Our Miss Brooks
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Our Miss Brooks, an American situation comedy, starred Eve Arden as a sardonic high school English teacher. It began as a radio show which lasted from 1948 to 1957, migrating to television (1952-1956) and becoming one of the still-new medium's earliest hits.
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[edit] Characters
- Connie (Constance) Brooks, an English teacher at fictional Madison High School.
- Osgood Conklin (Gale Gordon), blustery, gruff, crooked, and unsympathetic Madison High principal, a near-constant pain to his faculty and students. (Conklin was played by Joseph Forte in the show's first episode; Gordon succeeded him for the rest of the series' run.) Occasionally Conklin would rig competitions at the school--such as that for prom queen--so that his daughter Harriet would win. (Harriet, a sometime love interest for Walter Denton, was herself honest and guileless with none of her father's malevolence and dishonesty.)
- Walter Denton (Richard Crenna, billed at the time as Dick Crenna), a Madison High student, well-intentioned and clumsy, with a nasally high, cracking voice, often driving Miss Brooks (his self-professed favourite teacher) to school in a broken-down jalopy. (Miss Brooks' references to her own usually-in-the-shop car became one of the show's running gags.)
- Philip Boynton (Jeff Chandler on radio, billed sometimes under his birth name Ira Glossel); Robert Rockwell on both radio and television), Madison High biology teacher, the shy and often clueless object of Miss Brooks' affections.
- Margaret Davis (Jane Morgan), Miss Brooks' absentminded landlady, whose two trademarks are a cat named Minerva and a penchant for whipping up exotic and often inedible breakfasts.
- Harriet Conklin (Gloria McMillan), Madison High student and daughter of principal Conklin, as well as Denton's girlfriend.
- Stretch (Fabian) Snodgrass (Leonard Smith), dull-witted Madison High athletic star and Walter's best friend.
- Daisy Enright (Mary Jane Croft), Madison High English teacher, and a scheming professional and romantic rival to Miss Brooks.
- Jacques Monet (Gerald Mohr), a French teacher.
[edit] Radio
| Our Miss Brooks | |
| Country |  United States |
|---|---|
| Languages | English |
| Starring | Eve Arden Gale Gordon |
| Announcer | Bob Lamond |
| Writers | Al Lewis |
| Directors | Al Lewis |
| Producers | Larry Berns |
| Air dates | July 19, 1948 to 1957 |
| Website [1] |
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Our Miss Brooks was a hit on radio from the outset; within eight months of its launch as a regular series, the show landed several honours including four for Eve Arden, who won polls in four individual publications of the time. Arden had actually been the third choice to play the title role. Harry Ackerman, at the time CBS's West Coast director of programming, wanted Shirley Booth for the part, but as he told historian Gerald Nachman many years later, he realised Booth was too focused on the underpaid downside of public school teaching at the time to have fun with the role. [1]
Lucille Ball was believed to be the next choice but she was already committed to My Favorite Husband and didn't audition. Then CBS chairman Bill Paley, who was friendly with Arden, persuaded her to audition for the part. With a slightly rewritten audition script---Osgood Conklin, for example, was originally written as a school board president but was now written as the incoming new Madison principal---Arden agreed to give the newly-revamped show a try. [2]
Produced by Larry Berns and written by Al Lewis (who also directed the show), Our Miss Brooks premiered on CBS on July 19th, 1948. According to radio critic John Crosby, her lines were very "feline" in dialogue scenes with principal Conklin and would-be boyfriend Boynton, with sharp, witty comebacks. The interplay between the cast---blustery Conklin, nebbishy Denton, accommodating Harriet, absentminded Mrs. Davis, clueless Boynton, scheming Miss Enright---also received positive reviews. For its entire radio life, the show was sponsored by Colgate-Palmolive-Peet, promoting Palmolive soap, Lustre Creme shampoo, and Toni hair care products.
The radio series continued until 1957, a year after its television life ended.
[edit] Television
The show's full cast minus Jeff Chandler (who had become a television star in his own right, in Cochise) played the same characters in the television version, which continued to revolve largely around Connie Brooks's daily relationships with Madison High students, colleagues, and principal. Philip Boynton still made an occasional appearance, played by Robert Rockwell. The television show shifted focus later in its run, however, moving Connie Brooks and Osgood Conklin from a public high school to an exclusive private school. It also changed the title character's romantic focus: Gene Barry was cast as physical education teacher Gene Talbot, and Connie was now the pursued instead of the pursuer.
Our Miss Brooks ran for 130 episodes on television and won an Emmy award before it was cancelled in 1956.
[edit] Awards and Recognition
Both the radio and television shows drew as much attention from professional educators as from radio and television fans, viewers and critics. Eve Arden was voted the top ranking radio comedienne in a poll of Radio Mirror listeners in 1948 and 1949 and in a poll of critics by Motion Picture Daily at the end of 1949---but her notices soon expanded beyond her media. According to the Museum of Broadcast Communications, Arden was made an honorary member of the National Education Association and received an award from the Teachers College of Connecticut's Alumni Association (in 1952) "for humanising the American teacher".
Our Miss Brooks was considered groundbreaking for showing a woman who was neither a scatterbrained klutz nor a homebody but rather, a working woman who transcended the actual or assumed limits to women's working lives of the time. Connie Brooks was considered a realistic character in an unglamorised profession (she often joked, for example, about being underpaid, as many teachers were at the time) who showed women could be competent and self-sufficient outside their home lives without losing their femininity or their humanity.
Our Miss Brooks has remained Eve Arden's most identifiable and popular role, with numerous surviving recordings of both the radio and television versions continuing to entertain listeners and viewers. (The surviving radio recordings include both its audition shows.) A quarter century after the show ended, Arden told radio historian John Dunning in an on-air interview just what the show and the role came to mean to her:
- I originally loved the theater. I still do. And I had always wanted to have a hit on Broadway that was created by me. You know, kind of like Judy Holliday and Born Yesterday. And I griped about it a little. And someone said to me, 'Do you realise that, if you had a hit on Broadway, probably a hundred or two hundred thousand people might have seen you in it, if you'd stayed in it long enough. And this way, you've been in Miss Brooks, everybody loves you, and you've been seen by millions.’ So, I figured I'd better shut up while I was ahead.[3]
[edit] Film
| Our Miss Brooks | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Al Lewis |
| Produced by | David Weisbart |
| Written by | Al Lewis Joseph Quillan |
| Starring | Eve Arden Gale Gordon Don Porter |
| Music by | Roy Webb |
| Cinematography | Joseph LaShelle |
| Editing by | Fredrick Y. Smith |
| Distributed by | Lute Productions |
| Release date(s) | 1956 |
| Running time | 85 min |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| IMDb profile | |
In 1956, the cast once more made a transition, this time to feature film. Directed by Al Lewis and written by both him and Joseph Quillan, the movie disregarded the past four years of television and started with a new storyline.
[edit] Cast
- Eve Arden as Connie Brooks
- Gale Gordon as Osgood Conklin
- Don Porter as Lawrence Nolan
- Robert Rockwell as Phillip Boynton
- Jane Morgan as Margaret Davis
- Richard Crenna as Walter Denton
- Nick Adams as Gary Nolan
- Leonard Smith as Stretch Snodgrass
- Gloria McMillan as Harriet Conklin
- Joseph Kearns as Mr. Stone
- William Newell as Dr. Henley
- Philip Van Zandt as Mr. Webster
- Marjorie Bennett as Mrs. J. Boynton
- Joseph Forte as Nolan's Butler
[edit] References
- ^ Nachman, Gerald (2000). Raised on Radio. University of California Press, pp 544. ISBN 0-520-22303-9.
- ^ Dunning, John (1998). The Encyclopedia of Old Time Radio. Oxford University Press, pp 528. ISBN 0-19-507678-8.
- ^ John Dunning, KNUS (Denver) radio interview with Eve Arden, 1982.
- Arden, Eve The Three Phases of Eve (1985)
- Frank Buxton and Bill Owen, The Big Broadcast 1920-1950 (1971) (New York: Avon Books.)
- Gerald Nachman, Raised on Radio (1998) (New York: Pantheon Books.)
- Ohmart, Ben, It's That Time Again (2002) (Albany: BearManor Media.) ISBN 0-9714570-2-6
- Wertheim, Arthur Frank, Radio Comedy (1979) Oxford University Press, USA, ISBN 0-19-502481-8
[edit] External links
- Our Miss Brooks (31 episodes of Our Miss Brooks)
- Our Miss Brooks television show at the Internet Movie Database
- Our Miss Brooks film at the Internet Movie Database
- The Gale Gordon Archive
- Our Miss Brooks Listen online 10 p.m., Eastern, Thursday nights, WHAV
