TV Urban Legends Revealed #1
This is the first in a series of examinations of TV legends and whether they are true or false.
Click here to view an archive of the TV urban legends featured so far.
Let’s begin!
TV LEGEND: Cheers was a fire hazard.
STATUS: True
On November 28, 1942, the trendy Boston nightclub, the Cocoanut Grove, caught fire with a packed crowd inside of over 1,000 people (the club’s capacity was 460).
The club had recently expanded with an attached lounge (the Melody Lounge). The club was decked up in a Casablanca theme, so there were paper and cloth decorations hanging from the ceiling and paper palm trees everywhere. Around 10:30 PM, a busboy went to replace a missing/blown out light bulb and dropped the replacement. He lit a match to find the bulb on the dark floor, found the bulb, blew out the match and replaced the bulb. However, the match managed to set a nearby paper palm tree on fire. That lit up and quickly spread to the ceiling where it set other decorations on fire – soon the fire was feeding off of oxygen and spread through the club.
Decades later, a re-opened fire investigation determined that it was actually methyl chloride that had leaked from a faulty refrigerator in the Melody Lounge that had led to the fire spreading so quickly.
In any event, while the fire itself was deadly, easily HUNDREDS of lives could have been saved had it not been for the construction of the bar. The main entrance was a lone revolving door. As you might imagine, a lone revolving door is quickly rendered useless by hundreds of people charging at it. Other sidedoors were actually bolted shut to keep patrons from skipping out on their bill. A stained-glass window was boarded over. And the few doors that WERE open were doors that opened IN to the building, and again, when a large group of people are charging towards a door, a door that opens IN to a building is effectively useless.
The tragedy was horrific, and actually stole some headlines from World War II.
The owner of the bar was later arrested and convicted on 19 charges of involuntary manslaughter (19 random victims were chosen to represent the dead as a whole).
So what does this gruesome turn of events have to do with Cheers, you ask?
Well, some of the many changes in the fire code in Boston after the Cocoanut Grove tragedy is that any revolving door entrance has to have a regular entrance adjacent to it. In addition, any and all exits from a public bar, restaurant, club, etc. have to open OUT. They cannot open IN.
Let’s take a look at Cheers, courtesy of the Season 7 episode, “Norm, Is That You?”
Yep, Cheers’ entrance opens IN.
Obviously, the Cheers bar is a set and not a real bar, but still, that’s pretty darn interesting.
TV LEGEND: Empty Nest was a spin-off without actually spinning off the lead characters.
STATUS: True
Empty Nest is already notable as one of the few spin-off TV series to ever spin its own series off (which Empty Nest did with Nurses in 1991), but the sitcom starring Richard Mulligan as a recent widower dealing with both the death of his wife and his two adult daughters moving back home.
The show ran from October 1988 to April 1995. Paired with The Golden Girls, it was a mighty ratings one-two punch in the late 80s/early 90s for NBC (and Mulligan even took home an Emmy for Best Lead Actor in a Comedy in 1989).
However, the show had a rather bizarre lineage from Golden Girls to Empty Nest. You see, the show was a spin-off of the Golden Girls without any of the lead characters actually ever appearing on an episode of The Golden Girls!
On May 16, 1987, the season 2 finale of the Golden Girls aired. Titled “Empty Nests,” it was about a married couple (played by Paul Dooley and Rita Moreno) who were having marital problems while dealing with “empty nest syndrome,” which is when older couples deal with the fact that their children have, you know, left the “nest.” The couple (George and Renee Corliss)’s daughter had just left home for college.
Show creator (and Golden Girls creator and, now that I mention it, Nurses creator, as well) Susan Harris was dealing with “empty nest syndrome” herself at the time, but the network felt that even with a sweet Golden girls lead-in, a show about a bickering older couple would grow tired.
So (according to Harris) “we killed the wife” and the show suddenly became about a widowed pediatrician and his adult daughters moving back home, and in October of 1988, Empty Nest debuted and the rest is TV history!
David Leisure was on the original version, but as a test pilot neighbor named Oliver instead of the now familiar cruise ship pursor Charley. Also, the same set was used for the house.
Still, I find it quite amazing that, here, a CONCEPT was spun-off rather than actual CHARACTERS!
Thanks to Matt Browning’s awesome Empty Nest web site for some information!
TV LEGEND: There are no black people in Mayberry.
STATUS: False
Let’s get it out of the way right off the bat. In the entire eight season run of The Andy Griffith Show, there was only one black character who ever had a speaking line.
That’s pretty weak right there.
That said, the oft-repeated claim that there are no black people in Mayberry is false on the face, not even counting the aforementioned Rockne Tarkington, who played Opie’s football coach, Flip Conway, in one of the later seasons of the show.
In addition, I am not counting Mayberry RFD, which was better with regards to black characters having speaking roles.
No, just counting regular episodes of The Andy Griffith Show, there were frequent usage of black extras on the show.
From a Mayberry fan site, here are a bunch of episodes with black extras in them…
Now don’t get me wrong, that’s not very impressive, and if you wish to complain about the meager display of black residents of Mayberry, I wouldn’t blame you.
But the actual claim (and I’ve seen it made often) is that there are no black people in Mayberry, and that’s not true.
Okay, that’s it for this week!
Feel free (heck, I implore you!) to write in with your suggestions for future installments! My e-mail address is bcronin@legendsrevealed.com
I always wondered what happened to Richard Mulligan after Soap.
Huh, I always knew Empty Nest was a Golden Girls spinoff but I never knew it was a concept, not a character, spin-off. Crazy, and good to know.
PS The legend headings are still titled “toy legends.”
Dreyfus the dog crossed over more than Mulligan.
Mulligan’s character Dr. Harry Weston was in three episodes of Golden Girls, but I can’t determine if it was before or after Empty Nest premiered (the GG eps were during the same year EN debuted, 1988).
It was after, badspock. Once the show started, he appeared in a few of their episodes and the Girls appeared in a couple of Empty Nest episodes (well, at least Estelle Getty did – she even later became a regular cast member!).
The Empty Nest story is not all that uncommon or exceptional. Though the terms are often used interchangeably, EN is less a “spinoff” than a “backdoor pilot,” which is what happens when a successful show is used as a testing ground for another show. That’s hardly uncommon. In fact, as a bit of a coincidence, “The Andy Griffith Show” was ALSO the result of a “backdoor pilot”- namely, an episode of “The Danny Thomas Show” (aka “Make Room For Daddy”) during which Andy Griffith plays Sheriff (and newspaper editor, and justice of the peace) Andy Taylor when Danny breaks down in Mayberry. “Happy Days” could also be regarded as either a spinoff or a backdoor pilot, since the characters debuted in an episode of “Love American Style.” It, itself, did the “backdoor pilot” thing a couple of times, with “Blansky’s Beauties” and “Out of the Blue,” both shows that introduced their characters on “Happy Days” but didn’t actually feature any well-known “Happy Days” characters.
Also not sure why you call spin-offs from spin-offs “rare.” Even if you don’t count the aforementioned “Andy Griffith Show” (progenitor of “Gomer Pyle,” and “Mayberry RFD”) or “Happy Days” (which led to “Laverne and Shirley,” “Mork and Mindy,” and the classic “Joanie Loves Chachi” as well as the two shows mentioned above) as spinoffs, “All in the Family” led to two second-generation spinoffs (“Good Times” from “Maude” and “Checking In” from “The Jeffersons”), “Models, Inc” was a spinoff from “Melrose Place” (which was a spin-off from “Beverly Hills, 90210″), and “Star Trek: The Next Generation” directly spun off “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine,” and “Star Trek: Voyager.” There are other examples, of course.
Backdoor pilots are fairly common, backdoor pilots where the leads (and heck, the entire premise of the show, even!) change are not.
The Happy Days episode you mention DID feature the same initial stars as Happy Days (Ron Howard and Anson Williams). It even featured the same Mrs. C. Only Mr. C, Joanie and Chuck were different, and while two of those characters ended up being important as the show went on, when it began, the show was pretty much the Richie and Potsie show.
Right, there have been other spin-offs of other spin-offs. “Rare” just means “rare,” not “unique.”
Agreed regarding the backdoor pilots- I guess I feel the actual “legend” is that Empty Nest is not really a spinoff at all (nor is “Empty Nests” a successful pilot). As you said, it features no characters that debuted anywhere else, and it has an entirely different premise from “Empty Nests”- it doesn’t even share the same name as the Moreno/Dooley episode. I’m not entirely uncertain that it’s the first time a set has been used in multiple series, either. So why is the show being considered a legitiamte spinoff in the first place?
As for the other issue- well, I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree. I don’t think the (almost surely incomplete) list I provided represents “few,” but, since that’s a subjective matter, I reluctantly concede to your own editorial judgment.
Ha!
Yeah, fair enough, Chris, I gots ya!
I could be wrong here, but the Cheers door appears to have a similar type of handle on both sides (although each is a different style). That makes it likely that the door is dual-hinged, able to be pulled or pushed from both sides.
Whether or not the door on the set actually has the hinges to go along with those handles (and if the door was ever shown to function that way) then becomes the matter at hand. The door could in actuality be a single-hinged fire hazard, and the set designers tried to handwave it away by having a handle on both sides to suggest differently.
Regarding Chris Stansfield’s comment, if I remember correctly, the lead character from ‘Out Of The Blue’ didn’t appear on ‘Happy Days’ until a couple of weeks after ‘Out Of The Blue’ premiered, which would make it a cross-over, and not a backdoor pilot. Although it’s possible the ‘Happy Days’ appeared earlier and I only saw the rerun. But I think it was new.
I’ve often wondered if ‘Andy Griffith Show’ was afraid to feature any black characters, or even extras on most occasions, because a North Carolina town would’ve certainly been segregated when the show began, and the producers or network didn’t want to deal with such a controversial subject.
This is something I am surprised was overlooked- Happy Days didn’t belong in the list of shows that spun off a show that itself spun off a show…unless there was a note in it about the fact that Happy Days itself was a spin off of Love American Style!
Now starring as the self-righteous “I’m gonna complain about the lack of black characters in Mayberry so I can feel all enlightened and show off how morally superior I am” man: Brian Conin!
Sigh, maybe the creators, unlike now, didn’t feel the need to throw in a bunch of black characters just so they can reach the PC quota and yell, “See, we have minorities in there, we are multicultural, dammit!”
If we are really going to judge people beyond their skin, than why should the racial makeup of Mayberry matter? I love Sanford and Son, and I don’t feel insulted because all the principal characters are black.
The creators probably just cast who was the best for the part, and didn’t fret over making some artificial racial mandate. Besides, in a tiny Southern town like Mayberry, how many black people would realistically live there?
Your comment about no character of Golden Girls ever appearing in Empty Nest is not accurate. They were supposed to be neighboors (The Westons and the girls). Dr. Weston appeared at least twice as well as his dauthter Barbara Kristy McNichol) who worked for the Police. I loved both shows and also liked Nurses and Carol & Company (with Carol Burnett, Richard Kind, Peter Krause and Terry Kiser, among others. All those shows were aired on Saturdays as a line up in NBC.
I meant before the show spun off from the Golden Girls, Jose. That’s what makes it so unusual – that it spun off from the Golden Girls and yet none of the characters appeared on Golden Girls before it got spun-off.