He would come up to me during rehearsals and say, ‘Can I have lunch with you?’ Then he would go to dinner with me and say ‘What are you doing tonight?’ And I said, ‘Well, I’m going to a poker game.’ He’d say, ‘Can I come and watch?’ and he used to come and sit and watch me play poker till three in the morning. I guess I kind of represented the life that he would have loved to have had, because I was working on Broadway at night and doing this TV show once a week.
It’s funny we were about the same age, and he sort idolized me. Jimmy Dean was doing nothing this was the first thing he got and he was walking around starry-eyed. Jack Lemmon was just starting in television and this was one of his first jobs. “Paul Newman was appearing then in the play Picnic. My four friends were John Kerr, who became a star, Paul Newman, Jimmy Dean, and Jack Lemmon.” “I was a teenager, I was in high school, and my friends on that show who all had recurring parts-it’s amazing. I sat down with Dick Van Patten one day, some years ago, and asked him about the people he encountered during his long run on Mama. The nearly-forgotten era of live TV was based in New York and relied on the theater community for its talent pool. But the television adaptation came into Americans’ homes week after week, year after year, and made them feel as if the family headed by Peggy Wood and Judson Laire, with Rosemary Rice and Robin Morgan, was part of their lives. Hollywood had its version of Kathryn Forbes’ autobiographical stories: I Remember Mama (1948) with Irene Dunne. No wonder he named one of his sons after that character, Nels. People used to call out to him on the streets of New York-not by his real name but by the boy he played on Mama. But millions of people (including my wife) grew up watching him on Mama, the heartwarming show that began in television’s infancy and remained a mainstay for nine years: nine years of live performances, 44 weeks a year!ĭick was a genial fellow and needed no prodding to talk about this phase of his life.
#I remember mama tv show series#
It's Katrin's way - and I think by extension Stevens' way - of finding a moral compass in an uncertain postwar world.Most people associate the late Dick Van Patten with the TV series Eight is Enough, or his appearances in a handful of Mel Brooks comedies. In many ways, Katrin seems more comfortable living in the past with her treasured memories of Mama. Katrin looks, acts, and dresses very much like Mama, which certainly seems out of place for the late 1940s.
Katrin narrates the story as an older woman, and her remembrances of Mama certainly have an affect on her adult behavior. I Remember Mama is also about the power of memory and how it shapes our lives. Philip Dorn (left), Barbara Bel Geddes, Steve Brown, and Irene Dunne count the family savings in I Remember Mama (1948). Jessie is such a pariah in the family that she has to sit outside during family gatherings. Mama is the only member of the family who treats Uncle Chris' common-law wife, Jessie (Barbara O'Neil), with kindness. Mama lives by a rigid moral code, but she doesn't let her beliefs shape her behavior towards others. Instead of meticulously documenting the horrors of war, he is turning his attention to the goodness and kindness of ordinary people. I can't help but think that I Remember Mama was Stevens' way of dealing with what he experienced in Germany. A Spanish language poster for I Remember Mama (1948).
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