On Our Own

The front of my house and even my current apartment were used in the opening credits. One of the characters opens a window and leans out holding a cup of coffee. I live on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. I'd love one episode of this to show my husband and child.

It was filmed very quickly in the mid 1970's. I don't think they were here more than two days, it may have only been one day. I just remember being really excited that our building was going to be on TV.

Because of the house I would faithfully watch it each week. Although as an eleven year old I don't think I was quite the target audience and I found it a bit boring.

This same apartment was in the running to be in Spike Lee's Malcolm X. The key selling point to the apartment at that time was that it has bay windows and you could see the living room from the kitchen--it was supposed to be the Boston girlfriend's apartment. We didn't make that one.

I was 12 when this show aired. I remember my whole family really enjoyed watching it every week. I was disappointed it was canceled after only one season. I would love to see it again. Some shows stick in your memory and others don't despite the length of the run of the show. I have always followed what the cast did after the series ended. I'm really glad that Lynne Greene had a successful career behind the scenes. She was a great actress especially in her appearances on Golden Girls as a young "Dorothy". I was sad to hear that Gretchen Wyler died this year of cancer. She was a brilliant actress on TV and on Broadway. Bess Armstrong is still going strong. It is a credit to the casting of On Own that the cast went on to have long careers, although, not high profile. I doubt this show will ever show up on DVD but it would be nice to see it again.

You can tell from the posts on this page that On Our Own was not a big hit. But, the audience for this show would be phenomenally large for any show today. I watched a few episodes but millions of others must have, too. I looked and acted a lot like Lynne Greene. Everywhere I went, parties, discos, total strangers told me I looked and acted like this actress (who was an inch taller and ten pounds thinner than me.) Even my family, living 1,500 miles away, called me long distance telling me to turn on the TV to watch my double. Not just because I look like her, I thought the character was a good one, really funny. In the second season, the characters were no longer roommates. One night, the Bess Armstrong character got sick. Being out of town and young, she did not have a doctor in NYC, so she called Maria, the New Yorker. Of course, Maria had the phone number of a cousin who was a doctor. When reading the number to Bess, she began, "Area code...." Back then, that meant long distance! What a trip.

Like a hazy dream, i am watching on FreeVee and wondering...is this really happening, or rather did this happen in 1978? I guess it did because I am having fun watching. The lead characters are examples of career women being manhandled in a male dominated 70's society, but the humor is maudlin and somewhat excruciating. It was shot in NYC and you can really tell the difference in acting styles, and set design. Exterior shots look like Rhoda's building, but i cant be sure. And sometimes the scripts and pacing feel like a NY stage play, esp since there's quite a bit of cringe in the way the lead girls over act and emote in very silly ways, but it is an incredible unintentional expose on feminism in the 70's. Everyone is sweet natured and people acted kinder. The men in the supporting cast are misfits and all the women are heroes. Dixie Carter is surprisingly bad here and her bad timing is difficult to explain, but Gretchen Wyler is pretty funny and every once in a while a good joke or a comic bit lands well. Bess is the stronger of the two, but her character is often forced to deliver lines all alone onstage, and it is campy. Lynnie is very presentational and indicated a lot and had too many jokes about being Catholic that completely sink with a thud. Her 2 part episode w/Danny Aiello as her love interest is extremely sappy like a Kmart version of Moonstruck. There are workplace ensemble scenes and apartment scenes, and lots of new york extras and actors playing parents and or agency clients. Kay Medford was in ep 3, James Naughton (I Love My Wife) was in ep4. Christopher Hewitt was in ep 5. The wardrobe is from Bloomingdale's and both women have those curled under joan of arc/bowl haircuts from 1978 that look a bit like mushroom caps. The theme song is noisily sung (belty/wail broadway style) and difficult to understand the lyrics until you hear it more than once. It's a sorta cute sitcom but episodes always feel half finished, like a lot of mistakes were included, set walls dont actually look real... as if this were taking place on the new york stage. Still it is fun to discover an ancient, fully -formed sitcom shot in NYC that history and vintage tv networks seem to have forgotten, and i managed to get thru all 19 episodes posted at free vee. Imdb seems to credit both leading ladies with 22 episodes, so maybe there are lost episodes?!

An attempt at creating another "Laverne and Shirley," "On Our Own" also featured the pairing of a cute perky Shirley-type (Julia) and a not-so-cute street-wise Laverne-type (Maria). The best thing about this series was the discovery of Bess Armstrong as Julia. She was very cute in this series which otherwise was a snooze-fest. Not a terrible show, just nothing to distinguish it from any other sitcom.