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4^0 Su
The translation of "My Friend Irma", a highly successful radio show, to television has been done with meticulous care. Marie Wilson, the extravagantly modelled blonde, still plays Irma. Cathy Lewis is still her level-headed, suffering roommate. Both are so entirely appropriate to the roles that it's hard to imagine anyone else replacing them. This will lead to quite a casting problem in 1975 when Miss Wilson may just possibly want to step down and when, I'm sure, the shov/ will just be getting its second wind.
"My Friend Irma" is frankly a very funny and thoroughly professional show. Its writers, Cy Howard who originated the radio show, and Frank Galen, appear to have scrutinized carefully all the other comedy shows around and to have incorporated the very best features and eliminated the worst. Like George Burns, Miss Lewis acts as narrator, talking straight to the camera and more or less setting the scene for whatever httle disaster Miss Wilson is cooking up.
In short, the Shakespearean aside is coming back, and not a bad idea either. For one thing, it saves time — Miss Lewis being able to compress a situation into less space than it would take to dramatize it. For another, it adds an air of informality, as if someone were just telling us a story in our living rooms, an atmosphere highly suitable to television.
"My Friend Irma" is an excellent illustration of the difference in thinking between CBS and NBC. It is an intimate operation, reasonably priced, and largely dependent on slick writ
ing, excellent casting and the knowledgeable direction of Richard Whorf rather than — as is generally the case at NBC — on Milton Berle, fourteen guest stars, a thirtypiece orchestra and a lot of dancing girls. Its story line, largely borrowed from "My Sister Eileen", namely that of one ^ bright and one dumb girl trying to make their way in the big city, is susceptible of infinite variation. Its stars. Miss Wilson and Miss Lewis, are appealing enough to be welcome once a week without being so overpoweringly possessed of personality that you tire of them. In the long run they may outlast the dazzling big money operations at NBC.
The new entrant into the dumb girl field is Vivian Blaine who is teamed up with Pinky Lee on a three-timesa-week show on NBC-TV which is on the whole a pretty sorry melange ^ii of just about everything. Miss Blaine, a really gifted girl, is cast here as a young lady trying to get a job as a singer; Mr. Lee — the relationship between them is rather misty — as a young man helping out and from time to time expressing sympathy and admiration. He is dressed in a comic hat and a checked coat like a burlesque comedian. She is usually enwrapped in low cut gowns. He plays the xylophone. She sings. In between there are intervals of incredibly silly comedy. The whole thing is an awful | waste of good air time and also of Miss Blaine's talents.
THIS leads us to Martha Raye, a girl whose mouth can just barely be encompassed by the coaxial cable, who, I think, is a very good comedienne indeed and who, properly