rlquall

My parents were inveterate fans of "The Red Skelton Show" but would go to bed as soon as it was over and let me stay up to watch this. I loved the pretty girls and didn't even mind how they kept changing into different girls over time, as the replacements were always pretty, too. I sure envied the little dog (who later became "Benji") who got to swim with them in the train's water tank in the opening sequence! Lori Saunders was my favorite, and I loved seeing her in the commercial that she did for Fantastik spray cleaner, even. Red Skelton led me to another dream girl, Julie Sommars, later on, when "The Governor & J.J." became what followed him on Tuesday nights after "Petticoat Junction" had moved to Saturday night.

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.