That Girl

Four years before the debut of the Mary Tyler Moore Show, this was the first show to feature an independent woman who wanted to make it on her own without having to rely on her parents or her boyfriend. This was a great show with a great cast that really worked well together. The other thing that I really loved about this show was the fact that the humor was very broad and that Ann, even though she was independent, often found herself in some very awkward situations. I especially loved the last season in which we really saw Ann's relationship with Donald really blossom as they finally became engaged. Too bad it ended before they walked down the aisle.

... or if not that, Ted Bessell as one of the most sexually frustrated men of 1960's New York City. If the Mary Tyler Moore show had first aired in 1966 instead of 1970, it would have been this show. American culture changed that quickly. Marlo Thomas plays a young woman, Ann Marie, from the village of Brewster, New York who comes to the big city to become an actress, which is a tough career to break into, thus she takes a series of quirky jobs to get by which often become the central theme of certain episodes. In the very first episode she meets Donald (Ted Bessell), a writer for a magazine, and they are a couple for the next five years, a couple that - apparently - never has sex.

Back home, Ann's dad (Lew Parker) never quite trusts Donald's intentions with his daughter, and believes that girls should live at home until married. Thus a mainstay of the show is dad bursting in on Ann and Donald, either incidentally or intentionally, only to find them in what appears to be a compromising position (Ah ha! I've got him!) that in the end has a logical and platonic explanation.

If you didn't live through this period in history, you might think of the 1960's and believe it was nothing but an endless parade of hippies, pot smoking, and student/police confrontations over the Vietnam War. The fact is, most people in 1960's America were still living in the 1950's at the time, and women were still largely accepted only in traditional professions - teaching, nursing, secretarial work, acting - you know, jobs that involve either serving men or children. So That Girl was about as far as network TV could go with this topic - a young woman living in her own apartment pursuing a career in ANYTHING in New York City - without raising middle class eyebrows.

It was bright, funny, and innocent, sometimes to the point of being naive, but I'll always look back fondly on "That Girl" of my youth.

"That Girl" is one of those shows that I enjoyed during it's first run on ABC and in it's reruns over the years, but it's been many years since i saw this as it has not been on TV in a while. The re-discovery of this on DVD reveals that it is even better than I remember it. The cast in all instances is first-rate, and the scripts are crisp, funny, full of heart and do not date one bit. Marlo Thomas supposedly had a hand in most of the aspects of this classic series, and I say a great job well done. Like John Forsythe in "Bachelor Father", this show was her baby and no show could have had a better mother. ME-TV has just begun re-running this as of this writing, and my partner and I were laughing out loud at many of the antics on the marathon which launched the series on New Year's Day. The film quality of the show has been so beautifully preserved that it looks brand-new. The 1960s background makes the series a kind of time capsule back to those fashions and some of the early episodes especially feature some great location footage shot in N.Y.C. which add to the "theatrical" look of this series. Each episode has the look of a mini-movie, being shot with one camera. The laugh-track is present but not overdone or intrusive. The format of the single girl trying to make it on her own would be echoed a few years later in the super-classic "Mary Tyler Moore" show. "That Girl" had great writing throughout it's five seasons, and Ms. Thomas wisely opted out of the show before it became stale as so many other long-running shows of the period did. She also avoided knuckling under to the network by not having Ann and Donald marry. This was her personal decision and in retrospect, a wise one. Marlo Thomas herself, being the daughter of the great Danny Thomas, had to prove herself with this series and boy, did she ever. Having "Make Room For Daddy", one of the great shows of it's own era, and "That Girl", one of the greats of the 60s, one hopes that there will be another generation of the Thomas family to give us yet another great series to enjoy. If this review sounds like a love letter to Marlo Thomas, so be it. It is.

To many of us born in the fifties and becoming teen-age girls by the mid-late 60's, THAT GIRL was THE show to tune in to and see the hair and fashions and enjoy the comedy. My very favorite episode is when Donald tries to teach Ann to drive his manual (stick) shift car!!! The chemistry between the two actors is just great. Marlo Thomas is adorable in this series. The show was well casted and polished. My best friend in the 60's and I never missed an episode on Tuesday nights and now they are available on wonderful DVDs to enjoy again and again. Hollywood did not spoil Marlo, as she went on to author several wonderful books and of course, carry on her father's work for St.Jude Hospital for the children. She is to be admired.

I've been looking for a certain episode, #8, Little Auction Annie for ages. I'm probably the world's biggest That Girl fan and would love to see it on TV Land, instead of some of the so-so shows they've got on now! Any other That Girl fans out there: we should start a campaign to get TV Land to put on That Girl!

I have seen some of the DVD's out with select That Girl shows on....I'd love to see a season-by-season release of all of the shows, however. Anyone know if that is out yet? Or does anyone have episode #8 on VHS or DVD? I love trivia about the show and would play That Girl trivia with anyone interested!