Sitcoms Online Photo Galleries - It Had To Be You: Cast Photo

It Had To Be You ran from September until October 1993 on CBS.

Short-lived comedy about the sometimes awkward romance of an unlikely couple-Laura ( Faye Dunaway), a high-powered , socially prominent book publisher in Boston and Mitch( Robert Urich), the carpenter she had hired to build a bookshelf for her. Despite the obvious social gulf between the lady publisher and the surprisingly literate blue-collar carpenter, the chemistry between them was powerful stuff. Eve ( Robin Bartlett), was Laura's outspoken longtime assistant-who was all for the relationship-and David, Christopher, and Sebastian ( Justin Whalin, Will Estes, Justin Jon Ross)where widower Mitch's 3 sons.

Their was an attempt to retool the show after the initial ratings came in by deleting Faye Dunaway's character of Laura and turning it into a copy of all the other single dad shows that were on the air at the time but CBS canceled the series before these changes were implemented.

The teaser trailor that ran during the summer of 1993 showed star Robert Urich approaching Faye Dunaway in her hallway and telling her, in a vey carpenter like tone that she needed a stud to finish her penthouse. Dunaway raised her eyebrows, smiled, and asked salaciously " Do I really need a stud?"

A Review from USA TODAY

TV PREVIEW/BY MATT ROUSH

YOU-HOO

Watching the forced romantic high jinks of It Had to Be You , you might begin to wonder. Did it have to be them?

It's one thing to see an office of women drool over beefy carpenter Robert " new-show-every-fall" Urich when he walks into a room ( He can dream can't he?) But its another entirely to watch glam Faye Dunaway slum as a wound-type -A publisher: mugging through lame sex jokes, hiccuping and standing on her head and dumping flour on a teen-agers head.

Oops is right.

Still there are sparks between the smoldering mismatched star couple-he a widower with three boys, she a prickly and condescending Dewer's Profile candidate-and when they climatically kiss, the audience remarkably stays quiet. No annoying wolf whistles, mearly grown-up appreciation of a payoff.

An added plus: Robin Bartlett ( The Powers That Be) as Dunaway's man-crazy, sardonic assistant . While nothing special, It Had to Be You ( which moves to Friday next week) has a touch-the wispiest touch-of class.

A Review From Entertainment Weekly

It Had to Be You

Reviewed by Ken Tucker

The vehemently titled it had to be you (CBS, Fridays, 8-8:30 p.m.) is actually one of the season's vaguest, most ambivalent new sitcoms. The casting of TV perennial Robert Urich and movie star Faye Dunaway as odd-couple lovers is almost perversely capricious. Watching these two utterly different acting styles share scenes, you immediately realize that, great old song title to the contrary, it really didn't have to be them. The silliness of It Had's premise- Urich is a working-class carpenter in Boston who romances Dunaway's publishing-world sophisticate; he has three sons from a previous marriage, she gazes at children as if they were Martians-is merely an excuse for the stars to engage in watered-down Tracy-Hepburn banter.

All that said, both Urich and Dunaway do their jobs with considerable energy and resourcefulness. Urich seems relaxed and natural, while Dunaway is arch and stylized-I'll bet viewers who like her film work will be intrigued by the way she bends her volatile-grande-dame movie persona to fit into a sitcom structure, and those who don't will find her off-puttingly formal. Ultimately, the very unlikeliness of this pairing takes on a loopy credibility: Don't we all know real-life couples who don't seem to belong together, but who, against all odds and temperaments, get along just duckily? C+

An Article from Entertainment Weekly
Published on October 8, 1993

Pop Culture News
ENTER FAYE, LAUGHING
WITH HER NEW SITCOM 'IT HAD TO BE YOU,' FAYE DUNAWAY TAKES THE FIRST COMIC TURN IN HER LONG DRAMATIC CAREER. HOW WILL ONE OF AMERICA'S PREMIER ACTRESSES FARE IN THE FUNNY LANE-AND WHAT'S SHE DOING THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE?

By Lisa Schwarzbaum

The young production interns and junior publicity reps and apprentice techs and assistant caterers who populate the set of the new CBS sitcom It Had to Be You were all of-what, 2?-in 1967, when Faye Dunaway blazed her way to big- screen fame as girl outlaw Bonnie Parker, shooting great, bloody chunks out of life with Warren Beatty in Bonnie and Clyde. They were 9, maybe, when she seared the screen and unhinged Jack Nicholson in Chinatown; 11 when she grabbed an Oscar for her fierce, precise work as ruthless TV programmer Diana Christenson in Network. And the walkie-talkie-wielding staffers on the Warner Bros. soundstage were probably teens in 1981 when they first paid attention to one of America's great capital-A Actresses in Mommie Dearest. Of course, at that point, Faye Dunaway was acting up a tornado as a raging, hanger-brandishing Joan Crawford, an all-stops-out performance resulting in a pretty daunting image of herself as a scary, demanding, imperious, melodramatic, difficult capital-A Actress. And now she is surrounded by these young colleagues who call out, ''Hey, Faye!'' ''Morning, Faye!'' ''How ya doin', Faye?'' as they bustle around the set of It Had to Be You, CBS' standard-issue romantic comedy (Fridays, 8 p.m.). The show is about a high-powered, stylishly dressed, highly stressed, workaholic book publisher in Boston who falls for the manly, down-to-earth carpenter who comes to hang her office bookshelves-and who, because he is played by Robert Urich, is also an educated, nurturing widower raising three sons on his own. Sample riposte: He: ''You've got no stud on this wall.'' She: Do I need a stud? (building tide of laughter) He: ''You tell me.'' (cresting wave of laughter) Dunaway, 52, is now costarring in a foursquare television sitcom (see review on page 42), and she's performing nuts-and-bolts situation-comedy transactions that include standing on her head, hiccuping, and tossing bowls of flour. She's used to having quiet on the set, used to shooting scenes until she gets them just right, used to darkness in the wings and nobody in her sight lines as she works, and now she is riposting on a tight schedule with squadrons of unimpressed light and sound technicians unceremoniously galumphing around her, with a studio audience peering at her while they chew gum, and with a new script to learn next week. ''I really love this thing of comedy,'' says Faye Dunaway. ''I would really like to be a comedienne.''

''I'll tell you what surprises me-she's not a snob,'' says executive producer Anita Addison, who has shepherded It Had to Be You for a year and a half. Back then it was called For Love or Money (not to be confused with Michael J. Fox's film of the same title), was about a widower plumber who falls in love with an heiress, and was intended for Twiggy Lawson (Princesses) and Terence Knox (St. Elsewhere). ''(Dunaway) is not a television snob at all. You'd think, coming from features to television, that she would bring the airs. She's still a perfectionist, but she understands that the small screen is different. And she thinks it's no less or more valuable than the larger screen. Only different.'' In fact, Dunaway appears to think that the small screen is more valuable. Or at least it is at this juncture in an acting career that has shown signs of stumbling almost willfully in the past dozen years as she entered middle-aged actresshood, that harsh Hollywood playing field (see story on page 24). Dunaway has done made-for-TV dramas-she was a small-screen Evita Peron on NBC in 1981, for instance, and evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson in The Disappearance of Aimee, and later this month she vamps glamorously through a Columbo TV movie. But one of the great American actresses of our time has never done comedy. And now, she says, she sees the sitcom form as something with the potential to reposition her persona for the next phase of her life- perhaps as a woman known for her cool beauty, her intensity, her romances, her fashion style, her idiosyncratic acting roles, her reputation for being difficult, as well as her ability to stand on her head and banter about studs. ''I think the yearning (for comedy) is really something linked to the desire to have that in my life as a lighter approach, something not so tortured,'' says Dunaway. She can say that now. The night before, when the series' first non-pilot episode was shot, she appeared taut, her concentration and her timing rattled by the lights and the audience and the chatter between scenes. Her green, almond-shaped eyes and high swells of cheekbones were cosmetically sculpted into static beauty, her hair stiffly sprayed into carefully plotted tendrils, her wardrobe severely elegant. Now, at the Warner Bros. commissary, with her pale face bare of makeup, her wavy blonded hair loose and free around her face, in jeans and a plain white shirt, she already looks softer, lighter, lovelier. Before sitting down, she asks the name of the maitre d' and the waiter and introduces herself to these young men (their eyes register Miss Dunaway! No wire hangers!) like a newcomer thrilled to be in the business. Show business! It is a gesture that combines great acting with unrehearsed charm. ''Let's say Bonnie and Clyde was the first big role that I connected with in a big way,'' she begins, tracing the remarkable trajectory that started with her childhood in the backwater town of Bascom, Fla.; her stage work in Boston and New York; her breakthrough starring role in William Alfred's play Hogan's Goat; her first notable film role, in Otto Preminger's Hurry Sundown; and her casting (reportedly over her costar's skepticism) as Bonnie Parker, for which she received her first Oscar nomination. ''(That role) is the closest thing to me, a frustrated Southern girl wanting to break out. I knew her backwards. ''But then, boom, star machine big-time! The city! Then you start to play, inch by inch, someone else's notion of who a woman is and who I am. And the conventional notions, I mean, you know, some of them are true. I became cooler and more urban and more sophisticated. And I'm strong and also defended. But I'm also very vulnerable! Very fearful, a little girl from the South. And that alone is enough to make you scared in the big city. And I would not show anyone that for the longest time because I'm a proud woman.'' Dunaway was a willing participant in the exaggeration of her persona, she admits. The films she chose were intriguing, intermittently odd things: The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) with Steve McQueen, a hooty Oklahoma Crude (1973), The Towering Inferno (1974), and Three Days of the Condor (1975). But the experience of becoming Mommie Dearest cracked open all her own notions of herself. ''That was an extreme moment where I said, How did I get here? This is alien to where I am as a woman. I've got to stop. So I did. I was out of control in terms of my choices. So I went to England and I just stopped the music. I became quieter.'' Moving to London in 1983, Dunaway settled on the turf of her second husband, photographer Terry O'Neill, with their son, Liam, now 13 and headed for an East Coast prep school. (Her first marriage, to rock musician Peter Wolf of the J. Geils Band, ended in 1978.) By the time she left London in 1987, the marriage was over. Eccentric roles followed: The Wicked Lady (1983), Supergirl (1984), Barfly (1987), and Midnight Crossing (1988). ''But I wanted to do something that would drastically change the perception I was in,'' she continues. ''I wanted to play comedy! I've always yearned for that light, frivolous, wonderful thing that Kay Kendall had, and Carole Lombard, that larky nuttiness, you know, the eccentricity. The kind of freedom in that stuff. Myrna Loy! Rosalind Russell! And currently, I have to say, Lucille Ball. I love her!'' Dunaway studies Lucy as she studied Joan Crawford. Seriously. ''There's this whole thing of the dadada da da DAH. That's what they call comic timing,'' she reports. ''I tell her, 'Forget about Lucy!''' says David Steinberg, the stand-up comedian-turned-director and executive producer of It Had to Be You. ''I tell her, 'What made you Faye Dunaway is the most original version of yourself.''' Steinberg sees Urich and Dunaway as a '40s romantic couple-a Howard Hawks Bringing Up Baby kind of thing, maybe a Hepburn-Tracy relationship with a little Preston Sturges thrown in. Dunaway sees it as sophisticated fizz about ''the ultimate energized, intelligent, smart, witty woman, and a man who just brought her right back to sense.'' She shaped the series to be exactly what she wanted from the moment she signed on, and pressured Urich (who was also considering another project, with Empty Nest's Park Overall) to be her costar. She also retooled Urich's occupation from plumber to carpenter, and upgraded her own character's book list. ''At first, she published a Judith Krantz kind of thing,'' she says. ''I thought she should be on the phone with Henry Kissinger, talking about his memoirs. You know, I thought of Jackie Onassis (a Doubleday editor), I thought of (former Turtle Bay publisher) Joni Evans.''

Can a diva do a convincing hiccup as a comedienne? Candice Bergen successfully lightened her dramatic image with Murphy Brown, and Anjelica Huston's capacity for wicked wit, seen in the Addams Family movie and Woody Allen's Manhattan Murder Mystery, has clearly broadened her appeal and her options. But It Had to Be You opened to only modest reviews, and it's running in CBS' deadly Friday time slot at 8 p.m. Whether the show has staying power, and whether it loosens the Lucy within Dunaway to lasting advantage, remains to be seen. "I have never seen any person with this much energy!" says Anita Addison, sounding somewhat exhausted by Dunaway's intensity, her perfectionist's desire to get things exactly right, which can translate into a reputation for trouble. Urich is warmly diplomatic. "You hear diva this and diva that. I haven't been witness to any of it. Faye is particular about some things, but they don't really affect anybody else. That's what made her a big star. There's also a sweetness in her." "This whole thing about comedy, it's like I'm in college," says the big star, scaled back to sit at a commissary lunch table like any other sitcom employee with an arugula salad on the agenda, equally willing to talk about needlepoint or romance. "I'd like to find a partner in life, you know, but there's a time when you have to say, okay, everybody out! The connections I'm making aren't working!" she says, laughing. "I don't want another failed relationship. So I'm going to do what I can to get my life in a very comfortable place so that I'm happy, so that I don't go to somebody else for that. Besides, right now I'm a workaholic." She sounds like Laura Scofield, her character in It Had to Be You. She does not sound like Lucy. This is probably all for the best. The brilliantly talented actress who glittered as Bonnie Parker should not have to go WAAAHHHH! to get good work.

An Article from USA TODAY
Published on October 15, 1993

Urich: For hire
The actor miost likely to star-in the short run

By Jefferson Graham
USA TODAY

Robert Urich has been put on hiatus. His shows have been axed, sacked and yanked.

But he's never before had a series removed from the schedule after just four airings.

That's what happened to CBS' It Had to Be You. The romantic sitcom starring Urich as a carpenter with three kids who falls in love with Boston book publisher Faye Dunaway, will have its final Friday airing tonight at 8 ET/PT.

CBS promises You will return later in the season-possibly in a better time slot on Monday or Wednesday. To prove its support, the network ordered additional episodes of the show.

" I have to think this is a possitive," says Urich. " I don't like looking at the ratings list and seeing our show at No. 86. I want to see us in the top 25."

Urich has starred in a record 10 network series-beating out former champs Harry Morgan and Robert Conrad, with nine series each-a remarkable achievement when you consider none of Urich's series have been top 10 hits.

Yet TV producers and network execs keep coming back.

" He's handsome, women find him very appealing and he's a good actor," says Madison Avenue advertising timebuyer Paul Schulman. " He's just never found the right show."

Over the past 20 years ( his first series, Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, premiered in 1973) he's played Bob, Robert, Dan, Tom, Jim , Peter, Paul, Spenser, Johnny and now Mitch. He's appeared on network television every night of the week. On Vega$, Urich's biggest hit, P.I. Dan Tanna was a Wednesday staple; as Spenser: For Hire he lived on Fridays.

" Urich is a bigger-than-life man's man," says Schulman. " It Had to Be You isn't his last TV series."

Urich is good -natured about his string of good luck/bad luck ( Although he's never had a series run longer than three seasons, Vega$ and Spenser have lived on in re-runs.)

" It's really kind of funny," he says. " But they keep asking me back, and that's sincere flattery. Sometimes I wonder, 'Why can't I get a break in a good timeslot? But all I can really do is focus on my work, show up on time and be a professional. The rest is left up to the Nielsen Gods."

It Had to Be You executive producer David Steinberg says that producers keep employing Urich because he's a TV Everyman. " He has a relaxed charm people really respond to. Bob Urich and a hit show are destined for each other . I just hope that show is ours."

CBS hoped the double star-power of Urich and Dunaway and the romantic feel of 1930s screwball comedies might put a dent in ABC's Friday kid-coms. But Urkel turned out to be a lot stronger than anticipated.

When You returns-probably in January, it will have a slightly new look-Dunaway and Urich will be heading towards the alter.

" I feel really good about the show," says Urich. " It takes awhile for everybody to find their rhythm, but I think we have a good base to start from.

" There's nothing wrong with this show that a good time slot couldn't cure."

For The Robert Urich Tribute Site go to http://www.roberturich.co.uk/

For another Robert Urich tribute site go to http://www.meredy.com/roberturich/

For more pictures of Faye Dunaway go to http://www.geocities.com/fayedunaway2/

For a webpage dedicated to Will Estes go to http://www.willestes.com/