Ain't That a Knee-Slapper: Rural Comedy in the Twentieth Century

Chapter Six: What It Was, Was the Fifties

- 143 What It Was, Was the Fifties W hen the time inevitably came that the radio audience defected to television, some tough decisions had to be made. Television was not certain just where its future lay, so with radio as the only prior comparable medium, much of TV’s early programming was patterned after what had gone before. Ironically, the remnants of radio would not be television’s biggest successes, but it would take a while before anyone figured that out. With so many radio shows and stars already established, a smooth transition to television seemed natural, but actual events sometimes proved more difficult. As only one example, Fred Allen found television to be stifling to his satirical imagination. Faring the worst were the shows that depended so heavily on listeners building a mental image of the setting and characters. Probably the earliest attempts at a rural comedy television series were three tries to adapt Lum and Abner for the new medium. With six feature films in its cracker barrel, the show would seem to have had plenty of trial runs, but somehow translating the Jot ’Em Down Store and the Pine Ridge setting to the small screen was a daunting task. The first Lum and Abner TV pilot was filmed for CBS in 1948 and tried to emulate the daily fifteen-minute format of the radio show. No characters other than Lum and Abner themselves appeared. CBS president William S. Paley supposedly liked it but Chapter Six - 144 felt that the market for fifteen-minute television programs was rapidly going to disappear. He commissioned a second pilot, which was filmed during the summer of 1949. This version used the weekly half-hour version of Lum and Abner as its model. The script was based on a radio episode from May of that year, in which Abner pretends to be deathly ill so that he can sneak away from the store to go fishing. Lum, however, has found the fishing tackle Abner has hidden around the store and catches on to his partner’s scheme. He insists on Abner going home to bed, where the formidable Widder Abernathy watches over him to make sure he doesn’t try to get away. Radio cast regulars Andy Devine, Opie Cates, and ZaSu Pitts appear in their usual characterizations, although Dink Trout does not join them. For whatever reason, the pilot was not considered a success, and the idea of a Lum and Abner series was temporarily dropped. The participants continued telling stories about the difficulties involved with filming the show for decades afterward; writer Roswell Rogers recalled an incident that occurred at the New York hotel where the cast and crew were staying during the production. For lack of anything better to define his ill-defined character, Opie Cates wore what looked like a tattered house painter’s outfit. While he was relaxing in the lobby of the swank hotel, the management called security and nearly gave him the bum’s rush before he could convince them that he was not a vagrant. Rogers also insisted that the film of this pilot, available through several video nostalgia sources over the years, is actually a kinescope of the dress rehearsal, as CBS lost its nerve and canceled the whole project even before the final pilot could be shot. A third Lum and Abner pilot actually made it onto CBS’s airwaves in February 1951. Again written by Rogers, much of this version was taken up by a routine Lauck and Goff had devised when they were making personal appearances during the 1930s. Abner needs a new suit—in this program he and “Lizzabeth” are celebrating their fortieth wedding anniversary—and Lum tries to measure him for it by standing him against the vertical boards that comprise the walls of their store. As one might imagine, this method of determining What It Was, Was the Fifties - 145 the length of his sleeves and the size of his waist (Lum measures how many boards Abner’s middle section covers, then doubles it for the waist of the pants) produces a garment that is not exactly Hart, Schaffner, and Marx quality. Although the pilot received favorable reviews after its airing, it still did not lead to a series. The most likely candidate for the first successful rural-themed series was also based on an established source, but tellingly, it was not radio. During the...