Süß, aber ein bißchen verrückt

Ann Marie (Marlo Thomas, Danny Thomas' daughter in case you've never heard) is a single lady living in Manhattan. Her ambition is to make it as an actress on Broadway but between small gigs on children's television, commercials and experimental theater, she must work other jobs. These include news stand salesclerk (where she meets someone special), waitress, door-to-door shoe hawker, and more. On one of her first days in NYC, she meets Don Hollinger (Ted Bessell) and its an auspicious beginning. They both want to buy the same rolltop desk for sale in the same building and Don interrupts a commercial Ann is shooting after hours. But, in short order, they go to dinner. Pretty soon, they are stepping out steadily and, after a disastrous picnic, meet Ann's folks. While Ann's mother (Rosemary DeCamp) is loving and kind, Ann's father, Lew (Lew Parker, hilarious) is a prickly restaurateur. He, Ann, and Don often clash on many topics. Also, Ann is on very friendly terms with the couple across the hall, Judy and Leon, and Don's co-workers include Bernie (Bernie Kopell) before he went to the Love Boat. By the fifth season, will Ann and Don finally tie the knot? This will always be one of my favorite shows from childhood. First, it was and is very funny, with Thomas exhibiting very comedic talents as zany Ann. Bessell is a perfect foil and Parker is a delight, too. Secondly, Ann was a single lady decorating her own apartment, pursuing her own dreams, choosing her own friends and more. Yes, most gals like me wanted to get married AT SOME POINT but, first, we wanted to live the good life by our own merits! Naturally, Ann's costumes are terrific, her hairstyle was one we tried to copy, and her tastes became our tastes. Dear Marlo Thomas, as Ann's alter ego, YOU WILL ALWAYS BE A HEROINE TO ME. After all, you were one of the first to show women everywhere that women's goals and ambitions MATTERED!

... or if not that, Ted Bessell as one of the most sexually frustrated men of 1960's New York City. If the Mary Tyler Moore show had first aired in 1966 instead of 1970, it would have been this show. American culture changed that quickly. Marlo Thomas plays a young woman, Ann Marie, from the village of Brewster, New York who comes to the big city to become an actress, which is a tough career to break into, thus she takes a series of quirky jobs to get by which often become the central theme of certain episodes. In the very first episode she meets Donald (Ted Bessell), a writer for a magazine, and they are a couple for the next five years, a couple that - apparently - never has sex.

Back home, Ann's dad (Lew Parker) never quite trusts Donald's intentions with his daughter, and believes that girls should live at home until married. Thus a mainstay of the show is dad bursting in on Ann and Donald, either incidentally or intentionally, only to find them in what appears to be a compromising position (Ah ha! I've got him!) that in the end has a logical and platonic explanation.

If you didn't live through this period in history, you might think of the 1960's and believe it was nothing but an endless parade of hippies, pot smoking, and student/police confrontations over the Vietnam War. The fact is, most people in 1960's America were still living in the 1950's at the time, and women were still largely accepted only in traditional professions - teaching, nursing, secretarial work, acting - you know, jobs that involve either serving men or children. So That Girl was about as far as network TV could go with this topic - a young woman living in her own apartment pursuing a career in ANYTHING in New York City - without raising middle class eyebrows.

It was bright, funny, and innocent, sometimes to the point of being naive, but I'll always look back fondly on "That Girl" of my youth.

I've been looking for a certain episode, #8, Little Auction Annie for ages. I'm probably the world's biggest That Girl fan and would love to see it on TV Land, instead of some of the so-so shows they've got on now! Any other That Girl fans out there: we should start a campaign to get TV Land to put on That Girl!

I have seen some of the DVD's out with select That Girl shows on....I'd love to see a season-by-season release of all of the shows, however. Anyone know if that is out yet? Or does anyone have episode #8 on VHS or DVD? I love trivia about the show and would play That Girl trivia with anyone interested!

To many of us born in the fifties and becoming teen-age girls by the mid-late 60's, THAT GIRL was THE show to tune in to and see the hair and fashions and enjoy the comedy. My very favorite episode is when Donald tries to teach Ann to drive his manual (stick) shift car!!! The chemistry between the two actors is just great. Marlo Thomas is adorable in this series. The show was well casted and polished. My best friend in the 60's and I never missed an episode on Tuesday nights and now they are available on wonderful DVDs to enjoy again and again. Hollywood did not spoil Marlo, as she went on to author several wonderful books and of course, carry on her father's work for St.Jude Hospital for the children. She is to be admired.

I wonder how many preteen boys had a crush on Marlo Thomas like I did during the run of this program. She was soooo beautiful, and Ted Bessell seemed like an awfully lucky guy to me, except that he had to live in constant fear of Ann Marie's father, which was realistic enough as Mr. Marie was rather menacing, which by the time the series ended I realized was because he considered the Donald Hollister character a threat to his daughter's virginity. (Wonder how much different, if any, Danny Thomas was about that issue in real life?) In retrospect, this show requires suspension of disbelief even more than most sitcoms, as Ann, a supposedly struggling actress, had a better apartment and nicer clothes than many steadily-employed New Yorkers could have possibly have afforded, then or now. It's a shame that the show only went as far as Donald's bachelor party; it would seem to have been better if they had actually shown the wedding with the implication that "they all lived happily ever after" and that this show, after all really was a modern fairy tale. A fun aspect of the show was seeing how they were going to work the words "that girl" into the opening sequence.