Obscurity factor: 8
This sitcom about women holding down the fort during WWII Washington D.C. was produced by Gary Marshall and starred Annie Pots as the informal head of a group of friends sharing a small attic apartment due to the wartime housing shortage. The series walked the line between comedy and heartfelt sentiment, sharing the bittersweet circumstances of servicemen about to ship out to uncertain futures as well as the wacky situations the girls found themselves in. Also in the cast was Adrian Zmed and Peter Scolari, before his break out role in Bosom Buddies.
Above is the episode Too Many Fiances in which Betty (Lorna Patterson), who can't say no to to boys who ask her to marry them the night before they ship out, has to deal with several of the many service men she's become engaged to on one night. It was uploaded to YouTube by kentgrauvac.
Obscurity factor: 8 (largely unknown, not on DVD, several episodes available on YouTube)
Wow, whatever became of Lorna Patterson? She was such a deft comic actress. She seemed to drop off the face of the earth...
ReplyDeleteThere was a huge swathe of the 1980s when I didn't have a TV; I wonder if this series was during that period. Never seen nor heard of it, and that opening scene is giving me a "Laverne & Shirley" x2 feel (which is not a bad thing).
ReplyDeleteI'm loving that 1940s look on Annie P., and Lorna Patterson is a name I haven't heard in decades.
Many, many years ago, a dancer friend of my aunt told us she knew Georgia Engel from shared dance classes and that she was "exactly like she is on TV." I saw her on stage in "The Drowsy Chaperone" a few years back, and I came to the same conclusion that my aunt's friend had.
Thank you, Ben, for finding this lost gem.
What else did Lorna Patterson do? I'm not familiar with her. Glad you enjoyed it. It's a fun find. There are so many one season shows out there that deserve rediscovery...
ReplyDeleteShe was in Airplane! and played the Goldie Hawn role in the sitcom Private Benjamin, off the top of my head.
ReplyDeleteIt is amusing what VanceMan said about Georgia Engel. I have a cousin who used to organize talks or workshops of some kind about breaking into show business. This was about 30 years ago and she lived in LA back then. Georgia spoke at one of them, and my cousin said she was exactly like she appeared on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show."
ReplyDeleteEveryone seems to say that - I had a friend who took a dance class with her and he said the same thing.
ReplyDelete