Summary
- Mary Kay and Johnny was one of the first sitcoms ever produced, paving the way for many other shows that followed.
- The show was based on the real lives of Mary Kay and Johnny Stearns, who played versions of themselves on the sitcom.
- Despite being forgotten by many, Mary Kay and Johnny had numerous firsts and deserves to be remembered for its contributions to television history.
Vintage television paved the way for many shows we enjoy now; even things we would consider silly or menial today once were not. Having a woman show her navel was once too provocative, as was saying the word "pregnant" (it implied the deed of hanky-panky, which was a big no-no), toilets (you can probably guess this one), and any reference to drug use. But which television show was the first to show a married couple sharing a bed? Any The Brady Bunch? The Flinstones? You might guess I Love Lucy, but unfortunately, you're mistaken. Although these shows broke many barriers for future television shows, Mary Kay and Johnny—a sitcom about a married couple, their adventures, and misadventures—was the first to show a couple sharing a bed.
Mary Kay and Johnny premiered on November 18, 1947 and ran until its final broadcast episode on March 11, 1950.
'Mary Kay and Johnny' Is One of TV's First Sitcoms
This series was one of the first ever in production, so it had many firsts and is said to have about 300 episodes ranging from 15 minutes to half an hour. It premiered in 1947, just a few years before I Love Lucy and starred real-life married couple Mary Kay and Johnny Stearns. In the show, the two mostly played a dramatized version of themselves in some form or another. When writing the series, Johnny often took situations or personal experiences from their married life and wrote about them, exaggerating their predicaments for the sake of the joke. Mary Kay is an enthusiastic screwball with a big heart who often gets into trouble because of it, while Johnny, the straitlaced bank teller, would often have to get her out of it, but by the time the episode ended, the crisis or situation would be resolved in some form or another.
Before the series, Mary Kay and Johnny were stage actors who had appeared both together and separately on Broadway. Then Mary Kay heard about an on-camera job for dress manufacturer Jay Jossel, who sponsored the TV show Jay Jay Junior Dresses. Mary Kay had to wear and discuss the dress before moving on to the next one. But Jossel soon realized that many television sets were in bars, making their top viewers men, most of whom wouldn't appreciate the finer points of fashion. Jossel nearly decided to pull his sponsorship, but Johnny asked if he could try writing something for the time slot: a domestic comedy centering around his and Mary Kay's lives. Jossel agreed, but only if they could sell 200 cosmetic compacts (as Jossel's friend was a manufacturer) by having Mary Kay pitch the product at the end of the episode. So, she did, and after a couple of days, Jossel had over 9,000 inquiries about the product, and the Stearns got the timeslot for their sitcom.
Johnny wasn't a professional writer by any means, but writing the sitcom came easily to him when he was able to draw inspiration from real life. He would take on the role of producer and sole writer for their initially 15-minute program. But Mary Kay and Johnny soon earned another sponsor, Whitehall Pharmaceuticals, which wanted the show to shift to 30-minute episode slots. This proved challenging for Johnny, who eventually tried to bring in more writers. None of them, however, could capture the magic that the show needed like he could.
About halfway through the season, Mary Kay became pregnant in real life, a development that was written into the show. Many people think I Love Lucy was the first to show pregnancy on TV, but that is a common misconception. And even though Mary Kay became pregnant, it in no way interfered with the couple's commitment to the show. In fact, a mere 30 minutes after the child was born, another episode aired, and it showed the expectant father pacing the waiting room in anticipation. Mary Kay only missed two episodes because of the birth, and their son had his acting debut at less than two weeks old. Fans were so excited that they even sent the couple baby gifts.
'Mary Kay and Johnny' Paved the Way for Many Other Sitcoms
This sitcom template that Mary Kay and Johnny Stearns created became a standard for many shows that came after and are what audiences would come to consider as the domestic sitcom. Many of the most well-known sitcoms would follow Mary Kay and Johnny, such as I Love Lucy (1951-1957), The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961-1966), I Dream of Jeannie (1965-1970), Bewitched (1964-1972), Get Smart (1965-1970), and The Brady Bunch (1969-1974). These sitcoms all followed the same template but with a little twist applied to each; Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie followed a woman with supernatural abilities trying to navigate the human world. In Get Smart, the roles are reversed slightly, with Maxwell Smart (Don Adams) more of the screwball character while 99 (Barbra Feldon) is the sane one always pulling him out of trouble. Some still popular sitcoms revolved more around a blended family, like The Brady Bunch, while others added a work/life aspect, like The Dick Van Dyke Show.
Although Mary Kay and Johnny is a show that has so many firsts to its name, it's also become something of a forgotten television show, not recognized by many. That could be because there were only 250,000 television sets in America back in 1947, or because the kinescope recordings were tossed into New York's East River when making room in the studio — and because the episodes were broadcast live, there wasn't much thought put into preserving them. Now, only one episode survives, housed in the Paley Centre for Media in Los Angeles. For a television show that housed so many firsts, though, Mary Kay and Johnny deserves to be remembered.
