Our Miss Brooks

"Our Miss Brooks" was the second hit series to come out of Desilu. It was based on a successful radio series that had been around since 1948. Rumor has it that this was created for Shirley Booth, but that she turned it down. Enter the marvelous Eve Arden, who was an expert on wisecracking, of which there was a lot of on this series. When watching Richard Crenna as Walter Denton, he plays with the high-pitched voice so convincingly that it is difficult to remember that he actually didn't speak like that. Gale Gordon started his long TV carrer with this series, and as Osgood Conklin, he was the prototype for Uncle Paul Barton ("Pete and Gladys"), The second Mr. Wilson ("Dennis The Menace"), and most memorably Theodore J. Mooney ("The Lucy Show"). Many people have criticized the last season of this show, when the format was slightly changed to put Miss Brooks in an elementary school. I always liked these episodes as much as the earlier ones. It is sad that this series is not widely available on DVD. I have but three episodes that I got on a disc with four "Love That Bob" episodes. I can only assume that there are rights issues with this series which more people should get the chance to see. Connie Brooks was a one-of-a-kind and a real pip.

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.

Growing up in Brooklyn close to where I live was James Madison High School and as a little kid I imagined that the folks I saw on Our Miss Brooks were those I would find in that school. By the time I reached that age I knew such was not the case. And I was in a different school district besides.

Like William Bendix with The Life Of Riley, Eve Arden was known as a crack supporting player in dozens of films. Speaking of crack, her wise cracks usually as the heroine's best friend made her reputation even today. But with Our Miss Brooks first on radio then television she became a star as the wise English teacher with an ever ready wit doing battle with her arch nemesis, pompous Principal Osgood Conkling played by Gale Gordon who made this the first of many TV series he would be an indispensable part in.

Some of the other regulars on television were Robert Rockwell as Mr. Boynton the biology teacher who could never quite get together with Arden though not for lack of trying, Carol McMillan as Gordon's nice but totally clueless daughter and Richard Crenna as ever voice changing Walter Denton. He had the longest entrance to puberty that anyone ever had in history.

I remember Crenna saying how he hated the part because he thought he would be typecast and no one would take him seriously. He was lucky to get to be Luke McCoy in The Real McCoys, but then got his real break in the short lived Slattery's People where he was finally seen as a serious actor with a rich baritone actually.

One thing with Our Miss Brooks that made it work was that both Arden and Gordon came with built in images, Gordon carrying over from the radio Our Miss Brooks, Arden from there and dozens of films displaying a woman of wit. Audiences expected it and got it.

I think though that if Our Miss Brooks had been started in the 70s Eve Arden would have expected and demanded that the title be Our Ms. Brooks.

Absolutely, an outstanding television show fully realizing the comedic talents of Eve Arden and Gale Gordon-English teacher and principal of Madison H.S. The exchanges between those two are memorable. Teachers of yesteryear may have even had some of those challenges as well.

When the show was first being casted, Miss Brooks was supposed to be a gym teacher. When Arden was cast for the starring role, the writers and director correctly saw that her diction merited the part being changed to an English teacher. How right they were.

With a support like landlady Davis and biology teacher, Mr. Boynton, who Brooks wanted and would go miles to get, a perfect comic imagery of high school life was depicted. Of course, Walter Denton, our favorite student, etched an unforgettable character as played by an excellent Richard Crenna.

This show was certainly indicative of the lay-back 1950s era.