A different sort of sitcom family – a blue-collar clan of the type infrequently seen on television (either then or now) – began their regular run on NBC on the second day of 1953.
The Life Of Riley starred former motion-picture heavyweight William Bendix as the mildly tormented and befuddled Chester A. Riley, who lived at 1313 Blueview Terrace in a working-class neighbourhood in California and worked as a riveter for Stevenson Aircraft and Associates for $59 a week.
Sympathising with – if not causing – his travails, were his unbelievably patient and loving wife Peg (Marjorie Reynolds), teenage daughter Babs (Lugene Saunders), son Junior (Wesley Morgan), neighbours Jim (Tom D’Andrea) and Honeybee Gillis (Gloria Blondell), and friends Waldo Binny (Sterling Holloway) and Otto Schmidlap (Henry Kulky).
“Jimsy” and Honeybee came into money and moved out of Blueview Terrace, leaving Riley to rent their little white cottage – preferably not to a plump blonde named Belle Dudley (Florence Sundstrom) and her shiftless husband, Calvin (George O’Hanlon).
So, being Riley, he did rent the house to the Dudley’s – after booby-trapping all the furniture (and, of course, setting off all the booby traps himself)
Martin Milner played Don Marshall, Babs’s boyfriend (Babs and Don eventually married in January 1956).
Much of the comedy in the show revolved around Riley’s mispronunciation of words and his ill-advised interventions in minor problems.
In a line that epitomised the mock crises that formed the sitcom genre, Riley would look at the viewer at some point during each episode and exclaim, “what a revoltin’ development this turned out to be!”
Originally heard as a radio show in 1943, this was actually the second television incarnation of the character.
In 1949, on the DuMont network, Jackie Gleason had starred as Riley, with Rosemary Decamp as his wife and Gloria Winters and Larry Lees as the children. Gleason was about to find greener pastures as comedy host of a variety programme that would, in turn, spawn sitcom classics.
The Life Of Riley is one of a handful of vintage TV comedies that feature no audience laugh track, whether real or “canned”, and viewing the episodes – which display credible writing and acting – makes one realise how integral the laugh track has become to television comedy.
The series completed five seasons before it left the airways on 22 August 1958.
William Bendix died of lobar pneumonia on 14 December 1964 in Los Angeles, California. He was just 58.
Marjorie Reynolds died of congestive heart failure on 1 February 1997 in Manhattan Beach, California, aged 79.
Chester A. Riley William Bendix
Peg Riley
Marjorie Reynolds
Junior Riley
Wesley Morgan
Jim Gillis
Tom D’Andrea
Honeybee Gillis
Gloria Blondell
Babs Riley
Lugene Saunders
Waldo Binny
Sterling Holloway
Otto Schmidlap
Henry Kulky Calvin Dudley George O’Hanlon Belle Dudley
Florence Sundstrom Don Marshall
Martin Milner
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Sympathising with – if not causing – his travails, were his unbelievably patient and loving wife Peg (Marjorie Reynolds), teenage daughter Babs (Lugene Saunders), son Junior (Wesley Morgan), neighbours Jim (Tom D’Andrea) and Honeybee Gillis (Gloria Blondell), and friends Waldo Binny (Sterling Holloway) and Otto Schmidlap (Henry Kulky).
The Life Of Riley is one of a handful of vintage TV comedies that feature no audience laugh track, whether real or “canned”, and viewing the episodes – which display credible writing and acting – makes one realise how integral the laugh track has become to television comedy.
