OVERLOOKED TELEVISION: MY LITTLE MARGIE

My Little Margie was Margie Albright (Gale Storm), the 21-year-old daughter of Vern Albright (Charles Farrell), with whom she shared an apartment.  Vern, a widower and member of an investment firm, has his hands full with his impressionable and often mad-cap daughter.  Margie's co-horts in mayhem usually included her boyfriend Freddy and her oft-married neighbor Mrs. Odetts.  The show was one of several domestic situation comedies that aired following the success of I Love Lucy; in fact, My Little Margie began as a summer replacement for I Love Lucy.

     In a very unusual move, the show -- with the same leads -- also appeared at the same time with original episodes on CBS radio.  It continued on CBS radio even after the television show moved from CBS to NBC in its third season.

     Gale Storm (born Josephine Cottle, 1922-2009) was still a teenager when she landed a one-year contract with RKO.  Her first role was in Tom Brown's School Days; she then did several low-budget pictures and sang in a number of shorts.  She moved to Monogram Studios where she appeared in about three dozen pictures and became one of the studios biggest stars.  This led to a number of television appearances and, in 1952, her role in My Little Margie.  At the same time her recording career began.  Her debut record, a cover of I Hear You Knockin', was a hit -- the first of many and led to a stage and nightclub career.  For personal reasons, Storm stopped recording after only two years.  Her star power led to another popular comedy series, The Gale Storm Show (also shown as Oh! Susannah) where she played a cruise director.  That show also featured Zasu Pitts and Roy Roberts in supporting roles.

     Charles Farrell (1901-1990) was a silent film star often linked on-screen with Janet Gaynor as his love interest.  Both segued to talkies and Farrell had a popular movie career that began to slow down in the early Fifties, when he moved to television and My Little Margie.  After that show, he appeared in the short-lived Charles Farrell Show, another sitcom, this time playing the owner of a small motel.  He was also an important supporter of the city of Palm Springs and served as its mayor for seven years duing the 1950s.

     Gertrude W. Hoffman (born Eliza Gertrude Wesselhoeft, 1871-1968) played Mrs. Odetts (my favorite character from the series).  Although born in Germany, she was raised in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and married Ralph Hoffman, an ornithologist and teacher of natural history.  Her husband died in 1932 from a fall while on a scientific expedition.  The following year she began a thirty-year career in films. A talented character actress she appeared in such films as Foreign Correspondent, The War of the  Worlds, and Not As a Stranger.  As Mrs. Odetts, she only appeared in twenty-five of the one hundred twenty-six of the show's episodes.

     My Little Margie was created by Frank Fox, who had previously written for The Colgate Comedy Hour, and was produced by Roland Reed TV productions and was filmed at Hal Roach Studio.  The series ran from June 16, 1952 to August 24, 1955.

     From September 22, 1954, "Star of Khyber":

http://archive.org/details/MyLittleMargie-4x04-StarofKhyber

     And the link below should take you to four of the twenty-three radio broadcasts known to still exist.  Please  note that the role of Mrs. Odetts was played by Vera Felton on the radio series.

http://archive.org/details/MyLittleMargie

     My Little Margie also made it to the comic books.  This llnk shows some of the covers:

http://www.comicvine.com/my-little-margie/49-27086/

     As Charles Farrell stated at the end of every show, "Well, that's my little Margie."

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     For more of today's Overlooked Film, Television, and A/V, stop by My Little Todd Mason's great blog Sweet Freedom, where Todd will have an evergrowing list of links as well as his own insights,

INCOMING

Heavy this week on fantasy -- the Jennifer Robison 12-volume pile covering two series looks intimidating all at once.  (I may never get to the fart and pus book unless I am called to give a public reading; that should ensure no reinvite.  Bwahahahahaha!)

• Joan Aiken, Beware the Bouquet.  Mystery/thriller marketed as a Gothic.  Published in the U.K. as Trouble with Product X.
• Steve Alten, Meg:  Hell's Aqaurium.  Horror; one of a series about megalodons muching on people.
• Robert Asprin, M.Y.T.H. Inc. Link.  Fantasy.  Yeah, I know I got this book in an omnibus a few weeks ago, but this is the Starblaze edition.  That counts for something, doesn't it?
• Marion Zimmer Bradley and Paul Edwin Zimmer, Hunters of the Red Moon.  SD.
• Gardner Dozois, editor, The Year's Best Science Fiction:  Seventeenth Annual Collection.  Twenty-seven stories from 1999.
• David G. Hartwell, editor, Year's Best SF 2.  SF anthology with 20 stories from 1996.
• Raymond J. Martinez, Mysterious Marie Laveau, Voodoo Queen and Folk Tales Along the Mississippi.  A 1956 compilation of articles published by Hope Publications in New Orleans (which may or may not be the author's self-publishing house) and illustrated with photographs and incredibly racist drawings.
• Joy Masoff. Oh Yuck!  The Encyclopedia of Everything Nasty.  Maggots, poop, pus, snot, and everything gross.  Perfect for a twelve-year-old boy, right?  Mark said it was too gross, even for him.  Oh, well.
• Janet Morris, editor, Masters in Hell.  Shared world anthology with nine stories famous people in Hell.
• T. Jefferson Parker, Little Saigon.  Thriller.
• Jennifer Robinson, Shape-Changers, The Song of Homana, Legacy of the Sword, Track of the White Wolf, A Pride of Princes, Daughter of the Lion, Flight of the Raven, and ATapestry of Lions.  Eight-book fantasy series Chronicles of the Cheysuli, first intended as a single book, then a trilogy, and fnally an octet.  Also Sword Dancer, Sword-Singer, Sword-Maker, and Sword-Breaker, a four-part fantasy series.

HYMN TIME

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtTWIE15DjE&feature=results_video&playnext=1&list=PL2A4CBD174B51C9B6

BLOGGER BLUES

The new blogger keeps trying my patience.  I've spent the last five days trying to make it work.  For me, it eats up three-quarters of the tool bar, allows me to put in a headline but doesn't allow me to write the body of the post, and refuses to allow me change or correct any previous drafts I had done.  And don't get me going on the "Having problems?  Try Google Chrome" fiasco.  Udders on a bull, I'm telling you.  Ptah!  I'm done with it.

     I finally managed to circumvent everything and get the old, unimproved, often reliable Blogger back, so regular posting should start again tomorrow.

    In the meantime I see that I've missed participating in the annual naked bike ride in Madrid once again.  Just as well.  That would be an image you would not want in your head.  I don't know what my excuse for not participating next will be, but I'm sure I'll come up with a good one.

INCOMING

• "William Arden" (Dennis Lynds), The Three Investigators #10:  The Mystery of the Singing Cave.  Juvenile mystery.  This edition drops all mention of Alfred Hitchcock.  Arden/Lynds went on to write a dozen more in the original series; other authors were M. V. Carey and Marc Brandel.  Arden also wrote one book in a follow-up series.
• Rober Arthur, The Three Investigators #1: The Secret of Terror Castle, #2:  The Mystery of the Stuttering Parrot, #4:  The Mystery of the Green Ghost, #5:  The Mystery of the Vanishing Treasure, and #11:  The Mystery of the Talking Skull.  Juvenile mysteries, again sans Alfred Hitchcock.  And, yes, the Arden book (#10) was published before Arthur's Talking Skull (#11), the last book in the series written by its creator.
• Orson Scott Card, Pastwatch:  The Redemption of Christopher Columbus.  SF.  Many hate Card because of his politics, but he has written some good stuff (but not, IMHO, the Ender series). I like his Alvin Maker series and some of his short fiction, so I'm willing to give this one a try.
• Tom Coffey, The Serpent Club. Thriller.
• Jeffrey Deaver, The Vanished Man.  A Lincoln Rhyme mystery.
• Annie Dillard, The Writing Life.  Memoir, advice, wisdom.
• Loup Durand, Daddy.  WWII thriller.  Translated from the French by John Maxwell Brownjohn.
• Ron Ely, Fast Beach.  The second Jake Sands mystery by the former television Tarzan.
• Linda Fairstein, The Bone Vault.  An Alexandra Cooper mystery.
• Geary Gravel, Might andMagic, Book One:  The Dreamwright.  The first in a gaming tie-in trilogy.
• Andrew M. Greeley and Michael Cassutt, editors, Sacred Visions.  Anthology with a dozen religious-themed (specifically Catholic) SF stories.
• James Neal Harvey, By Reason of Insanity.  Thriller.
• William W. Johnstone, Cat's Eye and Return of the Mountain Man.  A horror novel and a western.  Guess which is which.
• Jonathan  Kellerman, Theconspiracy Club.  A mystery with a psycholist who is not Alex Delaware.
• William Lasher, Fatal Flaw.  Legal thriller.
• Jonathan Letham, Motherless Brooklyn.  Literary detective novel, greeted by some liteterary critics as if that was a strange thing.
• Bentley Little, The Association.  Can a book about a homeowner's association be anything but horror?
• Graham Masterton, Manitou Blood.  Horror.
• Steve Perry, The 97th Step.  SF.
• Judith & Garfield Reeves-Stevens, Quicksilver.  Technothriller.  The Pentagon held hostage; published two years before 9-11.
• Lisa Scottoline, Daddy's Girl.  Thriller.
• Wilbur Smith, Assegai.  Historical thriller.  Daring-do in WWI British East Africa.
• Kathy Hogan Trocheck, Heart Trouble.  The fifth Callahan Garrity mystery.

HYMN TIME

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFELFUv1g9U

FORGOTTEN BOOK: VANISH IN AN INSTANT

Vanish in an Instant by Margaret Millar (1952)

Today is Margaret Millar Day for your merry little band of Friday's Forgotten Books bloggers.  Millar, of course, was a Mystery Writers of America Grand Master, author of over two dozen books, including a memoir and a posthumous collection of short stories.  Most readers today recognize her (if at all) as the wife of Kenneth Millar ("Ross MacDonald," the creator of PI Lew Archer), not realizing that she crafted some of the best mystery novels of the Twentieth Century.

     Vanish in an Instant was her thirteenth book, and began as a suspense novel, quickly moved into a murder mystery, and by the fourth chapter morphed into a psychological study of dependency -- both physical and emotional -- all the while keeping the reader quickly turning pages.

     We begin with the rich and imperious Mrs. Hamilton and her newly hired companion, Alice Dwyer, arriving in the University town of Arbana, some twenty miles west of Detroit.  Mrs. Hamilton's married daughter Virginia is being held in the brutal murder of Claude Margolis, the man believed to be her lover.  Virginia was found, drunk and covered in blood, wandering through the snow a quarter mile from the murder scene.  Virginia's husband, Paul Barkeley, has hired local lawyer Eric Meecham to defend his wife.  Virginia, however, refuses to speak to Meecham -- or anyone else --until her mother arrives.  Even then, it appears almost certain that Virginia is guilty.

     Then comes a strange-looking, soft-spoken man who readily confesses to the murder.  Earl Loftus is dying of leukemia, and his confession has the ring of truth and is so detailed that the police cannot ignore it.  Knowing that he was dying, Loftus decided to do the world a favor and "rid the world of someone it would be better off without, some incorrigible criminal, perhaps, or a dangerous politician.  But when  the time and the opportunity came. it was Margolis.  I wish it could have been someone more important.  Margolis was very third-rate."

     With the confession, Virginia was released and Meecham's involvement in the case should have been over.  Meecham, however, was persuaded by Loftus to bring some letters and his about $700 in savings to his mother.  Before Meecham could act on the request, Loftus committed suicide, hanging himself in his hospital room.

     Meecham then begins a search for understanding Loftus and his crime, leading to revelations both expected and unexpected.  With scapal-like clarity, Millar lays bear the destructive dependencies of almost every character in the book, bringing the novel and its puzzle to a logical and satisfying conclusion.

     Millar proves herself once again to be one of the best mystery and suspense novelists of her time.

     Recommended.

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Need more of a Margaret Millar fix?  Stop by pattinase for links to more of today's Forgotten Books written by Millar and others.