That Girl

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For other uses of That Girl, see That Girl (disambiguation).

That Girl
That Girl opening title.
Genre	Sitcom
Creator(s)	Sam Denoff Bill Persky
Starring	Marlo Thomas Ted Bessell Lew Parker Bernie Kopell Rosemary DeCamp
Country of origin	United States
No. of episodes	136
Production
Running time	22 minutes
Broadcast
Original channel	ABC
Original run	September 8, 1966 – September 10, 1971
Links
IMDb profile

That Girl was an American television situation comedy that ran on ABC from 1966 to 1971. It starred Marlo Thomas as the title character, Ann Marie, an aspiring (but only sporadically employed) actress, living in New York City. Ann had to take a number of offbeat "temp" jobs to support herself in between her various auditions and bit parts, though she nonetheless was able to afford a spacious New York apartment as well as an extensive wardrobe of mod fashions. Ted Bessell played her boyfriend Donald Hollinger, a writer for Newsview Magazine; Lew Parker and Rosemary DeCamp played Lou Marie and Helen Marie, her concerned parents. Bernie Kopell and Ruth Buzzi played Ann & Donald's friends.

Each episode began with a pre-credits teaser in which an odd incident would occur or a discussion would foreshadow the episode's story. The scene would almost always end with someone exclaiming "...that girl!" just as Ann wanders into the shot or the character notices her. The words "That Girl" would appear over the shot of Ann. The opening credits during seasons 2 through 5 followed, featuring Thomas, in character, ambitiously strolling the streets of New York and flying a kite that bore a resemblance to her. In the last season, lyrics were added to the theme song.

That Girl was the first show to focus on a single woman who was not a domestic or living at home. Some consider this show the forerunner of the highly successful Mary Tyler Moore Show and Murphy Brown. Thomas' goofy charm, together with Bessell's dry wit and the strong chemistry they shared, made the show a strong performer during its five year run.

In the beginning of the 5th season, Don and Ann became engaged, although they never actually married. The decision to leave the couple engaged at the end of the run of the series was largely the idea of Thomas herself. She didn't want to send a message to young women that marriage was the ultimate goal for them. ^[1]

The show's theme song and opening visuals have been parodied in pop culture several times. They appeared as a series of T-shirts, then as a Saturday Night Live skit featuring an African American remake "That Black Girl", as a sequence on episodes of Animaniacs, The Simpsons and Roseanne, in the precredits teaser of an episode of The Nanny where Maxwell's guest-starring mother encounters Fran at the florist, in another episode of The Nanny where Peter Bergman, playing himself acting in The Young and the Restless casts Fran in the soap by asking for a co-star like "that girl!" while pointing to Fran, and in the "That Guy" sequence in Family Guy. Thomas played Rachel's mother in the series Friends. Phoebe can sometimes be seen wearing a That Girl t-shirt.