MARIE WILSON, (IRMA) & CATHY LEWIS, (JANE), OF "MY FRIEND IRMA".
MY FRIEND IRMA
As reported in the GOld Time Radio post, The 1945-46 Season: CBS boss Bill Paley returned from two years of Army service and didn’t like what he found - NBC had registered over twice the number of programs in the Annual Top 50 than CBS for two consecutive seasons - 33 to 16, (to one for ABC). Worse yet, CBS billings were on the verge of dropping over $5.0 Million behind NBC. Paley was determined to put an end to the losing situation. With newly appointed network president Frank Stanton at his side, Paley told the press that CBS would counter NBC’s powerful comedy shows - eleven of the season’s Top 15 programs - by concentrating on, “ …news, drama, public service programming and music.”
Somehow, Paley “forgot” to mention variety and comedy programs or his edict to keep the lid on costs. The first show to meet his postwar criteria was the variety formatted Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts - an inexpensive half-hour talent competition of three professional performers hosted the network’s leading weekday personality. (1)
But Paley’s budget restrictions also meant cancelling the CBS plan to develop a situation comedy adaptation of the stage and screen hit, My Sister Eileen, starring Lucille Ball when royalty and production cost estimates proved too high. (2)
About this same time, Cy Howard, (fka Seymour Horowitz), was 31 and a former Jack Benny gag writer when he approached CBS with the idea of a low cost, network produced sitcom similar in name and content to My Sister Eileen, which he called My Friend Irma.
Howard was given approval to develop his concept with studio players from the Hollywood radio talent pool which suited him just fine until it came time to cast the title role of the beautiful but dumb as rocks Irma Peterson. Then he saw Marie Wilson on stage in the long running revue, Ken Murray’s Blackouts, and he knew his search was over.
Marie Wilson, (fka Katherine Elizabeth Wilson), was also 31 when Cy Howard approached her to play the innocent voiced, knockout blonde, My Friend Irma. She was a newcomer to radio but not to similar parts, having played beautiful but dumb blondes in Hollywood films ever since she was a teenager in nearby Anaheim. (3) Her first credited role - and a title role at that - was in the 1935 Universal two-reel comedy, My Girl Sally. By 1947 she had over 40 films to her credit when Howard saw her in Blackouts. Although stereotyped as a dumb blonde, she was smart enough to recognize that he was offering her the chance of a lifetime and she’d take it at scale if necessary.
Cathy Lewis, who was signed to play Irma’s roommate, Jane Stacy, was a few months younger than her off-mike friend, Marie Wilson, and one of the most active of all Hollywood radio actresses. (4) Howard smartly cast the remaining recurring roles in the first season from other popular actors in Hollywood’s stable of reliable actors: John Brown, Alan Reed, Jane Morgan, Leif Erickson and Hans Conried. Only a few minutes rehearsal of his pilot script was enough to convince Cy Howard that he had created a hit.
CBS introduced My Friend Irma on Friday, April 11, 1947, at 10:30 p.m., immediately, (and quite prophetically), following It Pays To Be Ignorant. (See It Pays To Be Ignorant.)
Variety responded to the new show like a dog to a bone: “Out of Hollywood last Friday came what shapes up to be the top comedy show developed this year by the assorted network programming mahouts. CBS spent many months prepping ‘My Friend Irma’ … the sponsorship nibbles should come thick and fast. Surprising aspect of this situation comedy is the way Marie Wilson, previously of pix and legit, projects herself before a mike. She’s a natural for the dumb-dora Irma role she portrays and with continued good scripting and direction, the teamup of Miss Wilson with the vet air performer Cathy Lewis could develop into radio’s standout femme comedy duo. That’s a tall order but that’s how good the initial stanza stacked up.”
True to Variety’s prediction, My Friend Irma was sold to Lever Brothers’ Swan Soap two months later for $6,250 a week (plus another $10,000 for air time) to replace The Joan Davis Show on Monday, June 30, 1947 at 8:30 p.m. One of the final sustaining episodes is from June 13, 1947.
Four days later, on June 17, producer Arthur Kurlan sued CBS for $150,000 charging breach of contract, breach of trust, plagiarism and infringement of his radio rights to My Sister Eileen with the network’s production and broadcast of My Friend Irma.
Kurlan further charged that he was encouraged by CBS President William Paley to produce an audition record of My Sister Eileen starring Lucille Ball in 1946 which cost him $9,000. He submitted the audition to CBS but received no response until he pressed the network and was told that it had decided to go “in another direction” Kurlan further claimed that Lucille Ball had been offered the lead in My Friend Irma.
Meanwhile, it was business as usual at CBS and business was good. Lever Brothers slotted Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts and My Friend Irma in the half hours immediately before and after Lux Radio Theater on the CBS Monday night schedule. The clever manipulation made all three Top Ten shows in the 1947-48 Season and the next three seasons as well. (5)
The first available broadcast from this series is My Friend Irma from December 1, 1947. The girls were on a roll as they greeted the new year with this episode from January 2, 1948.
That same week CBS claimed that My Friend Irma and Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts set a record as the first network-built shows to achieve Top 15 Hooperatings in just three months. During this period, My Friend Irma ranked Eighth in 1947-48, Eighth in 1948-49, Fifth in 1949-50 and Sixth in 1950-51.
Adding to the CBS optimism, a Los Angeles judge dismissed Arthur Kurlan’s plagiarism suit against the network in January, 1948. (But the network hadn’t heard the last from Arthur Kurlan.)
The last two years of this run were the peaks of popularity for My Friend Irma when Paramount released its film comedy of the same name in October, 1949, and its sequel, My Friend Irma Goes West, on July 4, 1950. (6) My Friend Irma was now in comic book form and CBS was discussing the possibility of a television adaptation. Cy Howard’s creation was becoming a franchise.
Lever Brothers switched sponsorship of the radio show from Swan Soap to its Pepsodent toothpaste as heard in this broadcast from its final Top Ten season on April 2, 1951. Then, in 1951-52 season, the bottom dropped out.
My Friend Irma’s plunge in the season’s rankings from sixth to 51st began in June when Lever Brothers cancelled the sitcom and it was picked up by Pearson Pharmacal’s Ennds, a breath freshening tablet riding the chlorophyll popularity craze. Pearson moved Irma to Sunday nights at 6:00 p.m., far removed from the lead-in provided by Lux Radio Theater on Monday nights. A sample of this sad season is found in this episode from January 6, 1952.
Compounding the problem was the television adaptation of My Friend Irma which premiered on CBS-TV from the network’s new Television City in Hollywood on January 8, 1952. Hitching the new television show to a fading radio sitcom wasn’t the idea when it was first developed.
R.J. Reynolds’ Camel cigarettes took Irma under its sponsorship wing on Tuesday night, October 7, 1952, at 9:30 immediately following another Cy Howard hit, Life With Luigi. (7) Irma bounced back on Tuesday nights and finished the season in 19th place in the Annual Top 50.
Meanwhile, Arthur Kurlan was back in court again on September 15, 1953. This time a Superior Court allowed the owner of broadcast rights to My Sister Eileen, who first sued CBS and others for $150,000 in 1947, to increase his suit to $3.0 Million in plagiarism damages.
How close was My Friend Irma to My Sister Eileen? Was Kurlan’s legal action justified or did CBS consider settling to rid itself of a nuisance suit? Judge for yourself by comparing the posted episodes of the sitcom with The Screen Guild Players adaptation of My Sister Eileen on CBS from October 18, 1943, featuring the same stars as the hit film comedy: Rosalind Russell, Janet Blair, Brian Aherne and George Tobias.
Better yet, this CBS production of My Sister Eileen on Academy Award with Rosalind Russell and Janet Blair from May 18, 1946 which contains this closing announcement: “The further adventures of Ruth and her sister Eileen, is now being prepared by Arthur Kurlan for production next fall as a radio series starring Lucille Ball.”
That statement on its full network, regardless of how it got there, left CBS defenseless and ready to settle which it did for $75,000.
Was it worth it? Seventy-five grand for seven years of radio episodes, (four in the Annual Top Ten), two seasons of television shows and two feature films that grossed over $10 Million in box office receipts? Even My Friend Irma could figure that one out...
(1) Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts premiered on CBS at 9:00 p.m. on Tuesday, July 2, 1946. Its first winner was an eight year old boogie-woogie pianist. (See Arthur Godfrey.)
(2) My Sister Eileen began as a series of autobiographical short stories in New Yorker magazine by Ruth McKinney which were published as a book in 1938. The mis-adventures of two sisters from Ohio living in a Greenwich Village basement apartment became a hit Broadway play in 1940, running 864 performances starring Shirley Booth and JoAnne Sayers. The first movie version of the play was released by Columbia Pictures in September, 1942, starring Rosalind Russell and Janet Blair.
(3) Keen eyed movie buffs will spot 16 year old Marie Wilson as a hotel maid in 1933’s Flying Down To Rio.
(4) Cathy Lewis and her husband, popular radio actor Elliott Lewis were known as Mr. & Mrs. Radio for the 15 years they were married which ended in a divorce in 1958.
(5) The three Lever sponsored programs. Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts, Lux Radio Theater and My Friend Irma, peaked in 1949-50 when they all reached the Top Five.
(6) Both adaptations of My Friend Irma to motion pictures were written by Cy Howard and Parke Levy who supervised writing of the radio series. Producer Hal Wallis used the films as the movie debuts of Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis, the popular comedy team he had under exclusive contract. Marie Wilson reprised her role as Irma but Diana Lynn replaced Cathy Lewis as Jane Stacy in both films.
(7) Adding to Cy Howard’s influence at CBS was a second sitcom, Life With Luigi starring J. Carroll Naish which was introduced in the 1949-50 season on Tuesday nights opposite NBC’s Fibber McGee & Molly and registered in the Annual Top 50 in 32nd place. In two years it would later become a Top Ten attraction.
Copyright © 2020, Jim Ramsburg, Estero FL Email: tojimramsburg@gmail.com
As reported in the GOld Time Radio post, The 1945-46 Season: CBS boss Bill Paley returned from two years of Army service and didn’t like what he found - NBC had registered over twice the number of programs in the Annual Top 50 than CBS for two consecutive seasons - 33 to 16, (to one for ABC). Worse yet, CBS billings were on the verge of dropping over $5.0 Million behind NBC. Paley was determined to put an end to the losing situation. With newly appointed network president Frank Stanton at his side, Paley told the press that CBS would counter NBC’s powerful comedy shows - eleven of the season’s Top 15 programs - by concentrating on, “ …news, drama, public service programming and music.”
Somehow, Paley “forgot” to mention variety and comedy programs or his edict to keep the lid on costs. The first show to meet his postwar criteria was the variety formatted Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts - an inexpensive half-hour talent competition of three professional performers hosted the network’s leading weekday personality. (1)
But Paley’s budget restrictions also meant cancelling the CBS plan to develop a situation comedy adaptation of the stage and screen hit, My Sister Eileen, starring Lucille Ball when royalty and production cost estimates proved too high. (2)
About this same time, Cy Howard, (fka Seymour Horowitz), was 31 and a former Jack Benny gag writer when he approached CBS with the idea of a low cost, network produced sitcom similar in name and content to My Sister Eileen, which he called My Friend Irma.
Howard was given approval to develop his concept with studio players from the Hollywood radio talent pool which suited him just fine until it came time to cast the title role of the beautiful but dumb as rocks Irma Peterson. Then he saw Marie Wilson on stage in the long running revue, Ken Murray’s Blackouts, and he knew his search was over.
Marie Wilson, (fka Katherine Elizabeth Wilson), was also 31 when Cy Howard approached her to play the innocent voiced, knockout blonde, My Friend Irma. She was a newcomer to radio but not to similar parts, having played beautiful but dumb blondes in Hollywood films ever since she was a teenager in nearby Anaheim. (3) Her first credited role - and a title role at that - was in the 1935 Universal two-reel comedy, My Girl Sally. By 1947 she had over 40 films to her credit when Howard saw her in Blackouts. Although stereotyped as a dumb blonde, she was smart enough to recognize that he was offering her the chance of a lifetime and she’d take it at scale if necessary.
Cathy Lewis, who was signed to play Irma’s roommate, Jane Stacy, was a few months younger than her off-mike friend, Marie Wilson, and one of the most active of all Hollywood radio actresses. (4) Howard smartly cast the remaining recurring roles in the first season from other popular actors in Hollywood’s stable of reliable actors: John Brown, Alan Reed, Jane Morgan, Leif Erickson and Hans Conried. Only a few minutes rehearsal of his pilot script was enough to convince Cy Howard that he had created a hit.
CBS introduced My Friend Irma on Friday, April 11, 1947, at 10:30 p.m., immediately, (and quite prophetically), following It Pays To Be Ignorant. (See It Pays To Be Ignorant.)
Variety responded to the new show like a dog to a bone: “Out of Hollywood last Friday came what shapes up to be the top comedy show developed this year by the assorted network programming mahouts. CBS spent many months prepping ‘My Friend Irma’ … the sponsorship nibbles should come thick and fast. Surprising aspect of this situation comedy is the way Marie Wilson, previously of pix and legit, projects herself before a mike. She’s a natural for the dumb-dora Irma role she portrays and with continued good scripting and direction, the teamup of Miss Wilson with the vet air performer Cathy Lewis could develop into radio’s standout femme comedy duo. That’s a tall order but that’s how good the initial stanza stacked up.”
True to Variety’s prediction, My Friend Irma was sold to Lever Brothers’ Swan Soap two months later for $6,250 a week (plus another $10,000 for air time) to replace The Joan Davis Show on Monday, June 30, 1947 at 8:30 p.m. One of the final sustaining episodes is from June 13, 1947.
Four days later, on June 17, producer Arthur Kurlan sued CBS for $150,000 charging breach of contract, breach of trust, plagiarism and infringement of his radio rights to My Sister Eileen with the network’s production and broadcast of My Friend Irma.
Kurlan further charged that he was encouraged by CBS President William Paley to produce an audition record of My Sister Eileen starring Lucille Ball in 1946 which cost him $9,000. He submitted the audition to CBS but received no response until he pressed the network and was told that it had decided to go “in another direction” Kurlan further claimed that Lucille Ball had been offered the lead in My Friend Irma.
Meanwhile, it was business as usual at CBS and business was good. Lever Brothers slotted Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts and My Friend Irma in the half hours immediately before and after Lux Radio Theater on the CBS Monday night schedule. The clever manipulation made all three Top Ten shows in the 1947-48 Season and the next three seasons as well. (5)
The first available broadcast from this series is My Friend Irma from December 1, 1947. The girls were on a roll as they greeted the new year with this episode from January 2, 1948.
That same week CBS claimed that My Friend Irma and Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts set a record as the first network-built shows to achieve Top 15 Hooperatings in just three months. During this period, My Friend Irma ranked Eighth in 1947-48, Eighth in 1948-49, Fifth in 1949-50 and Sixth in 1950-51.
Adding to the CBS optimism, a Los Angeles judge dismissed Arthur Kurlan’s plagiarism suit against the network in January, 1948. (But the network hadn’t heard the last from Arthur Kurlan.)
The last two years of this run were the peaks of popularity for My Friend Irma when Paramount released its film comedy of the same name in October, 1949, and its sequel, My Friend Irma Goes West, on July 4, 1950. (6) My Friend Irma was now in comic book form and CBS was discussing the possibility of a television adaptation. Cy Howard’s creation was becoming a franchise.
Lever Brothers switched sponsorship of the radio show from Swan Soap to its Pepsodent toothpaste as heard in this broadcast from its final Top Ten season on April 2, 1951. Then, in 1951-52 season, the bottom dropped out.
My Friend Irma’s plunge in the season’s rankings from sixth to 51st began in June when Lever Brothers cancelled the sitcom and it was picked up by Pearson Pharmacal’s Ennds, a breath freshening tablet riding the chlorophyll popularity craze. Pearson moved Irma to Sunday nights at 6:00 p.m., far removed from the lead-in provided by Lux Radio Theater on Monday nights. A sample of this sad season is found in this episode from January 6, 1952.
Compounding the problem was the television adaptation of My Friend Irma which premiered on CBS-TV from the network’s new Television City in Hollywood on January 8, 1952. Hitching the new television show to a fading radio sitcom wasn’t the idea when it was first developed.
R.J. Reynolds’ Camel cigarettes took Irma under its sponsorship wing on Tuesday night, October 7, 1952, at 9:30 immediately following another Cy Howard hit, Life With Luigi. (7) Irma bounced back on Tuesday nights and finished the season in 19th place in the Annual Top 50.
Meanwhile, Arthur Kurlan was back in court again on September 15, 1953. This time a Superior Court allowed the owner of broadcast rights to My Sister Eileen, who first sued CBS and others for $150,000 in 1947, to increase his suit to $3.0 Million in plagiarism damages.
How close was My Friend Irma to My Sister Eileen? Was Kurlan’s legal action justified or did CBS consider settling to rid itself of a nuisance suit? Judge for yourself by comparing the posted episodes of the sitcom with The Screen Guild Players adaptation of My Sister Eileen on CBS from October 18, 1943, featuring the same stars as the hit film comedy: Rosalind Russell, Janet Blair, Brian Aherne and George Tobias.
Better yet, this CBS production of My Sister Eileen on Academy Award with Rosalind Russell and Janet Blair from May 18, 1946 which contains this closing announcement: “The further adventures of Ruth and her sister Eileen, is now being prepared by Arthur Kurlan for production next fall as a radio series starring Lucille Ball.”
That statement on its full network, regardless of how it got there, left CBS defenseless and ready to settle which it did for $75,000.
Was it worth it? Seventy-five grand for seven years of radio episodes, (four in the Annual Top Ten), two seasons of television shows and two feature films that grossed over $10 Million in box office receipts? Even My Friend Irma could figure that one out...
(1) Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts premiered on CBS at 9:00 p.m. on Tuesday, July 2, 1946. Its first winner was an eight year old boogie-woogie pianist. (See Arthur Godfrey.)
(2) My Sister Eileen began as a series of autobiographical short stories in New Yorker magazine by Ruth McKinney which were published as a book in 1938. The mis-adventures of two sisters from Ohio living in a Greenwich Village basement apartment became a hit Broadway play in 1940, running 864 performances starring Shirley Booth and JoAnne Sayers. The first movie version of the play was released by Columbia Pictures in September, 1942, starring Rosalind Russell and Janet Blair.
(3) Keen eyed movie buffs will spot 16 year old Marie Wilson as a hotel maid in 1933’s Flying Down To Rio.
(4) Cathy Lewis and her husband, popular radio actor Elliott Lewis were known as Mr. & Mrs. Radio for the 15 years they were married which ended in a divorce in 1958.
(5) The three Lever sponsored programs. Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts, Lux Radio Theater and My Friend Irma, peaked in 1949-50 when they all reached the Top Five.
(6) Both adaptations of My Friend Irma to motion pictures were written by Cy Howard and Parke Levy who supervised writing of the radio series. Producer Hal Wallis used the films as the movie debuts of Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis, the popular comedy team he had under exclusive contract. Marie Wilson reprised her role as Irma but Diana Lynn replaced Cathy Lewis as Jane Stacy in both films.
(7) Adding to Cy Howard’s influence at CBS was a second sitcom, Life With Luigi starring J. Carroll Naish which was introduced in the 1949-50 season on Tuesday nights opposite NBC’s Fibber McGee & Molly and registered in the Annual Top 50 in 32nd place. In two years it would later become a Top Ten attraction.
Copyright © 2020, Jim Ramsburg, Estero FL Email: tojimramsburg@gmail.com