It's a Man's World (TV series)
Encyclopedia
It's a Man's World is a 19-episode comedy
/drama
television series centered on four young men who live in a houseboat
called the Elephant, which is moored at an Ohio River
town named Cordella, in Ohio. The program aired on NBC
from September 17, 1962, to January 28, 1963.
student Wes Macauley, portrayed by Glenn Corbett
(1933–1993) and his younger brother Howie, recently orphaned by an automobile
accident, played by Michael Burns
(born 1947). Ted Bessell
(1935–1996) played Tom-Tom DeWitt, a college student who came from a wealthy Chicago family. Randy Boone
(born 1942), a cousin of Pat Boone
and a nephew of Richard Boone
, played free spirit Vern Hodges, a talented guitarist
from Boone's native North Carolina
.
In the story line, Wes is working his way through college at Stott's Service Station, owned by Houghton Stott, played by the late Harry Harvey, Sr. Jan Norris appears as Wes's fiancee, college student Irene Hoff. Other characters, Iona and Virgil Dobson, are portrayed by Kate Murtagh and Scott White, friends of Stott and the four houseboat males. Their daughter, Alma Jean (played by Jeanine Cashell), is interested in Vern. Nora Fitzgerald (played by Ann Schuyler) is interested in Tom-Tom. There is also a dog
named Shadrack.
and James Leighton were the creators of the series, a Revue Studios production. Earl Hamner, Jr., later the creator of CBS's The Waltons
, was part of the writing staff. He wrote the episode "A Drive Over to Exeter" in which Vern takes young Howie to a roadhouse in the town, which is known for its beer
joints, adult theaters, tattoo
parlors, and bordellos. Wes and Tom-Tom suppose that Vern is in search of sexual adventure and is corrupting Wes' younger brother. Yet, it was all so innocent: Vern took Howie to Exeter because he was homesick for North Carolina and thought that the town would be exciting.
It's a Man's World was "ahead of its time": it depicted the restlessness, idealism
, and increasing iconoclasm
that began to emerge among American youth during the early 1960s. Broadcast at the family hour, It's a Man's World did not shy from the themes of premarital sex, feminism
, and the gulf between adults and adolescents, which began to be known as the generation gap
. The program coincided with the Cuban Missile Crisis
, civil rights
disputes, and the emergence of protest singer Bob Dylan
. It attracted a minor cult following on college campuses, but it failed to attract mass audiences.
NBC cancelled It's a Man's World on grounds of low Nielsen ratings
and ignored viewers who wrote letters of protests, the kind which resurfaced four years later in 1967, when CBS axed Gunsmoke
but then reversed itself and gave the long-running western
another eight years of production.
Episodes bore such titles as "Four to Go", the series premiere; "Stir Crazy", which introduced Randy Boone to the cast; "Molly Pitcher and the Green Eyed Monster"; "Winning His Way", "The Beavers and the Otters"; "Howie's Adventure"; "The Bravest Man in Cordella"; "The Man on the Second Floor"; "I Count My Life in Coffee Cups"; "The Macauley Profile"; "The Long Way Around"; "Hour of Truth", and "Winter Story", the concluding episode.
's second co-star (replacing George Maharis
) in the role of Lincoln Case
on CBS's Route 66
; Burns as the teenager Barnaby West on ABC
' s western
series Wagon Train
as well as appearances on Gunsmoke
; Bessell, Donald Hollinger, as the love interest of Ann Marie in ABC's That Girl
sitcom starring Marlo Thomas
, and Boone as Randy Benton in forty-six episodes of NBC's The Virginian
with James Drury
, Doug McClure
, and Lee J. Cobb
and twenty-three segments of Cimarron Strip
, a CBS western starring Stuart Whitman
.
It's a Man's World faced relatively weak competition at 7:30 Eastern on Mondays from the last season of Clint Walker
's western Cheyenne
on ABC and the two long-running CBS quiz programs, To Tell the Truth
with Bud Collyer
and I've Got a Secret
with Garry Moore
.
Comedy
Comedy , as a popular meaning, is any humorous discourse or work generally intended to amuse by creating laughter, especially in television, film, and stand-up comedy. This must be carefully distinguished from its academic definition, namely the comic theatre, whose Western origins are found in...
/drama
Drama
Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. The term comes from a Greek word meaning "action" , which is derived from "to do","to act" . The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a...
television series centered on four young men who live in a houseboat
Houseboat
A houseboat is a boat that has been designed or modified to be used primarily as a human dwelling. Some houseboats are not motorized, because they are usually moored, kept stationary at a fixed point and often tethered to land to provide utilities...
called the Elephant, which is moored at an Ohio River
Ohio River
The Ohio River is the largest tributary, by volume, of the Mississippi River. At the confluence, the Ohio is even bigger than the Mississippi and, thus, is hydrologically the main stream of the whole river system, including the Allegheny River further upstream...
town named Cordella, in Ohio. The program aired on NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
from September 17, 1962, to January 28, 1963.
The characters
The main characters are pre-law collegeCollege
A college is an educational institution or a constituent part of an educational institution. Usage varies in English-speaking nations...
student Wes Macauley, portrayed by Glenn Corbett
Glenn Corbett
Glenn Corbett was an American actor best known for his role on CBS's adventure drama Route 66.-Acting career:...
(1933–1993) and his younger brother Howie, recently orphaned by an automobile
Automobile
An automobile, autocar, motor car or car is a wheeled motor vehicle used for transporting passengers, which also carries its own engine or motor...
accident, played by Michael Burns
Michael Burns (historian)
Michael Burns is an American professor emeritus of history at Mount Holyoke College. He is also a former television and film actor, particularly known for his role as the teenager "Barnaby West" on the NBC and ABC television series Wagon Train from 1960-1965.-Background:Burns was born in Mineola,...
(born 1947). Ted Bessell
Ted Bessell
Ted Bessell was an American television actor and director.-Early career:Born in Flushing, New York, Bessell grew up in Manhasset on Long Island, New York. He was originally gearing up for a career as a classical musician...
(1935–1996) played Tom-Tom DeWitt, a college student who came from a wealthy Chicago family. Randy Boone
Randy Boone
Clyde Wilson Randall Boone, Jr., known as Randy Boone , is a former actor who co-starred in two of the three 90-minute westerns telecast during the 1960s on the national television networks, NBC's The Virginian and CBS's Cimarron Strip...
(born 1942), a cousin of Pat Boone
Pat Boone
Charles Eugene "Pat" Boone is an American singer, actor and writer who has been a successful pop singer in the United States during the 1950s and early 1960s. He covered black artists' songs and sold more copies than his black counterparts...
and a nephew of Richard Boone
Richard Boone
Richard Allen Boone was an American actor who starred in over 50 films and was notable for his roles in Westerns and for starring in the TV series Have Gun – Will Travel.-Early life:...
, played free spirit Vern Hodges, a talented guitarist
Guitarist
A guitarist is a musician who plays the guitar. Guitarists may play a variety of instruments such as classical guitars, acoustic guitars, electric guitars, and bass guitars. Some guitarists accompany themselves on the guitar while singing.- Versatility :The guitarist controls an extremely...
from Boone's native North Carolina
North Carolina
North Carolina is a state located in the southeastern United States. The state borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west and Virginia to the north. North Carolina contains 100 counties. Its capital is Raleigh, and its largest city is Charlotte...
.
In the story line, Wes is working his way through college at Stott's Service Station, owned by Houghton Stott, played by the late Harry Harvey, Sr. Jan Norris appears as Wes's fiancee, college student Irene Hoff. Other characters, Iona and Virgil Dobson, are portrayed by Kate Murtagh and Scott White, friends of Stott and the four houseboat males. Their daughter, Alma Jean (played by Jeanine Cashell), is interested in Vern. Nora Fitzgerald (played by Ann Schuyler) is interested in Tom-Tom. There is also a dog
Dog
The domestic dog is a domesticated form of the gray wolf, a member of the Canidae family of the order Carnivora. The term is used for both feral and pet varieties. The dog may have been the first animal to be domesticated, and has been the most widely kept working, hunting, and companion animal in...
named Shadrack.
Restless youth syndrome
Peter TewksburyPeter Tewksbury
Peter Tewksbury was an American film and television director who directed Sunday in New York with Jane Fonda in 1963 and a pair of Elvis Presley movies...
and James Leighton were the creators of the series, a Revue Studios production. Earl Hamner, Jr., later the creator of CBS's The Waltons
The Waltons
The Waltons is an American television series created by Earl Hamner, Jr., based on his book Spencer's Mountain, and a 1963 film of the same name. The show centered on a family growing up in a rural Virginia community during the Great Depression and World War II. The series pilot was a television...
, was part of the writing staff. He wrote the episode "A Drive Over to Exeter" in which Vern takes young Howie to a roadhouse in the town, which is known for its beer
Beer
Beer is the world's most widely consumed andprobably oldest alcoholic beverage; it is the third most popular drink overall, after water and tea. It is produced by the brewing and fermentation of sugars, mainly derived from malted cereal grains, most commonly malted barley and malted wheat...
joints, adult theaters, tattoo
Tattoo
A tattoo is made by inserting indelible ink into the dermis layer of the skin to change the pigment. Tattoos on humans are a type of body modification, and tattoos on other animals are most commonly used for identification purposes...
parlors, and bordellos. Wes and Tom-Tom suppose that Vern is in search of sexual adventure and is corrupting Wes' younger brother. Yet, it was all so innocent: Vern took Howie to Exeter because he was homesick for North Carolina and thought that the town would be exciting.
It's a Man's World was "ahead of its time": it depicted the restlessness, idealism
Idealism
In philosophy, idealism is the family of views which assert that reality, or reality as we can know it, is fundamentally mental, mentally constructed, or otherwise immaterial. Epistemologically, idealism manifests as a skepticism about the possibility of knowing any mind-independent thing...
, and increasing iconoclasm
Iconoclasm
Iconoclasm is the deliberate destruction of religious icons and other symbols or monuments, usually with religious or political motives. It is a frequent component of major political or religious changes...
that began to emerge among American youth during the early 1960s. Broadcast at the family hour, It's a Man's World did not shy from the themes of premarital sex, feminism
Feminism
Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...
, and the gulf between adults and adolescents, which began to be known as the generation gap
Generation gap
The generational gap is and was a term popularized in Western countries during the 1960s referring to differences between people of a younger generation and their elders, especially between children and parents....
. The program coincided with the Cuban Missile Crisis
Cuban Missile Crisis
The Cuban Missile Crisis was a confrontation among the Soviet Union, Cuba and the United States in October 1962, during the Cold War...
, civil rights
Civil rights
Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from unwarranted infringement by governments and private organizations, and ensure one's ability to participate in the civil and political life of the state without discrimination or repression.Civil rights include...
disputes, and the emergence of protest singer Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...
. It attracted a minor cult following on college campuses, but it failed to attract mass audiences.
NBC cancelled It's a Man's World on grounds of low Nielsen ratings
Nielsen Ratings
Nielsen ratings are the audience measurement systems developed by Nielsen Media Research, in an effort to determine the audience size and composition of television programming in the United States...
and ignored viewers who wrote letters of protests, the kind which resurfaced four years later in 1967, when CBS axed Gunsmoke
Gunsmoke
Gunsmoke is an American radio and television Western drama series created by director Norman MacDonnell and writer John Meston. The stories take place in and around Dodge City, Kansas, during the settlement of the American West....
but then reversed itself and gave the long-running western
Western (genre)
The Western is a genre of various visual arts, such as film, television, radio, literature, painting and others. Westerns are devoted to telling stories set primarily in the latter half of the 19th century in the American Old West, hence the name. Some Westerns are set as early as the Battle of...
another eight years of production.
Episodes bore such titles as "Four to Go", the series premiere; "Stir Crazy", which introduced Randy Boone to the cast; "Molly Pitcher and the Green Eyed Monster"; "Winning His Way", "The Beavers and the Otters"; "Howie's Adventure"; "The Bravest Man in Cordella"; "The Man on the Second Floor"; "I Count My Life in Coffee Cups"; "The Macauley Profile"; "The Long Way Around"; "Hour of Truth", and "Winter Story", the concluding episode.
Four stars in later roles
All four stars of It's a Man's World advanced to greater roles, Corbett as Martin MilnerMartin Milner
Martin Sam Milner is an American actor best known for his performances in two popular television series, Adam-12 and Route 66....
's second co-star (replacing George Maharis
George Maharis
George Maharis is an American actor who portrayed Buz Murdock in the first three seasons of the TV series Route 66...
) in the role of Lincoln Case
Lincoln Case
Lincoln Case was a fictional character portrayed by actor Glenn Corbett on the 1960s American prime-time drama Route 66. Linc was one of three main regular characters on the program. His tenure began midway through the show's third season, when he was written in as a replacement for the departed...
on CBS's Route 66
Route 66 (TV series)
Route 66 is an American TV series in which two young men traveled across America. The show ran weekly on CBS from 1960 to 1964. It starred Martin Milner as Tod Stiles and, for two and a half seasons, George Maharis as Buz Murdock. Maharis was ill for much of the third season, during which time Tod...
; Burns as the teenager Barnaby West on ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
' s western
Western (genre)
The Western is a genre of various visual arts, such as film, television, radio, literature, painting and others. Westerns are devoted to telling stories set primarily in the latter half of the 19th century in the American Old West, hence the name. Some Westerns are set as early as the Battle of...
series Wagon Train
Wagon Train
Wagon Train is an American Western series that ran on NBC from 1957–62 and then on ABC from 1962–65...
as well as appearances on Gunsmoke
Gunsmoke
Gunsmoke is an American radio and television Western drama series created by director Norman MacDonnell and writer John Meston. The stories take place in and around Dodge City, Kansas, during the settlement of the American West....
; Bessell, Donald Hollinger, as the love interest of Ann Marie in ABC's That Girl
That Girl
That Girl is an American television situation comedy that ran on ABC from 1966 to 1971. It stars Marlo Thomas as the title character, Ann Marie, an aspiring actress, who had moved from her hometown of Brewster, New York to make it big in New York City...
sitcom starring Marlo Thomas
Marlo Thomas
Margaret Julia “Marlo” Thomas is an American actress, producer, and social activist known for her starring role on the TV series That Girl . She also serves as National Outreach Director for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital...
, and Boone as Randy Benton in forty-six episodes of NBC's The Virginian
The Virginian (TV series)
The Virginian is an American Western television series starring James Drury and Doug McClure, which aired on NBC from 1962 to 1971 for a total of 249 episodes. Filmed in color, The Virginian became television's first 90-minute western series...
with James Drury
James Drury
James Child Drury, Jr. is an American actor probably best known for his success in playing the title role in the 90-minute weekly Western television series The Virginian, broadcast on NBC from 1962-1971...
, Doug McClure
Doug McClure
Douglas Osborne "Doug" McClure was an American actor whose career in film and television extended from the 1950s to the 1990s...
, and Lee J. Cobb
Lee J. Cobb
Lee J. Cobb was an American actor. He is best known for his performance in 12 Angry Men his Academy Award-nominated performance in On the Waterfront and one of his last films, The Exorcist...
and twenty-three segments of Cimarron Strip
Cimarron Strip
Cimarron Strip is an American Western television series that aired on CBS from September 1967 to March 1968. Starring Stuart Whitman as Marshal Jim Crown, the series was produced by the creators of Gunsmoke...
, a CBS western starring Stuart Whitman
Stuart Whitman
Stuart Maxwell Whitman is an American actor.Stuart Whitman is arguably best-known for playing Marshal Jim Crown in the western television series Cimarron Strip in 1967...
.
It's a Man's World faced relatively weak competition at 7:30 Eastern on Mondays from the last season of Clint Walker
Clint Walker
Norman Eugene Walker, known as Clint Walker , is an American actor best known for his cowboy role as "Cheyenne Bodie" in the TV Western series, Cheyenne.-Life and career:...
's western Cheyenne
Cheyenne (TV series)
Cheyenne is a western television series of 108 black-and-white episodes broadcast on ABC from 1955 to 1963. The show was the first hour-long western, and in fact the first hour-long dramatic series of any kind, with continuing characters, to last more than one season...
on ABC and the two long-running CBS quiz programs, To Tell the Truth
To Tell the Truth
To Tell the Truth is an American television panel game show created by Bob Stewart and produced by Goodson-Todman Productions that has aired in various forms since 1956 both on networks and in syndication...
with Bud Collyer
Bud Collyer
Bud Collyer was an American radio actor/announcer who became one of the nation's first major television game show stars...
and I've Got a Secret
I've Got a Secret
I've Got a Secret is a panel game show produced by Mark Goodson and Bill Todman for CBS television. Created by comedy writers Allan Sherman and Howard Merrill, it was a derivative of Goodson-Todman's own panel show What's My Line?...
with Garry Moore
Garry Moore
Garry Moore was an American entertainer, game show host and comedian best known for his work in television...
.