Meet the Family

After the Blondie movie series ended, Arthur Lake was struggling for work. A few years down the line, he helped create this unaired TV pilot with his mother-in-law Marian Davies (so it said in the credits) this hodgepodge of "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet" (in that he put his real-life family in the cast of wife Patricia, and offspring Arthur Jr. and Marian) and his Blondie movie series (in that he does his familiar mannerisms and has a flustered boss, played in voice only on the intercom by Hanley Stafford who played Mr. Dithers in the radio version). There's also a grandpa played by Walter Catlett. In this only ep, Lake has to sell the surfboards he mistakenly ordered (he actually said surf balls but the connection wasn't good at the time). How he does it forms the climax of the plot. Anwsay, this was pretty amusing but not altogether hilarious and the laugh track does get a bit annoying. Nice seeing Lake perform with his family members. The former Patricia Van Cleve has an interesting background: She's the daughter of William Randolph Hearst and his mistress Marian Davies but that wasn't revealed until her death on October 3, 1993. Oh, and previous Blondie movie player Hans Conreid-from Blondie's Blessed Event-plays someone interested in Lake's surfboards.

"Meet the Family" is a rather poor sitcom that, not surprisingly, was never sold to the networks. Despite this there are two surprising things about it. First, it's filmed in color...something very unusual for the mid-1950s. Second, Arthur Lake had his real life family appear on this pilot episode. What makes this really interesting is that his wife, Patricia Lake, was the illegitimate daughter of Marion Davies and William Randolph Hearst! As for the show, however, it's really a dud.

Arthur Lake plays a guy who is pretty much a klutzy moron like he often played in the "Blondie and Dagwood" films...but eve a bit stupider. The plot here finds Arthur accidentally buying a gross of surf boards for the sporting goods company and the boss screaming at him about what a dunder-head he is for doing this. So the rest of the show consists on him trying to sell the boards to Senor Martinez...horribly played by Hans Conreid. In fact, the acting throughout this show was terrible and it also lacked subtlety or imagination. It features plenty of goofy sound effects, tons of canned laughter and hardly a real laugh overall. A dopey show with little to recommend it.