The Bill Dana Show

This show was well-acted and well-written. Jose is a well-meaning emigrant who due to mistaken identity ends up as a bell-hop at a posh hotel. His best friend, Eddie is well played by Gary Crosby in what may be his best performance. Don Adams is a pre-Maxwell Smart, even using trademark dialogue such as, "Would you believe...?" Jonathan Harris is extremely energetic in this show, and with a little imagination, you could almost see him yelling at the robot from "Lost In Space" with the same exasperation he yells at Jose. Interestingly enough, Bill Dana played Agent 13 in Don Adams' "The Nude Bomb."

I disagree with some of what was said. I happen to think Bill Danna who played the Jose character, flawlessly for the times, used clean humour and stood for principles. Something rarely seen in productions nowadays. He may not always have had funny lines, yet usually he did, which got you laughing at what he said or how he said it, but rest assured somewhere along the way you would find yourself chuckling and feeling good and suddenly down out right laughing at it eventually.Even if some of the shows were a bit predictable, he could take it to new heights. But as Lucy was called the queen of comedy,I would suggest that Bill could have been nominated for the role of Prince.One of my my life goals has been to pursue the episode I shall never forget that had to be the funniest in all of TV comedy shows..the French love scene where he comes out misinterpreting a yes. Anyone remember this???! Everyone in my family was literally rolling on the floor almost peeing. I think our society could handle these and wish for one that these would all be made available in our free society to watch. Not just a few of them. Bring 'em back is my charge call!!!!!!!!!

I consider this a potentially great sitcom possibly cancelled way too soon. Don Adams' "Byron Glick, hotel detective" was Maxwell Smart ahead of his time. Gary Crosby did go on to be a regular on Adam-12. Jonathan Harris' pompous hotel manager was surely an earlt version of Doctor Zachary Smith though more likable as a freind to Jose Jimenez. And by the way I love any series with Maggie Peterson, most famous as Charlene Darling Wash on The Andy Griffith Show, my all time favorite hillbilly gal. After abandoning his Jose Jimenez character to be "politically correct" Bill Dana did go on to do some straigh acting. And as "Maxwell Smart" Don Adams did give work on Get Smart to former costars from other series including Bill Dana, Jonathan Harris and Larry Storch. ☺

Bill Dana's comic creation José Jiménez first appeared on Steve Allen's TV show, and swiftly became extremely popular. Jimenez was a Mexican immigrant, somewhat bemused by life in the U.S.A. but eager to join in. Dana got so much mileage from this one character that he became one of those performers - other examples are Paul Rubens (Pee Wee Herman) and Don Novello (Father Guido Sarducci) - entirely known to the public in the guise of one fictional character, rather than in his own right. Inevitably, there were some complaints (from Latinos in general and Mexicans in particular) that Jose Jimenez is an ethnic stereotype. This is simply unfair. Jose Jimenez is honest, hard-working. He has some trouble speaking English, but he is naive and uneducated rather than stupid or gormless. In many ways, Jose Jimenez is a south-of-the-border version of Gomer Pyle.

Jose Jimenez's origins were in brief skits and spoof 'man in the street' interviews on Steve Allen's show. 'The Bill Dana Show' was an attempt to place the popular Jimenez character at the centre of a weekly sitcom. This series had some genuine potential, with a good premise and a splendid supporting cast, and might have succeeded if it had possessed better scripts. Each episode began promisingly, with a marimba band playing the show's theme tune in rapid three-quarter time.

Bill Dana remained firmly in character as Jose Jimenez, who for purposes of this sitcom was a bellboy in a California hotel. Working on the same shift was his bellboy buddy Eddie. There was some good interplay between the naive, trusting Jose and the cynical Eddie, with Eddie always trying to recruit Jose into his schemes and always eager to explain to Jose the 'right' way to do things in America. Pop singer Gary Crosby showed real acting talent in his role as Eddie.

For modern viewers, the most intriguing aspect of 'The Bill Dana Show' is that the supporting cast featured dry runs for two characters who later became fixtures in their own respective series. Don Adams (a longtime friend of Dana) played the hotel's house detective Glick. Adams played this character with the same crotchets and vocal delivery that he would later employ so successfully as Maxwell Smart in 'Get Smart'. The hotel's pompous manager, Mr Phillips, was played by Jonathan Harris in the same snooty supercilious mode that he later used as the villainous Dr Zachary Smith in 'Lost in Space'.

There were no surprises in 'The Bill Dana Show'. One episode, absolutely typical, began with bellboys Jose and Eddie making a mistake that threatened to make trouble for the hotel. Jose was in favour of confessing their error to manager Phillips, but fast-talking Eddie convinced Jose that they should lie their way out of it. Of course, the lie gets out of hand and grows to unmanageable proportions. Eventually, Jose and Eddie discover that their original mistake had unexpected dividends: if they had only been truthful from the beginning, they would have come up trumps. This prompted Eddie to tell Jose: "You be honest Abe Lincoln, and I'll be George Washington who never told a lie." When Jose agreed to this, Eddie added: 'Now you get ready to kick me across my bridge.' The episode ended with Eddie bent over and Jose about to kick him. This sort of strained dialogue and unfunny humour was absolutely typical of this series, unfortunately.

To vary the monotony of Jose in a bellhop's uniform, working in a hotel, there were occasional episodes in which Jose would daydream that he had some other, more glamorous (and more dangerous) job of work, such as a deep-sea diver or an astronaut. (Dana had already released a successful comedy album featuring an astronaut routine.) This daydream device was later copied by "Gilligan's Island", giving Gilligan occasional chances to vary the castaway scripts by fantasising that he was a spy or somesuch.

It might be interesting to release one episode of 'The Bill Dana Show' on home video - mostly for its curiosity value, and to give us a glimpse of Don Adams and Jonathan Harris before their stardom - but this series as a whole was poorly written and unfunny.

Comic Bill Dana was a whole lot like Vaughn Meader in terms of having the character pull his career right out from under him. Just as Meader saw his career crash and burn after the assassination of John F. Kennedy when his act became unwanted overnight, Dana was subject to a lot of criticism from Latino groups. These were the years that Cesar Chavez was emerging as a major figure in American life and also when Black groups succeeded in getting Amos and Andy syndicated reruns off the air because they saw it as caricatures from white people.

So too with Dana's character Jose Jimenez which he originated on the Steve Allen Show. While it lasted Jose gave Dana a one note career and some stardom. Which manifested itself in The Bill Dana Show.

Dana's Jose played a bellhop in a big city hotel who was a hard working guy, not the sharpest knife in the drawer, and was continually having his friend and fellow bellhop Gary Crosby get him in trouble. Crosby was an operator of the first magnitude. Given his involvement you can absolutely take to the bank that somewhere was the influence of Poppa Bing on behalf of the son who turned on him posthumously in the production of The Bill Dana Show.

Pressure from Latino groups got this show canceled which wasn't drawing those good ratings in any event. Jose was not a character capable of sustaining a thirty minute comedy show built around him.

Two other people got to try out some shtick that was put to good use later on. Don Adams played the bungling house detective Glick and you can see more than traces of Maxwell Smart in his performance. And Jonathan Harris who did this show between The Third Man series and Lost In Space played the supercilious hotel manager who was forever foiling Crosby's schemes involving Dana. He was condescending in this role, but had a streak of kindness towards Dana, otherwise he would have canned the poor schnook. If you watch Disney's The Suite Life of Zack and Cody you can see a lot of Harris's character in that of Phill Lewis as Mr. Mosby the hotel manager of the Boston Tipton Hotel.

But like Vaughn Meader's Kennedy impersonation, Dana's Jose was banned due to circumstances beyond his control. Although Dana became a respected character actor, Jose Jimenez became his 15 minutes of fame.