OUR MISS BROOKS School Spirit

Home , Eve Arden, Gale Gordon, Shirley Booth

CD 7B: “School on Saturday” – 01/29/1956 When Mr. Conklin calls for staff and students to come to school on a Saturday, the students are outraged. OUR MISS BROOKS They do show up on campus…but only to protest against the Principal! School Spirit

CD 8A: “Charity Auction” - 02/05/1956 Program Guide by Elizabeth McLeod Connie’s tasked with leading an auction for a fundraiser. Going once! Going twice! Sold! Gale Gordon and Eve Arden Other than your immediate family, probably no adult figures had a greater impact on your life than your teachers. And yet, Americans have generally had an odd CD 8B: “Mr. Conklin’s Statue” - 02/12/1956 arms-length relationship with their educators -- often paying them peanuts, The principal of Madison High mounts a drive to raise a monument…to himself. denying them professional respect, and stereotyping them as dried-up joyless old fun-spoilers. From Washington Irving’s vivid portrayal of bony, desiccated Ichabod Crane to the glowering needle-nosed Miss Grundy of Archie Comics fame, teachers were rarely portrayed in mass culture with any sort of empathy or respect. But one radio program worked to break that mold by offering a schoolteacher who was as far from a nagging Grundy-ish crone as the popular imagination could handle: the delightful postwar favorite Our Miss Brooks. If you enjoyed this CD set, we recommend Our Miss Brooks: Faculty Feuds, available The first half of the twentieth century saw the height of the Mean Old Teacher now at www.RadioSpirits.com. stereotype in America -- “readin’ and writin’ and ‘rith-a-matic, taught to the tune of a hickory stick.” But that stereotype drifted further and further from the ac- tual reality of the classroom with every passing year. Even before the First World War, the modern schoolteacher was a well-trained, well-educated professional. They were in tune with the latest trends in scholastic theory, and eager www.RadioSpirits.com and willing to teach students PO Box 1315, Little Falls, NJ 07424 as human beings (rather than simply marking time by cram- Audio programs released under license from series rights holders. ming pointless rote memori- © 2019 Al Lewis Estate. All rights reserved. Manufactured under zation into their heads). New, exclusive license. Unauthorized duplication prohibited. airy, modern school buildings fast replaced the dilapidated Program Guide © 2019 Elizabeth McLeod and RSPT LLC. All Rights Reserved. old nineteenth-century school- houses as America moved into 48352 the 1920s, and teachers who couldn’t keep pace with the new trends found themselves overtaken by eager CD 1A: “Stretch Is In Love Again” - 10/24/1954 young specialists who understood the emerging field of child psychology as well Stretch Snodgrass gets involved with the daughter of the principal of a rival as they understood the proverbial Three R’s. By the 1940s, the average Ameri- school…and doesn’t realize that she may have an ulterior motive. can public school teacher was a woman in her thirties, with a four-year college degree and a crisp, modern attitude to go with her extensive training. She did not CD 1B: “Male Superiority” - 01/16/1955 dress severely in black, she did not wear heavy low-heeled shoes, she did not Who’s better in an emergency, men or women? The Madison gang finds out! wear her hair in a tight bun, and she did not scowl angrily at her students over a thick pince-nez. And she had a life of her own away from the classroom. CD 2A: “The Pen Pal Project” - 01/23/1955 Who’s Mr. Boynton’s mysterious French correspondent? That was the type of teacher that writer Al Lewis had in mind when he pitched a new idea for a situation comedy in 1947. No relation to the actor who went CD 2B: “Project X” - 03/06/1955 on to play Grandpa Munster, Lewis was a veteran comedy scribe who’d had Never mind Big Brother -- Mr. Conklin is eavesdropping on you! considerable success at CBS with My Friend Irma. That series stood out not just for the quality of its scripts, but for the fact that it was wholly owned and CD 3A: “An American Tragedy” - 04/03/1955 developed by the network (instead of a sponsor or an ad agency). Together A rural retreat for Connie and Mr. Boynton leads to -- well, you can imagine. with producer Harry Ackerman, William S. Paley took an active interest in the CD 3B: “Spring Cleaning” - 05/01/1955 development of Lewis’s project. A slick vacuum cleaner salesman spells trouble for Mrs. Davis. Lewis gave the new series a solid foundation with his sympathetic-yet-sardonic CD 4A: “The Spring Garden” - 05/29/1955 portrayal of modern high school life. However, the program did not leap fully What happens when the school goat discovers the school garden? developed from his typewriter. From the beginning, the script was seen as a potential vehicle for a name star, and producer Ackerman’s first impulse was to CD 4B: “Bye Bye Boynton” - 07/10/1955 offer the role to Broadway favorite Shirley Booth (below) -- known and beloved The Brooks-Boynton romance hits the rocks. for her portrayals of wised-up two-fisted women, generally with a heavy tinge of Brooklyn sass about them. She was well-known to radio listeners for her years CD 5A: “The Non-Fraternization Policy” - 07/24/1955 as the original Miss Duffy of Duffy’s Tavern, but the end of her marriage to series Mr. Conklin tries to keep the boys away from the girls -- and vice versa. star Ed Gardner brought an abrupt end to her tenure on that show. She had been confining her radio work to occasional guest spots when Ackerman approached CD 5B: “Marriage Madness” - 07/31/1955 her about his new series. Mrs. Davis gets sweet on that nice man from the butcher shop.

Booth recorded an audition episode CD 6A: “The Cat Burglars” - 08/07/1955 in early 1948, but Ackerman found Who’s behind a wave of break-ins around town? her portrayal of Connie Brooks too brittle, too sardonic, and too obviously CD 6B: “Summer Vacation” - 09/04/1955 working-class for a situation comedy. Summer’s winding down, but Mr. Conklin is determined Booth’s Miss Brooks, ever griping to get the most out of what’s left. about her low pay and poor treatment, sounded like she might have been CD 7A: “Saving the School Newspaper” - 12/04/1955 right at home walking a picket line… Walter Denton’s editorials in the school paper may have Dick Crenna is heard but both Ackerman and the network gone too far. Shirley Booth as Walter Denton. 2 7 Eve Arden’s career tapered off in the years after had someone a bit less militant-sounding (with Our Miss Brooks ended. She dabbled in Broadway, more of a sense of humor) in mind for the part. made the occasional film, and enjoyed a brief but Paley suggested another actress, one who had flashy success on television. In the raucous 1967-69 extensive experience in playing tart-tongued NBC sitcom The Mothers-In-Law, she ramped up women on the air, on stage, and on the screen her brassy persona to the highest possible level in a -- the glass-voiced Eve Arden (right). Al Lewis formidable pairing with co-star Kaye Ballard. She was no stranger to Arden, having written for spent the 1970s and ‘80s doing selected television her during her tempestuous run opposite co- guest shots, which often came across as campy star/clandestine lover Danny Kaye on the revisitations of her snappy screen manner. A prime latter’s wartime comedy-variety series. On that example of this was her 1983 performance as the program, she’d played the part of an all-purpose Eve Arden Robert Rockwell and Eve Arden Queen of Hearts in a PBS dramatization of Alice in comic foil, a hard-boiled Mary Livingstone Wonderland. Her health faltered as the 1990s dawned, and heart failure claimed figure to Kaye’s twittering-eccentric Jack Benny. The role of Connie Brooks, her in November 1990. however, would be far more a creature of the real world. This suited Arden’s talents just fine -- she wasn’t just a lively comedienne, she also was a gifted In the wake of her passing, Arden got a dignified obituary and passing notice on straightforward actress, known in her film career for playing women who tended the TV news programs -- but nowhere near the coverage a major screen star of to be blunt and honest to a fault. She was so well established in such roles, in fact, her generation might have merited. But few actresses ever earned the immortality that the “Eve Arden type” had already become a byword in movie casting offices of becoming a “type” -- casting directors with long memories might refer to “an when director’s wanted someone who could deliver a tough-with-a-heart-of-gold Eve Arden type” even today. And few ever left behind a character as well-liked portrayal…roles which very often went to Arden herself. and fondly remembered as Connie Brooks. She was the teacher every student wished they’d had, and the teacher every adult remembered their favorite teacher Eve Arden was about to turn forty in 1948, and had been a screen fixture for over as being like. And in playing that role, Eve Arden helped to change the popular- a decade. Born Eunice Quedens, the daughter of an unstable and unhappy home, culture image of the American teacher for the better…and gave audiences a lot she’d struck out on her own as soon as she could manage. Hitting the road with of laughs besides. a theatrical stock company at sixteen, she manufactured a hard-nosed persona to better absorb the bumps and scuffs she picked up along the way. She was twenty- THE AMERICAN HOME PRODUCTS COMPANY one when she broke into pictures as a brassy showgirl in a cheap Columbia THE GILLETTE COMPANY musical. For several years, she shuttled between Broadway and Hollywood present -- picking up a new name along the way -- before finally settling on the West Coast when she landed an RKO contract in 1937. Her breakthrough role as the EVE ARDEN sarcastic second lead alongside Katharine Hepburn in Stage Door established the “Eve Arden” character forever after. While she did play occasional leads, in by the mid-forties she was well on her way to character-actress status. Her sub-rosa relationship with Danny Kaye, which began with their pairing in a OUR MISS BROOKS Broadway show, made her a bankable radio personality. But the sudden end of that relationship, when Kaye refused to divorce his wife (and head writer), left with her wondering about the future direction of her career. The Our Miss Brooks GALE GORDON, DICK CRENNA, ROBERT ROCKWELL, GLORIA proposal came along at precisely the right moment. McMILLAN, ANNE WHITFIELD, LEONARD SMITH, MARY JANE CROFT, and JANE MORGAN

6 3 Arden read for the part, and cut an audition record that came closer to the vision from tales of classroom antics (featuring Henry Aldrich-like adolescent blunderer Ackerman had in mind for the program. But something still wasn’t quite right. Walter Denton, the principal’s bobby-soxer daughter Harriet, and goofy class jock The issue was not with Arden herself, but with the supporting cast. Specifically, Stretch Snodgrass) to wistful stories revolving around Miss Brooks’ personal life there was a lack of a strong adversarial character to act as a foil for Miss Brooks. (primarily focusing on the frustration she felt at the romantic inadequacies of her The audition featured character actor Will Wright as the new principal of Madison boyfriend, the fumbling frog-obsessed science teacher Philip Boynton). Bridging High School, reporting to his job after a traffic accident with Miss Brooks. The the two worlds in which Miss Brooks lived out her life was the ominous figure situation set the groundwork for a difficult relationship between principal and of Mr. Conklin, who always seemed to make unreasonable new demands on his teacher -- but Wright was too phlegmatic an actor to give the role any real bite. teaching staff at the worst possible time. There gradually developed a grudging Ackerman gave the job to another established character actor, the not-quite-so- mutual respect between Miss Brooks and her principal, but the relationship was blasé Joe Forte. With that, and Arden’s star power, it was sufficient to get the nod always fraught…and you never quite knew when Conklin might lose his temper, from CBS. Our Miss Brooks made its debut on July 19, 1948. to generally hilarious results.

The premiere was promising, but it was apparent to all that there was still an Our Miss Brooks ran on radio with remarkable consistency for nine years. It ingredient missing. Forte was adequate in the role of Conklin, but he wasn’t survived the arrival of television in fine form, by introducing a TV series that in strong enough to work credibly opposite Arden’s vigorous performance as Miss every way captured the warmth and wit of the radio original. Most of the radio Brooks. Ackerman knew that he needed an actor capable of giving the part a cool, cast -- Dick Crenna as Walter, Gloria McMillan as Harriet, Jane Morgan as Miss smooth professionalism…right up until that climactic stack-blowing moment. Brooks’ dizzy landlady Mrs. Davis, and of course Gale Gordon as Conklin -- He needed, in other words, to hire Gale Gordon (below). made the transition to the small screen. Unfortunately, Jeff Chandler (radio’s Mr. Boynton) was too restricted by his movie contract to make the shift to TV. Robert Gordon had been playing similar roles on other programs for several years by Rockwell played the part for the television series, and later replaced Chandler on this time, branching out from the glossy leading man/suave announcer parts the radio show (when Chandler’s movie schedule forced him to give up the role). that had characterized his prewar radio career. He was best known by this point But regardless of the medium, Our Miss Brooks kept its flavor throughout its as Fibber McGee’s windbag rival Mayor LaTrivia, a cartoon of a small-town run. Connie Brooks remained arch and occasionally sarcastic, but always firmly functionary with an ego as big as all outdoors and a firecracker temper. Principal dedicated to her career and her students. And Osgood Conklin never managed Osgood Conklin of Madison High School wasn’t quite that exaggerated, but to lose the notion that somehow all the feckless teenagers of Madison High, and Gordon’s performance as LaTrivia made it obvious to one and all that he was their enabling teachers, stood aligned impassably against him. exactly the man to take the role (and give it the energy needed to make Conklin an outstanding comic foil). Gordon assumed the part of the principal with the By the mid-1950s, radio was a shell of its former self, with big-money sponsors second broadcast, and it was that one change that pulled the entire show together. deserting the medium in droves. Colgate dropped the show in 1954, giving way to Now Miss Brooks had a worthy adversary, a friendly American Home Products…which later gave way to Gillette’s hair-care division enemy with whom she could exchange sharp, witty in 1955. CBS sustained the program for one more season as reruns before the dialogue without the exchanges ever coming across final bell rang for Madison High in the spring of 1957. Our Miss Brooks was as one-sided. Gordon’s addition to the cast was the the last survivor of the half-hour situation comedy format on the network’s final touch needed to ensure the program’s success, schedule, outlasting even the TV series. The television series had a long life in and Our Miss Brooks, soon gaining well-paying rerun syndication, turning up on independent TV stations in odd timeslots well sponsorship from Colgate-Palmolive-Peet, settled in into the 1970s. This kept the “Miss Brooks” image before the public, making it for a long and satisfying run. Arden’s best-remembered role. In fact, the producers of the movie version of the musical Grease cast Arden in the role of a no-nonsense high school principal. It Miss Brooks remained the fulcrum on which the was no doubt a promotion that the old Connie Brooks would have relished…and Gale Gordon entire series moved. The action tipped effortlessly it was as a fun tribute to her long run as America’s Favorite Teacher 4 5 Eve Arden’s career tapered off in the years after had someone a bit less militant-sounding (with Our Miss Brooks ended. She dabbled in Broadway, more of a sense of humor) in mind for the part. made the occasional film, and enjoyed a brief but Paley suggested another actress, one who had flashy success on television. In the raucous 1967-69 extensive experience in playing tart-tongued NBC sitcom The Mothers-In-Law, she ramped up women on the air, on stage, and on the screen her brassy persona to the highest possible level in a -- the glass-voiced Eve Arden (right). Al Lewis formidable pairing with co-star Kaye Ballard. She was no stranger to Arden, having written for spent the 1970s and ‘80s doing selected television her during her tempestuous run opposite co- guest shots, which often came across as campy star/clandestine lover Danny Kaye on the revisitations of her snappy screen manner. A prime latter’s wartime comedy-variety series. On that example of this was her 1983 performance as the program, she’d played the part of an all-purpose Eve Arden Robert Rockwell and Eve Arden Queen of Hearts in a PBS dramatization of Alice in comic foil, a hard-boiled Mary Livingstone Wonderland. Her health faltered as the 1990s dawned, and heart failure claimed figure to Kaye’s twittering-eccentric Jack Benny. The role of Connie Brooks, her in November 1990. however, would be far more a creature of the real world. This suited Arden’s talents just fine -- she wasn’t just a lively comedienne, she also was a gifted In the wake of her passing, Arden got a dignified obituary and passing notice on straightforward actress, known in her film career for playing women who tended the TV news programs -- but nowhere near the coverage a major screen star of to be blunt and honest to a fault. She was so well established in such roles, in fact, her generation might have merited. But few actresses ever earned the immortality that the “Eve Arden type” had already become a byword in movie casting offices of becoming a “type” -- casting directors with long memories might refer to “an when director’s wanted someone who could deliver a tough-with-a-heart-of-gold Eve Arden type” even today. And few ever left behind a character as well-liked portrayal…roles which very often went to Arden herself. and fondly remembered as Connie Brooks. She was the teacher every student wished they’d had, and the teacher every adult remembered their favorite teacher Eve Arden was about to turn forty in 1948, and had been a screen fixture for over as being like. And in playing that role, Eve Arden helped to change the popular- a decade. Born Eunice Quedens, the daughter of an unstable and unhappy home, culture image of the American teacher for the better…and gave audiences a lot she’d struck out on her own as soon as she could manage. Hitting the road with of laughs besides. a theatrical stock company at sixteen, she manufactured a hard-nosed persona to better absorb the bumps and scuffs she picked up along the way. She was twenty- THE AMERICAN HOME PRODUCTS COMPANY one when she broke into pictures as a brassy showgirl in a cheap Columbia THE GILLETTE COMPANY musical. For several years, she shuttled between Broadway and Hollywood present -- picking up a new name along the way -- before finally settling on the West Coast when she landed an RKO contract in 1937. Her breakthrough role as the EVE ARDEN sarcastic second lead alongside Katharine Hepburn in Stage Door established the “Eve Arden” character forever after. While she did play occasional leads, in by the mid-forties she was well on her way to character-actress status. Her sub-rosa relationship with Danny Kaye, which began with their pairing in a OUR MISS BROOKS Broadway show, made her a bankable radio personality. But the sudden end of that relationship, when Kaye refused to divorce his wife (and head writer), left with her wondering about the future direction of her career. The Our Miss Brooks GALE GORDON, DICK CRENNA, ROBERT ROCKWELL, GLORIA proposal came along at precisely the right moment. McMILLAN, ANNE WHITFIELD, LEONARD SMITH, MARY JANE CROFT, and JANE MORGAN

6 3 couldn’t keep pace with the new trends found themselves overtaken by eager CD 1A: “Stretch Is In Love Again” - 10/24/1954 young specialists who understood the emerging field of child psychology as well Stretch Snodgrass gets involved with the daughter of the principal of a rival as they understood the proverbial Three R’s. By the 1940s, the average Ameri- school…and doesn’t realize that she may have an ulterior motive. can public school teacher was a woman in her thirties, with a four-year college degree and a crisp, modern attitude to go with her extensive training. She did not CD 1B: “Male Superiority” - 01/16/1955 dress severely in black, she did not wear heavy low-heeled shoes, she did not Who’s better in an emergency, men or women? The Madison gang finds out! wear her hair in a tight bun, and she did not scowl angrily at her students over a thick pince-nez. And she had a life of her own away from the classroom. CD 2A: “The Pen Pal Project” - 01/23/1955 Who’s Mr. Boynton’s mysterious French correspondent? That was the type of teacher that writer Al Lewis had in mind when he pitched a new idea for a situation comedy in 1947. No relation to the actor who went CD 2B: “Project X” - 03/06/1955 on to play Grandpa Munster, Lewis was a veteran comedy scribe who’d had Never mind Big Brother -- Mr. Conklin is eavesdropping on you! considerable success at CBS with My Friend Irma. That series stood out not just for the quality of its scripts, but for the fact that it was wholly owned and CD 3A: “An American Tragedy” - 04/03/1955 developed by the network (instead of a sponsor or an ad agency). Together A rural retreat for Connie and Mr. Boynton leads to -- well, you can imagine. with producer Harry Ackerman, William S. Paley took an active interest in the CD 3B: “Spring Cleaning” - 05/01/1955 development of Lewis’s project. A slick vacuum cleaner salesman spells trouble for Mrs. Davis. Lewis gave the new series a solid foundation with his sympathetic-yet-sardonic CD 4A: “The Spring Garden” - 05/29/1955 portrayal of modern high school life. However, the program did not leap fully What happens when the school goat discovers the school garden? developed from his typewriter. From the beginning, the script was seen as a potential vehicle for a name star, and producer Ackerman’s first impulse was to CD 4B: “Bye Bye Boynton” - 07/10/1955 offer the role to Broadway favorite Shirley Booth (below) -- known and beloved The Brooks-Boynton romance hits the rocks. for her portrayals of wised-up two-fisted women, generally with a heavy tinge of Brooklyn sass about them. She was well-known to radio listeners for her years CD 5A: “The Non-Fraternization Policy” - 07/24/1955 as the original Miss Duffy of Duffy’s Tavern, but the end of her marriage to series Mr. Conklin tries to keep the boys away from the girls -- and vice versa. star Ed Gardner brought an abrupt end to her tenure on that show. She had been confining her radio work to occasional guest spots when Ackerman approached CD 5B: “Marriage Madness” - 07/31/1955 her about his new series. Mrs. Davis gets sweet on that nice man from the butcher shop.