Wendy and Me is a
1964The year 1964 in television involved some significant events.Below is a list of television-related events in 1964.For the American TV schedule, see: 1964-65 American network television schedule.-Events:...
-
1965The year 1965 in television involved some significant events.Below is a list of television-related events in 1965.For the American TV schedule, see: 1965-66 American network television schedule.-Events:...
ABCThe American Broadcasting Company is an American television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. It first broadcast on television in 1948...
situation comedyA situation comedy, usually referred to as a sitcom, is a genre of comedy programs which originated in radio. Today, sitcoms are found almost exclusively on television as one of its dominant narrative forms...
, principally starring
George BurnsGeorge Burns , born Nathan Birnbaum, was an American comedian, actor, and writer.His career spanned vaudeville, film, radio, and television, with and without his wife, Gracie Allen. His arched eyebrow and cigar smoke punctuation became familiar trademarks for over three quarters of a century...
and
Connie StevensConnie Stevens is an American actress and singer.-On-Set:When Connie was with her pals in the making of "Saving Grace B Jones", she met a few people...
. The series was Burns' first major work following the death of his wife and professional partner,
Gracie AllenGrace Ethel Cecile Rosalie Allen , better known as Gracie Allen, was an American comedienne who became internationally famous as the zany partner and comic foil of husband George Burns...
, who had died of a
heart attackMyocardial infarction or acute myocardial infarction , commonly known as a heart attack, is the interruption of blood supply to part of the heart, causing some heart cells to die...
about a month prior to the program's debut.
In the show (a slight variation of
The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show), Burns plays a somewhat fictionalized version of himself.
Wendy and Me is a
1964The year 1964 in television involved some significant events.Below is a list of television-related events in 1964.For the American TV schedule, see: 1964-65 American network television schedule.-Events:...
-
1965The year 1965 in television involved some significant events.Below is a list of television-related events in 1965.For the American TV schedule, see: 1965-66 American network television schedule.-Events:...
ABCThe American Broadcasting Company is an American television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. It first broadcast on television in 1948...
situation comedyA situation comedy, usually referred to as a sitcom, is a genre of comedy programs which originated in radio. Today, sitcoms are found almost exclusively on television as one of its dominant narrative forms...
, principally starring
George BurnsGeorge Burns , born Nathan Birnbaum, was an American comedian, actor, and writer.His career spanned vaudeville, film, radio, and television, with and without his wife, Gracie Allen. His arched eyebrow and cigar smoke punctuation became familiar trademarks for over three quarters of a century...
and
Connie StevensConnie Stevens is an American actress and singer.-On-Set:When Connie was with her pals in the making of "Saving Grace B Jones", she met a few people...
. The series was Burns' first major work following the death of his wife and professional partner,
Gracie AllenGrace Ethel Cecile Rosalie Allen , better known as Gracie Allen, was an American comedienne who became internationally famous as the zany partner and comic foil of husband George Burns...
, who had died of a
heart attackMyocardial infarction or acute myocardial infarction , commonly known as a heart attack, is the interruption of blood supply to part of the heart, causing some heart cells to die...
about a month prior to the program's debut.
In the show (a slight variation of
The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show), Burns plays a somewhat fictionalized version of himself. He is the owner of an
apartmentAn apartment, or flat, is a self-contained housing unit that occupies only part of a building. Such a building may be called an apartment building, especially if it consists of many apartments for rent...
building, while Stevens plays his
tenantA leasehold estate is an ownership interest in land in which a lessee or a tenant holds real property by some form of title from a lessor or landlord....
, Wendy Conway. Episodes typically revolved around Wendy pulling Burns into comedic situations mostly involving her husband, played by
Ron HarperRonald Robert "Ron" Harper is an American television and film actor.- Biography :Harper was born in Turtle Creek in Allegheny County near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the son of Mabel Grace Champion and George Harper...
, and other people in the building. As a regular part of its format, Burns would often break the
fourth wallThe fourth wall is the imaginary "wall" at the front of the stage in a proscenium theatre, through which the audience sees the action in the world of the play. The term also applies to the boundary between any fictional setting and its audience...
to comment directly to the audience about the episode's events. Intriguingly, Burns as landlord would watch his attractive young tenant on what appears to the modern eye to be a surreptitious closed circuit television transmission with hidden cameras (he also accomplished this with his "TV in the den" in later episodes of
The Burns and Allen Show).
James T. CallahanJames Thomas Callahan was an American film and television actor who appeared in more than 120 films and television shows between 1959 and 2007...
appeared in the series as Danny Adams, a playboy friend of Wendy's strait-laced husband.
J. Pat O'MalleyJames Patrick O'Malley , was an English singer and character actor, who appeared in many American films and television programs during the 1940s–1970s, using the stage name J. Pat O'Malley...
played the apartment handyman.
Prior to her
Wendy and Me role, Connie Stevens portrayed singer Cricket Blake in ABC's
Hawaiian EyeHawaiian Eye is an American television series that ran from October 1959 to September 1963 on the American Broadcasting Company television network.-Premise:...
. Due to her contract with
Warner Bros.Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc. Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc. Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc. (also known as Warner Bros. Pictures, or simply Warner Bros.—the shortened form of the former official, sometimes still used, formal corporate name: Warner Brothers
, in order for Connie to appear on the show, Burns agreed to produce another series for her studio, No Time For Sergeants, which appeared before Wendy and Me on ABC's Monday night schedule. Before he joined the Wendy and Me cast, Ron Harper had appeared in the 1961-1962 season as a rookieRookie is a term for a person who is in his or her first year of play of their sport and has little or no professional experience. The term also has the more general meaning of anyone new to a profession, training or activity Rookie is a term for a person who is in his or her first year of play of...
detectiveA detective is an investigator, either a member of a police agency or a private person. The latter may be known as private investigators...
on the NBCThe National Broadcasting Company is an American television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices in Burbank,California...
series 87th Precinct87th Precinct is an hour-long grim and gritty police drama series starring Robert Lansing, Gena Rowlands, and Ron Harper, which aired on NBC on Monday evenings during the 1961–1962 television season....
. A year after Wendy and Me, Harper co-starred as Paul Marshall, a young attorney, on the short-lived CBS sitcom The Jean Arthur ShowThe Jean Arthur Show is a 12-episode situation comedy about a mother-son team of lawyers in Los Angeles, starring Jean Arthur and Ron Harper as Patricia and Paul Marshall, which aired on CBS from September 12 to December 5, 1966, under the primary sponsorship of General Foods...
, starring former film star Jean ArthurJean Arthur was an American actress and a major film star of the 1930s and 1940s. She remains arguably the epitome of the female screwball comedy actress. "No one was more closely identified with the screwball comedy than Jean Arthur...
as his attorney-mother.
Wendy and Me was followed on the ABC schedule by The Bing Crosby ShowThe Bing Crosby Show is a 28-episode television situation comedy starring crooner, film star, iconic phenomenon, and businessman Bing Crosby and actress Beverly Garland as a middle-aged couple, Bing and Ellie Collins, rearing two teenaged daughters during the early 1960s...
, an unsuccessful attempt by Bing CrosbyHarry Lillis "Bing" Crosby was an American popular singer and actor whose career stretched over more than half a century from 1926 until his death....
to establish a situation comedy of his own. The program faced competition from Lucille BallLucille Désirée Ball was an American comedienne, film, television, stage and radio actress, model, film and television executive, and star of the sitcoms I Love Lucy, The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour, The Lucy Show and Here's Lucy...
's The Lucy ShowThe Lucy Show is a television series that aired on CBS from 1962 until 1968. It was Lucille Ball's follow-up to I Love Lucy. A significant change in cast and premise for the 1965-66 season divides the program into two distinct eras; aside from Ball, only Gale Gordon, who joined the program for its...
on CBS and The Andy Williams ShowThe Andy Williams Show was a television variety show which ran from 1959 to 1971 , and a short-lived run in syndication, beginning in the fall of 1976...
on NBC.
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