Following the enormous success of I Love Lucy after its premiere in 1951, television viewers saw a batch of other sitcoms driven by female characters that got into equally wacky situations each week. Unfortunately, most of these women aren't nearly as well remembered as Lucy is today. VCI Entertainment's recent DVD releases of two of these programs, I Married Joan Collection 3 and My Little Margie Collection 3, are welcome additions to all classic television enthusiasts.

VCI delivers a batch of 10 episodes each (Collections 1 and 2 of each series are also available here at ClassicFlix). I first saw these shows on the old CBN (the precursor to what is now ABC Family), and they appear on scattered low-profile independent and religious channels, but to my knowledge, neither has ever been on any of the new retro-themed digital subchannels. Both series are thought to be in the public domain, and it looks like VCI is transferring select episodes from film prints.

I Married Joan debuted on NBC in 1952 as a vehicle for comedienne Joan Davis. Her Joan Stevens is a daffy wife who gets into zany situations that frustrate sensible hubby Judge Bradley Stevens (Jim Backus) with a lot of physical comedy and wild situations. On the surface, the show resembles an I Love Lucy knockoff, but if you dig deeper and see everything on this disc...well, OK, the resemblance is still there, but it's an entertaining series in its own right, one that deserves a more prominent profile than it has today.

However, I have one quibble with this collection: most of the episodes run under 24 minutes. I compared the first episode, 'Ballet,' to another source, and confirmed that one key scene is drastically trimmed in the VCI version. The good news is the episode looks sharper on the VCI disc, but, unfortunately, classic TV collectors get superior quality at the expense of complete episodes. Another odd feature is that all shows have apparently generic end credits with no cast information, an annoyance to viewers who love to spot familiar faces but might not be able to place each name. I'm not sure the series originally aired like that, but I'm guessing these are syndication prints.

When you pop in the disc and see the menu, you experience one of the most distinctive aspects of I Married Joan, its theme song, one of the most the memorable TV tunes of its day. As scenes from the show unfold, you hear the Roger Wagner Chorale setting up the premise, and right away we question the titular relationship:

To each his own

Can't deny that's why I married Joan

So the chorus (singing from Brad's point of view) is saying, 'Yeah, I know she's a kook, but she's MY kook, all right? So stop giving me funny looks when I introduce my wife.' The Stevens' are a devoted, loving couple, but they just can't help getting into predicaments, and when I say 'they,' I mean Joan.

Brad Stevens loves his wife, but he has that mild patronizing chauvinism so common to screen hubbies of the era, and he gives the impression that he's indulging her silliness. While he settles many family disputes that come before him as a judge, he is not the most enlightened man by modern standards, but anyone watching a 60-year-old show looking for contemporary attitudes will be disappointed. If you go into the show in the right spirit, you can sit back and enjoy such episodes like 'Career,' in which guest Sheldon Leonard frets that his wife wants to work. Brad advises to let her, as he himself did Joan, because, as he puts it, 'I knew that she would soon realize that the daily routine of having a career is a lot tougher than the daily routine of being a housewife.' She doesn't prove him wrong.

Some stories take up the entire half-hour, but sometimes there are two separate mini-stories. There is almost always some farcical misunderstanding instigating the laughs. Through it all, Joan Davis works hard carrying the show. Already 45 at the time the series started, she was established as a talented radio and film performer, perhaps most notably in Abbott and Costello's Hold That Ghost.

She earns her reputation as a brilliant physical comedienne in episodes like 'Ballet,' where she dons a costume and leaps around. In 'Uncle Edgar,' Joan disguises herself as an older woman to trick the titular visitor, a mischievous womanizer, but then must execute a series of quick changes in a closet to maintain the ruse. You can imagine what she does in 'Jitterbug,' flailing around with a teenager when a babysitting gig goes awry.

I Married Joan is as over the top as television comedy gets, but it still entertains. While the production values are nowhere near those of Lucy, and you don't get the Mertzes or Ricky, for my money--and I'm sure this is a minority opinion--Davis has an edge that makes her character more appealing and funnier than Lucy Ricardo. I hope VCI can find more uncut episodes, but I recommend this third collection and hope there is a fourth.

My Little Margie Collection 3 is a superior DVD, not just because it contains what, I assume, are all uncut episodes (each clocking in over 26 minutes), but because the show itself holds up better. The formula is more varied here. While Joan usually comes up with some scheme, then makes a fool of herself, Margie does the same, discovering her scheme has been discovered and setting to teach a lesson to whoever discovers her ruse, usually her father. The extra scheming, reminiscent of Lucy, makes the stories interesting.

The all-instrumental My Little Margie theme isn't as amusing as that of I Married Joan, but it is catchy in its own right. It fits the 'plucky' title character by featuring a lot of strings plucking at a fast tempo. When I hear it, I imagine myself shopping in a 1950s department store while an off-screen narrator tells us how swell the experience is.


Gale Storm appeared in many Monogram B-pictures in the 1940s before taking the role of Margie for CBS in the summer of 1952. Oddly, the television program moved to NBC, back to CBS, and yet again to NBC, while a separate My Little Margie radio version with Storm and co-star Charles Farrell (distinguished film star, including many with Janet Gaynor) ran concurrently on CBS.

The first episode on the disc, 'Hypochondriac,' has a brief open that sets up the show's premise. Margie Albright lives in a roomy Fifth Avenue apartment in New York City with her widower father, Vern. He says he's been mother and father to his 'little Margie' since she was born, and now that she's all grown up, she's out of hand and he can't control her. Margie tells us she's raised her dad from childhood, and she wants 'a nice, old, comfortable father,' but he won't settle down and even has the nerve to wink back at all the ladies that wink at him.

At the end of 'Hypochondriac' is a tag scene showing Margie and Vern touting the benefits of first-season sponsor Phillip Morris. This is unlike all the other episodes that end with the camera zooming into a portrait of the two as they 'come alive' to exchange a few comments about the adventure they just experienced. Like 'Joan,' the series is filmed without a live audience and the laugh track comes and goes.

One thing elevating Margie over Joan is its rich cast of characters. There aren't quite as many notable guests in this collection as on the Joan set, though I get a kick out of seeing John 'Mr. Slate' Stephenson as an eligible bachelor Margie woos in 'Chubby Little Margie' (don't worry, I'll come back to that one). However, the regular supporting cast adds a lot of oomph and variety to the goofy mix-ups.

Vern is frequently befuddled by the craziness in the apartment, and Farrell's double-takes and exasperated reactions are hilarious. His constant insults of Margie's boyfriend Freddy also stand out. At the beginning of 'Margie's New Boyfriend,' Freddie fires Vern's rifle through the front door. The funny thing is, it's not even an accident, but the guy is enough of a numbskull to shoot into the hallway from inside the apartment. Vern happens to be in the hallway at the time, so he charges through the door, calls Freddie a 'stupid knucklehead' and chases him around with a tennis racquet. Just another day in the Albright household!

Many plots revolve around Vern trying to win or maintain some important client. Clarence Kolb provides suitable bluster as the irascible Mr. Honeywell, one of the partners at Vern's investment firm. As neighbor Mrs. Odetts, Gertrude Hoffman looks like an old fuddy-duddy prototype, but in fact she is a spirited partner in crime for Margie's schemes. Hillary Brooke is glamorous and classy in a recurring role as Vern's girlfriend Roberta. (Don't ask me why Vern is winking at those other ladies.) Apparently Margie has no problem with Roberta seeing Vern; it's the shallow gold diggers who bother her. Less memorable is Don Hayden as Margie's boyfriend Freddy, an ineffectual character who is especially lightweight in contrast with Storm's plucky energy. I enjoy how proud he is to be unemployed, though, and as I said, he's a useful foil for Vern.

Veteran character actor Willie Best, the building's elevator operator, is pretty much playing the African-American stereotype so evident in the movies of the 1930s and 1940s (often played by Best himself), and doesn't have much to do besides show wide-eyed astonishment. It's toned down from what you'd see in the movies of the era, but it sticks out from a modern perspective, partly because you don't see a lot of black faces in regular roles on sitcoms of the period.

Storm is the star of the series, of course, and is a delight. She's not as physical as Davis, but she brings her own kind of verve. Her sophistication makes it obvious she's playing a decade or so younger than she actually is, but she's plenty youthful enough to be 'Little' Margie, particularly in contrast with the silver-haired Farrell. She has good chemistry with the rest of the cast, and she has a fun recurring bit when she realizes she's screwed something up and looks into the camera while uttering a kind of odd trilling noise.

Margie's plots often get out of hand, and this disc offers a good sampler. Unusual animals are a recurring presence on the series, and here we see a duck and a pair of seals in separate episodes. (Sadly, one of my favorites, 'The Kangaroo Story,' isn't included.) 'Chubby Little Margie' shows Margie inflating herself in a fat suit to make herself less appealing when she thinks her dad is setting her up with a lame old guy.

One of the pleasures of watching vintage television is seeing attitudes and situations you don't see today. In 'Margie's Baby,' she learns an old classmate ran away from her disapproving father, secretly married, and just had a baby. When the father finds her, she can't just tell him the truth, so she sets up an appearance on 'Maury' for all of them. No, she actually dumps her child on Margie -- who she hasn't seen in years -- 'for a few days,' barely waiting for consent before hustling her out the door with the newborn! Later, Vern tricks Margie and Mrs. Odetts by taking a doll and tossing it into the air while pretending it's the baby. It's wrong, but hilarious.

'The Big Telecast' gets Margie and Freddy involved with 'The Marvelous Mandinis,' a group of carnies including a bearded lady who minds the aforementioned seals. Wouldn't you know it, though, the show 'Important People' schedules a profile of Vern on the same night in the same apartment? (He's chairman of the city's traffic commission, which was important enough for television when there were only a few channels.) Vern and Mr. Honeywell contrive an all-expenses-paid vacation for Margie and Vern so she can't foul up the program. And, of course, Margie thinks the apartment will be empty all week so that she can let the Mandinis stay there. Essentially, the two try manipulating each other to get back to New York without the other one knowing. The chaos is predictable, but I think a pair of seals makes much more compelling television than a discussion of the civic merits of the traffic commission. This and all the stories in the collection are goofy but charming, and the cast participates with gusto.

Another welcome touch from VCI is English subtitles on each episode. The prints look and sound good, too, making this one a clear winner. The only flaw on the DVD is an unfortunate typo ('Epsiodes' instead of 'Episodes') on the menu. Otherwise, My Little Margie Collection 3 and I Married Joan Collection 3 are an outstanding sampling series that have been neglected too long. I don't blame fans who love their Lucy, but I appreciate the efforts of VCI to resurrect Joan and Margie. Let's hope they keep them coming.

Rick Brooks is the proprietor of Cultureshark, a blog in which he uses an often irreverent approach to express his reverence for the classics and the un-classics.