I Married Joan
| I Married Joan | |
|---|---|
 I Married Joan intro screen |
|
| Genre | Sitcom |
| Starring | Joan Davis Jim Backus |
| Theme music composer | Richard Mack |
| Opening theme | "I Married Joan" |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Original language(s) | English |
| No. of seasons | 3 |
| No. of episodes | 98 |
| Production | |
| Executive producer(s) | Joan Davis James Bank |
| Producer(s) | P.J. Wolfson Richard Mack |
| Running time | 22–24 minutes |
| Broadcast | |
| Original channel | NBC |
| Picture format | Black-and-white |
| Audio format | Monaural |
| Original run | October 15, 1952 – April 6, 1955 |
I Married Joan is an American sitcom that aired on NBC from 1952 to 1955. It starred veteran vaudeville, film, and radio comedienne-comedy actress Joan Davis as the manic, scatterbrained wife of a mild-mannered community judge, the Honorable Bradley Stevens (Jim Backus).
Contents |
Synopsis [edit]
The show announced itself each week as "America's favorite comedy show, starring America's queen of comedy, Joan Davis, as Mrs. Joan Stevens." The series focused on a married couple, Joan and Bradley Stevens. Joan Stevens usually found herself in numerous wacky jams, with or without the help of her younger sister. (Davis's real-life daughter, Beverly Wills, acted out Joan's sister, Beverly Grossman.) The installments usually began with Backus, as Judge Stevens, recalling yet another merry mishap; this was followed by the unfolding of the mishap, and the installments ended with Stevens summing it up.
Sponsored by General Electric(which later took over NBC's parent company, RCA), I Married Joan was aimed at the viewers who watched I Love Lucy, which had debuted the previous year and was already television's top-rated situation comedy. Displaying Davis's considerable physical and verbal comedy talents, the show ran three seasons in first-run production before falling victim to weakening ratings and Davis's personal health problems. It would be Davis's last appearance on camera before her death.
Though I Married Joan was an NBC television series, CBS Paramount Television subsequently became the primary owners of the program's copyright. The copyrights on some of the episodes eventually lapsed without being renewed; as a result, I Married Joan has several episodes in the public domain.
Cast [edit]
| Actor | Role |
|---|---|
| Joan Davis | Joan Stevens |
| Jim Backus | Bradley Stevens |
| Hope Emerson | Minerva Parker |
| Wally Brown | Wally |
| Sheila Bromley | Janet Tobin |
| Sandra Gould | Mildred Webster |
| Hal Smith | Charlie Henderson |
| Geraldine Carr | Mabel Henderson |
| Sally Kelly | Sally |
| Beverly Wills | Beverly Grossman |
| Dan Tobin | Kerwin Tobin |
Syndication and DVDs [edit]
In the early 1980s, the series was rerun by the CBN cable network in a late-night block that included another TV sitcom, Gale Storm's series My Little Margie. The series was also aired on ION Television, and on the HOT (History of Television) network in New York (WKOB 42.4) and Dallas (KODF 26 and K31GL 31.3).
Since 2004, Alpha Home Entertainment has released three volumes of various episodes from different seasons on budget DVD compilations.[1]
BearManor Media published a biography about Joan Davis, which includes a chapter dedicated to I Married Joan. Episodes of the series have been screened at the Mid-Atlantic Nostalgia Convention held annually in Aberdeen, Maryland.
References [edit]
External links [edit]
- I Married Joan at the Internet Movie Database
- I Married Joan at TV.com
- A film clip of an episode of I Married Joan is available for free download at the Internet Archive [more]
