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The Aldrich Family aired from October 1949 until May 1953 on NBC.
A favorite on radio since 1939, The Aldrich Family was NBC's first successful television sitcom. It concerned the adventures of teenager Henry Aldrich, his " typical American family," his high school buddies ( including best friend Homer Brown), and his puppy loves. The location was the Aldrich household on Elm Street, Centerville. Their was considerable turnover in casting of the principal roles with only House Jameson remaining throughout the television run as Henry's long suffering father, Sam Aldrich ( Jameson had also played the role on radio).
Ezra Stone had originated the role on radio and had become a national celebrity ( he influenced later creations like the Archie Comic Strips). Stone portrayed the character on radio until he left for service in the army in 1942. The role then fell to Norman Tokar (1942-1943), Dickie Jones (1943-1944) and Raymond Ives (from mid-1945 until November 1945). Ezra Stone then resumed his role and would play him until 1952. When it came time to adapt the show to tv though the producers felt they needed a new star. Stone was far to old to play a teenager in the visual medium and he was getting fat and was losing his hair.
Five actors played Henry Aldrich on tv: Bob Casey ( 1949-1950); Richard Tyler ( 1950-1951); Henry Girard ( 1951-1952); Kenneth Nelson ( 1952); and Bobby Ellis( 1952-1953 Ellis also replaced Stone on the radio version of The Aldrich family during that season ). Playing Henry's mother Alice were Lois Wilson ( 1949-1950); Nancy Carroll(1950-1951); Lois Wilson again (1951); and Barbara Robbins (1951-1953). Appearing as Henry's sister Mary were Charita Bauer ( 1949-1950); Mary Malone (1950-1952) and June Dayton ( 1952-1953). Playing best friend Homer Brown were Jackie Kelk ( 1949-1951); Robert Barry ( 1951-1952); and Jackie Grimes (1952-1953).
Appearing semi-regularly were Leona Powers as Mrs. Brown; Howard Smith as Mr. Brown; Marcia Henderson as Kathleen; Ethel Wilson as Aunt Harriet; Ann Sorg as Anna Mitchell; Lionel Wilson as George Bigelow; Richard Midgley (1949) and Joseph Foley ( 1950-1953) as Mr. Bradley; and Loretta Leversee ( 1952-1953) as Eleanor. Paul Newman, in one of his earliest tv roles, also appeared occasionally during the 1952-1953 season.
Despite all these cast changes their was still supposed to be another major one added but the actress was dropped at the last minute in one of the television industry's most celebrated cases of political blacklisting. Jean Muir, a movie and radio actress for nearly 20 years was hired during the summer of 1950 to portray Henry's mother Alice Aldrich in the coming season. Immediately, protests began to come in from right-wing groups accusing Miss Muir of left-wing sympathies-it seems her name was listed in Red Channels , a vicious pamphlet that cited the alleged left-wing activities of dozens of performers. The sponsor General Foods and its advertising agency, Young and Rubicam , canceled the opening episode of the season as a result, and Miss Muir was summarily fired-with no opportunity to defend herself. Later before a congressional committee, she stated that she was not and had never been a communist. But the truth didn't really matter . As in the case of Philip Loeb of The Goldbergs, the accusations alone had been enough virtually to destroy her career.
The Aldrich Family was created by Cliford Goldsmith, based on his play What A Life. The oppening lines each week became something of a national catchphrase with Mrs. Aldrich's call, " Henry! Henry Aldrich," and Henry's pained reply, " Coming Mother!"
An Article from Time Magazine
New Henry Aldrich
Monday, Sep. 14, 1942 Article
When America's sensationally popular radio serial, The Aldrich Family, went back on the air last month, Aldrich actors fidgeted nervously while General Foods kept its fingers achingly crossed. Calamity had overtaken Henry Aldrich again. This time the Army had clamped down on Sergeant Ezra Stone's once-a-week performance as The Aldrich Family's Penrodish son. So Henry was being played by another actor: Norman Tokar.
Canny, crack-voiced Ezra Stone, 24, the script's top drawing card, started as Henry Aldrich in the stage play, What a Life, from which the radio serial was concocted. The script was a summer fillin, but Ezra's adolescent croaks and bleats so delighted radio listeners that The Aldrich Family emerged in the fall of 1939 as a full-fledged weekly show, soon had an audience of millions.
The new Henry, short, stocky, pink-eared Norman Tokar, 19, has long played a bit part in the script, long understudied Ezra, sounds enough like him to be his twin. He has played small stage roles in Delicate Story, Lamented Life of Riley, Days of Our Youth, is currently featured in the subway circuit Sailor Beware. He also writes and sells gangster scripts bristling with argot. Knowing the script depends on Henry, Norman does his best to be a businesslike copy of Ezra. House Jameson, who plays Father Aldrich, coaches the new Henry out from behind every eight ball. It is worth it. For in Norman The Aldrich Family has a safely deferred Henry (he supports elderly and semi-invalid parents).
Another Article from Time Magazine
What a Family
Monday, Apr. 12, 1943 Article
U.S. radio's favorite juvenile has almost no chance of growing up. Crack-voiced Henry Aldrich has been about 16 years old now for the last four years. His protracted adolescence earns his creator (Playwright Clifford Goldsmith) radio's fattest writing fee ($3,000 for one show a week). Goldsmith is hardly likely to let the youngster get any older before his contract expires in 1948.
Henry is the agonizingly adolescent star of The Aldrich Family (NBC, Thurs.
8:30-9 p.m., E.W.T.), whose earthbound tribulations manage to keep some 20,000,000 U.S. listeners in a weekly tizzy.
The serial's formula is surefire. It is skill fully designed to give listeners the impression that they are eavesdropping on a typical small-town American family.
But the Aldriches are more typical than real.
No real American family could long stand the strain of Henry's curbless propensity for getting into adolescent jams.
The business of getting Henry and his girl to and from a high-school dance is like moving an armored division into battle. If Henry plays an April Fool prank, it is virtually certain to assume vast, unanticipated proportions.
The Groaning Past. Credit for the success of The Aldrich Family, which has been one of radio's top ten shows (present Crossley rating: 33.4) since December 1940, belong almost entirely to Play wright Goldsmith, a gentle, home-loving family man with thinning slicked hair, blue eyes and a puckish smile. He has the capacity for making his characters, especially Henry (Norman Tokar) and his pal Homer Brown (Jackie Kelk), seem warmly human, pleasantly credible.
Goldsmith found out about youth the hard way. Orphaned son of a pair of East Aurora, N.Y. schoolteachers, he tried vaudeville, playwrighting, stage and cinemacting without success. To earn a living while pursuing these arts he trimmed cigarstore windows, wrote insurance-company maxims (sample: "Sleep with your windows open and your mouth shut") and lectured high-school students on the benefits of drinking milk. Audiences used to groan when his subject was announced.
One day about five years ago a Broadway producer, tired of rejecting Goldsmith's plays, told him for goodness' sake to write a play about something he knew about. He canvassed himself and wrote What A Life (TIME, April 25, 1938), a play about an adolescent named Henry Aldrich. It went over, became a movie, and is still playing the little theaters.
Rudy Vallee asked for a radio skit, and Goldsmith obliged. Says he: "It was horrible, but they asked for more." The Bleeding Present. Goldsmith turns it out in an old milkhouse on his farm in Chester County, Pa. Enraptured Aldrich fans send him their childhood anecdotes, and he has a first-rate supply of source material in his three sons, aged 16, 14 and 6.
Whenever he incorporates one of their misadventures in a script he is likely to find an itemized bill by his bedside for "plagerism." It is strictly understood at the Goldsmiths' that The Aldrich Family is never to be mentioned at meals.
Another Article from Time Magazine
The Heat's On
Monday, Sep. 04, 1950 Article
From coast to coast, indignant citizens took after Communists, their party-line friends, and some they just suspected of being party-liners. Distinctions were not always finely drawn, and so the actions they took ranged from sound to silly to unjust. Items:
NBC postponed the fall premiere of the TV version of The Aldrich Family, because it had received a lot of protests against one member of the cast, Actress Jean Muir. She was identified as a leftie in a directory published by Counterattack. Rejoined Actress Muir: "It's strange . . . especially since I consider Communism one of the most vicious things in the country today." The sponsor, General Foods, said it was making no judgment on the charges, but fired her as "a controversial personality."
¶Members of Joe Ryan's A.F.L. longshoremen, who a week earlier had balked at unloading inbound cargoes of Russian furs and crab meat, refused to touch 2,000 cases of Polish hams aboard two American freighters at New York docks.
¶The Peace Information Center, a Manhattan outfit which has been a wholesale distributor of the Red-sponsored Stockholm "Peace" Petition, was directed by the Department of Justice to register as agent of a foreign power.
¶New Hampshire's Wentworth by-the-Sea Hotel canceled a scheduled Sunday evening talk by Owen Lattimore after the management polled the guests, found that more than half who voted did not want to hear him.
¶The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors passed an emergency ordinance requiring all Communists or Communist sympathizers (which they had trouble defining) to register at the sheriff's office after Sept. 1 or face a $500 fine and six months in jail for each day's failure to register.
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