somewhat girlfriend] convinces Bob and his boss to make the next IRS agent think the business is TERRIBLE {AGENT: "I haven't seen anything like this since the Depression ended.." BOB: "You mean it's OVER??" THACKERY: "You see, if we had a nickel to buy a newspaper, we'd KNOW about these things!!"}....only the man happens to be from the government's Farm Bureau, whom Mr. Thackery was hoping to do BIG business with!!! Ah, but it all ends happily.....

Somehow, Cummings and Sharpe manged to sell this series to NBC and Philip Morris/Dunhill (their sponsor), and it was on Saturday nights at 7:30pm(et) in the 1952-'53 season. It went off the air because of competition from CBS' "BEAT THE CLOCK".....but "MY HERO", even though only 33 episodes were produced, became a success in syndication (through Official Films) over the next decade!!! It faded when more sitcoms became available in syndication in the early '60s, and the advent of color TV, later in the decade, made black & white series virtually obsolete to most stations.

Funny you mention Beat the Clock, haven't thought of that show in years. Can remember it like it was yesterday, with Bud Collyer the host and Roxanne, the cute one helping with the commercials, "with blue dots for sure shots". Sylvania the sponsor. Bud was Superman on radio and I grew up with him. Never wanted his name in the credits and never had a picture taken of himself. Wanted the kids to think of him as Superman and not as a thin man, with black horned rimmed glasses and a bow tie. Still listen to some of the Superman radio shows. Some years back before he passed on I met Jackson Beck at a old time radio convention. He of the booming voice, "look up in the sky, it's a bird----" Very few old tme radio stars left. At a convention last year there was a Lone Ranger episode recreated. The opening credits were spoken by Fred Foy, now in his 80's. Brought chills to me. TV of today is crap, all I watch is the old shows that have been preserved. Last night as my wife watched American Idol, I watched three episodes of Andy's Gang, with Andy Devine and the Buster Brown gang.

Harvey

[Cincy Guy]

In mentioning "Beat The Clock" and its sponsor, Sylvania, it might be also interesting to remember the television sets manufactured by Sylvania. Those were the TV's that had the "Halo Light" feature. Commercials about those sets were shown on "Beat The Clock". "Halo Light" involved the area around the screen of the television producing a glow. The feeling was that watching TV in a darkened room (maybe that was done more in the 1950's) caused a strain on a person's eyes. The "Halo Light" surrounding the TV screen was said to help avoid that. I wonder if there are any Sylvania TV sets with "Halo Light" still around?

[TV Knowledge Fan]

...all of the "jackpot" prizes the couples won (if they managed to beat the $100, $200 and $300 "clocks" [stunts]) were "top of the line" Sylvania TV sets (BERN BENNETT: "Congratulations, Mr. and Mrs. {Whomever}- you've just won SYLVANIA'S JACKPOT PRIZE!!").

I'm not aware of any Sylvania models (with "Halo Light") still in operation these days...


As for "MY HERO", NBC moved it to 8pm(et) on Saturdays in June 1953...just in time to see it trounced in the ratings {again} by "THE JACKIE GLEASON SHOW" on CBS, and by his summer replacement, "THE LARRY STORCH SHOW", before they finally cancelled it that August.

[jehobden]

I remember seeing a listing for "My Hero" in TV Guide on a small UHF independent station out of Crossville, TN, in the early 1980s. I never saw this station, but I imagine that the show was cheap to rerun, so it was affordable for the station.

[TV Knowledge Fan]

...that "MY HERO" had fallen into "public domain"- the copyright on the entire series wasn't renewed in 1980-'81, so anyone could show those episodes, like that UHF station in Crossville, Tn. I remember a small New Jersey cable network, CTN (Cable Television Network), showing "MY HERO" late at night during 1984-'85.

[Mark The Shark]

Both My Hero and Love That Bob were running in Chicago in the late 1970s. I wonder who the distributor was by then. We had a station (WFLD-TV Channel 32, now a Fox affiliate) and for a few summers (1976-78) they had a programming block called "50s Comedy Festival" -- by the time I watched it in the summer of 1978 it was called "3rd Annual Festival Of Television." This was a packaged lineup with different series each weeknight, with videotaped wraparound intros by an actor named Terry McGovern. The 1978 lineup (the one I saw pretty regularly, and also the last time they did it) had Jack Benny and My Hero on Mondays, Topper and (I think) The Gale Storm Show on Tuesdays, Love That Bob and How To Marry A Millionaire on Wednesdays, and on Thursdays and Fridays I don't remember the exact schedule but it was some combination of The People's Choice, Bachelor Father, December Bride and The Great Gildersleeve. The prior two years they had (IIRC) some of the same shows and some different ones. I get the impression this was something carried on all the group of stations owned at the time by Kaiser Broadcasting/Field Communications -- I think they had a group of five stations. The weird thing is, they had a different lineup of shows every weeknight, but then after the whole thing was over, and they had run the videotaped closing with Terry McGovern saying good night and reviewing all the shows in the lineup, then our local station ran The Three Stooges (Monday through Friday) and promoted it as part of the "Festival Of Television" (even though it clearly was not). (The Stooges are the reason I started watching this and got to see these shows, but they were added to the lineup in mid-summer, replacing Buck Rogers, which I think was also something thrown in at the local level and not "really" a part of the lineup.) I remember the Stooges shorts shown were almost all from the 1950s, so almost none with Curly. I'm guessing this was in keeping with the 1950s theme for the lineup, even though when the Stooge shorts were first released to television in 1958, they were all pre-1948 shorts.

Anyway, just throwing this out there because I remember it. So a lot of these shows were still available to local TV by the late 1970s. I don't think TV stations generally went the "public domain" route until a little later than that, although I could be wrong.

[paterd]

I bought the DVD's of My Hero because I had never heard of it and I love Bob Cummings. The picture quality of the shows is poor, if I had known that, would never have bought them. Will probably never watch them again.