Arnie

Elaine Shore was the best surprise of the show. Her comic timing working with Arnie as Felicia, his secretary, made every office scene in that show shine. She put Arnie in his place and added some spunk each time she appeared on screen. The first episode provided a clue about how she would "handle" Arnie by attempting to empty his briefcase while Arnie was embarrassed to show that the contents were simply a brick. From that point on, the show shined in the office and tended to wane in the home scenes. Every time Elaine came on the screen, Tom Pedi, Roger Bowen, Herb Voland, and Herschel Bernardi had a special camaraderie that kept the momentum.

I've never met a contemporary in the States who even remembers this show. I find that amazing and sad. I lived in Brussels from '67-'72. While we also got a couple BBC shows, my family's options for American TV were limited to 2-3 shows a week.

Over the five years we lived in Brussels, I only recall "Wonderful World of Disney", "Doctari", "I Love Lucy", "Voyage to The Bottom of the Sea" and "Arnie".

Of them all, only "Arnie" became a family viewing event. Of course, due to the dearth of options, we would usually all watch each of the above shows, "Arnie" was the one that the whole family paid attention to, and laughed at together. Mr. Majors stole that show, in our opinion.

It's been well over 32 years since I saw this show. I do not remember this series being a really big hit though it made it through a few seasons. It involved a blue collar worker who got moved up to a white collar position. It was funny and it was one of the first sitcoms to successfully cast a minority member in a leading role, long before the Jeffersons "moved on up" to their own show. The one episode I remember is when Arnie's boss announced that he wanted Arnie to throw a surprise birthday party for him. He also specified that it had to be a surprise party, or else, since the boss simply loved surprise parties. How was he supposed to throw a surprise party for his boss when his boss already knew about it in advance, being that he was the one who ordered Arnie to throw the party for him in the first place? Such dilemmas were a part of Arnie's life. I sure would like to see this show again.

I am not sure what happened to this show. Herschel Bernardi was great as Arnie, the main character. Sue Ann Langdon was excellent as his wife. Roger Bowen (Col Henry Blake of the movie MASH) was excellent as Arnies boss.

The premise was of a blue collar moving up to white collar job based upon his on the job experience & life knowledge. This is the way it used to be done before over priced college degrees, brown nosing & networking replaced this. It is a good premise.

For some reason, CBS pulled the plug on it the second season. I am not sure that they didn't cause it problems by moving the shows time slot too. For some reason, even though it's first season made a big splash, the show did not get what it needed for a long run.

This is too bad, but it might not have kept going long anyways. The real world by then had already gone to the brown nosing method. It is possible that the execs at CBS were afraid they'd bring back fairness to the workplace so they canned it.

The show came on in 1970 which was when CBS was taking extremely popular top 10 rated programs & canceling them to improve their "image".

I was 10 when this premiered and watched it regularly. The comment here about Arnie being moved or pre-empted because of political coverage jogged my mind a bit. Remember when that political stuff was on all the network channels and there was nothing else to watch? A nightmare for a kid in 1970. I remember Arnie being a good family show and probably had a crush on Sue Ann Langdon and didn't know it. (As I was 10!) But she was a doll. I remember Charles Nelson Reilly, too. I can't recall Arnie *ever* being shown in reruns. Come on SHOUT FACTORY! Give us a box set! The thing I was most enthused about was that my school teacher told us that Herschel Bernardi was the voice of CHARLIE THE TUNA! So we must have discussed it in class for some reason! I always watched Arnie with that in mind.