Sitcoms Online Photo Galleries - December Bride: Spring Byington, Harry Morgan and Verna Felton

This show makes every dame over fourty-five think she's still desirable.

-Producer of December Bride

December Bride aired from October 1954 until September 1959 on CBS.

Besides their own 2 children, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, A.K.A. Desilu produced a lot of offspring: The Danny Thomas Show, Our Miss Brooks, and this venerable family program, December Bride. It was a one joke show-the old mother-in-law cliche turned inside out-and audiences loved it because it was funny and more importantly, because it directly followed I Love Lucy each week. What more could any program ask for? December Bride debuted on October 4, 1954 but that was its second incarnation. With Spring Byington at the helm, December Bride had first been a successful Radio series in the early 1950's. Comedy-Writer Parke Levy had created the show and based it on his own mother-in-law. Before that he had worked on My Friend Irma for tv. But he ran into trouble with the networks: Nobody wanted Spring Byington to repeat her original role as Lily. Its hard to believe now. Born in 1893 Byington had been acting since high school, where she set up a theater company on inheritance money from her father, and toured mining camps in Colorado, where she grew up. She appeared in several Broadway shows and made many movies including the 1935 Oscar Winner Mutiny On The Bounty, Jezebel (1938), and You Can't Take It With You ( 1938). Sweet and gentle Lily Ruskin was a role made for her. Unsinkable Levy took his idea to Desi Arnaz, who was having quite a sucess with I Love Lucy. Desi shrugged and told Levy
"I think Spring would be great in it " and that was that. As for the series itself, it was a very pleasant enough show. Lily Ruskin ( Spring Byington), was that truely rare individual, a mother-in-law who could live with and be loved by her son-in-law. An attractive widow who was very popular with the older set-hence her potential as a December Bride. Lily's social life revolved around her family as well. Her daughter Ruth ( Frances Rafferty), and son-in-law Matt ( Dean Miller), were always looking for suitable marriage prospects for Lily, as was her friend Hilda Crocker ( Verna Felton). Pete Porter ( Harry Morgan), the next-door neighbor who couldn't stand his mother-in-law ( " When my mother-in-law was in San Diego, she walked out on the pier and the fleet refused to come in") was often seen around the Henshaw household, and he even became so popular that he eventually got his own series, Pete And Gladys, after December Bride went off the air. Pete complained constantly about his wife Gladys but she was never seen on December Bride only heard. Occasionally featured was Arnold Stang as Pvt. Marvin Fisher, Pete's brother-in-law. Filmed at Desilu Studios before a live audience, most of the action in December Bride took place in the Henshaw room.

An Article From Time Magazine

The Mother-in-Law Joke
Monday, Mar. 12, 1956 Article

The most venerable cliché in U.S. humor is the mother-in-law joke. December Bride (Mon. 9:30 p.m., CBS), which translates the joke and variations to television, has astounded the industry by elbowing its way into the top ten. Nielsen and Trendex place Bride No. 5; ARB has it tied for sixth (with Disneyland and I've Got a Secret). Videodex and Pulse report it "consistently in the top ten."

No one is quite sure why. Writer-Producer Parke Levy argues that the show's success is the result of "basic sociological and psychological factors." Bride's star, fluttery Spring Byington, veteran of stage and screen, thinks "people get a lot of fun from this show, but the fun is based on good feeling. You get to know the family, and they are kept pretty much in character so they don't confuse the audience." CBS's Hubbell Robinson, vice president in charge of TV programming, notes that Bride inherits a great many viewers from the preceding I Love Lucy. "That's a big help. I figured that most of the people who like Lucy would like this show too. And its competition is a dramatic show [Robert Montgomery Presents] and a medical documentary [Medical Horizons], so the comedy lovers just stay put."

Desirable Dames. What Bride's viewers see is a mishmash of kittenish domestic humor. Spring Byington lives with her daughter and son-in-law (Frances Rafferty and Dean Miller); a next-door neighbor, Pete Porter, adds a welcome touch of acid as a wisecracking foe of mothers-in-law, and Verna Felton plays a low-comedy crony of Spring's. Verna recently had a bit part in the movie Picnic, and when the film was on location in Kansas she got more attention from the natives than all the rest of the company. Director Joshua Logan was perplexed: he had never heard of December Bride. Rosalind Russell observed: "I've got to look into this TV thing."

Any Bride plot is as comfortable and commodious as an old shoe. Spring usually embarks on some do-gooding project, e.g., saving the marriage of a wrestler and his wife. Within ten minutes, the project is a total mess, causing either financial or personal embarrassment to her son-in-law. After assorted hilarity, the straggling plot lines are swiftly tied into a lover's knot in time for the conclusion. A recurring staple is a budding romance for Spring who, so far, has been vainly courted by Lyle Talbot, Regis Toomey and Paul Cavanaugh. Says Writer-Producer Levy: "The show's message is that a woman can be attractive to men regardless of her age. It makes every dame over 45 think she's still desirable."

Actress Byington sees an even more important message. Primed by extensive off-camera reading ("Books to me are my favorite stuff of the world"), with a working knowledge in psychology that ranges from Vedanta to Karen Homey, Spring believes that her role of Lily Ruskin in Bride proves that "Lily hasn't lost her appetite for life and is now free to do ridiculous things. She can play with life much more because she is mature of heart. She isn't stopped because other people are not doing it. She drives to Mexico alone. If something appeals to the mature person, if there is no really cogent reason for not doing it, let us do it, let us not be bound by hidebound convention!"

Out of the Bedroom. Unfortunately, not all of Spring's fans get the point. The hundred letters a day the show receives are heavily sprinkled with criticisms whenever viewers think things are getting too close to life. Levy says that the audience resents the use of alcohol on the show, and so drinking is rarely shown. They are even more strait-laced about sex: "Once we played a scene that showed Frances Rafferty and Dean Miller in twin beds. Dean got out of his bed and went over to Frances. He never touched her, but we got all sorts of audience squawks asking us to keep the show out of the bedroom."

Levy wholeheartedly agrees with his critics. He defines successful situation comedy as "a small hunk of life exaggerated for comic purposes. If you play it realistically, it comes out drama because very little in life itself is funny. People want a mirror held up to life but at an angle so that it's humorous. People are tired of problems."

For more on December Bride go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_Bride

For a biography of Spring Byington go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spring_Byington

For more on December Bride and its spin-off Pete and Gladys go to http://www.loti.com/fifties_TV/December_Bride_and_Pete_and_Gladys.htm