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The Halls of Ivy
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Halls of Ivy, an NBC radio comedy (1950-52), was created by Fibber McGee & Molly co-creator/writer Don Quinn before being adapted into a CBS television comedy (1954-55) produced by ITC Entertainment and Television Programs of America.
Quinn developed the show after he had decided to leave Fibber McGee & Molly. The audition program featured radio veteran Gale Gordon (then co-starring in Our Miss Brooks) and Edna Best in the roles that ultimately went to British husband-and-wife actors Ronald Colman and Benita Hume. The Colmans had shown a flair for radio comedy in a recurring role on The Jack Benny Program in the late 1940s, and they landed the title roles in the new show.
The Halls of Ivy featured Colman as William Todhunter Hall, the president of small, Midwestern Ivy College, and his wife, Victoria, a former British musical comedy star who sometimes felt the tug of her former profession, and followed their interactions with students, friends and college trustees. Others in the cast included Herbert Butterfield as testy Clarence Wellman, Willard Waterman (then starring as Harold Peary's successor as The Great Gildersleeve) as John Merriweather, and Elizabeth Patterson and Gloria Gordon as the Halls' maid.
The series ran 110 half-hour radio episodes from January 6, 1950 to June 25, 1952, with Quinn, Jerome Lawrence, and Robert Lee writing most of the scripts and giving free if even more sophisticated play to Quinn's knack for language play, inverted cliches and swift puns, a knack he'd shown for years writing Fibber McGee & Molly. Jerome Lawrence and Robert Lee continued as a writing team; their best-known play is Inherit the Wind.
Cameron Blake, Walter Brown Newman, and Milton and Barbara Merlin became writers for the program as well. Listeners were surprised to discover that the episode of 27 September 1950, "The Leslie Hoff Painting," was written by Colman himself.
The sponsors were Schlitz Brewing Company and then Nabisco. Nat Wolff produced and directed, Henry Russell handled the music and radio veteran Ken Carpenter was the announcer.
For the television series, the Colmans and Butterfield repeated their radio roles with Mary Wickes portraying Alice and Ray Collins. The TV version premiered 19 October 1954 and ran for 38 half-hour black-and-white episodes. Many TV episodes are missing, to the degree that some credits and episode titles are unknown.