New book spotlights one-season sitcom wonders

New book spotlights one-season sitcom wonders

Jimmy Stewart may have become one of the most beloved and respected actors in movie history, but when he tried to take his charm to a TV sitcom, it did not turn out to be a wonderful life.

“The Jimmy Stewart Show” ran just one season on NBC, 1971-1972, before meeting the fate of most other TV sitcoms. It was canceled.

The show had its charms, however, as did many of its fellow flops, and TV historian/sitcom fan Bob Leszczak lovingly recalls almost 300 of them in “Single Season Sitcoms, 1948-1979” (McFarland, $ 45).

For every classic like “Leave It to Beaver,” TV gave us a dozen “Roller Girls,” which lasted four episodes in the spring of 1978, or “The Pruitts of Southampton,” which ran in 1966-67 and starred Phyllis Diller.

Leszczak recounts the sitcom missteps of big-name stars like Henry Fonda and Connie Stevens, and pokes deep into the dusty drawers to find shows of which we have almost no trace.

“Off the Record,” for instance, aired for two episodes in the fall of 1948 on DuMont. The star, Zero Mostel, walked off and that was that.

Leszczak is dogged in pursuit of detail and trivia, however, and he also lets readers know where they can view whatever episodes survive from these early shows.

It’s also worth noting that while we can usually assume a one-season show was a flop, that’s not always the case.

“The Honeymooners” is here because it only ran one season as a stand-alone show, even though creator Jackie Gleason did it in sketch form on his variety shows for years before and after.

Other shows helped launch the careers of performers like Natalie Wood, Jack Lemmon, Carol Burnett and Goldie Hawn.

“Single Season Sitcoms” is a readable, good-natured companion to more comprehensive TV reference books like the Tim Brooks/Earle Marsh “Complete Directory to Prime-Time TV Network Shows.”

And if you swear you remember seeing Eddie Albert in a sitcom back around the fall of ’52, well, “Single Season Sitcoms” confirms you could have.

It was called “Leave It to Larry” and it ran about two months. If you really saw it, you are one of the last. No episodes are known to exist.