CBC Television Series, 1952-1982
by Blaine Allan
Return to
CBC Series Index
CONCERNING WOMEN
Sun 12:30-1:00 p.m., 23 May-12 Sep 1976
Executive producer Kay Smith collected programs produced in Halifax, Ottawa,
and Vancouver in 1975, International Women's Year, and packaged them as a
seventeen part series on women in different parts of contemporary society.
Programs included Kids' Attitudes, on children's perception of changes in
women's status and roles; Alcan - Women in the Labour Force, on the fifty-seven
women who worked at Alcan's smelter in Kitimat, B.C.; Women in Sport; The
Single Woman; and Women and Mental Health. The series was produced in
Vancouver, and the programs were introduced and narrated by Judy Piercey.
Sun 8:30-9:00 p.m., 14 Sep-5 Oct 1952
Sun 3:00-4:00 p.m., 6 Nov-18 Dec 1960
Sun 3:00-4:00 p.m., 20 May-24 Jun 1962
Mon 10:00-11:00 p.m., 2 Jul-17 Sep 1965
The CBC has, understandably, produced a number of musical programs and series
simply titled Concert. The first month of CBC television included a weekly,
half-hour concert, produced in Toronto by Franz Kraemer and broadcast on Sunday
evenings.
In autumn 1960, the network presented a series of eight programs, titled
Concert, that highlighted compositions and performances by Canadians. Host
Henri Bergeron introduced guest conductors and soloists in a one-hour broadcast
each Sunday afternoon. Each program included at least one composition by a
Canadian. The following conductors and musicians appeared on the show: Roland
Leduc and violinist Arthur Garami; Remus Izincoca and clarinetist Rafael
Masella; Jacques Beaudry and tenor Louis Quilicot; Otto Werner-Mueller and
cellist Walter Joachim; Alexander Brott and cellist Zara Nelsova; Wilfred
Pelletier and soprano Irene Salemka; charles Houdret and pianist Monik Grenier;
and Roland Leduc again, with tenor Leopold Simoneau.
A 1962 Concert program, also one hour on Sunday afternoons, featured vocalists,
instrumentalists, and dancers in a summer series of classical music.
Thu 8:30-9:30 p.m., 6 May-24 Jun 1954
Thu 10:00-11:00 p.m., 29 Sep 1955-22 Mar 1956
Thu 10:00-11:00 p.m., 4 Oct 1956-21 Mar 1957
Tue 10:00-11:00 p.m., 24 Sep 1957-11 Mar 1958
The Concert Hour, a classical music program, was produced in Montreal and
transmitted on both English and French stations, and included commentary in
both languages. CBFT-TV had presented L'Heure du concert every other week,
alternating with Teletheatre, but the musical show changed to a weekly
broadcast when the network picked it up in spring of 1954. Performers included
Glenn Gould, Robert Savoie, Marielle Pelletier, Herta Glaz, Louis Quilico, and
Rosalyn Tureck.
The Concert Hour included more than instrumental and vocal performances of
classical works. It also featured contemporary selections, and the show
regularly included excerpts from opera and ballet. Conductors included Wilfred
Pelletier, Desire Dufaw, Boyd Neel, Roland Leduc, Paul Scherman, Jean
Deslauriers, and Sylvio Lacharite. The program also featured the work of such
choreographers as Ludmilla Chiriaeff, Heino Heiden, Francoise Sullivan, Marc
Beaudet, Brian Macdonald, Jury Gotschalks, and David Adams.
The studio director for the program was Irving Gutman, and the producer was
Pierre Morin. Starting in the autumn 1954 season, Pierre Mercure and Noel
Gauvin produced The Concert Hour on alternate weeks.
Wed 9:30-10:00 p.m., 18 Feb-4Aug 1976
In a series of seven half-hour programs, Victor Feldbrill, the conductor of the
Toronto Symphony Orchestra, introduced a variety of musical selections. In the
first show of the series, produced by John Coulson, the Chamber Players of
Toronto, with musical director Victor Martin and cellist Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi
played a concerto by Vivaldi. To provide an idea of the variety in the series,
in a later segment, produced by Mickael Sinelnikoff, fiddler Jean Carignan
played Fantasy for Fiddle and Strings, a concerto composed for Carignan by
Donald Patrinquin. The Chamber Players of Toronto returned in an instalment
devoted to Bach and Marcello. Other performers in the series included Stephen
Staryk, Walter Joachim, and conductor Jacques Beaudry.
Sun 10:00-11:00 p.m., 27 Jul-31 Aug 1969
Host Percy Saltzman and announcer Bill Kehoe presented this five part program
on space and space travel. In segments titled Sounds of Silence, The Other
Side of the Sky, The High Frontier, A Star to Steer Her By, and Childhood's
End, Saltzman examined the ideas of outer space from ancient times up to the
Apollo space program, which had just put a man on the moon. The series
concentrated on the period that started in 1957 with the Soviet Union's Sputnik
launch, and examined space exploration through interviews with aerospace
engineers and scientists. Film editor Robert Murphy assembled film footage
collected from the U.S.A., the Soviet Union, the U.K., and France. The series
was written by Noel Moore and produced in Ottawa by Rod Holmes.
Sun 10:00-11:00 p.m., 20 Mar 1977
Mon 10:00-11:00 p.m., 21 Mar 1977
In Converging Lines, the CBC presented two, one hour documentaries. A People,
A Place, A Book, produced by Louise Lore, concerned Judaism, and The Surrender,
produced by Herb Krosney, dealt with Islam. The two programs informed
Canadians about aspects of the two faiths through visits with believers in
different locations in the world.
Sun 2:00-2:30 p.m., 16 Feb-6 Apr 1975
The CBC aired six of the seven black-and-white films that the National Film
Board produced about the Steinberg corporation to provide a view of management
operations in a major Canadian company. The six programs, produced, written,
and directed by Arthur Hammond, each ran a half-hour. (The seventh, called
After Mr. Sam, was also directed by Hammond and runs nearly eighty minutes.)
Growth, the first program, traced the development of the family business and
the current possibilities for expansion. The second program, Real Estate,
considered Steinberg's position as a landowner in Quebec and as an influence on
how and where people live. International Operations, the third program, dealt
with the effects of Steinberg's first Paris store on the shopping habits of the
French. The Market, the fourth film, outlines corporate strategy in relation
to suppliers, competitors, and customers. The fifth program, Motivation,
concerned the corporation's relations to its employees and their work. The
final show in the series, Bilingualism, involved Steinberg's relations to
Quebec society. Hammond had the offscreen and onscreen participation of
company president and founder Sam Steinberg for the production. The films were
edited by Pierre Lasry, and the cinematographer was Jean-Pierre Lachapelle.
George Pearson was the series' executive producer.
Sun 9:00-10:00 p.m., 5 Oct-2 Nov 1969
Sun 9:00-10:00 p.m., 22 Nov 1970-3 Jan 1971
Executive producer Ronald Weyman attempted to follow-up the success of Wojeck
with another series about a doctor. Where Steve Wojeck had been a coroner, and
the dramatic roots of his stories were in crime investigations, Greg Corwin was
a psychiatrist who had given up his specialty to work in an inner city general
practice, and his stories were more allied to the genre of melodrama.
The five week series opened with a two part story, directed by Peter Carter,
called Does Anybody Here Know Denny? It introduced Corwin, played by John
Horton, a Canadian who had worked in England for seven years and more recently
at the Shaw Festival; "Doc" James, the older doctor Corwin assisted, played by
actor and writer Alan King; and Mac, the office nurse played by Ruth
Springford. Denny, a wealthy and spoiled, but emotionally unstable young woman
played by Margot Kidder, had been Corwin's patient. They meet again at her
father's funeral, and they fall in love. Denny, however, is blackmailed, and
Corwin ultimately fails her.
Apples of Gold in Pictures of Silver, directed by Daryl Duke, featured Eileen
Heckart and Nehemiah Persoff as Hannah and Sol Kestenberg, a Jewish couple in
their fifties who have resigned themselves to living childless when the woman
discovers that she is pregnant. Corwin's laboratory tests uncover a
complication in the pregnancy that threatens Hannah's life.
Ronald Weyman directed Boxful of Promises, a story of Pix, a newshawk played by
Eric Christmas whose apparent poverty conceals actual wealth. Corwin becomes
involved when one of his patients steals Pix's fortune and Pix suffers a heart
attack.
What Do You See When You Turn Out the Lights? featured Jane Mallett, Ron
Hartmann, and Deborah Turnbull.
Corwin drew on character actors from Canada and the U.S.A. for its supporting
cast. A large budget series, it was commended for its production values and
for the visual quality in director of photography Grahame Woods's images, but
the show was roundly criticized for the banality of its stories and the
inadequacy of the dialogue and acting. The series was created and written by
Sandy Stern, who had written for Festival and Wojeck, and who had trained as a
medical doctor himself, which for the CBC vouched for the program's
authenticity.
Sun 2:30-3:00 p.m., 12 Feb-16 Apr 1967
Sun 2:00-2:30 p.m., 16 Apr-18 Jun 1967
A nineteen week series of half-hour broadcasts produced in Montreal,
Counterpoint attempted to alleviate tensions between Quebec and English Canada
by stressing what CBC's publicity called "the surging spirit of interracial
co-operation." Armande Saint-Jean, columnist for Sept Jours, and Arthur
Garmaise, formerly a radio actor and producer and more recently an executive in
a Quebec construction firm, were hosts for the program. Producer David
Bloomberg and writer Edgar Sarton concentrated the series on elements and
makers of French-Canadian culture, not on the major figures of Quebec and
federal politics. the show covered such items as jazz in Quebec; Anglophone
patrons of a French-style bistro and Francophone who frequented a British-style
pub; and a women's hockey team. The show profiled such figuress as Jean
Ostiguy, stock broker and patron of the arts, Peter White, newspaper publisher
and assistant to Quebec Premier Daniel Johnson, and federal Minister of Energy,
Mines and Resources Jean- Luc Pepin. The series also presented a program on
Quebec cinema, with interviews with directors Donald Brittain, Gilles Carle,
Jean-Pierre Lefebvre, and Larry Kent.
Country Calendar, the half-hour program in which the CBC provided regular
coverage of agriculture, started on an interconnected network in Eastern
Canada, with Norm Garriock's commentary on farm matters in the first half of
the show and Earl Cox on gardening in the last fifteen minutes. Garriock
provided news on the business of agriculture, weather reports, and farm news on
films from the CBC News Service. Cox set up in the studio to talk about and
demonstrate tips for the garden according to the time of year. The show was
produced by Norman Caton, under the supervision of Franz Kraemer for television
production and of Murray Creed for the CBC's Farms Department. (Creed, who had
been the farms and fisheries commentator for the CBC in the Maritimes, had
moved to Toronto to develop the program.)
The CBC subsequently introduced editions of Country Calendar for other regions
of the country and programs were exchanged among broadcast centres. Editions
appeared in Winnipeg and Vancouver later in the first season, and in the
Maritimes in September 1955.
Producers of Country Calendar included Dick Knowles (l959-6l), Eric McLeery
(l96l-69), and Ted Regan, under the supervision of executive producer Doug
Lower (l969-7l). The show's hosts and interviewers included Johnny Moles
(l958-60), Jim Ross (l960-6l), John Foster (l96l-67), and Bob Carbert
(l964-67).
Country Calendar became Country Canada, the CBC's national magazine of
agricultural news and information. The program continued to cover farm news,
but also aimed to be pertinent to urban viewers. It continued to exchange
information and programming with other nations and to cover developments in
Canada through a network of regional contributors, including Bob Hutt from
Halifax, Hal Andrews and David Quinton from St. John's, and Garnett Anthony
from Edmonton.
Doug Lower continued to act as executive producer from 197l to 1977, and he was
followed by Neil Andrews (l977-8l), Lower again (l98l-82), and Robert Petch
(l982- ). The program's producers were Ted Regan (l97l-72), Tom Molyneaux
(l972-76), Bill Smith (l976-77), Michael Barnes (l976-78), Les Harris
(l976-78), Ray Burley (l978-8l), Robert Petch (l980-82), Robert Doan (l980-82),
Lynn Sleigh (l980-82), David Tucker (l980-8l), David Quinton (l980-8l), and
Jane DuBroy (l98l-83).
The program's hosts and commeentators were Ron Neily (l97l-74), Laurie Jennings
(l97l-74), Glen Powell (l974-75), John O'Leary (l974-75), and Sandy Cushon
(l975-83)
Fri 9:30-10:00 p.m., 27 Jun-24 Sep 1958
Produced by Drew Crossan and starring singers Don Francks and Patti Lewis, with
Bert Niosi and his band, this musical variety show, set in a country club
ballroom, was a summer replacement.
Sat 9:00-9:30 p.m., 30 Jun-29 Sep 1956
Fri 9:30-10:00 p.m., 28 Sep 1956-4 Jul 1958
Fri 9:30-10:00 p.m., 3 Oct 1958-31 Jul 1959
FRi 8:00-8:30 p.m., 2 Oct 1959-25 Jun 1965
This showcase for Canada's country music talent originally starred popular
fiddler King Ganam and his Sons of the West, along with several of the most
popular winners in the CBC's Pick the Stars competition: the Hames Sisters
(Norma, Jean, and Marjorie), Lorraine Foreman, and Tommy Hunter (who was also a
member of Ganam's band). From the start, Gordie Tapp was the show's host, and
also appeared as the debonair character, Gaylord, or, more often, with
blacked-out teeth and dressed in bib overalls, plaid shirt, and straw hat, as
hayseed Cousin Clem.
Regulars in the troupe also included Tommy Common, Johnny Davidson, fiddler Al
Cherney, Mary Frances (l960), Pat Hervey (l962-63), Wally Traugot, the show's
square dangcing chorus, called the Singing Swinging Eight (which at one point
counted Gordon Lightfoot among its members), and Lloyd Cooper and the Country
Hoedown orchestra. The producer was Dave Thomas.
By the time Country Hoedown ended, Gordie Tapp was well established as a star
in Canadian country music culture, and used that fame and his connections with
fellow Canadian expatriates in the U.S.A., program creators and producers Frank
Peppiatt and John Aylesworth, to gain a place in Hee Haw (where Cousin Clem
continues to appear). Country Hoedown also made Tommy Hunter, "Canada's
Country Gentleman," a television star, and The Tommy Hunter Show immediately
succeeded the program that brought him fame, and became the network's
principal country music series.
Photo (courtesy of CBC) shows Gordie Tapp, Tommy Common
(left), the Haymes Sisters, Lorraine Foreman, Tommy Hunter (rear).
Mon-Fri 12:30-1:00 p.m., 19 Nov 1979-4 Jan 1980
A daily drama, Country Joy concerned the lives of the citizens of Coronet,
Alberta, a fictional twon l50 miles from Edmonton. Howard Dallin played Dick
Brugencate, local real estate agent and the mayor of Coronet, who as the series
opened was pressing for the construction of a modern medical facility in town.
One of the reasons for his insistence was the recent death of his wife in an
automobile accident, and Dick's belief that her life might have been saved in
an up-to-date medical centre. On a committee, he met Joy Burnham, a health
services executive played by Judith Maby, and they fall in love and marry.
Joy, however, faced the disapproval of dick's family, which included his
seventeen year old daughter Pam, played by Debra AuCoin, his fifteen year old
son Bob, played by Jim Calderbank, and his mother Helen, played by Vernis
McQuaig. Other regular actors included Jack Wyntars and Pamela Boyd. Mark
Schoenburg produced Country Joy in Edmonton.
Fri 9:00-10:00 p.m., 10 Aug-14 Sep 1973
A summer replacement for The Tommy Hunter Show, Country Roads starred singer
Ronnie Prophet in a one hour, weekly showcase for young, Canadian country music
talent. The show included comedy sketches and characters, such as Granny
Slanders, played by comedian Gwen Neighbours, and her rural newspaper, and
Harold the Frog and Yackie Duck, two puppets made by John and Alison Vandergun,
with voices by Prophet. Programs also included regular musical slots, such as
"It's Cryin' Time Again," with country music's hurtin' songs, "The Grease
Spot," which featured rockabilly music, and the "New Song Spot." Other musical
regulars included The Peaches, the OK Chorale, thirteen year old Joey Tardiff,
and Dave Woods and the Country Roads Brass. Bill Lynn produced the show in
Toronto.
Country Sunshine With Myrna Lorrie
Thu 9:30-10:00 p.m., 25 Jul-8 Aug 1974
After a run of several seasons in the post-hockey broadcast Countrytime, Myrna
Lorrie starred in this summer series, which featured music by Eric Robertson in
a weekly half-hour of country music, produced by Cy True at CBC Halifax.
Countrytime, like Country Calendar, was a half-hour program of agricultural
information. It was produced in Halifax, Toronto, Winnipeg, and Vancouver and
presented fifteen minutes of national news on recent developments in
agricuture. The following fifteen minutes were taken up with local gardening
news and tips by Earl Cox for the Ontario and Quebec area and by Gordon Warren
for the Maritimes and Newfoundland. Hosts for the show were John Ross
(l960-62), John Foster (l962-63), and George Atkins (l963-66). Countrytime was
produced by Renee Elmer and John Foster.
Sat 10:30-11:00 p.m., 28 Feb-11 Jul 1970
Sat 10:30-11:00 p.m., 3 Oct 1970-10 Apr 1971
Sat 10:30-11:00 p.m., 7 Aug-2 Oct 1971 (R)
Sat 10:30-11:00 p.m., 9 Oct 1971-24 Jun 1972
Sat 10:30-11:00 p.m., 30 Sep 1972-28 Jul 1973
Thu 9:30-10:00 p.m., 4 Oct 1973-3 Jan 1974
Wed 10:30-11:00 p.m., 30 Jan-3 Apr 1974
In the early 1970s, the CBC followed the Saturday night hockey broadcasts with
this country music concert series, taped in the auditorium of Dartmouth High
School in Nova Scotia, and starting 1972 in the larger auditorium of the Prince
Arthur High School, also in Dartmouth. Myrna Lorrie had been a star of country
music in Canada since she was a chile, and Countrytime was principally her
show. She shared the stage with musical director Vic Mullen and the supporting
band, the Hickorys (Ron Naugle, Ken Meisner, and Stan Taylor), hosts Don
Tremaine (l970-73) and Mike Graham (l973-74), and guests such as Wilf Carter
Blake Emmons, the Mercy Brothers, the Allan Sisters, and Lynn Jones.
Countrytime was produced by Cy True of CBC Halifax.
See Live And Learn.
Wed 9:30-10:00 p.m., 10 Sep 1952
Wed 9:30-10:00 p.m., 1 Oct-18 Oct 1952
Wed 8:30-9:00 p.m., 22 Oct-19 Oct 1952
Wed 9:30-10:00 p.m., 26 Nov 1952
Drew Crossan produced this television adaptation of a CBC radio panel show. It
featured host Neil Leroy and regular panelists Lister Sinclair and Kate Aitken,
and two guest panelists each week.
Mon/Wed/Fri 5:00-6:00 p.m., 29 Dec 1952-5 Oct 1953
Mon/Wed/Fri 5:30-6:00 p.m., 12 Oct-16 Oct 1953
Tue/Thu 5:30-6:30 p.m., 4 Nov-31 Dec 1953
Producers Joanne Hughes and Peggy Nairn included a half-hour program of western
films in their afternoon programming for children in the first year of CBC
television.
Wed 9:00-9:30 p.m., 3 Jul-25 Sep 1968
The production of Creative Persons, a series of twelve, half-hour film
portraits, was supported cooperatively by the CBC, the BBC, National
Educational Television in the U.S.A., and Bayerischer Rundfunk in West Germany.
Allan King and Roger Graef were executive producers of the series for Allan
King Associates. The filmmakers employed direct cinema techniques to examine a
number of people who make contemporary art of different types. The subjects,
in programs that were individually titled, "Who Is. . . ?" with the name of the
principal filling the blank, included novelist James Jones, in a film directed
by King; composer Pierre Boulez, Maurice Bejart, founder of the Ballet of the
20th Century, sculptor Jacques Lipschitz, architect Walter Gropius, and artist
Rufino Tamayo, in segments directed by Graef; designer Sean Kenny, Oscar
Niemeyer, the designer of Brasilia, and playwright Max Frisch, in films
directed by William Brayne; painter Richard Smith, directed by Denis Postle;
musician Sonny Rollins, in a profile directed by Dick Fontaine; artist Victor
Vasarely; and writer Norman Mailer.
Crisis of Middle Age (Is There Life After Youth?)
A series of four half-hour programs with Dr. David Levinson, produced by Mark
Blandford.
Thu 4:30-5:00 p.m., 10 Apr-26 Jun 1969
The CBC's Schools and Youth Programming department presented this weekly
half-hour of films, most produced by the National Film Board, as after- school
viewing on the activities of Canadians. The titles included: Aircraft in
Forest Fire Control; A Question of Identity; Taming the Rocky Mountain Trench;
Angotee: Story of an Eskimo Boy; The Sea Got In Your Blood; Rogers Pass; North
Pacific; Twenty Million People; Three Farmers; The Voyageurs; Victory Over the
Nahanni; and The Annanacks.
Sat 2:00-4:00 p.m., 9 Dec 1961-20 Jan 1962
Sat 2:00-3:00 p.m., 5 Jan-16 Mar 1963
Sat 3:00-4:00 p.m., 21 Dec 1963-7 Mar 1964
Sat 2:00-3:00 p.m., 11 Dec 1965-
Bob McLaughlin produced this annual series of curling coverage, with announcer
Don Wittman, from the Rossmore Curling Club in Winnipeg.
The CBC adapted the formula of the U.S. musical variety series, Your Hit
Parade, to produce its own weekly half-hour countdown of popular music. Austin
Willis was the show's host. Each week, the regulars Wally Koster, Joyce Hahn,
and Phyllis Marshall, Adam Timoon (l956-57), the vocal group the MCs (or the
Emcees: Harry Harding, Ken Reaney, Iver MacIver, and Ken McRae), and an
orchestra led by clarinetist Bert Niosi would perform a selection of the top
musical hits in the country, determined in cooperation with radio and
television stations across the country. The show also featured a guest star
each week, and the producers also brought in a guest disk jockey to talk about
the top ten and predict the coming hits. Although the program's run was well
within the era of rock and roll, Cross Canada Hit Parade consisted mostly of
production numbers of show tunes and light popular music. The productions in
this popular series could become elaborate. The first show of the 1956 season
was played on a set that the producers boasted was the largest used in Canada
to date. It included Conklin's Children's Carnival, with three elephants and a
roller coaster.
Cross Canada Hit Parade was produced by Stan Harris, with Peter MacFarlane for
the 1955 season, then with Drew Crossan, and written by Saul Ilson and John
Aylesworth. Bert Niosi was the musical director, and Alan and Blanche Lund
choreographed the show.
Tue 10:00-10:30 p.m., 3 Apr-24 Apr 1955
Crossfire, a companion to Citizens' Forum, was a series of four discussion
broadcasts, arranged by Art Stinson and produced by Cliff Solway. The programs
alternated between two different formats. In one, an assembled panel of
experts opened itself to questions on different subjects by a studio audience.
In the other, a form of debate, each side of a question had two supporters, one
a "witness," the other a "cross-examiner." After the cases for both sides were
presented, a chairman provided a summary and invited the audience to judge the
merits of the arguments and decide the winner.
Sun 4:00-4:30 p.m., 2 Jan-26 Jun 1977
In segments produced in Toronto, Halifax, St. John's, Winnipeg, Ottawa,
Windsor, Edmonton, and Vancouver, young people demonstrated and talked about
their interests. Dick Donovan produced this half-hour broadcast.
Mon-Fri 3:55-4:00 p.m., 2 Jan-15 Jun 1962
Cross-Section was a five-minute film of non-topical news, broadcast every
weekday.
Fri 9:00-9:30 p.m., 26 Dec 1952-24 Apr 1953
Tue 8:00-8:30 p.m., 12 May-30 Jun 1953
A literate quiz program in which moderator Kim McIlroy provided crossword
puzzle-style clues to James Bannerman, Ralph Allen, editor of Maclean's
magazine, and two guest panelists. Morley Callaghan replaced McIlroy as
moderator starting 20 March 1953.
In addition to its regular coverage of Canadian and international curling, the
CBC sponsored an annual bonspiel. The network broadcast the matches, in edited
form, in one hour slots on Saturday afternoons in the winter. From 1968 to
l972, the series was called CBC Championship Curling, and from 1973 to 1979 it
gained the title CBC Curling Classic. The hosts and commentators in this
sports program included Alex Trebek (l966-70), Ken Watson (l966), Doug Maxwell
(l968-78), Don Chevrier (l969-79), Don Duguid (l97l-79), and Don Wittman
(l978-79). In 1968, comedian and sports enthusiast Johnny Wayne joined the
team as a commentator. The producers of the program for CBC Sports were Gordon
Craig (l966-68), Dino Marcus (l968- 69), Rick Rice (l969-70), Leo Herbert
(l970-77), and Laurence Kimber (l977- 79).
Tue 7:30-8:00 p.m., 20 Sep-27 Dec 1977
The CBC hoped that Perry Rosemond could follow the success of King of
Kensington with another situation comedy. Rosemond drew on his own past when
his uncle managed a Winnipeg burlesque house that still featured vaudeville
acts as well as strippers, and when he was a student at Ryerson Polytechnical
Institute in the 1950s and lived in a Toronto fraternity house, where people
like Larry Zolf, Don Owen, and Al Waxman dropped in, and shared a rented room
with Gordon Pinsent and Allan Blye. He prepared a script about a troupe of
young performers who shared a house and did zany, knockabout comedy. He had
cast the project with three members of Toronto's Second City company, Andrea
Martin, Dave Thomas, and Catherine O'Hara, and Toronto stage actor Saul
Rubinek, and in October 1976 he produced a pilot called The Rimshots, directed
by George Bloomfield. In the pilot, the group's gig at the O'Keefe Centre is
cancelled and they wind up playing for a Hungarian club. When they discover
that the audience does not understand a word of English, they adapt to the
situation and play pantomime. When the CBC agreed to go ahead with the series,
conditions for the performers had changed. Martin, Thomas, and O'Hara were
already committed to Global TV's Second City series, which would have caused
scheduling conflicts. The actors also wanted the CBC to retain Bloomfield as
director and guarantees of their control over scripts and producers should
Rosemond leave the project. In addition, the performers wanted a ten day
shooting schedule for each episode, which was to be produced, like the pilot,
on film. The CBC and the performers had no contractual ties, and parted ways
when the network refused their demands. (See Martin Knelman, "The Casting of
Custard Pie," The Canadian [24 Septermber 1977], pp. l0-l3.)
Rosemond had to retitle the project, because the CBC thought "rimshots" too
suggestive, and recast it. Three of the members of Custard Pie, as the group
and the show were renamed, came from the Toronto and southern Ontario theatre
scene. Kate Lynch played Sheila Ann Murphy, who aspired to be a serious
actress, not just a comic player and clown. Nancy Dolman was Maggie Tucker, a
singer who worked part-time at a restaurant/gasoline station called Aldo's.
(Les Carlson played Aldo Ludwit.) Derek McGrath played Harvey Douglas, the
dough-faced, naive member of the group who owned the van that was their only
means of transportation. The show also featured in supporting roles Vivian
Reis as Vicie DeMarco, the group's landlady. Rosemond and the CBC publicity
department were lucky, though, that he was able to cast Peter Kastner as Leo
Strauss, a performer and the group's manager. Kastner remained well-known to
Canadian audiences as the callow youth in Don Owen's feature film, Nobody Waved
Good-bye, as the co- star of the CBC series Time Of Your Life, and as the star
Francis Ford Coppola's thesis film, You're A Big Boy Now, and of the lamentable
U.S. situation comedy, The Ugliest Girl in Town. Kastner had worked in the
U.S., but remained out of sight in lead roles for some years. So, the CBC
could brag that Custard Pie represented the return of Peter Kastner.
Unfortunately, he wasn't enough. The production never really recovered from
the setbacks involved in the transition from pilot to series. Rehearsals
started in July 1977, and the series was produced on videotape at the breakneck
rate of two half-hour shows per week. The frenetic production pace was
reflected in the loud and broad performances, which made the characters more
abrasive than likeable. The series ran for the thirteen episodes that had
originally been ordered and was not renewed.
Return to CBC Series Index
CUSTARD PIE
Country Hoedown made its premiere on Saturday evenings as a summer replacement
for On Camera. It moved to Friday for a regular slot in the autumn broadcast
schedule, and there it stayed for nine years. It followed the lead of Holiday
Ranch, and was one of the most popular musical variety shows the CBC ever
produced.
