Who's the Boss? TV TALES

[spunkygirl]

From the E! Online TV TALES EPISODE that aired last year just thought I'd share


The Hunky Housekeeper, the Delightful Divorcée--and Halle Berry?!

Sexual tension. Unrequited passion. Lingering looks.


Sure, the 1984-1992 sitcom seemed innocent. Good-guy widower Tony Micelli (Tony Danza) takes a job as the live-in housekeeper to uptight divorcée Angela Bower (Judith Light). Along the way, much love and good advice is dispensed to their respective cute kids (Alyssa Milano and Danny Pintauro).

But wait till you hear the tales E!'s TV Tales has to tell.

In an all-new episode, TV Tales gets the goods on Tony and Angela--the flashing , the real-life chemistry, the battles over whether the Boss couple should, you know, do it.

As Light tells TV Tales, "This was not Donna Reed."

Of course not. So, let TV Tales help you reexamine this longtime top 10 favorite. And let us help you prep for your reexamination, with factoids, credits and other fun info.

But first, you may want to slip into something more comfortable...

In the Beginning...
Great TV minds think alike. In 1983, ABC execs wanted to do a comedy about a blue-collar guy going to work for a white-collar woman. At the same time, writers-producers Blake Hunter and Martin Cohan wanted to do a show about a blue-collar gal going halvies on a house with a white-collar guy. When Hunter and Cohan pitched their series, titled Limited Partners, to the Alphabet network, ABC pitched right back: Would they be willing to switch their character's respective collars? Hunter and Cohan were. They proceeded to draft a script for You're the Boss, about a working-class Brooklynite who moves himself and his daughter to Connecticut to work for a stuffy ad exec and her son. ABC greenlighted the project in October 1983. The retitled show, Who's the Boss?, premiered on September 20, 1984.

Casting About
From the start, ABC wanted Tony Danza, then 33 and recently dispatched from Taxi, to play Tony Micelli. At the time, Danza had three pilots to choose from--one in which he'd play a tough New York City detective, one in which he'd be a helicopter pilot, and one in which he'd be a housekeeper. He thought the last one sounded the funniest.

Judith Light, then 34, was an Emmy-winning New York soap actress (One Life to Live) when she was flown to the Left Coast for an audition. Light also had three projects to pick from--one of which (the never-was Staff of Life) she'd committed to as her top priority. But her priorities changed after her screen test with Danza. "I just remember feeling this instant connection," she tells TV Tales, "as though I had known him forever." (We guess so--she flashed him during the shoot for the second episode.)

For the role of Danza's TV daughter, Samantha, casting directors found Alyssa Milano--then a 10-year-old Annie moppet--through an audition tape. Danny Pintauro, then 6, nabbed his part as Angela's son, Jonathan, after he corrected Light on a line during an audition with her and Danza.

The Problem with Moaning Mona
The Who's the Boss? cast of characters was rounded out by Mona Robinson. Mona was designed to be the show's randy alternative to the prim Angela. (Moan-uh, get it?) She was also designed to be Angela's sister. But during auditions, producers found that Mona's lines sounded somewhat unseemly when spoken. Then they found out 49-year-old Katherine Helmond, an Emmy nominee for Soap, was available. In an instant, Mona Robinson, Angela's sister, became Mona Robinson, Angela's mother. The lines didn't sound unseemly anymore. "I have kind of a ladylike facade," Helmond tells TV Tales. "So, when things are said, they're more risqué than smutty."

All Right, Enough--Who Exactly Was the Boss?
It depends which actor you're talking to. Katherine Helmond says she thought she was the boss (and she's pretty sure the other stars thought they were the boss, too). Light says everyone was the boss, due to the "brilliance" of the question mark in the title. "One week, Katherine was the boss. One week, Tony was the boss. One week, I was the boss," Light tells TV Tales.

Working Mothers: Scourge of the Earth?
The makers of Who's the Boss? feared resistance when they wrote Angela Bower as a high-powered professional who left her son to be raised during the day by a hired hand. But Angela had safety in numbers. In 1950, just 12 percent of mothers worked outside the home. By 1980, the number had climbed to 45 percent, and just seven years later (when Who's the Boss? was four seasons old), it was up to 57 percent. While commonplace, the working-mother trend has been charged with contributing to a number of societal ills. According to the locally produced San Diego PBS show Full/Focus, working mothers even helped spike the number of fat kids in the United States. Found Full/Focus: "More children have to fend for themselves in the kitchen for snacks and meals--and what child would choose carrot sticks over potato chips?" (Thank God Jonathan Bower got out of that house alive.)

They Won't Take Manhattan
Cocreators Hunter and Cohan originally wanted to locate the show in an upscale New York City neighborhood. But when it was decided that Tony Micelli was to be an ex-jock from Brooklyn, it no longer made sense for him to physically move into Angela Bower's place. (Most housekeepers, you see, actually commute to the job.) Hunter and Cohan then gave Tony a daughter and, in turn, a reason to get out of NYC altogether. (His motivation? He wanted his streetwise kid out of the big bad city.) Thusly, Angela's digs were moved to Connecticut, and Tony packed up his van and headed for the suburbs.

Tony Danza's Secret Life as a Real Housekeeper
The onetime boxer tells TV Tales that his mother ran a tight ship, one requiring all hands on deck. "I remember not being allowed out until the bathrooms were cleaned on a Saturday," he tells E! "[And] I knew how to iron, 'cause she said, 'You don't want to go wrinkled, do you?' I knew how to sew. You know, I just knew all that stuff." Although Danza never applied his know-how professionally (Who's the Boss? scenes, notwithstanding), he could have expected to earn $250-$500 a week (in 2001 dollars) as a live-in nanny, according to Nanny on the Net.

"The Look" of Lust
In the Who's the Boss? pilot, Angela Bower, fresh from the shower and wearing a bathrobe, opens the door to find housekeeper applicant Tony Micelli. The look that Light and Danza exchanged in that moment became known among the writers as "the Look." "The Look" represented Angela and Tony's canned heat. Network suits wanted the heat uncanned--and Angela and Tony married--by the second season. But Danza was adamant that the show not go into the bedroom. "[In the characters' world,] there were kids around, and you had to think about them," he tells TV Tales. "I think that was the moral thing, that these people really cared about each other and about their kids." (Light, by the way, was all for Tony and Angela doing it.)

As the seasons went on, producers grew more passionate about getting Tony and Angela passionate--they really wanted to end the series with the two marrying. Still, Danza resisted. In the end, the studio backed him up, because it thought a marriage episode would hurt syndication (something about giving the series too definitive a conclusion). So, in the last-gasp episode, number 196, broadcast on April 25, 1992, Tony and Angela wind up at her front door again, exchanging "The Look." (Is it getting hot in here...?)

The Halle Berry Connection
Living Dolls, a short-lived 1989 ABC sitcom about teen models in Manhattan, was yet another attempt by Boss producers to produce a spinoff. The connecting character was Charlie Brisco, a born-in-Brooklyn catwalker played by Leah Remini (King of Queens), who befriends young Samantha. The original pilot, featuring Vivica A. Fox as supermodel Emily Franklin, was shot as the Who's the Boss? episode "Living Dolls." ABC didn't like the way the Charlie character was introduced. It also didn't like three of the "dolls"--including Fox. A second pilot (with Remini as the only featured "doll") aired as the September 26, 1989, Boss episode "Life's a Ditch." The Living Dolls series debuted the same night, with future Oscar winner Halle Berry as the new Emily Franklin. The Vivica A. Fox episode never aired on ABC. (But that doesn't mean it's lost. It runs today, along with the rest of the Boss reruns, in syndication.)

How Many Times Can You Say "Bra" on Prime-Time TV?
Ten, according to 1985 network standards. The January 8, 1985, episode of Who's the Boss?, "Samantha's Growing Up," originally featured 11 mentions of the B-word. (The story was about Tony taking Sam shopping for her first, um, thingamabob.) ABC suits branded the script "lascivious." "[A censor said,] 'You can only use the word "bra" 10 times,' " Hunter tells TV Tales. "And we said, 'What can we say?' He said, 'Foundation garment.' " No word how the censor took it when actors started appearing on camera sans their foundation garments on NYPD Blue.

Who's the Chap?
While Hollywood has long remade British TV shows for U.S. audiences (the most famous example being the U.K.'s Till Death Do Us Part, transformed in the States to All in the Family), Who's the Boss? was the first U.S. series to be remade for British TV.

The Upper Hand ran from 1990 to 1996. It recycled old Boss scripts, merely inserting Brit-isms for Danza-isms. The characters were rechristened, too. Good-guy widower Tony Micelli became good-guy widower Charlie Burrows (Joe McGann). Uptight divorcée Angela Bower became uptight divorcée Caroline Wheatley (Diana Weston). Honor Blackman, former Bond Girl P u s s y Galore, played Caroline's bad mama, Laura West.

The main difference between the two series was the ending. Without Danza around to protest, Who's the Boss? producers flew to Britain and wrote a series finale in which--cheerio!--the two main characters married.

In 1992, the surprisingly continental Who's the Boss? was reworked for German TV. But Ein Job furs Leben (translation: A Job for Life) ran just one season. (Those Germans...)

The Spinoff That Never Spun
In 1987, Boss producers prepared to send Katherine Helmond off to her own series, Mona. The show was to see Helmond's character leave the Bower nest to run a hotel with her brother (Hill Street Blues' James B. Sikking). A two-part pilot aired as the Who's the Boss? episodes, "Mona" and "A Moving Episode," broadcast in May 1987. But ABC didn't buy it. Helmond stayed put. No Benson was she.

Where the Show Never Ends
Did you know that Tony and Angela did get married? Had twins? Hired a new housekeeper? Well, they did--at least in the minds of Who's the Boss? devotees who have dreamed up their own plotlines in the name of fan fiction.

[tiff7]

When will it air again?

Tiff7

[Janet Bower]

that sounds so awesome....do u know when it will air again? i would LOVE to see it!!!

[EmoJoe]

Originally posted by JANET RULES!
that sounds so awesome....do u know when it will air again? i would LOVE to see it!!!

Ditto, that was great! Thanks ANgela!

[Sara Micelli]

I'm not sure why, but that article cracks me up.

[spunkygirl]

I really don't know, you'd have to email E! Online and ask them if they'll be reairing it anytime soon, this was actually shown Jan. 2003