The Patty Duke Show

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The Patty Duke Show
Opening sequence of The Patty Duke Show
Genre	Sitcom
Created by	William Asher Sidney Sheldon
Written by	Gary Abrams William Asher David Butler Arnold Horwitt Roy Kammerman Sidney Sheldon
Directed by	Bruce Bilson Harry Falk Claudio Guzmán Stanley Prager Alan Rafkin James Sheldon Don Weis
Starring	Patty Duke William Schallert Jean Byron Paul O'Keefe Eddie Applegate
Theme music composer	Sid Ramin
Composer(s)	Harry Geller
Country of origin	United States
Language(s)	English
No. of seasons	3
No. of episodes	104
Production
Producer(s)	William Asher Bob Sweeney
Running time	30 mins.
Broadcast
Original channel	ABC
Picture format	Black-and-white
Audio format	Monaural
Original run	September 18, 1963 – May 4, 1966
Chronology
Followed by	The Patty Duke Show: Still Rockin' In Brooklyn Heights

The Patty Duke Show is an American sitcom which ran on ABC from September 18, 1963, until May 4, 1966, with reruns airing through August 31, 1966. The show was created as a vehicle for rising star Patty Duke, who had recently won an Academy Award for The Miracle Worker. A total of 104 episodes were produced, most written by Sidney Sheldon.

Contents 1 Plot 2 Characters and cast 3 Production 3.1 Filming locations 3.2 Music 3.3 Visual effects 4 Reception 5 Cancellation 6 Syndication and DVD release 7 Social Security ad campaign 8 See also 9 References 10 External links

[edit] Plot

Patty Lane (Duke) is a normal teenager living in the Brooklyn Heights section of New York City, who loves boys, ice cream, and sleepovers. Her father is the managing editor of the New York Chronicle. In the unaired pilot episode, her "identical cousin" Cathy Lane (also played by Duke), whose father also works for the Chronicle as a foreign correspondent, arrives in the United States from Scotland to live with Patty's family and attend school.

Cathy is more worldly and demure than Patty, and the aggravations that come from the two girls' very different personalities set the tone for much of the sitcom.

The remarkable physical resemblance that Patty and Cathy Lane share to each other is explained by their fathers being identical twin brothers.

[edit] Characters and cast

Rounding out the cast was William Schallert as Patty's father Martin Lane (Schallert also played Cathy's father in a handful of episodes), Jean Byron as Patty's mother Natalie Lane, Paul O'Keefe as Patty's brother Ross Lane, and Eddie Applegate as Patty's boyfriend, Richard Harrison.

In the pilot episode only, Mark Miller played Patty's father and Charles Herbert played Patty's brother. The pilot episode was not aired as such, but parts of it were used in the last episode of the first season with the Schallert and O'Keefe in their respective roles.^[1]

Special guest stars included singing duo Chad and Jeremy, teen heartthrob singers Frankie Avalon and Bobby Vinton, Sal Mineo, and Sammy Davis Jr..

[edit] Production

[edit] Filming locations

The Patty Duke Show was, atypically for the time, filmed in New York and not in Hollywood. This was done because Duke was not quite 17 when the series began, and California's strict child labor laws curtailed the number of hours that child actors could work. New York, by contrast, did not have such stringent laws, thus allowing producers to devote more time to the production, a distinct advantage, since Duke effectively carried the show.^[2]:116 Duke turned 18 during the 1964-65 television season; consequently ABC wanted to shift the show's production to Hollywood. To the network's displeasure, Duke was reluctant to make the move; at the time, she was in the midst of breaking off her relationship with her managers, who were insisting upon the move. Nonetheless, a few of the last shows were in fact filmed on the West Coast.^[1]

[edit] Music

The show's theme song, which has since been parodied many times over in pop culture, illustrates the two girls' differences:

Meet Cathy who's lived most everywhere,

from Zanzibar to Berkeley Square;

But Patty's only seen the sights a girl can see from Brooklyn Heights - what a crazy pair!

But they're cousins, identical cousins all the way;

one pair of matching bookends, different as night and day.

Where Cathy adores a minuet,

the Ballets Russes, and crêpes Suzette;

our Patty loves to rock 'n' roll, a hot dog makes her lose control - what a wild duet!

Still they're cousins, identical cousins and you'll find

they laugh alike, they walk alike, at times they even talk alike.

You can lose your mind ... when cousins are two of a kind!"

[edit] Visual effects

The dual role for Duke challenged special effects for its time, considering television special effects were rare in the early 1960s, particularly for a sitcom.

In all episodes, Duke appeared as both characters in the same frame through use of a split screen effect. To complement these effects, child actress Rita McLaughlin was used as Duke's double (almost always seen only from behind).^[3]

[edit] Reception

Already a budding star in her own right, Duke was further thrust into the public consciousness through the show. As the series went on, her star power from the series allowed her to enter the realm of popular music, releasing a Top Ten single, "Don't Just Stand There", in 1965.^[4]

[edit] Cancellation

Although the series was still very popular during its final season and getting high Nielsen ratings, ABC decided not to renew it for the '66/'67 season on the basis that filming it in color would have been prohibitively expensive (at the time all three networks were switching their entire prime time lineups to color production).

Duke wrote in her memoir Call Me Anna that United Artists, which produced the series (as well as The Miracle Worker), refused ABC's demand for a switch to color. Duke suspected, but never knew for sure, that United Artists executives said no as "a negotiating ploy" with the hope that ABC would respond with an offer to pay it more money for the series. In the end, however, ABC decided not to renew the series.^[2]:167

In 1999, CBS aired the TV movie The Patty Duke Show: Still Rockin' In Brooklyn Heights, which reunited most of the original cast, including Duke, Byron, O'Keefe, Schallert, and Applegate. In Still Rockin', Patty and Richard married after high school, had a son, and were amicably divorced (though toward the end of the movie, they reconcile). Cathy is a widow living in Scotland and has a teenage son. Most of the plot revolves around Patty's old rival Sue Ellen's plans to buy Brooklyn Heights High School, raze it, and replace it with a mall, which is opposed by Patty, Cathy, and the rest of the family.

[edit] Syndication and DVD release

The Patty Duke Show was rerun on Nick at Nite from 1988 until 1992. In 1995, Nick at Nite showed one episode of the series during their 10th anniversary celebration. In 2005, both Nick at Nite and TV Land aired an episode of Patty in honor of Nick at Nite's 20th anniversary.

As of November 1, 2008, The Patty Duke Show is currently being syndicated on This TV as part of an early morning "kid friendly" entertainment block. Prior to this, the show had not appeared in syndication since Nick at Nite dropped it from its lineup in 1992. As of March 2009, the show was being broadcast daily on World Harvest Television, the cable/satellite channel operated by televangelist Lester Sumrall's LeSEA Broadcasting.

On May 28, 2009, Shout! Factory announced that they will be releasing the complete first season of The Patty Duke Show on DVD in Region 1 on September 29, 2009.^[5]

DVD Name	Ep #	Release Date
The Complete First Season	36	September 29, 2009

[edit] Social Security ad campaign

In 2009, Duke would reprise her dual roles from the show in a PSA for The Social Security Administration, in which Patty asked Cathy about where she got her information about how to get Social Security benefits and other questions, like applying for one, online. The PSA was targeted towards baby boomers who were born or grew up in the 1960s^[6][7].

[edit] See also

• The Parent Trap
• Double Trouble
• Sister, Sister
• The Suite Life of Zack and Cody

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• The Patty Duke Show at the Internet Movie Database
• The Patty Duke Show at TV.com
• The Patty Duke Show at EpGuides.com