The Women Who Made Television Funny by David C. Tucker

Author:David C. Tucker
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General Fiction
Publisher: McFarland
Published: 2012-06-20T16:00:00+00:00

Cast of Topper: Anne Jeffreys and Robert Sterling (standing) with Leo G. Carroll and Lee Patrick (Cosmo and Henrietta).

In search of new stories, Topper’s rejuvenated writing staff would eventually take Cosmo and his companions further and further from home, the scripts incorporating trips to Las Vegas, a desert island, and even Lisbon—though, in this case, Lisbon was a town in South Carolina. Although the first-season episode “Henrietta Sells the House” tells us that, should the Toppers move to a new house, George and Marion won’t be able to come along (it’s “against the rules,” she explains), those rules apparently don’t preclude them from taking an occasional trip with their friend.

One such outing, “Topper Goes West,” was a flashback to Anne Jeffreys’ days as a Western actress, the episode mocking genre stereotypes as “Calamity Marion,” George “Tall in the Saddle” Kerby, and Cosmo “The Dude” Topper showed off their prowess with trick riding, quick-draw gunplay, and a showdown with a bad guy in the saloon. The episode also, intentionally or not, reflected the ongoing popularity of a genre that would soon threaten to take over prime time TV altogether, leaving sitcoms and comedic actresses in short supply.

Retaining the same Friday time slot, and the same competition from The Life of Riley, Jeffreys’ show in its second year began to challenge its highly rated NBC competition. Though Riley still emerged the victor in the 1954-55 ratings race, it lost several points in the Nielsen ratings, and the gap between it and Topper narrowed considerably, with both shows ranking among the season’s Top Twenty-Five.

Although Camel continued its sponsorship of Topper into a second year, the company took advantage of a then-new wrinkle among TV sponsors when it relinquished a half-interest in the popular show to an alternate-week sponsor, General Foods, in early 1955. Although the TV medium was still young, changes such as this one were becoming increasingly common, as the typical single-sponsor pattern of early TV gave way to the reality that not every company could, or wanted to, assume sole sponsorship of an expensive weekly series.

Solidly popular with viewers, Topper by all indications should have been settling in for a multi-season run. Instead, in the late spring of 1955, trade papers printed the surprising news that the show’s second season on CBS would be its last. Having cut its sponsorship of the show in half only a few months earlier, Camel was the instigator of this move, declining to sign on for a third year as sponsor. Although General Foods was happy with the show, and willing to foot half the bill for a third year of episodes, Camel’s pullout cost Topper its spot on the CBS schedule, where it aired for the last time in September 1955.

The cigarette company’s surprising decision to relinquish sponsorship of a hit series was probably for reasons similar to its rival Philip Morris’ abandonment of an even more popular CBS show, I Love Lucy, the same year. In the early days of TV, sponsors paid

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