Following the lead of her longtime friend and fellow B-movie actress Lucille Ball, Ann Sothern made the transition to television in 1953 with her popular sitcom Private Secretary (also known as Susie). Over the next decade, she would perform in more than 200 episodes of that show and its successor, The Ann Sothern Show (CBS, 1958–61). Playing a savvy, resourceful “career girl” onscreen must have come easily to the actress, whose off-screen accomplishments as a businesswoman were even more impressive.
Born January 22, 1909, as Harriette Lake, Sothern’s parents were performers, her mother a singer and her father an actor, and were frequently on the road. Of her birthplace, Valley City, North Dakota, Sothern later said, “I’ve never seen the town. I was born there, then my mother and father moved on.”1 She grew up mostly in Minnesota, one of three daughters. Developing an interest in music early in life, Sothern learned to play the piano as well as composing her own tunes. She also cultivated a pleasant singing voice that would eventually help her gain a toehold in show business.
Sothern first came to Hollywood in the late 1920s, after a brief stint in college. Her newly divorced mother, who’d been hired as a vocal coach at Warner Brothers, tried to help Sothern get her entree into movies, but she was unable to progress much beyond uncredited bit parts. Retreating to the stage, she developed her craft further in musical theater. In the spring of 1931, Sothern (still as Harriette Lake) was featured in the Rodgers and Hart musical America’s Sweetheart. The show was not a huge success, closing after only 135 performances, but after the summer hiatus she followed it up with another musical role in Everybody’s Welcome, which ran until February 1932.
She returned to Hollywood in 1933, having achieved some renown for her abilities in musical theater. Offered the female lead in Columbia’s musical comedy Let’s Fall in Love (1935), Sothern’s acting and singing impressed studio executives, and she was offered a contract. She had gone blonde for her first role at Columbia, and would retain that shade, along with the new stage name she had selected from a list offered by studio head Harry Cohn.
During those early years at Columbia, she met and befriended fellow starlet Lucille Ball, who became a lifelong friend. Both would be well-liked and employed steadily in the 1930s, but often found the roles they were given less than satisfying.
“We used to cry on each other’s shoulder,” Sothern said. “I said I got all the parts that Katy Hepburn didn’t want and Lucille would say that she got all the ones I didn’t want.”2 Also during this period, the actress renewed her acquaintance with bandleader Roger Pryor, whom she’d met a few years earlier, while on tour in Chicago. They were reunited when Pryor, now pursuing an acting career, was cast as Sothern’s leading man in Columbia’s The Girl Friend (1935). Their on-screen romance carried over to real life, and the couple was married on September 27, 1936. Unfortunately, the marriage would not be a success over the long haul, lasting only into the early 1940s.
Meanwhile, having slogged her way through numerous B movies, Sothern’s better-than-average supporting role as a flighty stenographer in Tay Garnett’s Trade Winds (1938) made an impression at MGM. The studio owned the rights to Wilson Collison’s 1935 mystery novel “Dark Dame,” which featured as contrast to the title character a brassy, cheerful showgirl, Maisie Ravier. The property had been purchased as a vehicle for Jean Harlow, but MGM put it on the shelf after that star’s untimely death in 1937. Seeing Sothern’s performance in Trade Winds, however, playing a similar character, studio executives signed her for Maisie (1939), opposite Robert Young. When that film cleaned up at the box office, MGM promptly launched a series, signing Sothern to crank out additional modestly budgeted Maisie films at the rate of two a year.
As film historian James Robert Parish noted, “All the Maisie films began with the established situation of luckless Maisie, a not so successful chorine, losing her job and being stranded, forced to fend for herself. Most of the entries gave saucy, scatterbrained Maisie the chance to sing a song, before coming into conflict and eventual harmony with the film’s hero.”3
The popularity of Maisie proved to be a double-edged sword for Sothern. While the B movies sold tickets on the strength of her name, and made her a valued commodity at MGM, she also worried that she was in danger of being pigeonholed. “So, me, I’m on this tightrope,” she explained at the time. “Maisie is my pal and I love her but I don’t want her to get her arms around my neck. When she falls off I don’t want to fall off.”4
In fact, she would spend most of the 1940s on the Maisie assembly line, rarely considered for any of the studio’s more ambitious or challenging roles. Her starring role in the musical Lady Be Good (1941), opposite Robert Young, one that showcased her singing talent, was more of a plum than she usually rated, but MGM still liked her best as Maisie. Nor did she always benefit from the proper star buildup—in Lady Be Good, she’s second-billed behind actress Eleanor Powell, though Sothern is clearly playing the lead character.
In 1945, she added to her workload a weekly Maisie radio comedy, initially heard Thursday nights as a summer replacement for Milton Berle’s show. An early reviewer praised Sothern, noting that the “Metro star plays her role to the hilt, giving a performance that adds enjoyment to some fine writing.”5 The show quickly became popular enough to return as a regular attraction, and continued on CBS until 1947. It was revived in 1949 as a syndicated show, The Adventures of Maisie.
Ann Sothern as her popular movie character Maisie Ravier in Swing Shift Maisie (MGM, 1943), opposite leading man James Craig.
Because Sothern could get so far with material that was no better than average, she was somewhat taken for granted. Joseph Mankiewicz, who later directed Sothern in A Letter to Three Wives, said of her time at MGM, “Annie was a damned good Broadway musical comedy actress. She had the sexiest mouth any woman ever had. But, at Metro, poor Annie got stuck in the Sam Katz unit. She never got the big break Gene Kelly and others did, of being with the Arthur Freed steamroller of talent.”6
On a personal level, however, Sothern’s role as Maisie introduced her to her second husband. While shooting Ringside Maisie (1941), she met actor Robert Sterling, whom she married on May 23, 1943, not long after being granted her divorce from Roger Pryor. The second marriage did not prove an idyllic one either—Sothern and Sterling were separated for a time in the mid–1940s, and finally divorced in 1949. (Soon afterwards, he married Anne Jeffreys, with whom he would co-star in Topper). The union did, however, produce Sothern’s only child, daughter Patricia, born on December 10, 1944.
She came to television in the early 1950s on the heels of a life-threatening health crisis that had sharply curtailed her career in recent years. A transfusion performed in an overseas hospital in 1949 infected the star with hepatitis, and she spent most of the next two years seriously ill. For a time, she was homebound, suffering from extreme sensitivity to light and sound. Unable to work on camera, she was mostly inactive professionally except for taping her role in the syndicated Adventures of Maisie radio series, recorded onsite at her home.
Ironically, just before her illness, she had played one of the best roles of her long film career, in Joseph L. Mankiewicz’ A Letter to Three Wives (1949). The film, both a popular and critical success, gave Sothern a meaty role as successful radio scriptwriter Rita Phipps, whose marriage to schoolteacher George Phipps (Kirk Douglas) is threatened by his insecurity about her professional accomplishments. For Sothern, who’d toiled in B movies for most of her career, it was a plum role, but the unfortunate timing prevented it from reviving her film career.
Following her divorce from Robert Sterling, Sothern would never remarry. According to Kirk Douglas, he and his Letter to Three Wives co-star had a brief fling during shooting. “Ann Sothern played my wife,” the married actor later said. “We rehearsed the relationship offstage.”7 She also enjoyed a few dates during this time with fellow film actor Ronald Reagan, not long before he married Nancy Davis, Sothern’s co-star in Shadow on the Wall (MGM, 1950).
During her long recuperation from hepatitis, she became friendly with newcomer Richard Egan, twelve years her junior, and fan magazines reported that she declined a marriage proposal from the actor, who was a practicing Catholic. “Ann was not a Catholic. Even more serious, she was a divorcee. He couldn’t marry her—not with the approval of the church. And could he marry without it?”8 Ironically, Sothern herself would convert to Catholicism not long afterwards, and would practice that religion seriously for the rest of her life.
Once she had begun to put her illness behind her, Sothern resurfaced in the fall of 1951 with a starring role in the Broadway comedy “Faithfully Yours,” opposite another soon-to-be TV stalwart, Robert Cummings (Love That Bob). Unfortunately, the show was not a hit, and closed after only 68 performances. By the time she did return to the silver screen, playing a critically praised supporting role in the film noir drama The Blue Gardenia (1953), she had already reached the conclusion that it was time to look into regular television work.
In the early 1950s, Sothern announced her availability in the new medium with guest appearances on shows like Schlitz Playhouse of Stars and The Fred Waring Show. Producers sent her scripts for prospective TV series, but the actress was choosy. When Jack Chertok offered her the lead role in Private Secretary, based on a concept by former MGM producer Ned Marin, Sothern decided that this was the right vehicle for her.
Although she would later try unsuccessfully to obtain the television rights to the Maisie character (which MGM would develop as a pilot for Janis Paige in 1960, but never sold as a series), Sothern’s first series would present her as a new, if not radically different, character. A bit more educated and refined than the working-class Maisie, Susie MacNamara of Private Secretary was the invaluable assistant to New York talent agent Peter Sands (played by Don Porter). Her best friend and co-worker was switchboard operator Vi Praskins (Ann Tyrrell). Also seen occasionally were Susie’s friendly rival Sylvia (Joan Banks) and Mr. Sands’ scroungy competition, low-rent talent agent “Cagey” Calhoun (Jesse White, who alternated this recurring role with one as Danny Thomas’ agent on Make Room for Daddy).
Not content to be hired merely as a performer, Sothern was active behind the scenes of Private Secretary as well, involving herself in casting, script editing, and other production chores. The savvy star had a sense of what would attract viewers, particularly women, and did her best to supply it. She did this not only by taking time with her appearance and costumes, giving them a look they might enjoy emulating, but also making sure that the show’s basic setup was appealing as well.
“Women don’t see competition in me,” she said of her 1950s sitcom work, “they see a friend. I always make sure my scripts are written so the woman manages to tell off the big, hulking male at the finish. A happy female ending, you might say.”9
In assembling Private Secretary, she was mindful of two goals that often conflicted—the need to create an attractive product, while simultaneously producing an attractive profit. “If you’re trying to honestly do a show of quality, then you are constantly frustrated,” she said. “In three days we have to shoot an entire 26-minute show. And we do it just like the movies, with close-ups, the whole works. But you know that isn’t enough time. We start shooting promptly at 9 a.m., and never finish until 6. And still we don’t have enough time. Some scenes that you see on the screen have never been rehearsed. I just read the script and they shoot it.”10
In an era when the glass ceiling was firmly in place for women, Sothern played a clerical worker who routinely outshone her male supervisor. In the episode “What Every Secretary Knows” (11/11/56), Sands is eager to make inroads with opera impresario Bernard Hugo, whose upcoming Broadway production of “Samson and Delilah” is a golden opportunity for two of the agency’s young clients. Offering to get him in the door by calling on her friendship with the producer’s secretary, Susie is rebuffed by her boss, who deems the matter too important to be handled by the help.
Nor does he bide Susie’s advice that he cultivate the producer’s wife in order to achieve his goal: “You girls and your flighty romantic notion that behind every man is some noble, strong, long-suffering woman,” he says high-handedly. “Fiddle faddle!”
Unperturbed, Susie makes friends with Mrs. Hugo, and devises an elaborate scheme to bring her boss and Mrs. Hugo together. Succeeding in getting them acquainted, she proceeds to arrange an impromptu audition where Mr. Hugo hears Sands’ clients sing, and has a brainstorm—wouldn’t they be perfect for his new show? Susie and Mrs. Hugo exchange winks, having made all the necessary arrangements while the supposedly powerful men remain oblivious of how skillfully they’ve been manipulated.
Like Eve Arden’s Our Miss Brooks, the role of Susie (or Susan Camille MacNamara, as she was billed in the credits), made Sothern a favorite of women viewers, particularly those who were themselves employed in office jobs. Noted a fan magazine at the time, “Ann Sothern is perhaps the only secretary in the world who has three secretaries of her own to answer her sacks full of letters from stenos seeking her advice in love, marriage, how to handle the boss when he tells you his luckless yarns about how his wife doesn’t understand him.”11
In “How to Handle the Boss” (10/28/56), Susie’s job is on the line after a practical-joking friend ghostwrites for her an unflattering newspaper article about her job, and Mr. Sands. Desperate to keep the insulting copy from seeing print, she calls upon her network of contacts—and smarts—to bail herself out. In an interesting plot twist for the 1950s, Susie ultimately succeeds in her goal by using a secret signal known only to secretaries (the SOS—“Save a Secretary”), but it is an important male executive, himself a former secretary, who sees it and comes to her aid.
Sothern herself, as if heeding the advice later given to aspiring career women as to how to avoid being pigeonholed into secretarial work, professed to be unable even to operate the typewriter that was seen so prominently in her show’s closing credits. She enjoyed telling interviewers that her crew had removed most of the working parts from the typewriter on Susie’s desk, so that Sothern could pretend to type during scenes without breaking the machine.
Unlike her friend Lucille Ball and other comediennes, Sothern did little physical comedy on her 1950s sitcoms. Her comedy was primarily verbal, her rich voice wrapping itself around a variety of sardonic and beguiling lines. Ball herself would later say, “The best comedian in this business, bar none, is Ann Sothern.”12
Ann Sothern with actor Don Porter, her leading man in both Private Secretary and The Ann Sothern Show.
Nor did her role as Susie really fall into the “dizzy dame” category. Though Susie occasionally gets into scrapes of her own making, as in “Dollars and Sense” (11/25/56), when her passion for new clothes has a devastating effect on her bank balance, she was more often the problem-solver. In “Crazy Mixed-Up Kid” (5/15/54), she not only tames a publicity-hungry young actor (Paul Picerni) whose stunts are hurting his professional reputation, but talks a reluctant investor into writing a $150,000 check to star him in a play. Boss Mr. Sands can do little but step aside, and watch her at work.
Sothern would have a slightly less intense workload than other sitcom stars of the period, producing only 26 segments of Secretary per season. For most of the year, her show alternated with The Jack Benny Show on CBS’ Sunday night schedule. Still, after the relative ease of starring in a radio series, and given her health problems, she found TV work demanding. “I’ve been in show business for 20 years,” she told Time magazine, “and this is the toughest thing I’ve ever done.”13
Although Sothern, by then in her forties, was still highly attractive, her bout with hepatitis left her not only weakened but with residual side effects, among them a struggle with weight that would last the rest of her life. It’s been reported elsewhere that the star, sensitive about her girth, would not allow her TV directors to shoot her below the waist. However, a viewing of Private Secretary episodes does not bear this out. Costume designer Elois Jenssen (also associated with I Love Lucy) did clothe the star mostly in black, and her flowing skirts seemed designed to avoid defining the specifics of her figure, but Sothern allowed herself to be seen full length at least now and then. In fact, the opening titles of her later Ann Sothern Show, set in a New York City hotel, show a full-length shot of her sweeping majestically through the revolving doors of the hotel entrance every week.
In 1955, Private Secretary became one of the first TV sitcoms to go into syndication even before its network run concluded. Television Programs of America, Inc. offered the first 52 episodes to local stations, re-titled Susie so as to avoid direct competition with the new episodes still airing in prime time. Though Sothern had been a well-known actress for almost twenty years, the TV show’s ongoing popularity in reruns brought her a heightened level of audience recognition. While doing a nightclub appearance, she said, “a little girl walked out on the floor, threw her arms around me and said, ‘I love you, Susie.’ Nothing like that happened to me when I was in pictures as Maisie.”14
Unfortunately for Sothern, the show’s popularity didn’t necessarily lead to critical acclaim, although its star would be repeatedly nominated for Best Actress Emmys. By 1957, when the show had been again overlooked for Emmy consideration, the actress was steamed. The Academy of Television Arts and Sciences’ practice of sending a short “reminder list” of shows eligible for consideration, rather than a complete list, struck her as unfair, especially since the best series list was notably lacking Private Secretary.
“I’m on the warpath,” she told reporters. “Out of the list of 20 series, my show has beaten more than half of them in the ratings. It’s most unfair. Who is authorized to name those 20 shows on the list; who says it must be only those 20 shows. I think this could bear an investigation. My show has had a 39.8 rating this year, and isn’t even on the list. They have no right to do this.”15 Other producers whose shows had been similarly snubbed, such as Alex Gottlieb of The Gale Storm Show: Oh! Susanna, echoed her complaints.
Although Sothern’s show was still popular, it came to an abrupt end in 1957, when the star became embroiled in a legal battle with her producer. Chertok had sold Private Secretary in 1956 to TPA, the company that was successfully syndicating Susie reruns. TPA believed that it had bought not only the rights to the show, but also an option for Sothern to film new episodes. The actress, no less afraid to stand up to a man than her TV character, thought otherwise. She insisted that her contract be re-negotiated before filming resumed, and said that she had not received her full payment for Susie reruns. Sothern professed to hold no grudge against producer Chertok, saying, “He’s done a very creditable job. All he needs is a new accounting department.”16
By the summer of 1957, when negotiations had completely broken down, Sothern began telling interviewers she might retire. “Five years of TV is a lot of hard work,” she said. She claimed, probably as a negotiating ploy, to be making plans to leave the country—“I want to live in Europe for two years so my daughter Tish can go to school there. We’d live in Versailles.”17 Still, in the same interview, she admitted that she was at least contemplating the idea of a second TV series.
For a while, Chertok Television made noise about continuing Private Secretary with another star taking Sothern’s place. June Allyson’s name was bandied about as a possibility, as was Penny Singleton, star of the 1940s Blondie film series, but ultimately the impasse brought Private Secretary to an end in the spring of 1957.
Much as she sometimes professed to dislike Hollywood, and her workload, Sothern was soon busy with other projects. In 1958, she released an LP album, “Sothern Exposure: Ann Sothern Sings.” The record consisted mostly of old standards like Irving Berlin’s “Always.” It was a return to old times for the actress, given her background in musical theater.
While the 104 episodes of Sothern’s show continued to flourish in reruns, the star plotted a TV comeback. Her agent, William Morris, took the star to Desilu, where her first project was reprising Susie opposite Lucille Ball in the premiere of The Ford Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Show, “Lucy Takes a Cruise to Havana,” which aired in November 1957. (The show, a flashback episode depicting how Lucy and Ricky first met, established Lucy Ricardo and Susie MacNamara as having been friends in New York in the 1940s). Meanwhile, the Desilu staff had begun to brainstorm a new vehicle for Sothern, which had the working title “Career Girl.” Writers Bob Schiller and Bob Weiskopf, who had toiled on I Love Lucy, prepared the pilot script. The series would be a co-venture between Desilu and the star’s Anso Productions, with Arnaz serving as executive producer.
Charged with replicating what had worked well in Sothern’s previous series, without invoking legal complications as her lawsuit played out, the writers developed a format that would cast Sothern as Katy O’Connor, assistant manager of a hotel in New York City. In contrast to the setup of her previous series, here she would play not a support staff member but a supervisory role. The show’s original concept called for her to be the capable second-in-command to a henpecked, meek manager, played by veteran character actor Ernest Truex. One of TV sitcom’s most recognizable faces, character actress Reta Shaw, played his domineering wife, who not only ran roughshod over her husband, but looked askance at any pretty woman who appeared on the scene.
Initially, the only cast member familiar from Private Secretary was Ann Tyrrell, whose role as Katy’s skittish secretary, roommate, and best friend Olive would be barely distinguishable from her characterization as Vi on Secretary. Other regulars that first year were a handsome French-born desk clerk (Jacques Scott), and a philosophical bellboy (Jack Mullaney). Before long, though, Tyrrell and Sothern would find themselves keeping company with some familiar faces.
Sothern admitted that her new venture didn’t carry her too far into unfamiliar territory. “The character ... I played in Private Secretary on TV was only a more refined Maisie,” she said. “And to push my luck, the character I’m playing now, Katy O’Connor ... is just a refinement of Susan.”18
General Foods signed on to sponsor The Ann Sothern Show, using it mostly to promote its then-new Tang breakfast drink. Substantially increasing the show’s chance for high ratings was CBS’ agreement to slot it at 9:30 on Monday nights, following The Danny Thomas Show. It would take the place of Spring Byington’s December Bride, shunted into a less desirable Thursday night slot that fall.
The Ann Sothern Show seemed to have it made. Variety’s reviewer called the show a “smart bet” to garner strong ratings, praising the opening installment as “a first night click.”19 Interviewed by TV Guide a few weeks into the new season, Sothern exuded enthusiasm about her new supporting cast. “They’re dynamite performers, all of them,” she said. “I hand-picked them myself. Ernest is delightful, the dames fall apart over Jacques. And as for that Mullaney kid—well, he’s only terrific, that’s all.”20
More than a decade later, much would be made of how Mary Richards, the lead character of The Mary Tyler Moore Show (CBS, 1970–77), represented an early role model for working women. Without taking anything away from that notable show, though, we can look back further, and see that some of the elements thought to be groundbreaking in 1970 could be seen earlier in Sothern’s TV work. As not only the star but the co-owner of her series, Sothern used her influence to place herself in a format that was progressive for its time.
In a first-season episode of The Ann Sothern Show, “Three Loves Has Katy” (1/19/59), a forthcoming college reunion causes Katy to muse, “Sometimes I wonder if I was right to choose a career instead of marriage.” She tells friend Olive that she received eight marriage proposals in college—six of them from the same man. Of the three men she might have married, one was a star football player, another the student body president, but it’s the third man, pre-med student Nathaniel Norcross, whom she particularly remembers. As Katy says to friend Olive:
Katy: Do you know that I was responsible for his going into medicine?
Olive: You were?
Katy: Mm-hm. He had to take a splinter out of me.
Olive: He did? Where?
Katy: (giving her friend a sideways look) In the infirmary, of course!
Left alone, Katy amuses herself with fantasies of what her life might have been had she married each of the three men, and become either the loving wife of a star athlete, a doctor’s dedicated spouse, or the First Lady of the United States. The actual reunion, however, mostly fails to live up to her expectations. The football player is an immature boor whose wife has borne him five children, and says living with him is like having a sixth one. The politician is also married, but that doesn’t stop him from putting the moves on Katy in his wife’s absence.
As for Dr. Nat Norcross (John Beal), the attraction between him and Katy is still there, and at the reunion he proposes to her (for the seventh time). But Katy, who astutely sees that his first and foremost dedication is to his work, gently refuses him. Back home, when romantic Olive tries to console her about the fact that she didn’t snag any of the three men, Katy sees it differently. She’s content with her life, she tells her friend—“I have an exciting job, wonderful friends, complete independence.” Not that she’s opposed to the idea of getting married, she admits—but it’s also OK if doesn’t happen.
Unfortunately, the early predictions of success for The Ann Sothern Show were premature. Although the show was by no means a flop, by midseason it was evident that changes were needed. As Sothern had returned to network TV after a hiatus of only one year, playing a different character in a different setting, perhaps viewers in that more innocent age were confused. Perhaps her casting as an independent career woman was just a bit ahead of its time. But it became evident that some of the ways in which The Ann Sothern Show set itself apart from its predecessor were disappointing to the star’s fans.
Near the end of the first season, a familiar face surfaced in the show’s twenty-third episode, “Katy’s Big Surprise” (3/9/59). Billed initially as a guest star, Private Secretary’s Don Porter played James Devery, who has just been named the new manager of the Bartley House. His arrival comes as a disappointment to Katy, who had envisioned herself stepping into that role.
Porter’s appearance was part of a housecleaning that swept out much of the show’s original cast. By the time The Ann Sothern Show returned for its second season that fall, most of the original players except Tyrrell had been dropped. Porter was on the regular payroll once again, given co-star billing after Sothern.
The star was frank about the reasons behind the cast changes, and Porter’s return. “There isn’t any mystery about why Don is back,” she told TV Guide. “I wish I could show you the letters we got. ‘Where is Mr. Sands?,’ week after week. The simple psychological truth is, people don’t want to see me dominating a man.”21
Careful to emphasize that the decision to write out Truex’s character was no reflection on the actor or his work, Sothern said that the show simply worked better with the byplay that Porter could provide. “[Viewers] want to see Don and me trying to outsmart each other. It’s chemistry.”22
Publicity photo for The Ann Sothern Show.
Another familiar face on the show’s second season opener was Lucille Ball, who guest starred as Lucy Ricardo in “The Lucy Story” (10/5/59). The episode’s plot revolved around Lucy’s visit to the hotel after an argument with workaholic Ricky, and her efforts to jump-start a romance between Katy and her boss. The script gave its leading ladies the chance to play out a climactic scene in which both have been doped up with sleeping pills, which they carried off with style.
No fan of playing her comedy before a live audience, Sothern vetoed that and other of the usual Desilu production techniques in producing The Ann Sothern Show. In fact, for a time, the show’s closing credits included an unusual disclaimer, “Audience Reaction Technically Produced.” This may have been dictated by a nervous CBS in response to the late 1950s scandal surrounded rigged game shows, which for a time made network executives bend over backwards trying to avoid the implication that any aspect of its shows was phony, or simulated.
As she had done with Private Secretary, Sothern sought ways to make the show look good while not straining the budget. She took pride in innovations like the use of “flying” scenery (lightweight and portable) that could be moved quickly and inexpensively.
“I got talked into doing this series,” she told TV Guide, “but as long as I was going to do it, I wanted to do it right. They call me the MGM girl over there. ‘The things that girl wants!,’ they say. But you have to do it. You have to do things yourself.”23
Among the things that Sothern did herself was contribute the show’s theme song, “Katy,” which she composed with sister Bonnie Lake. She also joined her co-stars in appearing in weekly commercials for the sponsors’ products, ending each week smiling into the camera and saying, “Well, good night, everybody. Stay happy!”
Busy with the series and other activities, Sothern was fond of professing that she would willingly give it all up for a more leisurely existence. “Frankly, I would much rather be married,” she said, “and let someone else worry about making a living. I would love to be married to a diplomat, say, and give elegant dinners. I would like to live elegantly. Instead, I have to run five businesses.”24
Aside from Anso Productions, those businesses included a music publishing firm and a cattle ranch. For a time, her Vincent Productions (named after her patron saint) also had two aspiring young performers under contract, whose careers Sothern guided. Another venture was a sewing shop in Sun Valley, Idaho, where she regularly vacationed. Struck by a sudden impulse to do some sewing during one trip, she was frustrated to find that there was nowhere nearby to purchase the supplies she needed. Soon, “Ann Sothern’s Sewing Center” filled that gap.
Over the next two years, Sothern’s second show would increasingly come to resemble her first one. Aside from Ann Tyrrell, Jesse White, who’d been featured as Cagey Calhoun on Private Secretary, was eventually written into the new show as well, playing the hotel’s cigar stand operator, an inveterate conniver as White’s previous character had been. As in the original series, there were hints of attraction between Sothern’s character and her employer, though not much came of it. Instead, another running plot element during the 1960-61 season was Olive’s romance and eventual marriage to dentist Delbert Gray, played by comic Louis Nye.
Toward the latter part of the show’s run, Sothern also attempted to use her weekly vehicle as a springboard to launch new Anso Productions projects, often putting other funny women in the spotlight. Airing as the 2/23/61 episode of The Ann Sothern Show, “Always April” offered a lead role to fading film star Constance Bennett, cast as the mother of an aspiring actress. A few weeks later, “Pandora” (3/16/61), another lightly disguised series pilot, showcased actress-comedienne Pat Carroll, who played a gawky and self-conscious young woman hired as secretary to a matinee-idol movie star. She also gave her own daughter, Tisha, an aspiring actress, her television debut with a role in the episode “Loving Arms” (10/13/60).
Although the cast overhaul and story changes gave a boost to the show’s ratings, The Ann Sothern Show would not enjoy quite as long a run as Private Secretary had. During the third season, a scheduling change placed Sothern’s sitcom opposite one of TV’s hottest shows at the time, ABC’s gangster drama The Untouchables (1959–63). The competition sent Sothern’s ratings plunging downward, and her series was unceremoniously cancelled in the spring of 1961 by CBS president James Aubrey. Left unresolved was the relationship between Sothern’s character and “Mr. Devery,” though he proposed to her in the final episode filmed.
Sothern walked away in a huff, telling reporters that the season had ended four episodes short by mutual agreement between her and the sponsor. The Ann Sothern Show, with almost 100 episodes in the hopper, joined Private Secretary in syndication, both shows raking in profits for savvy co-owner Sothern. By 1962, Private Secretary was reported to have grossed $4,000,000 over the course of its afterlife in syndication, a goodly portion of which Sothern collected.
At first, it looked as though the star’s absence from series television might be brief. In the summer of 1962, Variety reported that Goodson-Todman, the production company better known for game shows like To Tell the Truth and What’s My Line?, was pitching an Ann Sothern sitcom to NBC to be launched in the 1963-64 season. The projected show, which the trade paper said “casts the actress as a midwestern housewife,”25 never materialized. Instead, the actress made plans for a Broadway comeback, but that too fell through.
On the heels of her TV series cancellation came a flurry of embarrassing and upsetting headlines for the star, when her mother sued her for support in 1961. Sothern defended herself to the press, explaining that she had withdrawn her support when her mother chose to live with other family members who the actress believed were usurping the money meant for her mother’s care. The case was ultimately settled, but Sothern’s mother died not long afterwards.
For a time in the early to mid–1960s, Sothern put television on the back burner while she pursued a career as a character actress. She spent time in New York City, studying acting under the highly regarded Stella Adler, then made a movie comeback in 1964. This time, though, she wasn’t after the leading lady parts she’d done previously.
Putting on some of the weight she had fought while starring on TV, the star eschewed glamour for the creative challenge of playing a varied lot of character roles. In Gore Vidal’s political drama The Best Man (1964), Sothern played Sue Ellen Gamadge, mover and shaker who is part of the team trying to elect Henry Fonda as president. Prone to spout advice about what “the women” do and don’t like in their political candidates, Sothern’s character is said by a former president to be a good choice to be the country’s first female Chief Executive.
Nominated for a Golden Globe as Best Supporting Actress for that performance, Sothern appeared in a vastly different role a few months later, playing Sade, a cheap floozy, in Paramount’s Lady in a Cage. Although this performance too was admired, 1964 audiences found the thriller, about a wealthy widow (Olivia de Havilland) terrorized by a home invasion, shockingly violent and intense, and Sothern believed that the controversy cost her recognition for her work.
Ann Sothern the character actress, menaced by Rafael Campos in Lady in a Cage (1964).
Late that year, Sothern’s longtime friend Lucille Ball approached her about appearing on The Lucy Show. Ill at ease without longtime second banana Vivian Vance, who was sitting out several episodes during the show’s third season, Ball asked Sothern to join the show as a recurring guest star. With the help of writers like Leonard Gershe, who had contributed to Sothern’s own shows in the 1950s, Sothern gave birth to the Countess Framboise, otherwise known as Lucy’s old pal Rosie Hannigan, who had married very well, but was now a widow of straitened means.
Making her Lucy Show debut in “Lucy and the Countess” (2/1/65), Sothern appeared in three more episodes in quick succession, her chemistry with the star enlivening what was in danger of becoming a stale show. She would be seen intermittently on the show throughout 1965.
By that point in their careers, neither Ball nor Sothern was a shrinking violet, and there were occasional gossip column items reporting clashes of temper on the set. Though others were sometimes intimidated by Ball, Sothern knew her well, and held her own. “Despite what has been written,” said Ball’s longtime colleague Maury Thompson, “Lucille and Ann were very close friends, and on the set there was always girl talk between them. They could talk anyway [sic] they wanted to one another, and no one took offense.”26
There was talk that she was offered the chance to become a series regular, when Vance quit the show altogether that spring, but Sothern was unwilling to accept the co-star billing that Ball had given Vance. Instead, with one foot already back in the sitcom world, Sothern took what seemed like a logical next step, unfortunately choosing a vehicle (pun intended) that would take her a long time to live down. In September 1965, NBC debuted My Mother, the Car, a fantasy sitcom about a suburban man (Jerry Van Dyke) who discovers that an antique car is the reincarnation of his late mother.
Producers wanted a name actress with a distinctive voice to read Mother’s lines, and after giving thought to Eve Arden and film actress Jean Arthur, settled on Sothern. Initially, the new series seemed like an easy way to pick up a healthy paycheck—radio work for TV money, as she later put it. The gig didn’t require her to doll up her appearance, worry about her weight, or shoulder any production responsibilities. All that was expected of her was to report to a sound studio every few weeks, where she could rattle off her dialogue for multiple episodes in one recording session and be home a few hours later. Still, there were signs that she missed being in the spotlight, and she told reporters that public demand might eventually see her role expanded to on-screen appearances, perhaps through flashback scenes.
In the meantime, she happily collected the paycheck, but the critical response to My Mother the Car was brutal, and the goofy show quickly became the laughingstock of the NBC prime time schedule, damaging the careers of everyone involved. At the end of the 1965-66 season, network programmers mercifully dropped the ax, though the show’s notoriety would continue unchecked for years to come. It would be Sothern’s last regular series role.
Perhaps that experience soured the star on sitcoms. A far more reasonable proposition soon came along, in the form of Sothern’s friend and colleague Desi Arnaz, who offered her one of the lead roles in his projected sitcom The Mothers-in-Law, which he was developing for CBS. The series had been created by Lucy writers Bob Carroll, Jr. and Madelyn Davis with Sothern and Eve Arden in mind to play the co-leads, battling neighbors whose son and daughter had gotten married. Early on in the project, when it seemed that the stars lacked the right chemistry to play off each other effectively, Sothern withdrew, and the show ultimately premiered on NBC during the 1967-68 season, with Kaye Ballard opposite Arden.
In the mid- to late 1960s, Sothern largely occupied herself with theater engagements, starring in stock and dinner theater productions of crowd-pleasing shows like Mame, Butterflies Are Free (written by her former television colleague Leonard Gershe), and, on a more serious note, The Glass Menagerie. On television, she occasionally surfaced as a guest star in shows like Family Affair (CBS, 1965–71) and Love, American Style (ABC, 1969–74).
Unfortunately, Sothern’s later years were often plagued with physical pain, much of it the aftermath of an injury she sustained in 1973, while starring in a dinner theater production in Florida. A piece of scenery crashed down on the actress during her opening night performance in the lightweight comedy Everybody Loves Opal, injuring her back. Sothern ultimately sued the theater owners, and collected a settlement, but her ability to walk was permanently impaired. She would use a cane for the remainder of her life.
More than most of her Golden Age peers from MGM, Sothern still found herself employable as a film actress in the 1970s. However, she did so, in part, by making herself available for roles that other leading ladies might have spurned. The low-budget thriller The Killing Kind (1973), released near the end of the “Scream Queen” cycle that had begun with Davis and Crawford’s What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), cast Sothern as the blowsy, world-weary mother of a recently released convict (played by a young John Savage) who goes on a killing spree.
The Killing Kind’s icky poster art, prominently featuring a limp rat being dangled by the tail, should have served notice to Maisie and Susie fans who might have ventured into the theater on the strength of Sothern’s star billing. Those who forged ahead might have been a bit shell-shocked at the sight of their favorite leading lady being told by her onscreen son that she’s “nothing but a fat old whore,” or at Sothern playing the weirdly incestuous mom who cackles with delight when she snaps a candid photo of her adult son naked in the shower. Then there’s the scene in which Sothern pays a $2 fee to drop off a trash can at the local dump—one that’s stuffed with the corpse of future Laverne & Shirley star Cindy Williams. (Sothern grimaces expressively when, safely past the dump attendant, she notices that a limp arm is dangling from the bag).
If The Killing Kind was not Sothern’s most dignified outing as an actress, it does have some moments of stylistic interest, thanks to director Curtis Harrington, and is something of a cult favorite today with horror buffs. Sothern herself, who’d long professed her fondness for character roles, was happy with the film itself, if not with its marketing. “It was a wonderful part,” she said. “The film was distributed so badly that it never got the recognition it deserved.”27
Nor did she denigrate Crazy Mama (1975), a cheap action film she made for veteran drive-in movie producer/director Roger Corman’s company. Most appreciated today as an example of the early accomplishments of the young Jonathan Demme, Mama cast Sothern as the matriarch of a family that turns to crime during the Depression, opposite leading lady Cloris Leachman and ingénue Linda Purl. Sothern had lots of screen time, but little of interest to do. She made the film a year or so after her on-stage injury, and is conspicuously absent from most of the fast-paced action scenes. Later, as film offers lessened, she gradually moved into smaller roles, in forgettable productions like The Little Dragons (1980), and higher-budgeted stinkers like The Manitou (1978).
In 1987, after Sothern’s shows had sat on the shelf for years, trade papers announced that the Nickelodeon cable network had acquired rerun rights to Susie and The Ann Sothern Show. The recently developed Nick at Nite service, which beamed classic sitcom reruns aimed at baby boomers on Nickelodeon’s evening schedule, was an ideal outlet for rediscovering the actress’ work. “(These) are the first series about working women,” said network vice-president Linda Kahn in announcing the deal. “Mary Tyler Moore and all the others came later.”28 Susie, in particular, would continue to play for several years to come.
Also raising Sothern’s profile that year was her best screen acting job in years, a co-starring role in the Bette Davis—Lillian Gish drama The Whales of August, which also featured Vincent Price. Director Lindsay Anderson, having seen Sothern play a featured role in the 1985 TV remake of Letter to Three Wives, offered her a role in his character drama about elderly sisters living together in Maine. She so charmed producer Mike Kaplan that he overcame some initial hesitation about her mobility, as she was still walking rather painfully with a cane. To Sothern, once she saw that the character’s name, like that of her real-life daughter, was Tisha, it seemed that the role in The Whales of August was meant to be hers.
The Whales of August was something of an oddity in the youth-obsessed 1980s, with Sothern, by then in her late 70s, flanked by a cast almost entirely made up of her contemporaries (or those, like Gish, older than she). Playing a longtime friend and neighbor of sisters Sarah Webber (Gish) and Libby Strong (Davis), Sothern livens up the proceedings considerably with her candor and humor. (Upon arriving for a visit, and not seeing Libby, she asks, “Where’s the old warhorse?”)
Later, the three ladies enjoy a little gossip—“You will never guess who finally got a hearing aid!” Sothern exclaims, while Gish sighs over the unexpected death of a mutual friend, who died “so young”—though Davis points out the lady in question was over eighty. Although Sothern’s screen time is limited, she gets the opportunity to create a full-fledged character, tearing up at one point over the suspension of her driver’s license, summoning up an appreciative smile for the gentlemanly attentions of Price, and sprinkling her dialogue with a Maine “ayuh” now and then.
The movie set was not without tensions. Bette Davis played the cantankerous old lady even when the cameras weren’t turning, endearing herself to few of her colleagues. Sothern, on the other hand, played poker with the film crew, did her work with a minimum of fuss, and walked away with an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress (though she correctly predicted that she would not take home the award). Despite the critical acclaim, and warm reception from moviegoers and critics happy to see her showcased again, it was her last film role.
In 1999, on the eve of Sothern’s 90th birthday, she was honored with a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, showcasing A Letter to Three Wives and ten more noteworthy selections from her more than 70 feature films. By that time, she had also been discovered by feminist scholars, who noted the intelligence and independence of the characters she played in the 1950s and earlier.
She spent her final years at home in her beloved Ketchum, Idaho, where she had lived full time since 1984, preferring to be away from the traffic, crime, and hubbub of Hollywood. The woman who had once owned five businesses was content to settle down in a rented house, saying, “I don’t want to own anything anymore.”29 Aside from daughter Tisha, who is today a florist in nearby Hailey, Sothern had four cats to keep her company. Frustrated by the limitations of her body as she aged, she plowed ahead nonetheless. “I’m exactly like my grandmother,” she told a reporter in 1987. “She lived to be 93. She never gave up. They pulled the sheet over her three times, and she pulled it down.”30
Her prediction proved accurate. On March 15, 2001, Sothern died of heart failure at the age of 92. Despite her many successes, she was disappointed that she hadn’t been allowed to accomplish more, saying, “I think Hollywood has been terrible to me. Hollywood doesn’t respond to a strong woman, not at all. I was too independent. How dare a woman be competitive or produce her own shows?”31