“Well, um, gosh…what do you think, Harriet…?”

Now, I know that many folks have a rather jaundiced view of The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, and I can understand to a certain extent why this is so. The program is an example of that wholesome, white-bread WASP-kind of family situation comedy (along with its siblings Leave It to Beaver and Father Knows Best) prevalent during the 1950s that comes across as extremely dated today. But I’m not ashamed to admit that I like Ozzie and Harriet—the radio version, that is. It’s one of those programs (like Burns and Allen) that played better on radio than TV, and veteran comedy scribe Bob Schiller concurs in an interview from Jordan R. Young’s The Laugh Crafters:

It was a much better radio show than it was a television show. If I had to name a sitcom that I thought was a classic, I’d say it was Ozzie and Harriet. It was terribly underrated—from a writing standpoint, from a performing standpoint. And Ozzie was a very good editor. They had solid stories, partially due to Ben Gershman. He was a droll man. Ben did all the stories, that was his job—that was the only show I ever worked on that had one guy doing stories. And that was great, because he’d spend the whole week just doing the story, then he’d bring ‘em in and we’d kick ‘em around.

Last night, along with some Jack Benny, I listened to a pair of Ozzie and Harriet shows from 1952. In the first, “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” (from April 18), Ozzie reads in the newspaper that the town’s Chamber of Commerce has withdrawn its support from the local baseball team, and he attempts to explain to his family why the Great American Pasttime is so important:

OZZIE: Baseball’s been a colorful part of our American scene since before the Civil War…
RICKY: Is that when they discovered it?
DAVID: Nobody discovered it, dopey—it was invented…by Abner Doubleday…
RICKY: Oh yeah…
OZZIE: Well, that’s right…he was the father of American baseball…
RICKY: Golly—that Lil’ Abner sure gets around, doesn’t he?
HARRIET: No, I think it was a different Lil’ Abner…
OZZIE: Some of my fondest childhood memories were the Sunday afternoons when my father used to take us up to Martin’s Oval and root for the Richfield Park Team…
RICKY: Was that before or after the Civil War?

After conferring with his neighbor Thorny on what steps they should take to get the community involved, they hit upon the idea of getting a promoter friend, J.J. Fleason (Gale Gordon), to mother-hen a few ideas on how to win support for continuing the local team. Fleason, who’s also a used car dealer, presents Ozzie with a few of his ideas:

FLEASON: First of all, we make Monday night—Ladies’ Night…
OZZIE: You mean that…uh…ladies are admitted free?
FLEASON: No, sir…no…the ladies play baseball…now, here’s what we do—we find eighteen beautiful, shapely girls, dress them up in fluorescent sun suits, and form two teams…like the idea so far?
OZZIE: Well, the…the basic elements there are pretty hard to knock…
FLEASON: Exactly…and I know what your next question is—you want to know where we can find eighteen beautiful, shapely girls who can play baseball…well, believe me…you get those girls out there in those sun suits and nobody’s going to care whether they can play baseball or not…

Fleason’s other ideas include Midget Baseball on Tuesday nights (“We’ll even cut the admission to half price!”) and Donkey Baseball on Wednesdays—where the regular team rides donkeys while playing. Ozzie presents the ideas to his family, trying to appear enthusiastic—but the horrified reaction he receives tempers his enthusiasm. Harriet then hits upon the brilliant idea of presenting to the Chamber of Commerce and community a choice between regular baseball or Fleason’s carnival-like imitation, and the Chamber immediately decides to reinstate its support for the hometown team.

(NOTE: I discovered something interesting in this episode—Ozzie’s next-door neighbor, “Thorny” Thornberry, reveals his initials to be “S.J.” Does anybody know if Thorny ever had a first name on the show?)

The second broadcast, “Too Much Change” (4/25/52), is a particular delight, beginning with Ozzie’s accounting of where the ten dollars Harriet gave him yesterday went:

OZZIE: First, I went to the garage and had the car filled up with gas…that was three-and-a-half…
HARRIET: Six-and-a-half to go…
OZZIE: Then I met Thorny—that cost me about a dollar-and-a-half…two cheese sandwiches, two chocolate malteds, two pieces of pie and the check was under my plate—I think I was framed…
HARRIET: That’s five…
OZZIE: Uh…then I went down to the Emporium and bought a shirt…they were on sale…that was three-and-a-half…after that, I stopped in at the hardware store to get a padlock for the garage…oh, I got a flashlight that shines red and green…that’s something we need…
HARRIET: Oh, desperately…
OZZIE: What did you say?
HARRIET: Nothing, go ahead…
OZZIE: I also found a set of wrenches for the car…and a box of magic crystals for the fireplace—they make the fire burn all different colors, it’s quite an idea…all that came to about four dollars…
HARRIET: What about the padlock?
OZZIE: Well, I’ll…I’ll pick up that up next time…then I stopped at the drugstore on the way home and I bought some toothpaste, and a can of shoe polish, and some magazines…which came to a little over two dollars…you figure it out…
HARRIET: I have—I’ve been writing it down…all together you spent about fifteen dollars…
OZZIE: All right…(sudden realization) Fifteen? No, no—you must have made a mistake…I only had ten dollars with me…let’s see…
HARRIET: Gasoline, three-and-a-half…Thorny and the sandwiches, a dollar-and-a-half…
OZZIE: Yeah, that’s five…
HARRIET: …shirt at the Emporium, three-and-a-half…after that, temptation at the hardware store, four dollars…
OZZIE: That’s…twelve-and-a-half…
HARRIET: And two dollars and something at the drugstore, that makes it about fifteen…not bad for starting out with ten dollars…

Ozzie comes to the conclusion that the sales clerk at the Emporium must have given him the wrong change, and so he tries to rectify the situation by returning the money. This, however, is easier said than done—the adjustments manager (Frank Nelson) pleads with him not to do this, as it will put the books out-of-balance (as an auditor, I feel his pain). Ozzie finally locates the clerk (Sara Berner) and attempts to give her the five-spot, but runs into interference with her boyfriend “Hoiman” (Sheldon Leonard), who’s convinced that the Oz Man is trying to pick her up. Paula Winslowe also appears in this show (as a flirtatious saleslady), a very funny effort with an equally amusing ending.

I was reading the recent issue of Michael J. Weldon’s Psychotronic! magazine and there’s an interesting article in which he reviews several old television shows that he obtained on videocassette—he makes a funny observation regarding “America’s favorite young couple”: “The showbiz brothers [David and Ricky] were forced to play themselves from 1949 (on the radio) to 1966. Weren’t there child labor laws?”