| Hello, Larry | |
|---|---|
| Genre | Sitcom |
| Created by | Dick Bensfield Perry Grant |
| Written by | Dick Bensfield Perry Grant George Tibbles |
| Directed by | Doug Rogers |
| Starring | McLean Stevenson Donna Wilkes Krista Errickson Kim Richards Joanna Gleason George Memmoli Ruth Brown Meadowlark Lemon John Femia Fred Stuthman |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Language(s) | English |
| No. of seasons | 2 |
| No. of episodes | 35 (List of Episodes) |
| Production | |
| Executive producer(s) | Dick Bensfield Perry Grant George Tibbles |
| Producer(s) | Rita Dillon Woody Kling Patricia Fass Palmer George Tibbles |
| Running time | 30 mins. |
| Production company(s) | T.A.T. Communications Company |
| Broadcast | |
| Original channel | NBC |
| Original run | January 26, 1979 – April 29, 1980 |
Hello, Larry is an American sitcom which aired on NBC from January 26, 1979, to April 30, 1980.
Contents |
Larry Alder (played by McLean Stevenson) is a radio talk show host who left Los Angeles after being divorced and moved to Portland, Oregon, with his two teenage daughters, Diane (played in the first season by Donna Wilkes and in the second season by Krista Errickson) and Ruthie (played by Kim Richards). In the first season, episodes centered on Larry at the radio station and his smart remarks to callers. The supporting cast consisted of producer Morgan (Joanna Gleason) and morbidly obese engineer Earl (George Memmoli).[1]
In an effort to make the character (and series) more likeable, the episodes were based almost entirely around the home life of Larry and the girls, with Morgan and Earl being seen less frequently. In addition, various supporting characters were added in the apartment building where Larry and the girls lived; these included a black neighbor, Leona, played by Ruth Brown, who usually did not approve of Larry's parenting; Tommy, a purportedly worldly wise teenage boy played by John Femia, who became a love interest of Ruthie's; former Harlem Globetrotters player Meadowlark Lemon as himself, running a local sporting goods store in the series; and Larry's father, played by Fred Stuthman, who moved in with the younger Alders. None of these people, nor a two-part episode in which Larry's ex-wife Marian (played by Shelley Fabares) tried to reconcile with him, were enough to save the show, and it was canceled in the spring of 1980.
The shift to more family-related stories in the second season was represented by a change in the line of the show's opening theme lyrics; the line that went "..the calls are comin' in, you'd better start to grin.." in reference to Larry's radio career gave way to "you're raising them just fine, but keep an open mind.." when the stories became more focused on the Alder household. In both seasons, the lyrical line always ended with "'cause you never know just what they're gonna say."[2]
The series, created by Dick Bensfield and Perry Grant (veteran writers with a résumé going back to The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet and The Andy Griffith Show), consisted of 35 episodes. Bensfield and Grant had also worked on One Day at a Time, a CBS sitcom about a single woman raising two teenaged daughters alone, and many critics noted the similarity of the two series. The show was produced by Woody Kling and directed by Doug Rogers.
Hello, Larry is sometimes referred to as a spin-off of Diff'rent Strokes. In actuality, it was conceived as a show in its own right. After struggling to gather ratings, NBC rescheduled it to appear immediately following Diff'rent Strokes and had it written in that Larry and Phillip Drummond were old army friends (with Drummond's company becoming the new owners of Larry's radio station), thereby allowing several crossover episodes on both programs in the hope of raising Hello, Larry's popularity.
Hello, Larry had the misfortune of appearing on NBC at a time when that network was at its nadir in the ratings. The show was greeted by viewers who had high expectations based on Stevenson's M*A*S*H association but quickly gained an extremely bad reputation as a weakly written, unfunny sitcom. The show was not helped by frequent ridicule from Johnny Carson in his The Tonight Show monologues. Indicative of NBC's struggles at the time, Hello, Larry, despite its extremely poor reception, lasted 35 episodes and was renewed for a second season.
Although viewers and critics had high hopes for Hello, Larry, McLean Stevenson, in fact, already had two other unsuccessful sitcoms under his belt since leaving M*A*S*H—The McLean Stevenson Show, which also aired on NBC, in 1976-77, and In the Beginning, which aired in 1978. Stevenson would go on to appear in one more series that would fail with him as a star, Condo in 1983.
TV Guide ranked the series number 12 on TV Guide's 50 Worst Shows of All Time list in 2002.
The show has often been referred to as an euphemism for badness. In one example, Arianna Huffington said that "John McCain's return to the Senate will be the chilliest reception for a war hero since McLean Stevenson tried to talk his way back onto M*A*S*H after Hello Larry tanked."[3]
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