My Kind of Gal

2012-02-05T13:56:00.036-05:00

Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman

1976-1978

There were women on TV and in the movies who made me feel like a man in the typical fashion and I have no problem admitting that. Some day I'll post a list of the top 25 or 50 or so women from 20th Century Hollywood (including television) who did that for me.

But when you run across a female character who has maybe a little less sex appeal (but it's still there) and a lot more of something else, you get fascinated in a brand new way. And Louise Lasser, as off-the-wall "flyover housewife" Mary Hartman, certainly did that for me.

She was outrageously funny but you weren't prompted to laugh when a ridiculous, contagious laugh track told you to laugh because there was no laugh track to Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman (thanks to the genius of Norman Lear). But you did more than laugh. You stared with wide-eyed fascination as if you couldn't believe what you were seeing and hearing. Mary Hartman was funny, brilliant, dopey, sexy, vulnerable, sweet, innocent, outrageous and, yes, cool.

You bet she was cool. Mary Hartman was my kind of gal. And so was Louise Lasser. And, you bet, this was Norman Lear's "sitcom" masterpiece. My hat is still off to him for showing us that TV's Golden Age included the 1970s. And, my God, the opening music for this weekday "soap" was so hauntingly beautiful and so moving. So nostalgic and so atypical of comedy.

Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman was a weekday soap opera parody that originally aired in the late-night time slot, Monday through Friday, on local TV stations (because ABC, CBS and NBC wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole). Later, they would scramble for the syndication rights. This adult-themed half-hour show was the perfect blend of soap opera and situation comedy and it was surely Norman Lear's most remarkable television effort.

And, yeah, I know, it took a lot of people to produce and write this "sitcom" (as I like to call it) and that Norman Lear is not listed as a creator. But he developed it and that makes the 1970's "soap opera parody" Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman the brainchild of Norman Lear. And the TV character legacy left to us by the unique talent and oddball charm of Louise Lasser.

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My Kind of Gal