Our Miss Brooks

The first thing you notice is the voice. Even before you look at the picture you notice the voice. Eve Arden started off as a showgirl but soon learned that it was her voice and aggressive delivery that would make her a star -- and it did. Like many, she tried to translate her talent into TV ... and succeeded. Easily the template for every high school TV series and movie that followed, brimming with stars (Gale Gordon, Richard Crenna). Gordon would later appear as a regular in several iterations of the Lucy show (each progressively worse than the last) and Crenna became a major TV star. No coincidence that Eve was brought out of mothballs years later to play her old character in GREASE. Nominated for awards .. and won several. Superb way to remember an era gone by.

To me this is the funniest TV sitcom ever made. Its type of humor is absolutely unique and can't be found anywhere else, a refined type of camp that produces a ticklish bitter-sweet inner chuckle. One wonders how much Eve Arden had to do with it. The show is unthinkable without her. In other roles she exhibits the same trademark worldweariness. Half the time she seems to be talking to herself, surrounded as she is, by a mass of clueless, shallow, though likable humanity. Miss Brooks inhabits a kind of solipsistic universe in which she seems to be the only one really alive. Yet the deadness of others seems to drag her down to a point where she is just going through the motions of living. Depression was never funnier. All other characters are adorable, particularly the landlady.

"Our Miss Brooks" was one of the first television programs to feature an independent, sharp, strong, beautiful woman who planned on a career and loved her career as a teacher. Eve Arden was a consummate comedienne who took the romantic comedy heroine from 1930's romantic comedy and combined her with a career woman in her portrayal of Connie Brooks. Eve Arden's portrayal pioneered shows starring actresses in roles as bright, career-minded women who were not defined by husbands nor boyfriends.

"Our Miss Brooks" featured one of the most brilliant casts of any television comedy. They played character who were only slight exaggerations of real people found in any American high school of the 1950's. Gale Gordon as pompous, arrogant Principal Osgood Conklin displayed Gordon's talents that made him a star character actor on television. The nerdy characters portrayed by Richard Crenna and Leonard Smith are as hilarious and believable today as they were in the 1950's. Jane Morgan as the befuddled Mrs. Davis was a great foil for Eve Arden. It is singular that so many characters serve as comic foils for the star of a show. "Our Miss Brooks" led the way. The combination of character writing, slapstick, and witty, sophisticated lines has never been equalled. Eve Arden's artistry was never so artfully displayed as it was in "Our Miss Brooks". When one realizes that, for several years, original scripts of "Our Miss Brooks" were written for concurrent radio and television versions of the show, it is astounding the consistent excellent level of script quality that the show's writers were able to produce.

One of the highlights of American television!

I've seen a good many episodes of Our Miss Brooks and they are excellent, a not so everyday school with an English teacher and her strong crush on the bashful biology teacher Mr. Boynton. My favorite was Mr. Conklin, the crusty no nonsense Pricipal who always clashed with Miss Brooks as well as the nerdy Walter Denton who had a crush on Conklin's daughter, Harriet. But, in the 4th season the show show was not as good at all because Miss Brooks transfers to a private school along with Mr. Conklin who also gets a job there as principal and so then the show just just kind of sunk. I never liked it as well. The 1st 3 seasons were the best when the cast was at Madison High school. Those are the episodes worth watching, after that the 4th season isn't worth seeing because it just wasn't as funny.

OUR MISS BROOKS was one of the funniest shows on radio and TV, and, amazingly, both the radio and TV show hold up well even today. In an item above, it is mentioned that the show was "one camera." It was not. It was filmed the same way that I LOVE LUCY was, and that is, with three-cameras and a "live" studio audience. I believe the poster above was thinking of the movie version, which was nothing like the TV show, in that there was little interaction with the students. There are bootlegged collections of the series available on DVD, obviously taped on someone's VCR when they were re-run somewhere or other, and the quality is poor, but they're better than nothing at all. Try to avoid collections that have 4th season episodes when Connie moved from Madison High to a private school.