The Bob Cummings Show

This is simply one of TV's all-time funniest sitcoms. Bob Cummings may have done well in DIAL M FOR MURDER and many leading man roles throughout his career, but THE BOB CUMMINGS SHOW (also known as LOVE THAT BOB) proves his forte was decidedly comedy.

Cummings is a gem as the playboy Beverly Hills photographer with a bevy of models and beauties swarming in, over, and through his photographic studio. Yet he always seems to be foiled whenever he tries to nail one of them down for lovemaking. Ann B. Davis (later the housekeeper in THE BRADY BUNCH)is his hilarious secretary secretly pining for Bob who nixes his love schemes one way or another whenever she has a chance. And Dwayne Hickman (later DOBBIE GILLIS) is great as the hormone-driven teenager vying for a piece of his Uncle Bob's action. The only sensible one in the group is Rosemary DeCamp, Bob's sister, with whom he lives, who does her best to raise Hickman with some degree of morality in the midst of her brother's sexploitations.

Nancy Kulp simply must be mentioned. Though she later skyrocketed in THE BEVERLY HILLBILLIES, she is a riot as the birdwatching, nerdy Pamela Livingstone, the bean-pole with a crush on Bob. She popped up in many episodes throughout the series and it was always hilarious to watch Cummings jump through hoops to escape her romantic advances.

If you have never seen THE BOB CUMMINGS SHOW, you simply must. It won't disappoint in the laugh department. And it's fun to watch if you'd like to see the kind of wholesome sex farce TV could produce in the late 1950's that was neither explicit nor offensive.

Trivia: Nancy Kulp spent her life savings running for political office in Pennsylvania in the '90's...Rosemary DeCamp played the wife of Georeg M. Cohan (James Cagney) in the movie YANKEE DOODLE DANDY in the 1940's...Darrell Hickman is the brother of Dwayne Hickman, who made several teen beach movies in the early 1960's...Bob Cummings was very much into healthy living, eating, and exercising which is probably why he looked 35 when he was 60...King Donovan, one of Bob's friends who shows up intermittently throughout the series, appeared in the cult classic INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS with Kevin McCarthy in the early '50's...Joy Lansing, one of the bevy of beauties who frequented Bob's studio had been a major model and did quite a lot of television...

Dennis Caracciolo

Bob Cummings was a pioneer in the early days of sitcoms, making this show worth viewing if you're interested in the history of television programming. There's a certain "live on tape" feel to some episodes, when actors accidentally step on each others' lines, which also makes the atmosphere a little more natural than today's highly polished (tightly edited) sitcoms.

It's a treat to see a young Ann B. Davis, best remembered today as "The Brady Bunch"'s housekeeper, Alice. In the 50s, she was considered a fairly major TV star, and she was an undeniably inventive comic actress. In many episodes of "The Bob Cummings Show," she has a pretty substantial amount of screen time -- far more than she usually got in the Brady household.

Another classic sitcom star is on hand: Before Nancy Kulp played Miss Jane Hathaway on The Beverly Hillbillies, she honed her TV skills in "The Bob Cummings Show." Her character, a snooty, sexually aggressive bird-watching enthusiast has much in common with Miss Jane. In fact, in many ways they're practically identical. In later years, Kulp came out of the closet and lived as an openly gay woman. Her character in "The Bob Cummings Show," while aggressively pursuing Bob, certainly has a lesbian vibe. In the episode "Bob Goes Bird Watching," for example, when Kulp enters the episode, she's clad in a very masculine suit, with a "butch" hairstyle, but throughout the scene she's trying to persuade Bob abandon his swimsuit-clad models and join her at Griffith Park, to check out some "tit mouse" birds -- no double entendres were wasted in this show...

Dwayne Hickman is also in the cast, perfecting his Dobbie Gillis character. Like Kulp, he carried this character's basic traits into another show -- so it's interesting to watch him learning his craft here.

Like many shows of this time period, "The Bob Cummings Show" was performed at a pace most viewers now find stunningly slow. But many of the scripts hold up fairly well, and the acting, though a bit stagey at times, is naturalistic and enjoyable. If you want lightening- quick repartee, tune into "Will and Grace," but if you're ready for some relaxing old-time humor performed by some of the best actors from TV's early days, check out "The Bob Cummings Show."

"The Bob Cummings Show" -- I knew it as "Love That Bob" in syndication -- was a mid-'50s TV show starring Bob Cummings, Ann B. Davis, Rosemary DeCamp, Dwayne Hickman, Joi Lansing, King Donovan, Lyle Talbot, Rose Marie, Nancy Kulp -- you couldn't ask for a better cast.

Cummings was 45 when he started this show - playing a bachelor photographer, no less - but he could get away with it. While he wasn't a superstar in films, he was a star and later became a superstar in television, due to his comic timing, charm, and good looks. On the show, Rosemary DeCamp plays his sister, Hickman his nephew, Davis his secretary, and Kulp a strange woman who constantly throws herself at him. She's hilarious. Cummings occasionally played his grandfather as well.

The comedy is wonderful, not only because of the lines, but because of the characters and the line readings. The show was probably considered a little risqué for the time -- after all, Bob had a lot of girlfriends -- but it was a more innocent time, at least as far as television was concerned so while there was some very veiled innuendo, that was about it.

I loved going back in time with this show and seeing the cigarette commercials - wow. Amazing. The show is available on Netflix. Check it out.

Watch this if you get a chance. It was made 40+ years ago when double entendres were the order of the day and you weren't hit over the head by crude expressions of sexuality disguised as humor. One commenter said that the women were "fat" - maybe compared to some of the anorexic women on television NOW, they were. But when women on television looked like women, they weren't "fat." I consider it to have been ahead of its time...

Lively series that could occasionally sparkle with comedy and high spirits. This is a role the handsome, slightly smug Cummings was born to play. As a high-fashion photographer, there was always a parade of shapely girls passing through his studio each week. I'm guessing teen- age boys like me made up a lot of his steady audience. But that's not to say glamour was the only draw. The scripts, by and large, were surprisingly good, usually centering around a romantic predicament Bob would then have to fast talk his way out of. Maybe secretary Schultzy (Davis) or sister Margaret (DeCamp) would help. More likely, they would standby amused, while Bob was getting some kind of minor comeuppance. And what a fine supporting cast they were, including a pre-Dobie Dwayne Hickman. Nothing special or substantive here, just solid light-hearted entertainment that wears surprisingly well.