The Unshakeables: John Monroe Welcomes You Into His World

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http://comforttv.blogspot.com/2023/0...-welcomes.html

At 7:30 pm on September 15, viewers first met John Monroe (William Windom), as he strolled onto their screens in front of a crudely drawn black-and-white illustration of his Connecticut home. He introduces himself as a cartoonist and writer for The Manhattanite, a magazine modeled after the sophisticated urban snobbery of The New Yorker, where many of Thurber’s stories and illustrations appeared.

John is in no hurry to arrive home. “I don’t get along with any of them,” he says of his wife Ellen (Joan Hotchkis) and young daughter, Lydia (Lisa Gerritsen). Pausing at the front door he resigns himself to his fate: “I suppose I might as well go in – I don’t have enough money for a motel.”

The episode is appropriately titled “Man Against the World.”

Heady stuff for the time, and not just in its freewheeling mix of animation and live action that still seems innovative 50 years later. But apparently viewers were not yet ready for such a unique presentation. Maybe they turned it off after that opening scene, wondering why anyone would want to spend the next 30 minutes listening to a gloomy curmudgeon. Or maybe they just preferred to stick with Gunsmoke on CBS. Even now, after many lesser one-season-and-out shows have found a new audience on DVD, My World and Welcome To It remains out of circulation.

The first audience to embrace the series consisted of those who worked in the television industry, and understood how rare it was for something truly different to break into a prime time schedule. They recognized a kindred spirit in John Monroe, and the series built around him by writer-director Melville Shavelson. It was a celebration of the artist’s creativity, and an acknowledgement of the sacrifices creators make to bring something special into the world.