Temperatures Rising/The New Temperatures Rising

1 9 7 2 – 1 9 7 4 (USA)
46 x 30 minute episodes

This ABC comedy series was set at the Capital General Hospital in Washington DC and featured the adventures of prankster Dr Jerry Noland (Cleavon Little) and his colleagues, presided over by the no-nonsense chief of surgery Dr Vincent Campanelli (James Whitmore).

Noland ran bingo games and off-track betting at the hospital while Annie Carlisle (Joan Van Ark), the sexy blonde Head Nurse, her wry assistant Nurse Mildred MacInerny (Reva Rose) and student nurse Ellen Turner (Nancy Fox) tried to cover up for him.

Campanelli left at the end of the first season and was replaced by Dr Paul Mercy (Paul Lynde), a new uptight penny-pinching administrator with a mother complex.

The show changed name at this point, to The New Temperatures Rising, Capital General was now a private hospital – owned by Dr Mercy’s meddlesome mother, Martha (Sudie Bond) who was permanently in residence and who kept calling her son via a beeper on his belt – and the chemistry of the series changed for the worse.

Miss Tillis (Barbara Cason)  was the efficient accountant, “Windy” Winchester (Jennifer Darling), the romantically inclined nurse, and Dr Axton (Jeff Morrow), the cheerfully fraudulent surgeon who had recently published two books, Profit in Healing and Malpractice and Its Defense. Only intern Jerry Noland remained from the first season.

Dr Jerry Noland
Cleavon Little
Dr Vincent Campanelli
James Whitmore
Student Nurse Ellen Turner
Nancy Fox
Nurse Annie Carlisle
Joan Van Ark
Nurse Mildred MacInerny
Reva Rose
Dr Paul Mercy
Paul Lynde
Martha Mercy
Sudie Bond
Miss Tillis
Barbara Cason
Nurse “Windy” Winchester
Jennifer Darling
Dr Lloyd Axton
Jeff Morrow
Dr Charles Cleveland Claver
John Dehner
Haskell
Jerry Houser
Edwina Moffitt
Alice Ghostley
Nurse Amanda Kelly
Barbara Rucker
Harold Lefkowitz
Bernie Kopell
Nurse Ferguson
Ketty Lester
Norman
Larry Storch

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