Recommend "forgotten" sitcoms from 1960s/1970s on You Tube?

Before "My World and Welcome to it", William Windom was a widowed Congressman with two children and Inger Stevens as his housekeeper in "The Farmer's Daughter", adapted from the 1947 film where Loretta Young surprisingly won an Oscar. Interestingly Windom's great-grandfather and namesake was a Congressman, Senator and Secretary of the Treasury in the 1870s and 1880s.

 

I've read that the producers intentionally made the script open-ended, so that if the show were cancelled it could be seen as a resolution of the premise, but if it were renewed it could continue as a conventional college sitcom.

 

This thread makes me wonder, when did the networks take more control of its programming taking it away from the sponsors? I guess what I mean is Philip Morris had Mondays at 9 so "I Love Lucy" aired at that time since they "were on" for them. I am wondering if that is why some terrible shows lasted a season while some good ones made it months before getting the ax.

 

I believe historians generally point to the quiz show scandals of 1958-9 as the key moment

 

I'm Dickens, He's Fenster.

jerol

 

They released Dickens &* Fenster's first half season on dvd about 5 years ago...

http://www.amazon.com/Dickens-Hes-Fenster-John-Astin/dp/B00746R3LM

 

Now that you mention the scandal I believe you are correct. After that the sponsors lost a lot of control over things with creative control, etc.

 

Yikes, that looks real bad!

 

One I would like to see again is That Was the Week That Was. It was based on a British show with the same name, and the Brit ones are the only episodes on YouTube. Would have been circa 1965 I think.

 

Thanks VERY, VERY much everybody for all of the suggestions~!

One I just rediscovered on You Tube that I had kind of forgotten about myself, from the late seventies (and I had actually really liked during it's run), was "Best of the West", a western spoof/sitcom that still holds up pretty well. Leonard Frey is hysterical as the villain.

 

"Oh we have no gym, and we have no pool....but we have spirit at Ted Baxter's Famous Broadcasting School."

 

Bernie Kopell and Dick Gautier both Get Smart (a Mel Brooks/Buck Henry production) alumni were in that show. I liked it too.

 

In remember a corny sitcom with Emma Jean Coco called "It About Time" about astronauts landing in a prehistoric earth after going through a time shift. I think it was on Sunday after Ed Sullivan. It didn't last very long.

 

I always remembered the first few lines of the theme song.

 

An obvious Indiana Jones ripoff it may have been, but I loved Tales of the Gold Monkey:

 

This would get my vote, hands down:

 

Reminds me of an episode of a sitcom from the '70s covering this scandal. I think it may have been Happy Days in which Richie was on $64,000 Question (or a similar game show.) He was getting all the questions correct on his own and since he was such a likeable "kid", the audience (and TV audience) was pulling for him each day to go further. Because of that, ratings for the game show was higher than previously and the sponsors were loving it. So, right before the final question, before air time, they slip Richie the answer to the question because they didn't want him to miss it. Of course Richie thought this was dishonest and missed the question on purpose. Forgive me if this wasn't Happy Days and the details weren't exact, but I do remember one sitcom of the '70s having an episode like this.

 

This show is before my time and most of the first three series/seasons are lost, but over 35 episodes exist. The episode called "The Blood Donor" is the most famous, but I like this one the best, from (I think) 1958. Note: The picture quality of this show can be pretty poor, but still watchable.

 

I forgot about that one with Imogene Coca. Thanks for the recollection.

 

Here's the pilot to The Tony Randall Show, one of MTM's few '70s flops. Either Nick at Nite or TV Land aired reruns of it for a time.

 

Debbie Reynolds Show:

 

The Doris Day Show:

 

I loved this show, big Tony Randall fan (I didn't care a lot for "Love Sidney", though). It had a great cast, including Barney Martin, Rachel Roberts and Allyn Ann McClerie, who was outstanding as Miss Reubner.

 

Henry Fonda in "the Smith Family."