Good Morning World

GOOD MORNING WORLD is a mid-60s hybrid of the Occupational Sitcom and the Domestic Sitcom. They took as their format the classic "Dick Van Dyke Show" mix of 50% Rob Petrie's home life and 50% Rob Petrie's work as a TV gag writer.

In this case, the single protagonist becomes two men and the workplace shifts from TV to radio, but otherwise things are fairly familiar. Richard Deacon's fussy producer was replaced by Billy DeWolfe's fussy station manager.

The main change was that by going with two men, the show was able to do both happily married plots and bachelor dating plots. In the latter case, dating involved newcomer Goldie Hawn, doing an early version of the ditsy character she later developed for LAUGH-IN.

Like most sitcoms, individual episodes' plots are long-forgotten aside from an occasional story that stuck in the memory for some reason. In the case of GOOD MORNING WORLD, it was the "Nude Ranch" episode. The guys had been sent to do an overnight remote broadcast from a "dude ranch." But when they got there, they discovered to their horror they were at a NUDE ranch. This being the still-uptight age of sitcoms, the humor was limited to the guys' nervousness at being around nude people (who were of course mostly off-camera aside from some above-the-waist shots on a couple men). The guys do their first show and retreat to their room, dreading the fact they are to be guests of honor at dinner that night. They decide they have to appear.... The next scene shows them bare-chested as they sit in the still-empty dining room. They hear the sounds of the ranch guests approaching.... And see that everyone is fully dressed. The nudists explain "We always dress for dinner!" but thank the guys for their thoughtfulness in appearing nude. The guys admit they chickened out and stand up, revealing large towels firmly in place.

For anyone wondering what The Dick Van Dyke Show would have been like in color, here you go. Another reviewer said it was similar to Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm, and that's a good analogy. The biggest difference is Seinfeld was tailored for network broadcast, while CYE found its niche on cable. Unfortunately for Good Morning World, there was no cable in 1968. Coupled with a second-tier group of actors and that TDVDS had expended the audience for the show's premise, Good Morning World was destined to fail.

Honestly, what's really surprising (and actually rather laudable) was how the writers for GMW managed to come up with new ideas for scripts (lame as they might have been) rather than taking the easy way out and just recycling old TDVDS ideas.

But, really, when watching GMW, you have to imagine the DVDS actors, plus the sets being in B&W, and you quickly realize that there's not a lot of difference between the two. The sad fact was that TDVDS' time had simply passed and no one was interested in a color version with different actors.

The 26 half-hour episodes of the situation comedy "Good Morning World" were originally broadcast by CBS during its 1967-68 season. Many of those who tuned in to see the premiere of "Laugh-In" in the fall of 1968 did so to see Goldie Hawn who had already developed a cult following from playing the Lewis' ditzy neighbor Sandy Kramer on "Good Morning World".

Dave and Linda Lewis were a married couple played by Joby Baker and Julie Parrish much in the vein of the Petrie's from "The Dick Van Dyke Show". Not a big surprise as both shows were produced and developed by Carl Reiner and Sheldon Leonard. Dave was also coupled with bachelor Larry Clarke (Ronnie Schell who viewers already knew as Gomer Pyle's friend Duke Slater) as an early-morning drive time Los Angeles radio DJ team known as (big surprise) "Lewis and Clarke". Think 1960's "WKRP" with funny voices, silly chatter, and general on-air antics between songs and commercials.

The show followed the home and office lives of this "sort of" wacky pair; mixing elements of their personal lives in with bits involving their overbearing boss, station manager Roland B. Hutton (Billy DeWolfe).

The series was a few years ahead of its time and the basic formula would be more successful a few years later as "The Mary Tyler Moore Show". MTM's famous "Teddy Awards" was a tribute to "Golden Mikey Awards" featured on "Good Morning World".

Good writing and excellent performances make it well worth watching.

Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.

GOOD MORNING, WORLD was an amusing bit of fluff with Joby Baker and Ronny Schell that was set on a radio show that was produced by Billy DeWolfe. Baker and Schell played Lewis and Clarke, the D.J.s on the show, who found their attempts to enliven their show curtailed by DeWolfe (whose name was Roland Hutton). Baker was married to Linda Lewis, and Schell dating Golde Hawn. DeWolfe was married, but you never saw his wife. The show was on Tuesday nights from 9:30 to 10:00 P.M.

I don't recall all the episodes (it ran for only one year). There were two that I recall, one involving DeWolfe's background and the other dealing with Baker and Schell's fondness for Laurel and Hardy. In the latter, they both see (in a novelty antique store) a salt and pepper set that are in the shape of Stan and Ollie, and both want it. The perfect solution doesn't occur to them (keep the set at the radio studio boys) because each feels he is the world's biggest fan of the team. So, at one point, they try to best each other in a rapid fire trivia contest on the films of Laurel and Hardy. I remember one of the questions dealt with the first short they starred in together ("Putting Pants on Philip").

The one with DeWolfe's past is interesting because it enables us to see him from his nightclub/vaudeville days. Billy DeWolfe is remembered for his snide, fussbudgets. He is like a younger brother of Clifton Webb (it would have been amusing if they had been together in a film as brothers). But his best known characterization before he hit the movies was "Mrs. Murgatroyd", a tight-ass-ed lady who reveals her pent-up feelings when she gets drunk with a friend at a local bar. This actually was shown in one of DeWolfe's early films, and is quite a funny piece of business. But we rarely saw much more of his early acts. In the episode on GOOD MORNING, WORLD, DeWolfe and the show are running a charity program - they get phoned in requests that the D.J.'s will do for money for a charity. One of the requests that is phoned in requests that the show put on some unknown man. It turns out it is DeWolfe. His wife has called in because she wants him to do the routines that he played when he was courting her (the name is his long forgotten stage name). And DeWolfe, for the last five minutes cuts up in very unusual comic bits that one normally never thought of him doing. It was a very unusual episode actually, and quite rewarding.

It never picked up the audience it deserved. Too bad, for it was above average as far as a sit-com of that period.

It seemed the show was mainly about Dave's and Larry's personal lives and hardly anything about their radio show or the station they worked at unlike WKRP years later.