The Pruitts of Southampton
Encyclopedia
The Pruitts of Southampton was a situation comedy
that aired during the 1966-67 season
on the ABC
network. The show was based on the novel
House Party (1954) by Patrick Dennis
.
The program starred Phyllis Diller
as Phyllis Pruitt, and featured Gypsy Rose Lee
and Richard Deacon
in supporting roles with Diller feeling the series was an inverted version of The Beverly Hillbillies
. The show's producers originally sought comic actress Beatrice Lillie
in the Diller role.
The premise was that the Pruitts, a supposedly incredibly wealth
y family living on Long Island
in the Hamptons, were approached by the Internal Revenue Service
about overdue taxes
. An audit
revealed that the Pruitts were in fact broke; rather than reveal this fact publicly and cause the economic depression
which would presumably result from this revelation, an improbably charitable IRS allowed them to continue living in their mansion and maintaining the pretensions of great wealth, which was difficult given their reduced circumstances. By mid-season, in order to raise more money, Phyllis had opened the mansion to boarders, attracting a "nutty" collection of tenants as well, a group that included Paul Lynde
as her hopeless brother, John Astin
as her brother-in-law, and Marty Ingels
as a handyman.
On the premiere
episode, Phyllis Diller unsuccessfully tries to roast a chicken in her clothes dryer. On January 13, 1967, with the episode "Little Miss Fixit", the program changed its title to The Phyllis Diller Show.
According to Television magazine, The Pruitts of Southampton finished 77th among the 91 shows rated during the 1966-1967 season. It began the season airing on Tuesdays, opposite The Red Skelton Show
on CBS, which finished second in the ratings. For the first half of the season, The Pruitts of Southampton followed ABC's unsuccessful The Rounders
starring Ron Hayes
, Patrick Wayne
, and Chill Wills
, loosely based on a 1965 film of the same name. In January, the Diller series moved to Fridays under its new title.
* First episode as The Phyllis Diller Show
Situation comedy
A situation comedy, often shortened to sitcom, is a genre of comedy that features characters sharing the same common environment, such as a home or workplace, accompanied with jokes as part of the dialogue...
that aired during the 1966-67 season
1966-67 United States network television schedule
This was the television schedule on all three networks for the fall season beginning in September 1966. All times are Eastern and Pacific.New fall series are highlighted in bold....
on the 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...
network. The show was based on the novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
House Party (1954) by Patrick Dennis
Patrick Dennis
Patrick Dennis was an American author. His novel Auntie Mame: An Irreverent Escapade was one of the bestselling American books of the 20th century. In chronological vignettes "Patrick" recalls his adventures growing up under the wing of his madcap aunt, Mame Dennis...
.
The program starred Phyllis Diller
Phyllis Diller
Phyllis Diller is an American actress and comedian. She created a stage persona of a wild-haired, eccentrically dressed housewife who makes jokes about a husband named "Fang" while pretending to smoke from a long cigarette holder...
as Phyllis Pruitt, and featured Gypsy Rose Lee
Gypsy Rose Lee
Gypsy Rose Lee was an American burlesque entertainer famous for her striptease act. She was also an actress, author, and playwright whose 1957 memoir was made into the stage musical and film Gypsy.-Early life:...
and Richard Deacon
Richard Deacon (actor)
Richard Deacon , born in Philadelphia, was an American television and motion picture actor.-Career:The bald and usually bespectacled character actor often portrayed pompous or imperious figures. He made appearances on The Jack Benny Show as a salesman and a barber, and on NBC's Happy as a hotel...
in supporting roles with Diller feeling the series was an inverted version of The Beverly Hillbillies
The Beverly Hillbillies
The Beverly Hillbillies is an American situation comedy originally broadcast for nine seasons on CBS from 1962 to 1971, starring Buddy Ebsen, Irene Ryan, Donna Douglas, and Max Baer, Jr....
. The show's producers originally sought comic actress Beatrice Lillie
Beatrice Lillie
Beatrice Gladys "Bea" Lillie was an actress and comedic performer. Following her 1920 marriage to Sir Robert Peel in England, she was known in private life as Lady Peel.-Early career:...
in the Diller role.
The premise was that the Pruitts, a supposedly incredibly wealth
Wealth
Wealth is the abundance of valuable resources or material possessions. The word wealth is derived from the old English wela, which is from an Indo-European word stem...
y family living on Long Island
Long Island
Long Island is an island located in the southeast part of the U.S. state of New York, just east of Manhattan. Stretching northeast into the Atlantic Ocean, Long Island contains four counties, two of which are boroughs of New York City , and two of which are mainly suburban...
in the Hamptons, were approached by the Internal Revenue Service
Internal Revenue Service
The Internal Revenue Service is the revenue service of the United States federal government. The agency is a bureau of the Department of the Treasury, and is under the immediate direction of the Commissioner of Internal Revenue...
about overdue taxes
Income tax
An income tax is a tax levied on the income of individuals or businesses . Various income tax systems exist, with varying degrees of tax incidence. Income taxation can be progressive, proportional, or regressive. When the tax is levied on the income of companies, it is often called a corporate...
. An audit
Audit
The general definition of an audit is an evaluation of a person, organization, system, process, enterprise, project or product. The term most commonly refers to audits in accounting, but similar concepts also exist in project management, quality management, and energy conservation.- Accounting...
revealed that the Pruitts were in fact broke; rather than reveal this fact publicly and cause the economic depression
Depression (economics)
In economics, a depression is a sustained, long-term downturn in economic activity in one or more economies. It is a more severe downturn than a recession, which is seen by some economists as part of the modern business cycle....
which would presumably result from this revelation, an improbably charitable IRS allowed them to continue living in their mansion and maintaining the pretensions of great wealth, which was difficult given their reduced circumstances. By mid-season, in order to raise more money, Phyllis had opened the mansion to boarders, attracting a "nutty" collection of tenants as well, a group that included Paul Lynde
Paul Lynde
Paul Edward Lynde was an American comedian and actor. A noted character actor, Lynde was well known for his roles as Uncle Arthur on Bewitched and Harry MacAfee, the befuddled father in Bye Bye Birdie...
as her hopeless brother, John Astin
John Astin
John Allen Astin is an American actor who has appeared in numerous films and television shows, and is best known for the role of Gomez Addams on The Addams Family, and other similarly eccentric comedic characters.-Early years:...
as her brother-in-law, and Marty Ingels
Marty Ingels
Marty Ingels is an actor, comedian, theatrical agent, and, by many, best known as the voice of many cartoon characters and commercials. Born Martin Ingerman in Brooklyn, New York, he is the son of Jacob and Minnie Ingerman.His voice-overs and commercials include those for Paul Masson wines, with...
as a handyman.
On the premiere
Premiere
A premiere is generally "a first performance". This can refer to plays, films, television programs, operas, symphonies, ballets and so on. Premieres for theatrical, musical and other cultural presentations can become extravagant affairs, attracting large numbers of socialites and much media...
episode, Phyllis Diller unsuccessfully tries to roast a chicken in her clothes dryer. On January 13, 1967, with the episode "Little Miss Fixit", the program changed its title to The Phyllis Diller Show.
According to Television magazine, The Pruitts of Southampton finished 77th among the 91 shows rated during the 1966-1967 season. It began the season airing on Tuesdays, opposite The Red Skelton Show
The Red Skelton Show
The Red Skelton Show is an American variety show that was a television staple for two decades, from 1951 to 1971. It was second to Gunsmoke and third to The Ed Sullivan Show in the ratings during that time. Skelton, who had previously been a radio star, had appeared in several motion pictures as...
on CBS, which finished second in the ratings. For the first half of the season, The Pruitts of Southampton followed ABC's unsuccessful The Rounders
The Rounders (TV series)
The Rounders is a 17-episode western-style situation comedy about two cowboys on the fictitious J.L. Ranch in Texas, starring Ron Hayes , as Ben Jones and Patrick Wayne , a son of John Wayne, as Howdy Lewis. The M-G-M television series aired on ABC from September 6, 1966, to January 3, 1967...
starring Ron Hayes
Ron Hayes
Ronald G. Hayes was an American television actor who, as an activist in the environmental movement, worked for the establishment of the first Earth Day, observed on April 22, 1970. He was a member of the Sierra Club and a founder of the ecological interest group Wilderness World...
, Patrick Wayne
Patrick Wayne
Patrick John Morrison, better known by his stage name Patrick Wayne , is an American actor, the second son of movie star John Wayne and his first wife, Josephine Alicia Saenz. He made over 40 films in his career, including nine with his father...
, and Chill Wills
Chill Wills
Chill Theodore Wills was an American film actor, and a singer in the Avalon Boys Quartet.-Biography:Wills was born in Seagoville, Texas in 1902. He was a performer from early childhood, forming and leading the Avalon Boys singing group in the 1930s...
, loosely based on a 1965 film of the same name. In January, the Diller series moved to Fridays under its new title.
Episode list
| Episode # | Episode title | Original airdate |
|---|---|---|
| 1-1 | "Phyllis Goes Broke" (pilot) | September 6, 1966 |
| 1-2 | "Phyllis, the Milkmaid" | September 13, 1966 |
| 1-3 | "Phyllis Beats the Rap" | September 20, 1966 |
| 1-4 | "Phyllis, Take A Letter" | September 27, 1966 |
| 1-5 | "Phyllis, the Cookie Tycoon" | October 4, 1966 |
| 1-6 | "Phyllis Fires the Butler" | October 11, 1966 |
| 1-7 | "Phyllis Saves the Day" | October 18, 1966 |
| 1-8 | "Phyllis Goes Commercial" | October 25, 1966 |
| 1-9 | "Phyllis Entertains Royalty" | November 1, 1966 |
| 1-10 | "Phyllis, the Upstairs Girl" | November 15, 1966 |
| 1-11 | "Phyllis, the General Stealer" | November 22, 1966 |
| 1-12 | "Phyllis, the Dress Maker" | November 29, 1966 |
| 1-13 | "Phyllis Goes Arty" | December 6, 1966 |
| 1-14 | "Santa Was A Lady" | December 13, 1966 |
| 1-15 | "The Hubcap Caper" | December 20, 1966 |
| 1-16 | "Phyllis, Queen of the Road" | December 27, 1966 |
| 1-17 | "My Brother Harvey" | January 3, 1967 |
| 1-18 | "Little Miss Fixit"* | January 13, 1967 |
| 1-19 | "Learn To Be A Millionaire" | January 20, 1967 |
| 1-20 | "The Ghost of Pruitt Mansion" | January 27, 1967 |
| 1-21 | "Portrait of Krump" | February 3, 1967 |
| 1-22 | "How To Rob A Millionaire" | February 10, 1967 |
| 1-23 | "Nobody Here But Us Chickens" | February 17, 1967 |
| 1-24 | "Phyllis, the Bat Girl" | February 24, 1967 |
| 1-25 | "Marry A Million" | March 3, 1967 |
| 1-26 | "Goddess of Love" | March 10, 1967 |
| 1-27 | "My Sister-in-Law Phyllis" | March 17, 1967 |
| 1-28 | "Krump, the Playboy" | March 24, 1967 |
| 1-29 | "Phyllis, the Beauty Queen" | March 31, 1967 |
| 1-30 | "The House Is Not A Zoo" | April 7, 1967 |