I am not sure what was the first television series that suffered from the loss of a cast member by his or her death. I think it may have been WHAT'S MY LINE? because the original show had the great radio comic and wit Fred Allan as one of the players, and he died while still appearing on the show. That was in the 1950s.
But WHAT'S MY LINE? was game show, so replacing Allan was not hard. In 1966, a comedy show appeared on the CBS line-up on Saturday nights called PISTOLS 'N' PETTICOATS. In it the Hanks family, headed officially by grandpa (Douglas Fowley) and grandma (Ruth McDivitt), but really headed by Henrietta (Ann Sheridan) were known for their abilities as sharpshooters (even Henrietta's niece, Lucy (Carole Wells).
"The story goes that granma was best at shootin' buttons off a rustler's vest. Granpa kept his gun in trim - nobody messed around with him..." as the theme song went. All of the characters would surprise the villains with their skills in the episodes. It was just as well that they were so good, as the local sheriff (Gary Vinson) was a clumsy stumble-bum - and Lucy's boyfriend.
Sheridan was at the end of her career - really beyond that. She had not done anything really big on screen since her heyday in the 1940s (I suppose I WAS A MALE WAR BRIDE was her last big production). But she was a favorite with audiences, who had named her the "Oomph Girl", and she had a spark opposite Cary Grant in WAR BRIDE, or Jimmy Cagney or Ronald Reagan or Bette Davis and Monty Wooley in THE MAN WHO CAME TO DINNER. Still, I recall that when news of her casting came out in 1965 it struck many as odd. Why did she decide to do it?
I don't think we will ever know. Sheridan had appeared in about half the episodes when she left the series and died of cancer. It was a shocker at the time.
The show stumbled on, but unlike it's near contemporary F-TROOP it never found the proper balance that made the latter a big hit (and a revivable show too, for that reason). Both shows had a good ensemble, but the scripts of F-TROOP seemed better thought out, even experimental.
In one F-TROOP episode entitled "THE DAY THEY SHOT AGARN", the entire episode was about Agarn being court-martial-ed on the mistaken belief he murdered the missing Sergeant O'Rourke. All through the episode somebody is singing a mournful tune about his execution (which never is completed). At the end, when O'Rourke (Forrest Tucker) returns, and Agarn (Storch) is cleared, they are talking to Captain Parmenter (Ken Berry) and trying to figure out who has been singing this depressing song. O'Rourke and Parmenter look around and see some derby-hatted gentleman singing it nearby, and they order him out of the fort!
That did not happen on PISTOLS. The stories were rather routine, for all the hard work of the performers. I only can recall one for an ironic aspect - Pat Buttram played an unscrupulous mountain man whose family cheated people. In an early episode he is caught by the family and he ends up going to jail. He returns in another episode, and he is a "reformed man" now. I recall he notices a little boy dropped a silver dollar on the floor of a store, and (naturally) he steps on it to hide it from the boy. He picks it up, but suddenly he feels ashamed at his greed. He calls the boy over and returns the dollar to him.
Why should I recall this scene from a show? Well, it's Pat Buttram, and of course in the late 1960s he found his television immortality shortly as the great Mr. Haney on GREEN ACRES - the ultimate in weird swindlers. Haney would not, perhaps, have robbed a boy of his dollar, but the fact that both characters are swindlers made me remember Buttram's performance on PISTOLS. But note - he is a supporting player in an episode or two. It's not like recalling the performances of the leads. And I can't recall them too well now. But I recall performances by the leads from F-Troop to this day.
One can blame the death of it's star for the demise of PISTOLS 'N' PETTICOATS, but one can also recognize that good shows survive due to clever scripts above everything else.
