Sci-Fi Pygmalion

Although I am broke as anything, I did order a couple of DVDs through Amazon (I don't do much in the way of downloads of TV series when I prefer to have the prerecorded shows for collection purposes and I don't subscribe to Netflix which is a waste of money). One of them I got was what remains of the old sixties sitcom My Living Doll starring Bob Cummings and Julie Newmar. It ran on CBS during the 1964-1965 season. I had already seen a handful of episodes on YouTube, but I wanted to get a collection of what remained of the show. Sadly, all of the 35mm copies of the series were destroyed in the 1994 Northridge earthquake, so the people who put together the DVD had to round up episodes from various collectors. The video quality of the 11 (so far) surviving episodes is good, and, contrary to the Andrews and Dunning book, The Worst TV Shows Ever from around 30 years ago, it doesn't rank anywhere near the worst. The show in fact has quite a bit of charm to it, and Julie Newmar did very well in a role that was extremely difficult to play (that of the robot Rhoda Miller), according to her and others who worked on the series. It helped she had been a dancer and had also studied mime. While the show's producers thought Bob Cummings had been miscast in the role of the Air Force psychiatrist who was in charge of the robot as he was in his fifties while Newmar was 29 when the show began, he was actually very good in the part. I would have a hard time with anybody else in the role, which was very similar to the part he played in the long-running series The Bob Cummings Show.

Furthermore, the part called for an older actor, as the show was obviously modeled on the "Pygmalion" theme but with a sci-fi twist. It is more obvious when one of the most popular films in the country during 1964 was the Oscar-winning film, My Fair Lady. A younger actor would have made the relationship with the robot downright creepy, if not perverted. Cummings was perfect for the part.

Unfortunately, there were problems with the show from the start. Mostly, the Sunday night schedule guaranteed it would not last because it was opposite the hit NBC series Bonanza. Even after it was moved to a different day and time slot, the ratings never rose from the cellar. It was also guaranteed to be cancelled because the person who approved the series, CBS president James T. Aubrey, was kicked out of the network thanks to scandal. The network did a housecleaning not just of this series but also of many other series including those produced by Aubrey gofer Keefe Brasselle*, who I think I mentioned on this blog some years ago. Brasselle was one of those guys with a lot of ambition, but he had utterly no talent for anything except failure.

Furthermore, Cummings, despite all of his considerable comic talent, tended to be a bit of a control freak and actually had the nerve to try and direct Newmar on occasion, forgetting that the series was supposed to be about HER and not him. Contrary to rumor, however, there wasn't a feud between the two, at least that is what I understand having seen one of the "extras" on the DVD release about the making of the show. Newmar said everything was professional on the set. She and others who had worked on the show did not know why Cummings decided to up and leave when there were still five episodes left to film. This article from the Los Angeles Times gives one a clue as to what happened with Cummings:

Cummings left the show with five episodes to go because they wouldn't film one he had written in which he played his own grandfather. "It was centered around his character," said Greenwood. "It was really Julie's show -- you can't take away the focus from her."

It seems that while The Bob Cummings Show left the air, the show hadn't left Bob Cummings, much to the exasperation of those working on My Living Doll. On the former series, he DID control it and had directed quite a few of the episodes. When he finally realized My Living Doll wasn't HIS Living Doll, he just said to hell with it and walked away. The show limped along five more weeks and then not renewed for a second season.

It's still worth watching the series even if it is silly. It was typical of the "gimmick" shows that flourished on network television at the time, but certainly no worse than any of them and not worthy at all of inclusion in a "worst television show in history" list.


*--About Keefe Brasselle, I wrote about him here.