‘Fantasy Sitcoms of the 1960s – A Compendium’ (review)

Written by Edward Gross
Published by BearManor Media

Edward Gross is a prolific author of pop culture books and articles and his works are never less than interesting. Fantasy Sitcoms of the 1960s – A Compendium, for example, is most interesting, with lots of basic facts and some trivia that even I didn’t know…and if you knew me, you’d know how hard that is to come up with. My problem with this book, though, is that it feels quite rambling, uneven and inconsistent.

Subject-wise, if you’re a classic TV buff, you’ll recognize all of the television series covered here. Bewitched, The Munsters, The Addams Family, Mr. Ed, My Favorite Martian, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, I Dream of Jeannie, My Living Doll, The Flying Nun, The Girl with Something Extra, Nanny and the Professor, and even the infamous My Mother the Car are covered in some detail.

There were, of course, earlier fantasy sitcoms—Topper, for instance, about a man and his two ghost friends—but the ‘60s was the Golden Age for such silliness in our living rooms.

Actually, despite this volume’s title, only ten are from the 1960s. Two more are leftovers from the trend that popped up in the earliest years of the 1970s. One could argue about the exclusion of other ‘60s shows such as The Smother Brothers (where Tommy is an angel), Get Smart, Captain Nice, or Mr. Terrific, all of which had similarly science-fiction/fantasy premises, but at more than 400 pages, let’s just take a look at what’s here and not worry about what isn’t.

Most of the entries follow a roughly standard format that begins with a brief summary of the series’ premise, background, and TV history.

This is followed by behind-the-scenes info and trivia, then sometimes long biographical pieces about the show’s various stars. While the latter sections are the book’s most interesting to me, they’re also the most inconsistent, with the Bewitched chapter giving star Elizabeth Montgomery only a dozen pages while memorable eleven-time guest star Paul Lynde gets 18 and Alice Pearce, who died after only one season, gets 13 as well.

Much of the Bewitched section is also odd in that it’s largely given over to quotes from an entirely different author, Herbie J. Pilato. Granted, Herbie was able to interview many of the cast and has written extensively about the show and its stars in multiple books, but still… Fellow authors and TV historians Ed Robertson and Geoffrey Mark are also quoted numerous times throughout the book.

There’s a big ol’ chapter about The Munsters and The Addams Family, oddly followed by long separate chapters on each series, repeating much of the same information.

I Dream of Jeannie is another one that gets a particularly long section, just under 60 pages, but for some reason, it goes through Barbara Eden’s career individually, one project at a time.

Despite some sections being almost books on their own, others get far less coverage. Both of Sally Field’s two series discussed in the book, The Flying Nun and The Girl with Something Extra, are dealt with only six and seven pages, respectively.

The word “compendium” is defined online as, “a collection of concise but detailed information about a particular subject, especially in a book or other publication.” Fantasy Sitcoms of the 1960s is literally subtitled as a compendium and therefore was never meant to be comprehensive. And there’s certainly a lot of detailed information and trivia (Did you know that Julie Newmar was once engaged to Western author Louis L’Amour? I sure didn’t). And with the exception of a few crazy long sections, it is concise.

Therefore, we have to admit that the book accomplishes what Ed set out to do. While the seeming lack of a thorough edit makes me have to consider Fantasy Sitcoms of the 1960s as one of the author’s lesser works, I can’t deny I enjoyed it.

Booksteve recommends.