Sitcoms Online Photo Galleries - Those Whiting Girls: Barbara and Margaret Whiting

on the set of Those Whiting Girls

Those Whiting Girls aired from July until September 1955 and July until September 1957 on CBS.

This half-hour sitcom was twice a summer replacement for I Love Lucy; it was created by two of Lucy's writers, Madelyn Pugh and Bob Carroll, Jr. Sisters Margaret and Barbara Whiting played themselves. Margaret was , and played a popular singer and Barbara was and played her younger sister. They lived in Los Angeles with their mother ( played by Mabel Albertson) and Barbara was a coed at UCLA. The adventures of the two girls and their relationship with their "mother" formed the basis for the stories told in the series. Also featured was Beverly Long as their friend Daisy . When it returned in 1957, Margaret had aquired an accompanist named Artie ( Jerry Paris) who was the one new regular in the cast.

An Article from Time Magazine of the summer TV programming of 1957.

Summer Slump
Monday, Jun. 17, 1957

Although viewers long ago learned what to expect of warm-weather TV, network bigwigs can usually be expected to lay out, brightly glazed promises of summer fun. But this year even the networks have stopped making believe. "It's simply a matter of economics," explains CBS Programmer Hubbell Robinson Jr. "The winter shows cost so much we have to cut down in summer and save money." Some old favorites will stay on, encouraged perhaps by the upswing in sales of portable TV models to vacationing patio and beach viewers. But mostly this summer's TV will be a rehash of the late season's mediocrity, with a few raw replacements thrown in. Network by network:

ABC. Chief newcomer is a live vaudeville show on Saturdays called Popsicle Five Star Comedy Party, on which Ventriloquist Paul Winchell and Dummy Jerry Mahoney rotate with Oldtimers Ben Blue, Jerry Colonna, Olsen & Johnson. Fearless Wyatt Earp, Cheyenne and The Lone Ranger will continue to defend the frontiers, but only with reruns of last season's shows, and a "new drama series" disguised as Key Club Playhouse will run off old films from Ford Theater. Folksy Bandleader Lawrence Welk, whose climb to the No. 5 position in the ratings began with a summer replacement spot two years ago, will obligingly tootle all summer long. Grand Inquisitor Mike Wallace, the chain's "biggest" new talent, will be around on Sunday nights. Already filling in for vacationing Kukla, Fran & Ollie is Sports Focus, a new show featuring sports news and interviews with top athletes. There will also be reruns of many ABC standbys

CBS. Once experiment-minded in summer, CBS contemplates only one new show: a live comedy-variety spot for young (29) Dick Van Dyke, an Orson Beanish kind of comic who earlier served on To Tell the Truth. Humorist Sam Levenson's quiz game Two for the Money will share Saturday's Jackie Gleason hour with filmed editions of old Jimmy Durante shows. The newest hillbilly darling, Jimmy Dean, will continue his weekday morning show and also move into CBS's "new talent spot" on Saturday night at 10:30—a bonus for having clobbered NBC's Today in the ratings. TV's best drama factory, Playhouse 90, will replay only the shows it originally did on film, all of them poor. The one CBS experiment will be Monday night's Studio One Summer Theater, a sort of summer-stock version of the regular Studio One, returning live shows with new acting and directing talent. Low-key Comic Peter Lind Hayes will pinch-hit for Godfrey on Talent Scouts, and last summer's hot-pop Baritone Vic ("Da Moan") Damone returns with his caramel-whip tunes for a live hour in Godfrey's Wednesday-night spot. Fred Waring replaces Garry Moore's morning show; more Ford Theater reruns will fill in for Red Skelton, and Those Whiting Girls (Singers Margaret and Barbara) replace I Love Lucy. CBS's promising public affairs show, Look Up and Live, last Sunday began a special nine-part summer series aimed at helping teenagers. And daytime's You Are the Jury is an unrehearsed courtroom drama exploring areas often considered tabu on TV. Experienced judges and counsel will play themselves, and a jury will be selected from the studio audience. A few sturdy reliables will fight the summer heat live: Ed Sullivan, U.S. Steel Hour, What's My Line?, $64,000 Question and Challenge, I've Got a Secret, Climax!

NBC. Song makes the best hot-weather din-and-tonic, thinks NBC. The 7:30 evening slot will be tryout time for promising Vocalist June (Crying in the Chapel) Valli. Baritone Andy Williams and resurgent, as-good-as-ever Helen O'Connell. Tennessee Ernie Ford will end his daytime pea-pickin' at June's end and be replaced by Bride and Groom, the old daytime stand-by that marries couples on the air and presents them with gifts, a reception and honeymoon. Arthur Murray Party, a perennial replacement, has already bounced cheerily on screen in full color, and will move into half of Robert Montgomery's Monday place next month. Although such giveaways as Tic Tac Dough and The Price Is Right trudge on in the daytime, NBC will cancel Home, its 3½-year-old, hour-long "service" show, in August. NBC is also mercifully scrapping the Tonight format and reverting to the freewheeling foolishness of the old Ernie Kovacs-Steve Allen days, with slouchy, sentimental Jack Paar picking up the pieces left by this season's witless nightclub gossipists. For the first time in its ten years. Kraft TV Theater will maintain its $50,000 winter budget despite polls that indicate a viewer decline in summer. Tentatively set for Thursday as NBC's biggest summer show is a new "low highbrow'' quiz called High Low with Charles Van Doren as a panelist. Continuing live in their oldtime slots: Twenty One, Steve Allen, Alcoa-Good-year, Lux Video Theater. Good Music-Making Perry Como gets a relaxed substitute in 27-year-old Julius La Rosa, who will pull a 13-week tour in color. Says NBC's Program Director Manie Sacks: "When you are perspiring, it's a lot easier to watch the music stuff."

Here is Barbara Whiting's Obituary
Published on June 16, 2004

Film actress Barbara Whiting Smith dies at 73

Barbara Whiting Smith, a teen actress in the 1940s and member of a well-known musical family, died Wednesday of cancer at 73.

Smith, of Bloomfield Village, Michigan, was the sister of singer Margaret Whiting. Her father, composer Richard Whiting, wrote hundreds of songs, including "Hooray for Hollywood."

In 1991, she came out of retirement to provide the voice of the West Witch in the English-language dub of the anime The Wizard of Oz (also known as Sugar & Spice: The Wizard of Oz). It was co-produced by several Japanese studios and U.S.-based Saban Productions Inc.

She also appeared as herself on Dateline: Disneyland, a 1955 live TV special on the opening day of Disneyland.

Her films in the 1940s and 1950s included Carnival in Costa Rica, Beware, My Lovely and Dangerous When Wet.

She was born in Los Angeles on May 19, 1931. At age 13, she had her first film role, as Fuffy Adams opposite child star Peggy Ann Garner in the 1945 movie Junior Miss. She was signed to a contract by 20th Century Fox after her screen appearance.

In addition, she performed in a Junior Miss radio series. With her sister, she starred with her sister in Those Whiting Girls, a 1955-57 TV show.

She later married Gail Smith; they moved to Michigan in 1959. Retiring from acting, she became a longtime volunteer at and patron of St. Joseph Mercy Oakland Hospital in Pontiac, Michigan. She died at the hospital, more than a decade after her husband.

Barbara Whiting Smith is survived by her sister and a son, Richard Whiting Smith.

For an episode guide go to http://www.geocities.com/TelevisionCity/Stage/2950/US/Comedy/ThoseWhitingGirls.htm

To watch Margaret Whiting sing Baby It's Cold Outside go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szrqtgAd3h0