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Aldrich Family

Teenage Situation Comedy:

Broadcast History:

• July 2-Oct. 1, 1939, NBC.   30m, Sundays at 7.  Summer replacement for The Jack Benny Program.   General Foods for Jell-O.

• Oct. 10, 1939-May 28, 1940;   Blue Network.  30m, Tuesdays at 8.  Jell-O.

• July 4, 1940-July 20, 1944, NBC.  30m, Thursdays at 8:30.  Jell-O.

• Sept. 1, 1944-Aug. 30, 1946, CBS.  30m, Fridays at 8.  General Foods for Jell-O and Grape Nuts.

• Sept. 5, 1946-June 28, 1951, NBC.  30m, Thursdays at 8.  Jell-O, Grape Nuts.

• Sept. 21, 1952-ApriI19, 1953, NBC.  30m, Sundays at 7:30.  Sustained.

Cast:  Ezra Stone as Henry Aldrich, 16-year-old student at Central High School in the town of Centerville;  Norman Tokar as Henry, 1942-43, when Stone went into the Army;   Dickie Jones as Henry, 1943-44;  Raymond Ives as Henry as of mid-1945;   Ezra Stone resumed the role in Nov. 1945;  Bobby Ellis as Henry in 1952-53.   House Jameson as lawyer Sam Aldrich, Henry's father, for most of the run;   also played by Clyde Fillmore and Tom Shirley.  Katharine Raht as Henry's mother Alice (Lea Penman and Regina Wallace were also heard in the role).  At least a dozen actresses over the years as Henry's sister Mary, among them Betty Field, Patricia Peardon, Charita Bauer, Ann Lincoln, Jone Allison, Mary Mason, and Mary Rolfe.   Jackie Kelk almost all the way as Homer Brown, Henry's pal and companion in mischief, with Johnny Fiedler, Jack Grimes, and Michael O'Day in the Homer role in 1952-53.  Ed Begley, Arthur Vinton, and Howard Smith as Will Brown, Homer's father.   Agnes Moorehead and Leona Powers as Homer's mother.  Mary Shipp as Henry's girlfriend Kathleen Anderson;  also played by Ethel Blume, Jean Gillespie, and Ann Lincoln.  Eddie Bracken as Henry's pal Dizzy Stevens.  Charles Powers as Henry's rival George Bigelow.
Announcers:  Harry Von Zell, Dwight Weist, George Bryan, Dan Seymour, Ralph Paul.
Music:  Jack Miller.
Creator-Writer:  Clifford Goldsmith.
Directors:  Harry Ackerman, Edwin Duerr, Fran Van Hartesveldt, George McGarrett, Sam Fuller, Bob Welsh, Lester Vail, Joseph Scibetta, Day Tuttle.
Sound Effects:  Bill Brinkmeyer.

Henry Aldrich was described in the press of the time as "typical," "not at all typical," and with all the daffy adjectives that those two opposites suggest.  He was described as the Penrod of the '40s, but his likeness to the hero of Booth Tarkington's 1914 classic was more imagined than real.  Henry found more ways to turn the ordinary into complete chaos and disaster than Mack Sennett ever devised for his old two-reel chase films.   With Henry, ordinary objects became lethal weapons.  A telephone was a window to such bizarre convolution that its consequences tested the imagination.  A bicycle with a flat tire led to much round-robin lunacy before the tire was patched and a sadder-but-no-wiser Henry Aldrich pedaled his way home.

Each week for 13 years, Henry was summoned into millions of living rooms to the wail of his long-suffering mother:   "Hen-reeeee! Henry Aldrich!"  And the cracking adolescent voice that answered, "Coming, Mother!" was the ticket to mayhem.  If the show began with Henry tying up the family telephone;  it was certain that within the half-hour he would somehow have every phone in town tied up, and calls would be coming into the Aldrich house for everything from plumbers to cab drivers.