Our Miss Brooks

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.

"Our Miss Brooks" was one of the first television programs to feature an independent, sharp, strong, beautiful woman who planned on a career and loved her career as a teacher. Eve Arden was a consummate comedienne who took the romantic comedy heroine from 1930's romantic comedy and combined her with a career woman in her portrayal of Connie Brooks. Eve Arden's portrayal pioneered shows starring actresses in roles as bright, career-minded women who were not defined by husbands nor boyfriends.

"Our Miss Brooks" featured one of the most brilliant casts of any television comedy. They played character who were only slight exaggerations of real people found in any American high school of the 1950's. Gale Gordon as pompous, arrogant Principal Osgood Conklin displayed Gordon's talents that made him a star character actor on television. The nerdy characters portrayed by Richard Crenna and Leonard Smith are as hilarious and believable today as they were in the 1950's. Jane Morgan as the befuddled Mrs. Davis was a great foil for Eve Arden. It is singular that so many characters serve as comic foils for the star of a show. "Our Miss Brooks" led the way. The combination of character writing, slapstick, and witty, sophisticated lines has never been equalled. Eve Arden's artistry was never so artfully displayed as it was in "Our Miss Brooks". When one realizes that, for several years, original scripts of "Our Miss Brooks" were written for concurrent radio and television versions of the show, it is astounding the consistent excellent level of script quality that the show's writers were able to produce.

One of the highlights of American television!

I was only three when OMB first aired on TV, so I don't remember much of it, but it was a weekly staple at our house. I started watching it several years ago on Decades TV, and was struck by its clever writing and the witty delivery by Ms. Arden. Some of the plots were rather contrived, and I didn't care for the somewhat tame animosity between Ms. Brooks and Mr. Conklin (which came to a head in the show's last season), but it stands out as mostly far better than any other 1950s TV sitcom. Sadly, with the recent passing of Gloria McMillan at 88, they're all gone now.

Heavens, has it really been 70 years since the show first aired? I'm feeling my age now, but the show lives on.