Duffy's Tavern

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Duffy's Tavern, an American radio situation comedy (CBS, 1941-1942; NBC-Blue Network, 1942-1944; NBC, 1944-1952), often featured top-name stage and film guest stars but always hooked those around the misadventures, get-rich-quick-scheming, and romantic missteps of the title establishment's malaprop-prone, metaphor-mixing manager, Archie, played by the writer/actor who co-created the show, Ed Gardner.

In the show's familiar opening, "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling," either solo on an old-sounding piano or by a larger orchestra, was interrupted by the ring of a telephone and Gardner's New Yorkese accent as he answered, "Duffy's Tavern, where the elite meet to eat. Archie the manager speakin'. Duffy ain't here — oh, hello, Duffy."

Duffy, the owner, was never heard (or seen, when a film based on the show was made in 1945 or when a bid to bring the show to television was tried in 1954). But Archie always was — bantering with Duffy's man-crazy daughter, Miss Duffy (played by several actresses, beginning with Gardner's real-life first wife, Shirley Booth); with Eddie, the waiter/janitor (Eddie Green); and, especially, with Clifton Finnegan (Charlie Cantor), a likeable soul with several screws loose and a knack for falling for every other salesman's scam.

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[edit] Guest stars

The show featured many high-profile guest stars, including Fred Allen, Mel Allen, Nigel Bruce, Bing Crosby, Boris Karloff, Veronica Lake, Bob Hope, Peter Lorre, Tony Martin, Gene Tierney, Arthur Treacher, Alan Ladd, Marie McDonald, and Shelley Winters. As the series progressed, Archie slipped in and out of a variety of quixotic, self-imploding plotlines — from writing an opera to faking a fortune to marry an heiress. Such situations mattered less than did the show's quietly clever depiction of earthbound-but-dreaming New York City life and its individualistic, often bizarre characters.

Duffy's Tavern was Gardner's creation, and he oversaw its writing intently enough, drawing also on his earlier experience as a successful radio director. His directing credits included stints for George Burns and Gracie Allen, Ripley's Believe It or Not, and The Rudy Vallee Hour. Gardner also brought aboard several keen writing talents, including theatric humourist Abe Burrows (the show's co-creator and head writer for its first five years), future M*A*S*H writer Larry Gelbart, and Dick Martin, who later became famous as the co-host of television's groundbreaking Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In.

[edit] Title changes

Early in the show's life, however, its name was changed — first to Duffy and, for four episodes, Duffy's Variety. A staffer for Bristol-Myers -- whose Ipana toothpaste was the show's early sponsor -- persuaded the company's publicity director to demand the name change because the original title promoted "the hobby of drinking" too much for certain sensibilities. Bristol-Myers eventually admitted the staffer had little to go on other than a handful of protesting letters, and -— to the delight of fans who never stopped using the original name, anyway —- the original title was restored permanently. The name change was often subverted by the Armed Forces Radio Network. When the AFRN rebroadcast those episodes for U.S. servicemen during World War II, the announcer referred to Duffy's Tavern.

[edit] Film and television

Radio's Duffy's Tavern didn't translate well to film or television. Burrows and Matt Brooks collaborated on the screenplay for the 1945 film, Ed Gardner's Duffy's Tavern, in which Archie (with regulars Eddie and Finnegan) was surrounded by a throng of Paramount Pictures stars playing themselves, including Robert Benchley, William Bendix, Eddie Bracken, Bing Crosby, Cass Daley, Brian Donlevy, Paulette Goddard, Betty Hutton, Alan Ladd, Veronica Lake and Dorothy Lamour. The film's plot involves a war-displaced record manufacturer whose staff — those not sent off to war — drown their sorrows at Duffy's on credit, while the company owner tries to find ways around the price controls and war attrition that threaten to put him out of business. The movie was a box-office disappointment.

The 1954 syndicated TV series lacked leading name guest stars and, according to writer Larry Rhine, it was weighted by Gardner's inability to adapt to camera work: "He couldn't act, and he wouldn't learn camera... He thought he could do TV, so he left radio, but he was a bad actor and knew it." The series failed to gain viewer support.

[edit] Influence

Duffy's Tavern inspired a number of future TV series set in neighborhood taverns. Examples are:

  • Archie Bunker's Place, the low-keyed spinoff from the groundbreaking All in the Family, which moved the now-title character from the loading dock and the taxicab to running a blue-collar bar with his usual repertoire of malaprops.
  • The soap opera Ryan's Hope (whose title family oriented around tavern-owning Irish parents).
  • The 1980s situation comedy classic Cheers (which was co-created by James Burrows, the son of Duffy's Tavern co-creator Abe Burrows).
  • Jackie Gleason's "Joe the Bartender" sketches. These usually began with Joe (Gleason) in a conversation with an unseen patron, Mr. Dunahy, before being joined (usually at Dunahy's request) by a Finnegan-like, cheerful dolt, Crazy Guggenheim (Frank Fontaine).
  • The Simpsons, in the form of Moe the bartender, who answers the telephone saying, "Moe's Tavern, where the elite meet to drink."
  • The show was parodied in the 1947 Popeye cartoon "I'll Be Skiing Ya." A billboard advertises: "Stuffy's Tavern. Where The Elite Beat The Heat. Lake Plastered, NY."

Whether or not they were inspired by the radio show, there are numerous bars across the United States today that call themselves Duffy's Tavern — from Wickford, Rhode Island, to Monterey, California.

[edit] NITA

The National Institute for Trial Advocacy (NITA) has a series of law tapes by Irving Younger about the Basic Concepts in the Law of Evidence. On the eighth tape of the series, Irving Younger is giving a lecture about hearsay when the phone rings. Younger picks up the phone and says, "Duffy's Tavern". The lecturees watching find this humorous and laugh. After hanging up, Younger states that "When I said 'Duffy's Tavern' he said 'I'll have a ham and cheese on rye.'"

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