Sitcoms Online Photo Galleries - Four Seasons: Cast Photo

The Four Seasons ran from January until July 1984 on CBS.

Danny Zimmer ( Jack Weston), was a born-and-bred New Yorker, a Dentist and a hyperchondriac. He worried about almost everything, including the decision to move to California and establish a new practice in Los Angeles.

Danny dreaded change of any kind, and the adjustment was traumatic although it was eased by the new friends he and his wife Claudia ( Marcia Rodd), made in Los Angeles. Ted Bolen ( Tony Roberts), was his aggressive real-estate salesman pal, who lived the " California" lifestyle and had a live-in relationship with stuntwoman Pat Devon ( Joanna Kerns). Danny's other close friend was Boris Elliot ( Alan Arbus), a successful attorney who had given up the practice of law for the less pressured life of a bicycle-shop owner after suffering a heart attack. Boris's wife Lorraine( Barbara Babcock), was a professor of orthopedics at the UCLA School Of Medicine and a good sport, despite a rather stuffy exterior. Also seen regularly were Beth Burroughs ( Elizabeth Alda), the daughter of Danny's best friend in New York, and Beth's friend Lisa ( Beatrice Alda), who moved to California to find fame and fortune. Sharon ( Lori Carrell), was the girl with whom Beth and Lisa shared an apartment. They all shared little middle-class adventures, often involving Danny's beloved mercedes automobile and counterpointed by the music of Vivaldi-The Four Seasons, of course.

The Four Seasons was based on the Alan Alda movie of the same name, with Jack Weston and Alda's daughters Beatrice and Elizabeth recreating their roles they had played in the movie. Alda, himself appeared in the pilot as his movie character and Beth's father Jack Burroughs.

A Review From The New York Times

TV VIEW; ALAN ALDA'S NEW SERIES IS OFF TO A HILARIOUS START

By JOHN J. O'CONNOR
Published: February 5, 1984

I am an insistent propounder of the theory that the first episode of a weekly television series reveals virtually nothing about its future. A couple of years ago, a situation-comedy called ''The Associates,'' structured

around the inner-working antics of a staid New York law firm, got off to a smashing start on ABC and then, week after week, proceeded to get increasingly soggy, entirely justifying its diminishing ratings. More than a decade ago, ''M*A*S*H'' began on CBS with an episode that was distinctly disappointing, especially when compared with the Robert Altman film that had inspired the series. Gradually, though, somewhere in the second season, the series hit its inimitable stride and, with the help of outstanding scripts and a fine acting company, went on to make television history.

But there is always the debut that gives even the beleaguered television watcher cause for optimism, however misplaced it may turn out to be. The latest example has been provided by ''The Four Seasons,'' which begins its regular run as a weekly half-hour series tonight at 8 on CBS. The show was unveiled on the network last Sunday with a one-hour special that turned out to be hilarious. It is a spinoff of the theatrical-release film that starred Alan Alda and Carol Burnett; the television series has been created by Mr. Alda, who, with Martin Bregman, also happens to be one of the executive producers. Perhaps not surprisingly, the cast includes two Alan Alda daughters, Elizabeth and Beatrice Alda. And part of the success of the premiere may have been attributable to the fact that the very talented and appealing Mr. Alda showed up as a prominent member of the cast.

But, rather cleverly, Mr. Alda made sure that the star of the show was definitely Jack Weston, who also appeared in the original film. Mr. Weston, whose credits include a Tony Award nomination for best actor in Woody Allen's play ''The Floating Light Bulb,'' is not your average leading man. Middle-aged, balding and of what can be diplomatically described as ample girth, he is a walking tribute to the ordinary man. He is also a master of comic delivery. Mr. Weston plays Danny Zimmer, a compleat New Yorker, who decides to move himself, his wife and his dental practice to California. That's simple enough, except that Danny is, as somebody describes him, a walking panic button. Nothing escapes his simmering anxiety. Looking at the construction workers in the street outside his New York apartment building, he mutters, ''I love this city - tell me when it's finished.''

Reaching California and finding several of his old friends welcoming him with three-alarm chili and cocktails called La Brea Tarpits, a delighted Danny steps out on a gorgeous balcony overlooking a spectacular hillside view and discovers that ''this house is on stilts.'' Rushing back into the living room and pressing himself against a presumably safe wall, he shouts to his wife, ''Claudia, stand over here by me.'' Later, when the cocktail table starts trembling ominously and the friends don't even bother noting the effects of an earthquake aftershock, Danny is even more dubious about his move out west. Finally, when he discovers that one friend has failed to get him a special patient that is required for his California state dental exam - he needs to demonstrate his ability to fill a cavity in a virgin tooth - Danny begins hyperventilating. Rushed to the guest bedroom, he whispers to his wife, ''Put everything back in the car, I'm going back to America where I can breathe.''

Throughout this neatly crafted lunacy, Mr. Weston remained a monumental tower of perfectly understandable but sidesplitting neuroses. His is the character, given the proper and decent scripts, that will make or break this series. But he is not working alone. There is an extremely accomplished supporting cast: Tony Roberts as Ted, the bachelor friend who is a real-estate wheeler- dealer living with a beautiful stuntwoman, played by Joanna Kerns; Marcia Rodd as Danny's wife Claudia, a woman of infinite patience, wisdom and insight; Allan Arbus (who was Dr. Sidney Freedman in ''M*A*S*H'') as Boris, who has given up his successful law practice to open his own bicycle shop because a heart operation has made him see life more clearly; Barbara Babcock (long of ''Hill Street Blues'') as his orthopedist wife; and, of course, the Alda sisters, portraying close friends who have moved to California to establish their respective careers, while the daddy of one (Mr. Alda), a lawyer in New York, frets about their being seduced by the kookiness that seems endemic to the West Coast.
In the end, ''The Four Seasons,'' spiked with excerpts from the Vivaldi composition of the same title, is about the trials and tribulations of friendship. These are people who have known each other for years. They feel they have the right to be impossible wth each other. Danny's ongoing crises are a natural part of their scene. However impossible, they are tolerated with the knowledge that this, too, will pass. Danny does have his lovable side. He adores good food and is very impressed with the loaf of raisin pumpernickel that his friends are able to buy in Los Angeles, comparing it favorably to the one sold by Kessler's in Brooklyn. The premiere ended with one of the friends promising that ''we'll take you around and show you what a really wonderful town this is.'' Yeah, parried Danny, ''but what will we do for the rest of the hour?''

Directed by Hy Averback and written by Don Segall, with some help from Richard Baer, the first glimpse of ''The Four Seasons'' was indeed very encouraging. Let's hope the momentum continues. Mr. Weston deserves all the exposure he can get.

Here is Jack Weston's Obituary from The New York Times

Jack Weston Is Dead at 71; Made Anguish Into Comic Art

By ROBERT MCG. THOMAS JR.
Published: May 5, 1996

Jack Weston, the chubby, bejowled actor who elevated anguish to a comic art in a 40-year career on television, in the movies and on Broadway, died on Friday at Lenox Hill Hospital.

He was 71 and had had lymphoma for six years, his wife said.

In a career in which he appeared in hundreds of television productions, two dozen movies and another two dozen Broadway plays, Mr. Weston became such a recognizable figure and played so many distinctive roles with such elan that no one doubted him when he bragged -- or complained -- that he never got a part from an agent.

He didn't have to. Mr. Weston was a master at bumping into the right people at the right time. At restaurants, parties or on the street he was forever running into producers, directors and playwrights whose eyes would inevitably light up as they told him to be sure to call them the very next day.

Mr. Weston, a shy man who never trusted his own luck, would just as inevitably dismiss the overture as routine social schtick and not make the call. Sure enough, the producers would call him and Mr. Weston would be hired for yet another role that would stick in some other producer's mind the next time Mr. Weston bumped into him.

That, more or less, is how Woody Allen came to hire Mr. Weston for his acclaimed role as a sleazy personal manager in "The Floating Lightbulb," which led to a Tony nomination for Mr. Weston in 1981.

And that is how he got his even more acclaimed role in "The Four Seasons," the 1981 movie with Alan Alda, Carol Burnett and Rita Moreno that led to a spinoff television series starring Mr. Weston in 1984.

He had appeared in his share of Broadway hits, including "California Suite" and "The Ritz" in 1976, but for Mr. Weston, who had survived for years on comic schtick, the role of a cantankerous dentist with depth marked a transition point in his career. From then on he would only take roles with substance, including parts in Shakespeare's "Measure for Measure" and Paddy Chayevsky's "The Tenth Man," at Lincoln Center in 1989.

Like many of the characters he played, Mr. Weston was the quintessential New Yorker, which is to say he was born in Cleveland and lived in Los Angeles for 18 years, hating every minute of it he wasn't actually in front of the camera.

"Every afternoon at 3 something hits this town," he said during an interview in Los Angles in 1984. "It's called flash boredom. If you're an actor and not working and you don't play tennis or golf, you can go stark, raving mad. I know. I lived here for 18 years."

Mr. Weston, who said he hated Cleveland, too -- until he spent two years as an Army machine-gunner in Italy in World War II, got his first break at birth. His father, a shoemaker, was a surprisingly understanding man.

When one of his son's teachers told him that Jack, a failing student and the class clown, had an aptitude for acting, rather than being aghast his father actually enrolled him in classes at the Cleveland Playhouse, a storied nurturing ground for young talent, including Paul Newman.

After his Army service, Mr. Weston came to New York to study at the American Theater Wing along with such future stars as Lee Marvin, Rod Steiger and Jack Klugman.

Although he did his share of menial work, including a job as an elevator operator that he got because he was the first applicant who fit the suit, Mr. Weston found ready work in the theater, including a part in "South Pacific," and even more on television, where he became a regular during the 1950's.

His Hollywood years began on a whim in the spring of 1958 when he and his first wife, Marjorie Redmond, abruptly quit their parts in the Broadway hit "Bells Are Ringing," and struck out for Los Angeles in a vintage Volkswagen, fully expecting to return to New York in the fall.

Then the car broke down and the couple were stranded for what turned out to be an 18-year stay as Mr. Weston appeared almost constantly on television and his wife did even better: a 10-year stint as the Cool Whip lady, a commercial gig, Mr. Weston once noted, that required her to work five days a year and paid her six figures.

In much of his early work, Mr. Weston was the villain, most memorably as a man who terrorizes Audrey Hepburn in the 1967 cult classic "Wait Until Dark," but movies like "Cactus Flower" and "Please Don't Eat the Daisies" led him to comedy.

His standing as a character actor took some of the edge off the fact that people were forever recognizing Mr. Weston and never knowing his name.

Mr. Weston was only slightly exaggerating when he claimed that he was everything about his role in "The Four Seasons" except a dentist. "I'm a hypochondriac," he said. "I'm paranoid. I'm a nervous wreck. Why are those people talking about me?"

Perhaps because they had seen him in any number of roles they will never forget.

Mr. Weston, who was divorced from Miss Redmond, is survived by his wife, Laurie Gilkes; a stepdaughter, Amy Gilkes of Manhattan, and a brother, Sam, of Los Angeles.

For more on Jack Weston go to http://www.dougmacaulay.com/kingspud/sel_by_actor_index_2.php?actor_first=Jack&actor_last=Weston

To watch the opening credits of the Four Seasons and some other 1984 TV shows go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ag5abWZfjac