My Little Margie

[ken123]

Does anyone remember this comedy starring Gale Storm in the title role.?

[jdb1]

Does anyone remember this comedy starring Gale Storm in the title role.?

I remember seeing this show on TV, but I remember very little about it. It goes back into the murky past for me.

People walking in the corridor of an apartment building.
Margie had short hair and a round face, and she grinned and shrugged her shoulders a lot. Also, she wore those tiny silk scarves around her neck, as were popular in the 1950s.
The boss was Mr. Honeywell?
A wacky older woman was a neighbor.
At the end Margie and her father talked about the events of the show, he said "Well, that's my little Margie!" and then they turned into a photograph.

I do remember the theme music - flutes and strings, a jaunty tune.

[Dewey1960]

I remember it well. Charles Farrell, the great former screen star co-starred as Margie's usually befuddled father, Vern Albright. It was a pretty shrill program, but as a kid I enjoyed it quite a bit. (I had a major crush on Gale Storm until Connie Stevens came along!) The show seemed to be constantly in reruns all through the late 50s and early 60s. Margie had a boyfriend on the show named Freddy who was a doofus and added very little. The real attraction was the tug of war relationship between Margie and her dad. Gale Storm had a string of hit records in the mid 50s when the show was in its so-called heyday.

[ken123]

The boss was Mr. Honeywell played by Clarence Kolb. The elderly lady was Mrs Odets, played by the ninety year old Gertrude Hoffman. Hillary Brooke was Roberta, Charles Farrell's, a widower, girlfriend, and you do have the endings totally correct.

Freud, where are you ? I the last five years I have had at least two dreams that featured Gertrude Hoffman and me !! Just talking, but when you dream about ninety year old as ninety year olds, what is THAT saying ?

[moira finnie]

Tragically, I was able to revisit My Little Margie last winter on the then Pax channel, (now ION), which trotted the series out on a daily basis up until it changed its programming format. The few times that I came across it I realized how ghastly a program it was and then contemplated how it might've affected young minds viewing it as an eternal rerun decades ago.

The only reason I can see to watch this was the presence of nice-guy actor, Charley Farrell, (whose off screen accomplishment as co-founder of the famed Palm Springs Tennis Club with Ralph Bellamy outshone his film career), character actor Clarence Kolb, (trying to pay the bills, I guess), and Hillary Brooke. The likable Ms. Brooke had already endured co-starring with Abbott and Costello and Orson Welles, so she probably figured she had nothing to lose. Unfortunately, she may have been wrong.

The shrill & manic Gale Storm may have been one of the worst comic actresses ever. Was her singing as relentless as her acting style? Did I mention that I didn't care for this show much?

[jdb1]

The shrill & manic Gale Storm may have been one of the worst comic actresses ever. Was her singing as relentless as her acting style? Did I mention that I didn't care for this show much?

I remember Storm a little bit better from her second series which was called both "The Gale Storm Show" and "Oh, Susannah!" ("OY Susannah" would have been better.) She was, I think, the cruise director on an ocean liner. Shrill's the word. However, I came across at least one fan website for her, so somebody must like that sort of thing.

I have vague memories of some of her recordings in the 50s, but the fact that I can't really remember them probably means that they sounded just like everyone else's.

I do know that she was the object of a parody by Spike Jones - she sang a very tragic, thobbing ballad called "Dark Moon," which Spike and his City Slickers recreated in hillbilly style. That bunch didn't parody singers unless they felt said singers roundly deserved it. (They really stuck it to Vaughn Monroe early in his career, for example.)

[jdb1]

Forgot to mention - the only selling point for most of us for Storm's second series was the presence of ZaSu Pitts as her sidekick.

I've been thinking about the show, which I still can't really remember, but I can hear Roy Roberts, as the captain of the ship (Capt. Huxley, as I remember), bellowing "MISS Pomeroy!!!"