Love Sidney: Swoosie Kurtz, Kaleena Kiff and Tony Randall

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Love Sidney aired from October 1981 until August 1983 on NBC.

Series star Tony Randall's role of Sidney Shore bore a certain resemblance to both Felix Unger from The Odd Couple and Judge Walter Franklin from The Tony Randall Show. They were all prim, propper, and meticious to a fault.However, in the made for television film on which this series was based (which aired a few weeks before the series premiered) Sidney did have one distinctive trait. In that film Sidney Shorr was a Homosexual. In the series, homosexuality could have been insinuated, but was never mentioned.

Sidney ( Tony Randall)was a middle-aged commerical artist who had been living alone for years when, all-of-a-sudden, into his bachelor life had come perky young actress Laurie Morgan ,who was pregnant and unmarried. Laurie had considered an abortion until Sidney talked her out of it. Now, a few years later, a grateful Laurie ( Swoosie Kurtz), and her cute young daughter Patti ( Kaleena Kiff), had moved into Sidney's eight-room Manhattan apartment.

The relationship between Sidney and Laurie was that of a close brother/sister type and he was like an uncle to little Patti. To the public who saw Laurie as the nymphomaniac Gloria Trenell on the daytime soap opera As Thus We Are, her real-life role of loving mother would have come as a complete surprise!

Other cast members included: Jason Stoller( Chip Zien), the art director for the Graham and Ludwig Advertising Agency, Sidney's biggest account; Nancy( Lynne Thigpen), Jason's secretary; Judge Harris( Alan North), one of Sidney's neighbors and Mrs. Gaffney( Barbara Bryne), his superintendent's nosy, busybody wife, who was romantically attracted to an uninterested and unresponsive Sidney.

An Article from The New York Times which turned out to be much ado about nothing.

Television Week; Randall Returns

By C. GERALD FRASER
Published: October 4, 1981

''Sidney Shorr,'' a television movie starring Tony Randall as a middle-aged N ew York homosexual who shares his apartment with a young actress (Lorn a Patterson) and her daughter, will have its premiere on NBC Monday night from 9 to 11. As the pilot for a forthcom ing series,''Love, Sidney,'' which will also star Mr. Randall and is scheduled to begin on Oct. 28, the program represents something of a first for television: the beginning of a series in which the central character is a homosexual.

George Eckstein, the producer, calls the movie a ''sad little comedy which takes place over a seven-year period.'' The movie, he explains, ''is not about homosexuality. It is not going to explore the homosexual side.'' He adds that ''homosexuality is more or less the given that explains why these people could live together seven years on a platonic basis. During those years, the woman has a child out of wedlock by another man and Sidney Shorr, becoming committed to the child, who fills a void in his rather lonely life, raises the child with her mother.''

A Review From The New York Times

TV: 'LOVE, SIDNEY'

By JANET MASLIN
Published: October 28, 1981

THE first episode of ''Love, Sidney'' begins with a tearful reunion and ends with another tearful reunion, but it's possible that all this sentimentality is just a way of getting the show on the road. The situation for this comedy series, which is billed as ''warmhearted,'' takes a good deal of setting up (even though the fulllength television movie ''Sidney Schorr'' helped launch the series several weeks ago). ''Love, Sidney,'' which hits its stride only in the latter half of this promising and well-played premiere episode, will be shown tonight at 9:30 P.M. on NBC-TV.

Sidney (Tony Randall), a fussy, lonely man, is first seen pining for little 6 1/2-year-old Patti (Kaleena Kiff), whom he evidently helped raise. Then the doorbell rings and Patti has arrived to surprise him. There are tears and laughter, until Patti's mother, Laurie (Swoosie Kurtz), makes her sassy presence known. ''Careful, Sidney, if you break her, you buy her,'' says Laurie while Sidney hugs the child. Half an hour and a few false goodbyes later, Sidney has persuaded mother and daughter to move in with him.

Laurie is an actress on a soap opera called ''As Thus We Are.'' This affords Miss Kurtz the chance to play a hilarious on-the-job scene in which she vamps around in a black negligee and ankle cast, since her character, Gloria, is supposed to be the only survivor of a plane crash that killed 275 people. ''You don't love her,'' snaps Miss Kurtz as Gloria, draping herself over her handsome co-star. ''She's only tryin' to use her brain tumor to hang onto you!''

''Bravo!'' cries Sidney from the sidelines, and he adds ''That was great theater.'' ''You don't get out very much,'' one of the television technicians observes of Sidney, who is by now trying to get the co-star to ask Laurie for a date. Sidney's main traits on this show will evidently be his sweetness, his fastidiousness, and his incorrigible desire to meddle in everyone else's affairs.

Mr. Randall has plenty to work with here, and so does Miss Kurtz, who makes a fine impression as a wisecracking foil to Sidney. Miss Kiff is an effortlessly adorable child. Oliver Hailey's script has a maudlin side, but it also shows signs of originality and humor, aspects of the show that may well prevail in subsequent episodes. Jay (''The Mary Tyler Moore Show'') Sandrich's direction gives ''Love, Sidney'' the potential for intelligent, knowing comedy once the soft spots are out of the way. Janet Maslin

For more on Tony Randall go to http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/R/htmlR/randalltony/randalltony.htm