Wednesday, January 27, 2021

Forgotten TV: The Queen & I (1969)

 After Blondie had bombed out halfway through the 1968-9 season, CBS decided another sitcom would fill the void.

Unfortunately, what they got was another bomb.

The Queen & I, from Bing Crosby's production company, was an ensemble comedy set aboard an aging cruise ship whose owners are looking to sell it for scrap, but the crew has other ideas.

Larry Storch (ex-F-Troop) was at the head of the ensemble as a junior officer aboard the ship who came up with one get-rich-quick scheme after another to try to save the ship. Ok, so there were elements of Phil Silvers' You'll Never Get Rich (aka Sgt. Bilko, aka The Phil Silvers Show). Storch hadn't headlined a show since he had a variety series years earlier, prior to F-Troop, and had passed the time post-Troop with guest roles (i.e. Mannix) and cartoons, including Cool Cat and Merlin The Magic Mouse for WB.

The supporting cast included Carl Ballantine (ex-McHale's Navy), Dave Willock (Wacky Races, ex-Margie), Pat Morita, five years before Happy Days turned him into a pop culture icon, and Barbara Stuart, who came over from a recurring gig on Gomer Pyle, USMC, which was in its final season. Billy De Wolfe (ex-Good Morning, World) was the authority figure getting in the way of the crew's schemes. De Wolfe would later move on to The Doris Day Show, and was heard in Frosty The Snowman.

To be honest, I had never heard of this show until I had seen it on a television schedule grid per Wikipedia. Since I never saw it, I can't fairly rate it, and the open, uploaded by Gilmore Box, is the only footage available on YouTube.

No comments: