Sitcoms Online Photo Galleries - Ray Milland Show: TV Guide Cover For August 7,1953

The Ray Milland Show ( a.k.a. Meet Mr. McNutley) aired from September 1953 until September 1955 on CBS.

During it's first season the title of this series was Meet Mr. McNutley. Ray McNutley ( Ray Milland) was the married, but very attractive head of the English department of Lynnhaven College, an exclusive women's school. In fact the only female on campus who was not distracted by his suave manners was stern, matronly Dean Bradley ( Minerva Urecal). Constantly getting McNutley into trouble was his hulking friend Pete Thompson ( Gordon Jones). Peggy ( Phyllis Avery) was his wife.

When the show returned in the fall of 1954 a number of changes had been made. Ray's last name was now McNulty, he was now teaching at coeducational Comstock University, and he was now a drama professor rather than an English Teacher. The show's title had also been changed to The Ray Milland Show. The basic plot, however remained the same. He was still an attractive professor whose female aquaintances were somewhat infatuated with him, he still had the same loving and supportive wife, and still had his problems with other members of the faculty.

Here are the theme song lyrics for 1954-1955

'S Wonderful (from the musical Funny Face, 1927) music and lyrics by George and Ira Gershwin

Life has just begun:
Jack has found his Jill.
Don't know what you've done,
But I'm all-a-thrill.
How can words express
Your divine appeal?
You could never guess
All the love I feel.
From now on, lady, I insist,
For me no other girls exist.

's wonderful, 's marvelous
You should care for me!
's awful nice, 's paradise,
's what I love to see.

You've made my life so glamorous,
You can't blame me for feeling amorous!
Oh 's wonderful, 's marvelous,
That you should care for me!

Don't mind telling you, in my humble fash
That you thrill me through, with a tender pash,
When you said you care, 'magine my emoshe
I swore then and there, permanent devosh,
You made all other men seem blah
Just you alone filled me with ahh

's wonderful, 's marvelous
You should care for me!
's awful nice, 's paradise,
's what I love to see.

You've made my life so glamorous,
You can't blame me for feeling amorous!
Oh 's wonderful, 's marvelous,
That you should care for me!
My dear it's four-leaf clover time;
From now on my heart's working overtime.
Oh, 's wonderful! 's marvelous
That you should care for me!

Here's an article from Time Magazine about how big name Movie Stars like Ray Milland were turning to the new medium of television.

Recruits from Hollywood
Monday, Oct. 05, 1953 Article

It looked as if TV had made a major raid on Hollywood talent. Joan Crawford was on television playing the suffering wife of an unfaithful husband; Marilyn Monroe was cavorting on Jack Benny's show; Ava Gardner, as the mystery guest on a quiz program, was answering embarrassing questions ("Are you married and are you happy about it?"); Loretta Young, Ray Milland and Joan Caulfield were turning up each week on their own programs; Arlene Dahl, Ray Bolger, Agnes Moorehead and young Brandon De Wilde were beginning big TV roles.

Had Hollywood finally given in to TV? Not quite. A few movie figures, notably Robert Montgomery, had long been familiar faces on television; some, like Lucille Ball, Ann Sothern and Robert Cummings, had propped up sagging careers by taking the television plunge. This season's rash of film stars on TV amounts to a sudden upswing in the trend, but the big-studio, big-star antipathy toward television still exists.

Mostly Soap Operas. Most term contracts at the big cinema studios still forbid TV appearances, except for special walk-ons to plug a new picture (as Marilyn Monroe plugged The Robe on Benny's program), and most top-ranking freelance stars are too wary or too busy for television. Explains Cinema Tough Guy

Humphrey Bogart: "I got a helluva good racket of my own ... I don't have the time and I don't trust the medium yet . . . You watch that stuff some time . . . Instead of being five foot eleven, you're four foot three. I'll wait until they get straightened out." Van Heflin feels that a series of weekly TV shows, for a movie actor, "can very easily mean the complete destruction of his career in motion pictures. The audience gets used to getting something for nothing, and then does not want to turn around and pay for it." Teresa Wright, after giving occasional TV performances, sniffs at television's dramatic works: "They're mostly soap operas. It's just like making a cheap film."

Bible with Guts. But television has enthusiastic converts. Says Joan Crawford, who has plans for a series about a lady columnist ("I'll definitely do the commercials, in a dignified way"): "When [television] is not badly photographed and when it is on film which I can own, I find it extremely attractive, because it pays for itself and then becomes an annuity for my children. How else can you save money these days?" John Wayne, one of Hollywood's top box-office draws, "is very much for TV," has plans to produce his own TV films. Kirk Douglas has made a pilot film for a Biblical series—"a sort of Bible-with-guts show."

What does it profit a cinema star to go into television? TV pay has finally reached movie levels, and its multimillion audience is an attraction in a time of waning movie attendance. Best of all, it offers jobs during the dog days of Hollywood employment. The latest TV converts and their new shows:

Meet Mr. McNutley (Thurs. 8 p.m., CBS). Academy Award Winner Ray (The Lost Weekend) Milland as the absent-minded professor at a women's college. The characterizations are trite, and most of the action is warmed-over slapstick. Milland's fine talent for light comedy is pretty well smothered. (Sponsor: General Electric.)

Letter to Loretta (Sun. 10 p.m., NBC). Loretta Young, ostensibly answering her fan mail, acts out the problem of the week and supplies philosophic guidance. The first show had her in the role of a perfume salesgirl botching up her first encounter with her wealthy boy friend's highborn family. Loretta turned to the Book of Proverbs for the solution. (Sponsor : Tide and Lilt.)

My Favorite Husband (Sat. 9:30 p.m., CBS), the best of the new crop, offers Joan Caulfield and Barry Nelson as an up & coming young couple in the upper-middle-income bracket. (Sponsors: Simmons Co. and International Silver Co.)

For a website dedicated to Ray Milland go to http://classicmoviefavorites.com/milland/

For another Ray Milland site go to http://www.reelclassics.com/Actors/Milland/milland.htm

For a Ray Milland Trivia Site go to http://www.meredy.com/millandtriv.htm