Love, American Style

This series was basically an hour of two or 3 vignettes that were supposed to be comedy about love. Every show would start with phony fireworks & a heart shaped trade mark on screen. The theme song was catchy.

Each show would have a love situation of 20 to 30 minutes. If there were any extra time there would be a 1 or 2 minute comedy blackout. Some of the shows parts were funny & some were not.

The series would vary in quality & sometimes during it's run, pilots for new shows would be put in. Some of them actually made it after into series of their own. Happy Days pilot aired on this program. It had Richie, & Howard, & Marion & the pilot was actually OK.

An animated series called "Wait Until Your Father Gets Home" first aired on Lover American Style too. The great thing about this anthology is you never quite knew where they were going, but you would almost always see well known actors & actresses on the way.

In a way, this series set up the later show "The Love Boat" which basically borrowed this format & moved it too a cruise ship & added a regular crew in addition to the celebrity guests every week. Both shows were ABC so nobody complained.

I seem to remember a vignette that is supposed to take place in the 50's, possibly featuring Ron Howard, in which a girl to whom he's attracted expresses an interest in him when she discovers that his parents just bought a television set. This may have been the pilot (of sorts) for "Happy Days". Does this ring a bell, anyone? Thanks.

This show is definitely a show that worked for the era it was produced in, the late 60's/early 70's. This show came out at the height of the sexual revolution and could have easily been called "Lust, American Style". Each episode pretty much was about the same thing, men and women in constant pursuit of each other. Also, the most memorable trademark was the ever present brass bed. However, despite the emphasis on sex there were a few more touching episodes in this series. One that comes to mind is an episode in which an old man creates a sculpture of his deceased wife on the anniversary of her death and the angel of death (played hilariously by Soupy Sales) comes down to inform him that he is about to die. At the end of the episode, there is a shot of the old man, who has become a statue himself, holding his wife's hand. This was perhaps the most moving episode from one of the wildest show's of the early 70's.

Having been born in the 1970's, I still recall my parents watching this and other 70's shows like it all the time. It's harmless in content, and in its day it made an otherwise turbulent world feel safer. Here we are in more times of turbulence; it would be nice to have this show back. They just don't make'em like that anymore! It's nice to be able to sit down and laugh at the ridiculousness of a show and forget your troubles outside your front door. It would be nice to have this show on DVD! How come it got tossed by the wayside? The Brady Bunch, which was much less popular at that time, is on DVD- All 5 seasons now! Though truly I loved the Brady Bunch, and am a member of one of the many ubiquitous web rings, I really think it was a much more ridiculous show than Love American Style. It's not fair they forget about this classic.

With Boy Scout meetings getting over at 9:30 during Fridays from age 11-16(1967-1972) I missed the Partridge Family, Wild Wild West, Room 222, and Brady Bunch during their original runs(have seen most Brady Bunchs since but not the others which were never rerun fixtures). However, I remember walking into house on Friday night to see a big American Flag, Fireworks, and a pleasant song and would sit down to watch not knowing anything about Love, sex, girls etc. I did not mind it, and would love to go back to see now what I saw then, and would like to envision what my 14 year old head was thinking about all the changes that were to come over my life in the next 20 years. Bravo Love American style and I always love that "Love and the Happy Day" story where the combination of American Graffiti(great movie) and Grease combined to resurrect this little short into a 10 year TV show.