Private Secretary

Television provided a lease on life for the careers of so many players in the second tier in Hollywood. As fewer films were made many had to go to television for work.

One of the luckiest in that regard was Ann Sothern who had series experience of a sort when she starred in the long running Maisie series of films. Sothern found herself a role that perfectly suited her personality, Susie McNamara Private Secretary to theatrical agent Don Porter and all around girl Friday. It was like Maisie Revere had given up the life of a wandering showgirl and took typing and stenography and became a secretary.

Sothern's character has been compared to Lucille Ball, but I think there was a world of difference. Sothern never did harebrained stuff like Lucy Ricardo did. She always zealously guarded the interests of her boss and never had to be rescued from the consequences of a plan. Her's usually worked.

The Ethel Mertz of the story was Ann Tyrell who was the switchboard operator. Tyrell sometimes bordered on the hysterical waiting to see if a Sothern scheme would work. She also had the longest neck I've ever seen, it's one of the things I remember well as a kid seeing this show.

The comic villain was Jesse White as rival bottom feeding agent Cagey Calhoun. As Michael Francis Calhoun was nicknamed 'Cagey' he in turn called her 'Foxy' the only one whoever did. White always thought he was so clever and lost as many times as Wile E. Coyote.

Wit and character were the hallmarks of Private Secretary which would be great if it were revived for the 21st century. It's timeless.

This was a very pleasant sitcom from the fifties which highlights the comedic talents of Ann Sothern. Miss Sothern was beautiful and witty and the series, which was set at a New York talent agency, had a very good supporting cast as well. As Mr. Sands, Susie's boss, we have Don Porter who had a definite chemistry with Miss Sothern. As Violet Praskins we have Ann Tyrell, who is sort of an ersatz Ethel Mertz. The episodes that I have on my DVD are a good cross-section of shows for the series. One of the best has Zasu Pitts as a guest star. This series ended in 1957 after Ann had a fight with producer Jack Chertok over residuals. There was talk of continuing the series with another actress, so the reruns were titled Susie. The following year, Ann Sothern came back with "The Ann Sothern Show" which cast Ann as Katy O'Connor, the assistant manager of the Bartley House hotel. Cast as her boss was Ernest Truex, but by mid-season of it's first year, Don Porter was brought back to play her boss once again. Ann Tyrell was back this time as Olive.

Jessie White, whose role as the sanatorium attendant in the movie "Harvey" is another gem and was later known as The Lonely Repairman in the Maytag commercials, played Cagey Calhoun.

He was frequently called upon by Susie to put into action some hair-brained scheme to get either get her boss into or out of a tight spot.

I seem to remember him referring to Susie "Foxy" with a wink-wink,nudge-nudge interaction. Does anyone remember what his link to the Susie character was? I was surprised to read that he was from Buffalo. He had a wonderful Brooklyn NY accent!

I think the best episode in this series would have to be the "efficiency expert" show, I feel this should be shown to many companies that do way too much "cost cutting" without considering the ramifications!

Ann Sothern & Ann Tyrell were a great team!

In this 50's TV comedy series, the private secretary to talent agent Peter Sands (Don Porter), Susan Camille McNamara (Ann Sothern) goes out of her way to help her boss in the most convoluted schemes. Somehow, she always puts her foot in it; yet in the end, everything turns out fine.

Either a victim of old age or bad memory (possibly the world has changed); I found this series to be straining for laughs.

The DVD volume one contains: "Cat in a Hot Tin File" season 4 episode 15 "Dollars and Sense" season 5 episode 7 "Old Dogs, New Tricks" season 4 episode 13 "That's No Lady, That's an Agent" season 5 episode 11

There are 107 episodes to this series 1953-1957 For some reason they are not in order on the DVDs

If you enjoyed the acting of Don Porter, then you should not miss him in the Bob Hope classic "Bachelor in Paradise" (1961)

The version I watched was distributed by alpha video and was not remastered (it really should have been). The images do not hold up well on today's big screen TV's.