The Sandy Duncan Show

Funny Face and The Sandy Duncan Show are two sitcoms aired by CBS starring Sandy Duncan as part of its 1971 and 1972 fall lineups, respectively. Both series were created and produced by Carl Kleinschmitt.

Funny Face

In Funny Face, Sandy Stockton is a young UCLA student from Taylorville, Illinois majoring in education and making ends meet by working part-time as an actress in TV commercials for the Prescott Advertising Agency. In the pilot for the series, the supporting cast included Nita Talbot as Maggie Prescott, Sandy's modeling agent and best friend, and Frank Aletter as Dick, a photographer for the agency, who also happened to be Maggie's ex-husband. After screening the pilot, CBS picked up the show for the 1971 fall season, however the network requested there be some changes made in terms of cast and format. As a result, the character of Sandy Stockton, instead, became a student teacher who supported her education through professional acting and modeling. Talbot and Aletter were dropped from the cast and replaced by Valorie Armstrong as Sandy's best friend and neighbor Alice McRaven (Armstrong and Duncan in real-life are close friends) and Henry Beckman and Kathleen Freeman as Pat and Kate Harwell, Sandy's friends and landlords. Beckman, in fact, had been featured in the pilot as a telephone repairman. The show was a part of the CBS 1971 Saturday night lineup which included All in the Family and The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Despite ranking #8 in the Nielsen ratings for the 1971-72 season, it was canceled less than three months after its premiere, because Duncan had to undergo surgery for a brain tumor behind her left eye. At that time, only 12 episodes had been filmed so, in order to complete the first 13-episode cycle, the pilot was dusted off and finally shown as the last show of the series on December 11, 1971. CBS returned the Sandy Stockton character and Miss Duncan the next season in The Sandy Duncan Show.

The Sandy Duncan Show

In The Sandy Duncan Show, Sandy now worked for the advertising firm of Quinn & Cohen, where her supervisor was one of the partners, Bert Quinn (Tom Bosley), the other partner was Leonard Cohen (Alfie Wise). Two of her neighbors, Kay Fox (Marian Mercer) and Alex Lembeck (M. Emmet Walsh) were also close friends. Motorcycle police officer Alex constantly worried about Sandy's status as a single woman living alone, which he saw as being inherently dangerous; and as such, appointed himself as her chaperone/protector. Sandy had a very sweet and slightly naive nature and was prone to try to help anyone whom she felt needed help, including total strangers, so Alex's fears were not totally misplaced.

The Sandy Duncan Show attracted a much smaller audience than Funny Face on Sunday nights, typically the time of the largest television viewing audience in the U.S. It had to compete with ABC's The F.B.I. and the NBC Mystery Movie. It was also canceled at midseason, with the last episode airing on New Year's Eve 1972.

Theme song and opening titles

Both Funny Face and The Sandy Duncan Show used the same theme song and opening titles. The opening titles consist of a photo album with pictures of Sandy Stockton as she was growing up from infancy to a young woman (presumably real-life photos of Duncan, used for the montage). Included were pictures of Sandy at various young ages; also pictures of her doing tap and ballet dancing; at various school functions; being a cheerleader for her high school; wearing her cap and gown, and posing by the Taylorville sign saying good bye as she was boarding her bus.

However, in The Sandy Duncan Show's opening, most of the pictures of a baby Sandy were eliminated, as there was now a second verse of the song, and that second verse was sung whilst showing Sandy on her bus trip from Taylorville to Los Angeles (which was actually footage of Duncan from her 1971 Paramount film 'Star Spangled Girl'). In Funny Face, the theme song "The Kind of Girl She Is" was sung by Jack Jones and later on in The Sandy Duncan Show, a more up-tempo version of the theme was sung by an unknown group of men and women. The theme was written by Alan Bergman, Marilyn Bergman and Dave Grusin.

References

Brooks, Tim and Marsh, Earle, The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows

External links

• Funny Face at the Internet Movie Database
• Funny Face at TV.com
• The Sandy Duncan Show at the Internet Movie Database
• The Sandy Duncan Show at TV.com