| The Phil Silvers Show | |
|---|---|
Opening sequence of The Phil Silvers Show |
|
| Format | Sitcom |
| Created by | Nat Hiken |
| Directed by | Nat Hiken Al De Caprio Charles Friedman |
| Starring | Phil Silvers Paul Ford Allan Melvin Harvey Lembeck Maurice Gosfield Joe E. Ross Billy Sands Herbie Faye Mickey Freeman |
| Theme music composer | John Strauss |
| Composer(s) | John Strauss |
| Country of origin | United States |
| No. of seasons | 4 |
| No. of episodes | 143 |
| Production | |
| Producer(s) | Nat Hiken Edward J. Montagne |
| Running time | 30 minutes (per episode) |
| Production company(s) | CBS Television |
| Broadcast | |
| Original channel | CBS |
| Picture format | black-and-white |
| Original run | September 20, 1955 – September 11, 1959 |
The Phil Silvers Show (originally titled You'll Never Get Rich) is a comedy television series which ran on CBS from 1955 to 1959 for 142 episodes, plus a 1959 special.[1] The series starred Phil Silvers as Master Sergeant Ernest G. Bilko of the United States Army.
The series was created and largely written by Nat Hiken, and won three consecutive Emmy Awards for Best Comedy Series. The show is sometimes titled Sergeant Bilko or simply Bilko in reruns, and is very often referred to by these names, both on-screen and by viewers. The show's success transformed Silvers from a journeyman comedian into a star, and writer-producer Hiken from a highly-regarded behind-the-scenes comedy writer into a publicly recognized creator.
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By 1955, the American television business was already moving westward to Los Angeles, but Nat Hiken insisted on filming the series in New York City, believing it to be more conducive to the creativity and humor. Early episodes were filmed at Dumont's television center in New York City (now home to WNYW-TV), with later episodes shot at the CBS "Hi Brown" Studios[2] in Chelsea, Manhattan.
Most of the series was photographed to simulate a live performance. The actors memorized their lines, as in a play, and performed the scenes in sequence before a studio audience. Thus, there are occasional flubs and awkward pauses. Actor Paul Ford, playing Bilko's commanding officer, was notorious for forgetting his lines; when he would get a blank expression on his face, Silvers and the rest of the cast would improvise something to save the scene, like "Oh, you remember, Colonel, the top brass is coming..." At that point, Ford would pick up where he left off, and the audience would respond by laughing.
This method of filming changed when impresario Mike Todd made a guest appearance and refused to memorize the script. He insisted on the episode being filmed like a Hollywood movie, one scene at a time, and out of sequence. Silvers and the crew found Todd's way was faster, cheaper and less demanding for the actors, so the series changed over to this new policy. The finished films were screened for live audiences, whose responses were recorded and added to the soundtracks.
Bilko's right-hand men were Cpl. Rocco Barbella (Harvey Lembeck) and Cpl. Steve Henshaw (Allan Melvin), and his long-suffering superior was Col. John T. Hall (Paul Ford). The large supporting cast included Herbie Faye (a former burlesque crony of Silvers') as Pvt. Sam Fender, Maurice Gosfield as the slovenly Pvt. Duane Doberman, Joe E. Ross as camp cook Sgt. Rupert Ritzik, Beatrice Pons as loud-mouthed Mrs. Ritzik, Billy Sands as Pvt. Dino Paparelli, Jimmy Little as Sgt. Francis Grover, and Mickey Freeman as diminutive Pvt. Fielding Zimmerman. Other characters included Jack Healy as the tough-talking Pvt. Mullin, Ned Glass as quartermaster Sgt. Andy Pendleton, and former boxer Walter Cartier as botany fiend Pvt. Claude Dillingham. Some episodes gave Bilko a romantic interest, Elisabeth Fraser as Sgt. Joan Hogan.
The series frequently featured so many secondary cast members, with so many speaking parts, that the show ultimately became too expensive to sustain. It was this factor more than any notable decline in ratings which led to the show's demise in 1959. Though The Phil Silvers Show was never a huge ratings magnet, it was considered the top television comedy of its time. The show was Emmy Award-nominated for both Comedy Writing and Best Series in all four of its seasons, winning both awards in 1956, 1957, and 1958. The series received nine other nominations during its run, with Silvers winning one individual Emmy for his performance, and Nat Hiken winning one for direction. As Silvers later recalled, "We went out at our height."
Guest stars included Dick Van Dyke, Eric Fleming, Fred Gwynne, Alan Alda, Paul Reed, Suzanne Storrs, Darry Richard, and Paul Lynde, then near the beginning of their careers. Later episodes used a wealth of veteran Hollywood character actors, including Harold Huber, Marjorie Gateson, and Frank Albertson.
The series was originally set in Fort Baxter, a sleepy, unremarkable U.S. Army post in the fictional town of Roseville, Kansas, and centered on the soldiers of the Fort Baxter motor pool under Master Sergeant Ernest G. Bilko. However, Bilko and his men seemed to spend very little time actually performing their duties—Bilko in particular spent most of his time trying to wheedle money through various get-rich-quick scams and promotions, or to find ways to get others to do his work for him. Bilko and his men wore the shoulder sleeve insignia of the 69th Division, then a training division at Fort Dix, New Jersey.
His soldiers regularly helped Bilko with his schemes, but were just as often Bilko's "pigeons" ripe for the plucking. Nevertheless, Bilko exhibited an odd paternalism toward his victims, and would doggedly shield them from all outside antagonists. The sergeant's attitude toward his men has been described thus: "They were his men and if anyone was going to take them, it was going to be him and only him." Through it all, the platoon was generally loyal to Bilko despite their wariness of his crafty nature, and would depend on him to get them out of any military misfortune or outside mistreatment. In such circumstances, Bilko would employ the same psychological guile and chicanery he always used to outwit his suckers, but for good purposes.
Bilko's swindles were usually directed toward (or behind the back of) Col. John T. Hall, the overmatched and beleaguered post commander who had early in his career been nicknamed "Melon Head". Despite his flaws and weaknesses, Col. Hall would get the best of Bilko just enough to establish his credentials as a wary and vigilant adversary. The colonel would often be shown looking fretfully out his window, worried without explanation or evidence, simply because he knew that Bilko was out there somewhere, planning something. The colonel's wife, Nell (Hope Sansberry), had only the kindest thoughts toward Bilko, who would shamelessly flatter her whenever he saw her.
The show's setting changed with the fourth season, when the men of Fort Baxter were reassigned to Camp Fremont in California. This mass transfer was explained in storyline as being the inadvertent result of a Bilko con gone wrong. In reality, creator Hiken had departed, and it was an easy excuse to move the production to California and fill the episodes with celebrity guest appearances from nearby Hollywood. The show, however, was still filmed in New York.
Sgt. Bilko's service number - RA 15042699 - indicated that he had enlisted in the Army sometime after 1940 from one of four states: Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio or West Virginia. According to the series, he enlisted in 1941.[3] Coincidentally, Phil Silvers co-starred in a 1941 film, You're in the Army Now, in which he enlists in the US Army.
In the series finale, "Weekend Colonel", Bilko discovers a short-order cook who is the exact double of Colonel Hall. Bilko hires the cook to impersonate the colonel, so he can cheat the other officers in a bogus charity effort. The real Colonel Hall learns of the scam, and Bilko, Henshaw, and Barbella end up being locked away in the guardhouse. As Colonel Hall looks at his prisoners on a newly installed closed-circuit TV system, he quips: "It's a wonderful show, and as long as I'm the sponsor, it will never be cancelled." The camera cuts to Bilko and his henchmen finally behind bars. Bilko waves to the camera and says, "Th-th-that's all, folks!" So ended the series.
Following the show's cancellation, CBS shortsightedly sold the films to NBC, which immediately aired reruns five days a week to great financial returns. Some of the show's other actors were recruited by "Bilko" producer Edward J. Montagne to appear in Nat Hiken's followup sitcom Car 54, Where Are You?, and in McHale's Navy.
Silvers was able to play off his durable Bilko persona for the rest of his career. In 1963, he starred in The New Phil Silvers Show, which attempted to transplant his mercenary character to a factory setting, but the result proved unpopular. Silvers frequently guest-starred on Buddy Ebsen's The Beverly Hillbillies as a character called Honest John. He also played an unscrupulous Broadway producer on an episode of Gilligan's Island who stole the castaways' concept for a musical version of Hamlet. In an episode of The Lucy Show, Silvers was a demanding efficiency expert; at one point, Lucy's boss Mr. Mooney (Gale Gordon), remarks that Silvers reminds him of a sergeant he used to know. Silvers also portrayed greedy connivers in various movies, notably It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (in which Ford had a supporting role, interestingly enough as a colonel, though they shared no scenes) and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. The British film Follow That Camel cast him as a scheming sergeant (this time in the French Foreign Legion).
The original You'll Never Get Rich program, which was filmed in black-and-white, was widely rerun into the 1970s. The advent of color television rendered it and many similar programs less marketable than they had been previously. The series reemerged in the late 1980s on the fledgling cable channel Comedy Central, then again on Nick at Nite for a short time during the 1990s (serving as charter programming for TV Land in 1996).
The Bilko persona was borrowed by the Hanna-Barbera animation studio for its television cartoon series Top Cat, which drew on elements from The Phil Silvers Show. Maurice Gosfield from the original platoon voiced Benny the Ball. Hokey Wolf was another Hanna-Barbera production that borrowed heavily from The Phil Silvers Show. The episode of The Flintstones that introduced Dino gave the pet dinosaur a Sgt. Bilko-styled voice and character. After this atypical debut, Dino never spoke again. Another episode recruited Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble into the army, where they were conned by an unnamed Bilko-like character into becoming astronaut test pilots.
The Manchurian Candidate (1962 film) used the names of several people associated with Sgt. Bilko for the members of a Korean War patrol such as Cpl Allan Melvin, Pvt Silvers, Pvt Hiken, and Pvt Lembeck.[4]
In 1987 a British tourist visiting Tibet was wearing a Phil Silvers Sgt Bilko T-Shirt that Chinese soldiers attempted to rip off her as they thought the image of Sgt Bilko was the Dalai Lama.[5]
The series was a staple of BBC One's post-11pm late-night schedule throughout the 70s, 80s and 90s, appearing up to several times per week immediately prior to the channel's signoff (before BBC1 became a 24-hour broadcaster in November 1997). During the 1990s, the series moved to BBC Two, where it often held a late-night slot, as well as runs during the daytime programmes and even occasionally in an early evening slot.
In 1996, The Phil Silvers Show was the basis of a critically and commercially unsuccessful movie, Sgt. Bilko, starring Steve Martin as Bilko, Dan Aykroyd as Colonel Hall, Max Casella as Paparelli, and Eric Edwards as Doberman. The plot centers around an investigation into wrongdoings in Fort Baxter by Major Thorn, an old rival of Bilko's, who will stop at nothing to best Bilko.
| Season | Position |
|---|---|
| 1955-1956 | #30 |
| 1956-1957 | #23 |
| 1957-1958 | not in the top 30 |
| 1958-1959 | not in the top 30 |
In May 2006, CBS DVD released a 50th anniversary collection entitled The Phil Silvers Show: 50th Anniverary Edition. The 3-disc set features 18 episodes from the series.[6]
On July 27, 2010, CBS DVD (distributed by Paramount) released the first season of The Phil Silvers Show on DVD in Region 1 format.[7] A region 2 release followed on September 6th of the same year.
| DVD Name | Episodes | Release dates | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Region 1 | Region 2 * | |||
| The First Season | 34 | July 27, 2010 | September 6, 2010 | |
The Phil Silvers Show can currently be seen on Me-TV Network.
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