| Broadcast History (September 8 - September 29, 1966) ABC-TV Thursdays 8:30-9:00 Cast Tammy Grimes .... Tammy Ward Hiram Sherman .... Uncle Simon Dick Sargent .... Terrence Ward Maudie Prickett .... Mrs. Ratchett |
Tammy Grimes was a popular Broadway star back in the early 60s. She won a Tony Award for Best Musical Actress for The Unsinkable Molly Brown, and television came a calling. In 1963, Bill Dozier, vice-president of Screen Gems' West Coast operations, thought Tammy could be the next Lucille Ball, but first he had to find the right vehicle to match her kooky personality and pixie-like qualitiy.
Dozier picked Tammy for a show that was currently in development entitled, The Witch of Westport. Tammy would play Cassandra, an attractive witch who marries a mortal and settles down to become a housewife. Tammy sat on the script for weeks. Eventually, she turned the role down. She just couldn't see herself as a witch. She said the show was too hokey and nobody would believe it. The part eventually went to actress Elizabeth Montgomery and the show was retitled, Bewitched. Needless to say, Bewitched became the number one smash hit when it debuted during the new fall season in 1964, and the rest is history.
Surely, Tammy must have been kicking herself for not accepting the part in the first place, so when Bill Dozier approached her again in 1965 about doing another tv series, Tammy--nearly sight unseen--jumped at the opportunity. Dozier was now the executive producer of another top-rated show, Batman, over at Twentieth Century-Fox. The working title of the series was My Twin Sister, and ABC-TV made a seventeen-episode commitment.
Tammy Grimes played Tamantha "Tammy" Ward, a beautiful orphaned heiress to her parents' multi-million fortune who wanted nothing more to do than spend money. Back in the 60s, TV shows had to have a gimmick like a witch, a jeannie, a martian, or a talking horse. The gimmick for this show is that Tammy doesn't control the purse strings -- it's really her guardian, Uncle Simon, who's in charge of the finances. But Uncle Simon (Hirman Sherman) is keeping a tight hand on the wallet--a condition of her parent's will that prohibits Tammy from touching her inheritance until she reaches the age of thirty. Her twin brother Terrence (Dick Sargent) and her housekeeper Mrs. Ratchett (Maudie Prickett) are also an irritation to Tammy. Episodes depicted Tammy's elaborate attempts to finance her expensive tastes. Does this sound like something you'd want to watch every week? Apparently Tammy thought so. So did ABC.
The Tammy Grimes Show premiered on Thursday night, September 8, 1966 at 8:00 pm right before Bewitched and That Girl. ABC heavily promoted its three female comedy stars as Dollhouse 90, meaning 90 minutes of beautiful girls--a spoof of the old Playhouse 90 title. The show opened to disastrous reviews. Harry Harris of the Philadelphia Inquirer described it as, "Plotting for morons by morons..." "Who put the whammy on Tammy?" asked Anthony LaCamera of the Boston Record-American. While Jack Gould of the New York Times called it, "an ordeal." It wasn't entirely Tammy's fault. The problem with the show was that it just wasn't funny, and the scripts offered very little in character development. In the following weeks, viewers began changing channels to watch the competition: Star Trek on NBC or My Three Sons on CBS.
The show was also bringing Bewitched's ratings down with it as well. Chevrolet, the sponsor of Bewitched, began complaining to ABC that The Tammy Grimes Show was not their idea of a good lead-in to their show and threatened to pull-out. ABC mercifully cancelled Tammy after just four weeks.
Tammy Grimes went on to do two more turkeys, Can't Stop the Music with the Village People, and Somebody Killed Her Husband with Farrah Fawcett. She returned to television in 1995 with a recurring role on the soap opera, Loving. She is the mother of actress Amanda Plummer. Ironically, Dick Sargent took over the role of Darrin on the program that followed this one on Thursday nights - Bewitched. Maudie Prickett was also a frequent guest-star on Bewitched, notably as Tabitha's school teacher, Mrs. Peabody.
| Episode Guide Episode #1 Title: Officer's Mess Screenplay by: Ralph Goodman Final Draft: June 29, 1996 Aired: September 8, 1966 Synopsis: Tammy may have her chance to see the world--she's stuck on the ship that is taking her brother on a Naval Reserve Tour. Episode #2 Title: How To Steal A Girl Even If It's Only Me Screenplay by: Roland Wolpert Final Draft: June 14, 1966 Aired: September 15, 1966 Synopsis: Uncle Simon refuses to give Tammy $50,000 for her favorite charity, but he may have to ante up after all--kidnappers are demanding 50 G's for her return. Episode #3 Title: Tammy Hits Las Vegas, or Vice Versa Screenplay by: Hannibal Coons and Harry Winkler Final Draft: July 1, 1966 Aired: Sept 22 1966 Synopsis: Tammy tries to help a friend by parlaying $20 and a one-way plane ticket to Las Vegas into $5,000. Episode #4 Title: Positively Made in Paris Screenplay by: Stan Dreben and Howard Merrill Final Draft: July 13, 1966 Aired: Sept. 26, 1966 Synopsis: Tammy poses as a French gendarme. Title: The Tammy Grimes Show (Formerly "My Twin Sister") Pilot Created and written by: George Axelrod Final Draft: October 18, 1965 Synopsis: Tamantha Ward is a rich, young, 'Madcap' heiress who loves to spend large amounts of money frivolously. Trouble is, her holdings are closely guarded by her banker, Uncle Simon, her prissy fraternal twin brother, Terence, who also works at the bank, and the nosy housekeeper, Mrs. Ratchett. Title: How I Saved the Opera, Or Did I? Screenplay by: Harry Winkler and Hannibal Coons Final Draft: May 17, 1966 Title: Giver Her Back to the Indians Screenplay by: George F. Slavin and Stanley Adams Final Draft: June 13, 1966 Title: The Ski's The Limit Screenplay by: Charles Marion and Irving Cummings Final Draft: June 16, 1966 Title: Send a Rich Girl To Camp This Summer Screenplay by: Gene Thompson Final Draft: July 29, 1966 Title: George Washington Didn't Sleep Here Screenplay by: Jack Raymond and Sid Morse Final Draft: August 5, 1966 Title: Diamonds Are A Bird's Best Friend Screenplay by: John Barbour and Whitey Mitchell Final Draft: August 16, 1966 Title: Tamantha Nightingale Rides Again Screenplay by: Al Gordon and Hal Goldman Final Draft: August 23, 1966 Title: A Funny Thing Happened To Me On The Way To The Studio Teleplay by: Alex Gottlieb Story by Bob Reitman and Don Garey Final Draft: August 25,1966 Title: Tammy Plays Cupid Screenplay by: Stan Dreben and Howard Merril Final Draft: August 31, 1966 Title: It's In The Bag, Dad Screenplay by: Hal Biller Final Draft: September 7, 1966 Title: The Great Charge Account War Screenplay by: Bil O'Hallaren Final Draft: September 12, 1966 |
| Facts: ABC-TV gave The Tammy Grimes Show a 17-week commitment. At least 16 scripts were written. Of those 16 scripts, 10 episodes were filmed. Of those 10, only 4 episodes aired. The other 6 were never broadcast. The remaining 6 scripts were never filmed. |
| Tammy Trivia Address: 365 Central Park West, New York City Phone Number: 476-7671 Occupation: Customer service relations girl at the Perpetual Savings Bank |
TV's Biggest Flops: http://www.tvparty.com/emflop.html
Episode List: http://www.tvtome.com/tvtome/servlet/EpisodeGuideServlet/showid-7850/
University of Iowa's Twentieth Century-Fox Film Scripts Collection: http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/spec-coll/MSC/ToMsc350/MsC302/msc302.html
Bart Andrews and Brad Dunning The Worst TV Shows Ever. E.P. Dutton, 1980
Gabe Essoe The Book of TV Lists. Arlington House, 1981
Vincent Terrace The Ultimate TV Trivia Book. Faber and Faber, 1991
William Dozier How Bewitched Was Born. TV Guide, January 27, 1968