The Debbie Reynolds Show

'The Debbie Reynolds Show' was possibly the most generic sitcom ever televised. It made its debut on American TV in September '69 and finished its inglorious run just less than a year later: 26 episodes, spread out over 50 weeks (with repeats and summer hiatus). In Britain, those same 26 episodes were compacted into a much briefer run, spanning January to mid-August 1970. I recall that the BBC (fully aware that 'The Debbie Reynolds Show' was nothing much) transmitted this series in the dead-awful schedule slot at 5.40 on Saturday afternoons. The Monty Python gang memorably parodied this series as 'The Attila the Hun Show', bootlegging a recording of Debbie Reynolds warbling 'With a Little Love', which was the bland theme song she'd actually recorded for her self-named sitcom.

Debbie Reynolds must take some of the blame for 'The Debbie Reynolds Show'. She supervised the (very derivative) scripts, and she personally approved all the sponsors' commercials! In 1969, it was still legal to advertise cigarettes on Yank TV: the R.J. Reynolds company wanted to advertise their cigarettes on the Debbie Reynolds show: Ms Reynolds personally turned them down ... but then, learning that the same corporation also made Mott's Apple Juice, she permitted them to air a Mott's spot instead.

'The Debbie Reynolds Show' is usually derided as a rip-off of 'I Love Lucy'. Reynolds is a much more talented performer than Lucille Ball ever was, yet this charge is accurate. Whereas the untalented Lucy Ricardo (played by the equally untalented Lucille Ball) was always pestering her conga-drummer husband to help her get into show business, here we had Debbie Reynolds as a former entertainer (named Debbie, of course) who gave up her glamorous showbiz career to get married, and now she's pestering her sportswriter husband to help her get a career in journalism. This premise lost something in its translation from 'I Love Lucy' to here. Success in showbiz is largely a matter of contacts, so it made sense for Lucy Ricardo to exploit her husband's connections. Success in journalism has more to do with hard work and the ability to meet a deadline: Debbie should have been pestering editors and publishers, instead of nagging her husband. Her sitcom husband is played here by Don Chastain, a tall actor with impossibly handsome features, a chiselled jaw and no discernible acting talent.

The 'Ethel Mertz' character here is Debbie's (fictional) sister. Tom Bosley is wasted in the 'Fred Mertz' role, given no ability to use his great talents in this thinly-written role. Their on screen son (Debbie's nephew) is played by a blond child actor of some genuine acting ability. The lacklustre direction is by Ezra Stone, who began his sitcom career as a child performer playing Henry Aldrich.

Even the scripts on this show were horribly derivative. One episode used a premise previously done by 'I Love Lucy' AND by 'The Dick Van Dyke Show': Debbie and her husband discover that, due to a legal technicality, their marriage was never legal. Until they can remarry, Debbie insists they should sleep in separate rooms. Her husband doesn't want to give up the bedroom, so they agree to flip a coin to see who has to sleep on the couch. Debbie tosses the coin, but 'accidentally' tosses it over her shoulder. When her husband bends down to see how the coin landed, Debbie lifts her foot to push him out of the bedroom and slam the door shut behind him.

Another episode featured an exact reversal of Lucy Ricardo's usual routine, with everybody else urging Debbie to get back into showbiz while she modestly refuses. A local charity are producing a benefit; Debbie's husband and her sister and her brother-in-law all urge Debbie to perform in the benefit, but she keeps insisting that her showbiz days are behind her. At the end of the episode (big surprise!) she changes her mind and performs a big musical number. Wearing clown make-up and costumes, Debbie and two men perform Cole Porter's 'Be a Clown'. One of the male clowns does a very stupid 'magic trick' in which he spits a dozen light bulbs out of his mouth, one at a time. This trick *would* be very impressive, except that we're obviously watching a looped film clip of this guy spitting out the same light bulb, over and over and over.

I'll rate 'The Debbie Reynolds Show' 3 points out of 10, and that's solely for my tremendous admiration of Debbie Reynolds as a performer. This sitcom was a very dim showcase for her considerable talents.

Although all the American television networks remaining by the 1960's had radio counterparts, television wanted to play on an image as the heir to the movie theater rather than as radio with pictures. It took the American television industry awhile to realize that, although performers like Eve Arden, Burns and Allen, or Lucille Ball did have movie careers behind them, it was more likely their radio backgrounds that brought them television success. The most successful of them being the one whose careers in both media were limited, it would have been easy to ignore either one; it chose to focus on the one it saw most flattering to itself and looked to actresses like Debbie Reynolds to take on a similar role. Unlike Reynolds, most of Ball's movies were pretty bad, the most enjoyable being little more than a ninety minute version of her television program. It would seem obvious that trying to do the reverse, putting a ninety minute film comedy into a thirty minute weekly television program, does not come out the same, but television tried anyway with programs like "The Debbie Reynolds Show". It is perhaps unsurprising, then, to find some attempts at the insertion of Hollywood movie connections.

For instance, the "Debbie Reynolds Show" episode mentioned earlier regarding the marriage license as being derivative of "I Love Lucy" and "The Dick Van Dyke Show", were themselves both derivative of the Alfred Hitchcock screwball comedy "Mr. and Mrs. Smith".

The choice of music for her "comeback" episode, also mentioned earlier, is a more subtle connection, in that it relates to Reynolds own career. Reynold's first starring role was in "Singing In The Rain" which included the Herb Nacio Brown song "Make 'Em Laugh", a number which is a fairly blatant plagiarism of Cole Porter's "Be A Clown".

This is actually a perfectly cute little show. It is too bad it did not run more than one season. I had some copies in the past and had never watched them really and am just watching them now. It is not a brilliant sitcom, but let's face it, until the 70's with All in the Family and The Mary Tyler Moore Show, along with Bob Newhart and Carol Burnett (comedy variety there) the only really great sitcoms were I Love Lucy and The Dick Van Dyke Show and Bewitched. But this is a very sweet show and although I am not having belly laughs, I am smiling at the end of each show. Too bad it did not last for a few seasons. It is certainly no worse than Mayberry RFD or F Troop or Gomer Pyle, all big hits at the time. Not as good as The Beverly Hillbillies or Green Acres, but not bad. It is very cute, very sweet, a nice little show with a little bit of zany.

What I remember about "The Debbie Reynolds Show" is that the first sponsor for the show was a cigarette company. Ms. Reynolds felt that cigarettes were NOT the way to promote a family show, and she threatened to quit rather than give in to the sponsors. The powers that be gave in to her demands, and I think Hunts Catsup sponsored the show. I never forgot that. She was a woman of convictions and I admired her for it.

After reading the previous comments by someone in Wales, all I can say is that my recollection of The Debbie Reynolds Show was that it was a spoof of things -- at least that's what the opening credits where Reynolds and her husband rush towards one another in a field of daisies, arms outspread -- but then miss each other completely.

However much it was derivative of I LOVE LUCY, Reynolds was very funny. Too bad that Monty Python and the Brits didn't get it. As for the previous comment that Lucille Ball was not talented, I simply don't know what to say except that the "untalented Miss Ball" starred in the best and longest running sitcom in the history of the world.

The androgyny required by female comics was balanced precariously by Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz in their sitcom. Jess Oppenheimer apparently did not understand the need for a sexual undertone when casting Reynolds, who lacked the gentile sexuality of Lucille Ball -- though could surpass her as a flat out clown in most instances. Ball had the feminine need of her husband and it came across on screen. Reynolds' character had no time for that.

CBS at that time was attempting to make Doris Day into their new Lucille Ball in THE DORIS DAY SHOW and she had the opposite problem of Reynolds -- a lot of girl next door female allure, but not enough androgynous clownishness.

In any event, for anyone in the UK to dismiss The Debbie Reynolds Show as imitative fluff either didn't see the original show in its original airings and/or didn't understand its American context of suburban spoof. Lucille Ball herself said that she took some umbrage at the TV show LAVERNE AND SHIRLEY (interestingly it was a comedic period piece set in the 50's -- the moral innocence required for a sitcom like that to thrive was oppressed by the swinging sixties, one supposes) for ripping off her Ethel/Lucy antics.

Even though THE DEBBIE REYNOLDS SHOW hit the screen during the middle of London's mod "Austin Powers" era, there were enough workaday types in the US, like my suburbanite family -- who remember the Reynolds show as very very funny. She and the actress who played her sister were hysterical and I was only in third grade but still recall it fondly. Reynolds, unlike Lucy Ball, didn't want Phillip Morris ciggie advertising, and she pulled the plug. I'd love to see it on DVD.