This short-lived situation comedy about a middle-aged woman who served as surrogate den mother to a quartet of rambunctious boarding school girls debuted in August 1979 in the 8:30 PM time slot on Friday nights. The series was named after its star, Broadway veteran Dorothy Loudon.
Dorothy Banks (Loudon) was an effervescent and liberated former Broadway showgirl who took a live-in job teaching music and drama at the exclusive Hannah Huntley School for Girls, a somewhat old-fashioned institution in Connecticut.
Other members of the faculty such as dizzy and emotional French teacher Miss Cathcart (Priscilla Morrill) – who unnecessarily added a French phrase to almost every sentence of conversation – and bespectacled biology instructor Mr Landis (Kip Gilman), and very prissy and demanding headmaster/grandson of the school’s founder Burton Foley (Russell Nype) – found Dorothy’s methods unorthodox and off-putting.
But her students – including streetwise tomboy Frankie (Linda Manz), brunette Margo (Michele Greene), pretty blonde Cissy (Elissa Leeds) and nerdy bookworm Meredith (Susan Brecht) – thought she was wonderful.
Frankie looked and spoke like a street urchin, but had a vaguely identified patron whose charity kept the school from closing, and therefore from expelling her.
While the near identical NBC show The Facts of Life, became a long-running hit that lasted for seven seasons and enjoyed a strong syndicated afterlife, Dorothy, on CBS, vanished into obscurity after its initial batch of four episodes were broadcast.
Dorothy Banks
Dorothy Loudon Frankie
Linda Manz Margo
Michele Greene Cissy
Elissa Leeds Meredith
Susan Brecht Jack Landis
Kip Gilman Lorna Cathcart
Priscilla Morrill Headmaster Burton Foley
Russell Nype Mrs Foley
Irene Tedrow
