Yahoo Lifestyle My Mind Is Absolutely Blown From These 32 Classic TV Show Facts That Are Making Me Look At Them Very, Very Differently
1.Sitcoms are a lot older than you might think. The very first sitcom that aired in the States started in 1947 and was called Mary Kay and Johnny.
Mary Kay and Johnny, which ran from 1947–50, centered on a NYC couple and was also the first TV series to show a couple sharing a bed and a character being pregnant.
2.Gertrude Berg was not only the lead of the early TV dramedy The Goldbergs — she also created the series and wrote every episode.
The series ran on TV from 1949–56, but prior to that it had been a radio show that ran from 1929–46. Gertrude created the show for radio before taking it to TV.
3.The Goldbergs might also be the first TV show that was turned into a film. The movie (which starred the cast from the TV series) was released in 1950.
4.I Love Lucy was a groundbreaking TV series that created much of how the modern TV industry works. One of the things it created was reruns. During the show's second season, CBS decided to rebroadcast some episodes because Lucille needed time off after giving birth. The episodes were rating hits.
I Love Lucy was perfect for rebroadcasting because, unlike other TV shows at the time that were filmed on kinescope (a type of film that was blurry and would deteriorate in quality with each rebroadcast), it was filmed on 35mm film.
5.While the classic heart and satin intro is one of the things we associate most with I Love Lucy, it's actually not the original intro...
...the original intro, as well as the bumpers, were animated. The heart and satin intro was actually created for the show when it went into reruns in 1958.
The animated sequences were designed by Gene Hazelton, who went on to work at Hanna-Barbera and designed Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm for The Flintstones.
6.Towards the end of I Love Lucy, Vivian Vance and William Frawley were offered a spin-off of their characters, the Mertzs. However, Vance wasn't interested and turned it down. Reportedly, this angered Frawley, who would never forgive her for it.
7.Lucille Ball also broke new ground in another way in her series after I Love Lucy, The Lucy Show. It featured TV's first primetime divorced character, who was played by Vivian Vance.
Originally, both Lucille and Vivian's characters were supposed to be divorced, but it was decided instead to make Lucille's character a widow (since the network was scared audiences wouldn't accept a divorced Lucy, even though she was divorced in real life).
Also, Vivian insisted on being called "Vivian" on the show since she was sick of people calling her "Ethel" in real life.
8.In 1957, Leave It to Beaver became the first TV show to show part of a toilet.
They couldn't show the actual toilet bowl ('cause that was too edgy), but could show the tank (and even getting to show that much was a fight).
9.The Honeymooners is considered a classic TV show. But it only lasted one season — with a total of just 39 episodes. There were various reasons why it was canceled after just one season, one of which was that it aired at the same time as the very popular Perry Como Show.
After the "Original 39" episodes of The Honeymooners aired during the 1955–56 season, the show transitioned into several different formats and revivals over the years.
10.Ricky Nelson (on the right), who starred with his family on The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, is considered to be TV's first teen heartthrob. His popularity is also why the show ran as long as it did.
The show held the record for the longest-running sitcom (it ran for 14 seasons) until it was surpassed by The Simpsons in 2003.
11.Ricky also hated the name "Ricky" and later changed it professionally to Rick. But his real name isn't Richard, it's actually Eric.
12.Carl Reiner, who created The Dick Van Dyke Show, originally wrote the show for himself, and it was called Head of the Family. Reiner, who based The Dick Van Dyke Show on his own life as a writer for Your Show of Shows, shot a pilot for it, which had the same characters from the classic series, just with different actors cast as them. The pilot aired but was not a success. However, Sheldon Leonard, who would go on to produce and direct the show, told Reiner he thought that the series could work if someone else played Rob Petrie.
Reiner would instead go on to play Rob's boss, Alan Brady.
13.Also, The Dick Van Dyke Show was almost The Johnny Carson Show, as he was almost cast as Rob Petrie.
Cbs Photo Archive / Getty Images, Bettmann / Bettmann Archive
Carson and Dick Van Dyke were the two finalists for the role of Rob. Ultimately it went to Van Dyke 'cause the show's producer, Sheldon Leonard, had seen him on Broadway in Bye Bye Birdie.
14.In 1963, The Dick Van Dyke Show did something revolutionary (for the time) by portraying a Black couple as middle-class suburbanites.
TV shows prior to and at the time usually portrayed Black characters as maids, butlers, or some sort of help.
15.Al Lewis, who played Grandpa on The Munsters, was only 41 when the show premiered. In fact, he was a half a year younger than Yvonne De Carlo, who played his daughter Lily on the show.
Cbs Photo Archive / Getty Images
According to Al's son, he was actually born in 1923 (it had been reported that he was born in 1910), while Yvonne was born in 1922.
16.The Addams Family is based on a comic that ran in the New Yorker. However, it wasn't called The Addams Family, and the characters in the comic didn't have names. The character names were created for the TV show.
The name Addams is a nod to the comic's creator, Charles Addams.
17.Both The Addams Family and The Munsters ran for two seasons and during the exact same years (1964–66).
Mary Evans/AAF Archive/Accusoft/Everett Collection, CBS / Getty Images
18.Rowlf the Dog was the first Muppet to achieve national fame. In 1963, he was introduced as the side-kick to Jimmy Dean on The Jimmy Dean Show and appeared throughout the show's entire run.
19.The iconic "Meet the Flintstones" theme song wasn't added to the show until its third season. Prior to that, they used an opening theme song that was more of an instrumental jazz tune called "Rise and Shine."
After the theme song became so well-known, it was added to the episodes from Seasons 1 and 2 for reruns.
20.Pebbles was originally supposed to be a boy named Fred Jr. However, when executives at the Ideal Toy Company found out about it, they proposed changing the baby to a girl so they could create a doll, and Hanna-Barbera agreed.
Changing the sex of the baby didn't go over well with the network executives, who had been told it was going to be a boy. According to Joe Barbera, "the brass was so shook up" that 31 executives flew out to Hollywood to discuss it.
21.I think everyone will agree that The Twilight Zone theme song is one of the most iconic and recognizable pieces of music in television history, but it wasn't the original theme song. In Season 1, the theme song was composed by Bernard Herrmann. But CBS executives hated it, so Lud Gluskin, who was the director of music at CBS, hired Romanian-born, Paris-based composer Marius Constant to write him some music cues. Gluskin then took two of those cues and put them together to create the iconic theme song that they would start using during Season 2.
Constant also didn't know for years that he wrote The Twilight Zone theme song.
22.Another thing that didn't start until Season 2 was Rod Serling doing an on-camera introduction of that week's episode of The Twilight Zone (which is also one of the most iconic things about the show).
During Season 1, Serling would only be on-camera at the end to promote the next week's episode.
23.All in the Family was the first show to feature the sound of a toilet flushing. Though it was still considered taboo at the time to imply about "bodily functions" in the bathroom, Norman Lear, the show's creator, included the sound of a toilet flushing in the first episode of the show.
24.While Dallas wasn't the first nighttime soap — that would be Peyton Place (which premiered in 1964) — it was the first primetime soap to have serialized storytelling (aka a continuing storyline) and cliffhangers to build anticipation for the next episode, which made it appointment television.
25.The Dallas Season 4 episode, in which it was revealed "Who Shot J.R.?" was the most-watched television show at the time. The episode had a 76 share (aka 76% of US households who were watching TV that night were watching that episode), with an estimated audience of 350 million people worldwide. However, it was all a bit of a happy accident. CBS asked producers to add a few extra episodes to Season 3 because the show was doing well. However, the producers and writers hadn't planned out any more storylines. According to Larry Hagman, who played J.R. Ewing, the producers said, "Let's just shoot the SOB and figure it out later." So, Season 3 ended with a cliffhanger of J.R. being shot and nobody, including the producers, knowing who did it.
The anticipation was high as viewers had to wait through the summer hiatus and four episodes into the fourth season to find out who did it in the November 1980 episode "Who Done It?"
26.Cheers is considered one of the best TV shows ever, but it was almost canceled during its first season. When it premiered, it ranked 77th out of 100 shows. Despite the low ratings, NBC executives believed in the show. It also got rave reviews from critics. Cheers would climb a bit in the ratings (into the 40s) because of word of mouth. However, the show really took off during summer reruns, where it faced no competition. The series would also go on to win the Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series in its first season, which boosted its visibility even more.
27.The idea for a show revolving around older women came about after network executives watched Doris Roberts and Selma Diamond do a skit at the NBC upfronts.
NBC
Both were starring on NBC shows at the time (Doris was then-starring in Remington Steele, while Selma was on Night Court) and were asked to do a skit where they mishear the name of Miami Vice as Miami Nice, with them thinking that the show was about a bunch of old retired people.
Shortly before her death, Doris even tweeted about it:
Selma Diamond & I appeared in a comedy sketch on NBC called "Miami Nice." It inspired the idea for The Golden Girls. pic.twitter.com/XszabZlQkP
— Doris Roberts (@doris_roberts) February 15, 2016
Touchstone Television/courtesy Everett Collection / Via x.com
28.The producers of The Golden Girls originally wanted to use Bette Midler’s song, "Friends," as the theme song. But, it was too expensive so they settled on "Thank You For Being A Friend." (Thankfully!)
29.NBC executives were the reason the character of Elaine Benes was created for Seinfeld. When they watched the pilot (then known as The Seinfeld Chronicles), they felt the show was "too male-centric." The only female character was Jerry’s neighbor Claire, who neither Seinfeld nor Larry David intended to be a main character. The NBC executives ordered them to write a strong female character and to make her part of the main cast. Not knowing how to write female characters, Seinfeld and David based Elaine on women they had dated in the past.
30.It was first-look deals that helped create Living Single. Warner Bros. Television brought together Queen Latifah and Kim Coles, both of whom had deals with the studio, to help develop a new series inspired by a scene from Spike Lee's Jungle Fever. In the scene, a group of women sit around, discussing men and life, and this moment sparked the idea for a show. They both agreed to do it, but only if a Black writer did it. The two then met with several writers and eventually met with Yvette Lee Bowser, who came up with the show idea after meeting with them.
Though initially, Bowser titled the show My Girls, however, Warner Bros. Television executives said they needed to change the show name so that people wouldn't confuse it with the movie My Girl.
31.Prior to landing the part of Rachel on Friends, Jennifer Aniston had filmed six episodes of a CBS sitcom called Muddling Through — that aired during the summer of 1994. Since the show hadn't been picked up for a full season, it allowed Jennifer to audition for the role of Rachel. However, this created one big conflict, because if Muddling Through became a hit and got picked up for a whole season, Jennifer would’ve been contractually obligated to stay on the show, and the role of Rachel would’ve been written off the show midway through Season 1.
In fact, this was such a concern that they even shot Friends promotional photos without Jennifer in them. Luckily for her, NBC and the producers of Friends liked her character and wanted to keep her on the show, so NBC came up with a very sneaky plan to cancel Muddling Through. They began running unreleased original Danielle Steel made-for-TV movies during the same time slot as Muddling Through. The move worked because it pulled the female demo away from the show, and CBS ended up canceling the series.
32.And lastly, the term "shipping," as in shipping/ship a relationship, comes from The X-Files. If you watched the show back in the '90s, you probably remember how much people wanted Mulder (David Duchovny) and Scully (Gillian Anderson) to hook-up in the early seasons. In 1996, fans of the show who wanted the characters to become a couple went on The X-Files Usenet fan forum and began calling themselves "relationshippers," then "r'shippers," and eventually just going by "shippers."
