The Bob Cummings Show: Bob Judges a Beauty Pageant

The Bob Cummings Show: Bob Judges a Beauty Pageant
NBC
December 16, 1958
Sitcom
DVD
B-

This episode, the twelfth of the fifth season, has a title that's again a misnomer.  (He wants to judge but doesn't get the chance.)  The Henning & Wesson script is definitely sexist and looksist even by the standards of the series, but the guest stars almost redeem it:

• Madge Blake (pre-Batman) as Florence Patterson,
• Peter Lawford as himself (referencing his wife Pat),
• Rose Marie in her recurring role of Martha Randolph, 
• future That Girl director (two episodes) Sidney Miller as Roscoe Dewitt (he also did the voice of Francis Church in the TV-movie Yes, Virginia, There Is a Santa Claus),
• and best of all, Nancy Kulp (pre-Beverly-Hillbillies) in her recurring role as Pamela Livingstone

Dorothy Johnson again appears as Harriet Wyle.  Cummings directed again.  I have to say that Hickman isn't given much do on any of these three episodes, but Ann B. always works with what she gets.

The Bob Cummings Show: Bob in Orbit

Sacque dresses

The Bob Cummings Show: Bob in Orbit
NBC
November 18, 1958
Sitcom
DVD
C-

Henning & Wesson wrote this eighth episode of the season, where Bob's grandfather Josh (also played by Cummings) gets him into trouble with the Air Force.  Bob doesn't actually go into orbit, or any flight except in his grandpa's "old Jenny" biplane.  This is a pretty weak episode, mostly because of the change in setting.  Cummings directed again.

The Bob Cummings Show: Bob and the Dumb Blonde

Aren't you glad they didn't go in this direction
for the title of The Dick Van Dyke Show?

The Bob Cummings Show: Bob and the Dumb Blonde
NBC
September 30, 1958
Sitcom
DVD
B-

Well, look what I found while packing for my move.  My boyfriend owned this DVD and gave it to me a couple years ago, and then I promptly forgot about it.  (It wasn't in the boxes with my other DVDs for the previous move.)  Anyway, as long as we've given up on strict chronology, let's journey back to three episodes from the late '50s.  This one is the second episode of the fifth season of a series that ran in syndication as Love That Bob.  It's also one of thirty-six episodes written by Dick Wesson, who played Schultzy's boyfriend Frank Crenshaw on four other episodes besides this one.  His co-writer Paul Henning is most famous as the producer of the "Hooterville Trio" (Beverly Hillbillies, Petticoat Junction, and Green Acres), but for the purposes of this blog it's most significant that he co-wrote all three of the Burns & Allen episodes I reviewed at the beginning of this project.

The regulars on this series:

• 48-year-old Bob Cummings as the Danza-ly named Bob Collins; 
• 32-year-old Ann B. Davis, still with her most famous role (Alice, the Bradys' maid) yet to come, here in her Emmy-award-winning part as Bob's infatuated secretary Schultzy;
• 48-year-old Rosemary DeCamp, later Ann Marie's mother on That Girl, as Bob's widowed sister Margaret MacDonald;
• and 24-year-old Dwayne Hickman, who was still youthful enough to play the title role in Dobie Gillis the following season, here as Bob's nephew Chuck MacDonald.

This episode is slow to get going but it does manage to juggle its various farcical situations-- including Bob telling an English girl he's "been saving himself"!-- with a pay-off where they all intersect.

Dorothy Johnson would return as Harriet Wyle, including for one of the episodes coming up.  This is one of 44 episodes of the series that Cummings himself directed.