Secret Television

TV babies of a certain age (read "old") no doubt remember the sitcom trend of the '50s and '60s where the lead character, usually a guy, was keeping a big secret from family and friends, and around which many of the shows' storylines revolved.

I've come to believe this theme spun out of national paranoia about commies and other "enemies within" [see McCarthyism, '47-'59], especially in show biz. Series creators were taking those worries and suspicions and making hay of them.

There was Leo G. Carroll's TV-adapted stage character Topper and his ghostly friends ('53-'55), Alan Young's Wilbur Post and his talking gentleman horse in Mr. Ed ('61-'66), the original My Favorite Martian ('63-'67) with Bill Bixby as a newspaper reporter and Ray Walston as the stranded alien passing as his "Uncle Martin," David Crabtree (Jerry Van Dyke) and the vintage car through which his dead mother (Ann Sothern) spoke to him in My Mother the Car ('65-'66), Maj. Tony Nelson (Larry Hagman) and his winsome genie housemate (Barbara Eden) on I Dream of Jeannie ('65-70) and the especially long-running ('64-'72) "my wife is a witch, but in a good way" series Bewitched (Elizabeth Montgomery).

Some of these venerable shows were remade more recently as movies -- I never could bring myself to see any of them. I guess I resisted wanting to reframe them into something more contemporary. They'll always represent for me that time when Tinsel Town struck back against lingering insulation and distrust and helped us lower our guard just a bit, if only for a while.