Sitcoms Online Photo Galleries - Too Young To Go Steady: Brigid Bazlen

Too Young to Go Steady aired from May until June 1959 on NBC.

The problems of teenagers Pam and Johnny Blake ( Brigid Bazlen, Martin Huston) were the focal points of this live series that aired in the spring of 1959. Pam was a 14-year-old trying to make the transition from tomboy to young lady. Her older brother , Johnny, got into almost as much trouble trying to help her as he did with his own life. Pam and her girlfriend Timmy ( Lorna Gillam) where at that stage when love-or was it infatuation?-was the most important thing in their lives. Pam and Johnny's father, attorney Tom Blake ( Donald Wood), and their mother Mary ( Joan Bennett), kept a watchful eye on the activities of the kids and were generally understanding and interested in their happiness.

Here is Joan Bennett's Obituary from The New York Times

Joan Bennett, Whose Roles Ripened From Sweet to Siren, Dies at 80

By PETER B. FLINT
Published: December 9, 1990

Joan Bennett, an actress who matured from a winsome blonde ingenue in movies of the 1930's to a sensuous brunette femme fatale in film noir classics of the 1940's, died Friday evening at her home in Scarsdale, N.Y. She was 80 years old.

She died of cardiac arrest, said her daughter, Shelley Wanger.

Miss Bennett got her basic training playing opposite such major stars as Ronald Colman in "Bulldog Drummond" (her first important role, at the age of 19 in 1929), George Arliss in "Disraeli" (1929) and John Barrymore in "Moby Dick" (1930).

She portrayed a personable waitress trading wisecracks with Spencer Tracy in "Me and My Gal" (1932), a pert sister competing with Katharine Hepburn in "Little Women" (1933) and a psychiatrist's young wife slipping into insanity in "Private Worlds" (1935).

The leading mentor of Miss Bennett's career was a celebrated producer, Walter Wange. In 1938, two years before they were married, he made "Algiers," a major hit that introduced Hedy Lamarr to American audiences. Miss Lamarr's dark Viennese beauty captivated audiences around the country. Capitalizing on the sudden vogue, Mr. Wanger had Miss Bennett become a brunette for a scenic melodrama called "Trade Winds," and she began an entirely new career. A Change of Personality

Combined with her sultry eyes and husky voice, the new look gave her an earthier, more arresting personality. She won praise in two 1940 melodramas -- "The House Across the Bay" and "The Man I Married" -- and came into her own in three film noir thrillers directed by Fritz Lang: as a Cockney prostitute in "Man Hunt" (1941), a mysterious model in "The Woman in the Window" (1944) and a vulgar blackmailer in "Scarlet Street" (1946).

She also won praise as a shrewish, cuckolding wife in Zoltan Korda's "Macomber Affair" (1947), as a deceitful wife in Jean Renoir's "Woman on the Beach" (1947) and as a tormented blackmail victim in Max Ophuls's "Reckless Moment" (1949).

Then, easily shifting images again, she was an elegant, witty and nurturing mother in two classic film comedies directed by Vincente Minnelli: "Father of the Bride" (1950) and "Father's Little Dividend" (1951), co-starring Spencer Tracy and Elizabeth Taylor.

Later in 1951, Miss Bennett was a principal in a major Hollywood scandal. Mr. Wanger shot and wounded her longtime agent, Jennings Lang, in a Los Angeles parking lot, accusing him of being a home wrecker. Miss Bennett later attributed her husband's outburst to desperation over large financial losses.

To avoid further notoriety, Mr. Wanger pleaded guilty to a reduced charge and served 100 days at a minimum-security prison farm. Mr. Lang soon recovered, but Miss Bennett's film career did not. Before the shooting, she had starred in more than 60 movies. After it, at the age of 41, she was offered only a handful of roles. Bad Timing

In a 1981 interview, she contrasted the judgmental 1950's with the sensation-crazed 70's and 80's. "It would never happen that way today," she said, laughing. "If it happened today, I'd be a sensation. I'd be wanted by all studios for all pictures."

The Wangers divorced in 1965, after 25 years of marriage.

As movie offers dwindled, Miss Bennett turned to the stage and made successful national tours in such plays as "Susan and God," "Bell, Book and Candle," "Once More With Feeling," "The Pleasure of His Company" and "Never Too Late."

She also lent her presence and prestige to television's top gothic soap opera, "Dark Shadows," which ran from 1966 to 1971 and attracted a major cult following. The series, which also dealt with a guilt-ridden vampire (Jonathan Frid), has been frequently rebroadcast.

Associates invariably applauded Miss Bennett for professionalism and dedication. In her 1970 autobiography, "The Bennett Playbill," written with Lois Kibbee, she said her experience with "Dark Shadows," in which she played the mistress of a haunted mansion, had given her new regard for daytime television performers.

Miss Bennett was celebrated for not taking herself too seriously. In 1986, she remarked, "I don't think much of most of the films I made, but being a movie star was something I liked very much." Theatrical Lineage

Joan Bennett was born on Feb. 27, 1910, in Palisades, N.J. Her parents were Richard Bennett, a flamboyant matinee idol, and Adrienne Morrison, an actress whose lineage went back five generations to strolling players in 18th-century England. The couple's elder daughters, Constance and Barbara, also became actresses.

Miss Bennett attended St. Margaret's, a boarding school in Waterbury, Conn., and L'Hermitage, a finishing school in Versailles, France. At the age of 16, she married John Marion Fox, whom she later described as a playboy and drunkard. At 17, she had a daughter, Diana, and at 18, she divorced Mr. Fox.

That same year, her father got her the ingenue role in a Broadway melodrama, "Jarnegan," in which he starred as a lecherous, brawling movie director. She received good notices, and after a five-month run, he helped her get her first movie contract. She soon succeeded in "Bulldog Drummond" and over the next decade starred in 33 films. Her major early setback was a final-round loss of the role of Scarlett O'Hara to Vivien Leigh.

About Hollywood in the 1930's, Miss Bennett recalled: "The industry held a combination of nuts, talents, charlatans and geniuses, all of whom were learning, bumbling and creating with fury and innocence. The colorful types had a passionate love for the business, not just for the money. Today, it seems to me, it's strictly a big business, based on dollars and cents."

Miss Bennett is survived by her fourth husband, David Wilde, a former critic and publisher whom she married in 1973; four daughters, Diana Anderson of Los Angeles and Melinda Bena of Chappaqua, N.Y., from her second marriage to Gene Markey, a film writer-producer whom she married in 1932 and divorced in 1937, and Stephanie Guest and Shelley Wanger, both of Manhattan, from her marriage to Mr. Wanger, and 13 grandchildren.

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

For a Biography of Brigid Bazlen go to Brigid Bazlen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brigid_Bazlen