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Trying to date two My Friend Irma episodes

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Trying to date two My Friend Irma episodes Empty Trying to date two My Friend Irma episodes

Post by ozradio 4/26/2020, 10:19 am

I am trying to date 2 episodes of My Friend Irma. They are AFRS versions labeled 108 and 109. They are frequently dated as 1949-05-02 and 1949-05-09. However, those dates are based on Jerry's episode numbering which 1) I don't think necessarily reflects the actual episode numbering (if they were even numbered; the later cigarette-sponsored episodes seem to restart numbering with 1) and 2) to my knowledge AFRS disc numbers don't usually have any relation to actual script numbering.

Further, both episodes include Cathy Lewis as Jane and she was not on the program during the second season which contained those two dates above. They also have John Brown as Al (he was replaced in later seasons) and Hans Conreid (whose character was replaced for a while by Kenny Delmar in later seasons).

They do not match up with any descriptions I find on Goldin's site and Jerry doesn't have very many episodes of this particular series. Nor do they match any of the scripts that were released by the cigarette company after that lawsuit years ago.

Summaries:

#108 Mr. Kitschler moves into apartment. Irma has been reading murder mysteries and thinks he's a killer. His voice is Peter Lorre-esque. Jane mentions the Cyrano de Bergerac film at the beginning and that was released in November 1950 so it may be November or December of that year.

#109 Al is managing "Murderin'" Mushy as a fighter (not 1947-04-18 or 1948-02-09) and Mrs. O'Reilly is holding a benefit for firefighter widows and orphans.

The series does not seem to be especially well documented so it may be impossible at this point to identify specific or even general dates for these programs. If any of you have scraps of info that could be helpful I would be most grateful.
Ryan

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Post by CompleteDayMan 4/26/2020, 12:24 pm

I had worked on documenting this series some time back. I can't do it right now but if no one gets back to you in the near term I will dig into this and try and verify it for you later today or tomorrow.
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Post by kschriever 4/29/2020, 11:21 am

Ozradio, I'm going to share some speculation as to why dating these may prove challenging... some of the logic may appear a bit stretched but I think there may well be something here:

1.  As you pointed out, some of the cast appearances don't work with the dates you've found assigned.
2.  I have just a few episodes which appear correctly dated and also carry the associated AFRS disc numbers.
AFRS 75 is from May 29, 1950;  the next dated number I have is #113 from May 26, 1953.  Very broadly applying some math, that's about 38 AFRS shows per year.  IF that held up, shows 108 and 109 would probably date from somewhere around April or May of 1951.
3.  I've found newspaper and magazine references indicating that Marie Wilson was hospitalized twice in the spring of 1951;  once for phlebitis and then again shortly thereafter for a very serious bout with blood poisoning in mid-May 1951.  For the latter episode, an article in Radio Mirror states she missed just one broadcast;  however, the May 16 Fort Worth paper indicates she had recently been in a coma and just emerged, and the May 21 North Hollywood Valley Times says MFI "again has a script which 'shoots around' the star, Marie Wilson, who is still ailing in the hospital".  So missing just one show during this period seems unlikely, and it appears that multiple episodes were written and aired with Marie Wilson absent.
4.  The last great leap in logic... but which appears quite plausible in light of that conflict between cast members and AFRS numbers... may be that AFRS didn't find it palatable to send the boys My Friend Irma Minus Irma in May 1951 and so substituted reruns of discs from earlier in the series for those episodes sans Ms. Wilson.

If this were indeed the case, we'd either need to find the same shows amongst those from earlier years that we already have documented or we'd need complete-ish descriptions of ALL the shows from the periods appropriate to the casting.

Hope that was followable and makes some sense.
kschriever
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Post by ozradio 4/29/2020, 12:49 pm

Thanks for the input. I agree, it's probably unlikely that these can be precisely dated. But I thought if any sleuths could help, it would be this group. I tried a couple years back without success to find Cy Howard's or Park Levy's papers in an archive somewhere. Finding more "peer" episodes would help; I didn't realize how many were missing from this series until I dug into it.

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