Private Secretary: Ann Sothern Part 1 - Sitcoms Online Photo Galleries

Private Secretary Aired from February 1953 until September 1957 on CBS.

Susie McNamara ( Ann Sothern) was private secretary to Peter Sands ( Don Porter), a very successful New York talent agent. She was attractive, efficient, and conscientious but she also had one serious falling. Susie couldn't tell when her responsibilities to her boss ended, and as a result kept getting mixed up in his personal life. Her efforts to help him with personal problems usually led to confusion and misunderstanding, despite their good intent. Vi Praskins ( Ann Tyrrell), the agency's receptionist/switchboard operator, was Susie's friend as was Sylvia ( Joan Banks), although the later was often vying with Susie for the affections of a particularly attractive man. Peter's chief competition in the talent business was fast-talking loud-mouthed , cigar-smoking Cagey Calhoun ( Jesse White).

" Cat On a Hot Tin Fire" ( a name -play on the then popular Tennessee Williams play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof) was as typical an episode as any. Vi came in to Susie's office to tell Susie she found a cat that came in through the office window and wanted to keep her.Susie-dressed in black, as usual with a white tie told her not to bother Mr. Sands about it today " He's in his Simon Legree mood this morning." But Susie would see what she could do.

She brought Mr. Sands his coffee into his office, paneled with a philodendron on his desk. He saw the cat sleeping in a file cabinet and told her that it must go. So Susie put holes in Mr. Sands' new suitcase and took the cat around , seeing if she could find it a home. She gave the cat to a restaurant owner, but it came back. She decided to keep the cat in the office.

Mr. Sands announced that an important client was coming to the office-and she was allergic to cats. What to do? Susie and Vi schemed to get rid of the cat, but the haughty and overdramatic actress came early and started sneezing. Nobody could imagine why. But when Susie was sitting in on the meeting, the cat crawled in and went near the actress who jumped into Mr. Sands' arms. Their was a great deal of screaming and mugging and carrying on . The actress announced that she was going to sue.

"Missssss McNamara"

Mr. Sands called her , as he often did when he was angry. He berated her when he discovered she let the cat in.

" There's not room in this office for the three of us. Now start counting."

Susie talked with Vi who had a hunch. She thought that that actress' alergy was psychosamatic and wanted to send her to a psychiatrist. They knew she wouldn't go so they had a psychiatrist friend of Susie's meet them in a restaurant-The Black Cat Cafe. As it turned out the actress once lost a part to a "catty rival" and had been alergic to cats ever since.The doctor and the actress hit it off and it looked like they might be seeing more of one another, and as a kicker the actress took a part in a play about cats and wanted to use the cat in the play. After the Lucky Strike Cigarette Commercial, there was the tag. The cat which they thought was a male-had kittens right in the office. " Susie" Vi squeeled, " we're Grandmothers!" The kittens even melted the cold, cold heart of Mr. Sands. And the show was over.

Ann Sothern was born Henrietta Lake in Valley City, North Dakota. A student of the violin, she played an original composition with the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra when she was thirteen. Her mother became a vocal coach for Warner Brothers and Henrietta was discovered singing with her mother. She was in two notable Broadway shows-Smiles and Hotcha before she was brought to Hollywood in 1936. She was well known for living beyond her means ( even though her means were beyond most people) and each day she'd ride to work in a chauffered limousine.

In 1957 Ann Sothern quit Private Secretary after a dispute with producer Jack Chertok and she filed suit against him to get more than $93,000 that she claimed was owed to her in distribution profits. Chertok tried to resurect the show starring Don Porter without Ann Sothern but he couldn't find a suitable actress to replace her.

Private Secretary alternated bi-weekly with The Jack Benny Program. The series was syndicated under the title Susie.

An Article from Time Magazine

Sympathetic Susie
Monday, Apr. 20, 1953 Article

"I've been in show business for 20 years," says breezy Ann (Maisie) Sothern, hard-working star of her own CBS-TV show, Private Secretary, "and this is the toughest thing I've ever done." After Actress Sothern had made seven Maisie movies and broadcast 78 Maisie radio programs, she was so tired of the dumb-blonde character that "the very name made me frantic." .Several months ago someone handed her a TV script for Private Secretary, and Ann decided it was just right.

As Susie McNamara every Sunday night (7:30 p.m., E.S.T.), Ann is the "private right arm" of a show-business impresario, a glib, high-spirited girl in her thirties, who gets in & out of scrapes with sexy relish. Unlike Maisie, Susie dresses well, and "we try not to make her stupid. There are 5,000,000 secretaries in this country, and we want some sort of sympathetic association." After only a couple of months on the air, Private Secretary—a sort of junior-size I Love Lucy—has built up an audience of a good portion of those 5,000,000 secretaries, plus a few hundred thousand others.

As the boss of the filmed program (cost: $27,500 a week), Ann Sothern has to be practical about her art: "It's a business of compromise. Time is of the essence. Cost is paramount. If you're trying

I to honestly do a show of quality, then you are constantly frustrated. In three days we have to shoot an entire 26-minute show. And we do it just like the movies, with closeups, the whole works. But you know that isn't enough time. We start shooting promptly at 9 a.m. and never finish until 6. And still we don't have enough time. Some scenes that you see on the screen have never been rehearsed. I just read the script and they shoot it."

Ann also has to approve and edit scripts and help in casting and production planning: "If anyone tells you TV is easy, you can hit them for me. I live on Knox Gelatine and orange juice, just to keep going. In television you must give of yourself at such a pitch that it takes everything out of you."

Although Private Secretary is going great guns, Ann likes to say she would just as soon be out of it all. She says she never asked to be in show business anyway; it was all her mother's idea. Fortyish and divorced, she lives in Beverly Hills with her eight-year-old daughter Patricia, and "I hope Tish will never want to be an actress. I want her to grow up and have a lot of children so I can be a grandmother." What Ann really wants, she says, is "a man who is 40, rich and Catholic. Then I'll quit this business in a second." Until then, "I'll have to spend my time hermetically sealed on Stage 8."

Here is Don Porter's Obituary from The New York Times

Don Porter, 84, Actor In Sitcoms and Films

Published: February 24, 1997

Don Porter, who played Ann Sothern's boss in ''Private Secretary'' and Sally Field's father in ''Gidget,'' died on Feb. 11 at his home in Beverly Hills, Calif. He was 84.

Mr. Porter appeared in many television shows over the years, but was perhaps best known for his role as the widowed father of the teen-age Gidget in 1965.

Before that, he appeared as Ms. Sothern's boss twice, in ''Private Secretary,'' from 1953 to 1957, and in ''The Ann Sothern Show,'' from 1959 to 1961.

Mr. Porter was born in Oklahoma. He began his show business career on stage in Portland, Ore., and went on to appear in more than 200 plays across the country.'' His movie credits include ''Youngblood Hawke,'' ''The Candidate,'' ''40 Carats,'' ''Mame,''and ''The Women's Club.''

He is survived by his wife and frequent co-star, the actress Peggy Converse; a daughter, Melissa Converse, also an actress, and a son, Don Jr., an architect.

For an episode guide go to http://ctva.biz/US/Comedy/PrivateSecretary.htm

For a look at a crossover between Private Secretary and I Love Lucy go to http://poobala.com/lucyandprivate.html

For an Ann Sothern Page go to http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Hills/2440/sothern.html

For a Page dedicated to Ann Sothern go to http://www.lucyfan.com/annsothern.html

For more on Private Secretary go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_Secretary_(TV_series)