Classic Television - Prime Time

Love, American Style

Original channel

ABC

Original run

September 29, 1969 – January 11, 1974

Starring

An ensemble cast, changing from week to week.

Love, American Style is a comedic television anthology, which was produced by Paramount Television and originally aired between 1969 and 1974. For the 1971 and 1972 seasons it was a part of an ABC Friday prime-time lineup that also included The Brady Bunch, The Partridge Family, Room 222, and The Odd Couple.

Each week, the show featured unrelated stories of romance, usually with a comedic spin. Episodes featured different characters, stories, and locations. The show often featured the same actors playing different characters in many episodes. In addition, a large, ornate brass bed was a recurring prop in many episodes. Charles Fox's delicate yet hip music score, featuring flutes, harp, and flugelhorn set to a contemporary pop beat, provided the "love" ambiance which tied the stories together as a multifaceted romantic comedy each week.

For its first season, the theme song was performed by The Cowsills. Beginning in the second season, the same theme song was sung by the Ron Hicklin Singers featuring the Bahler Brothers John and Tom, (billed as The Charles Fox Singers).

This second version of the theme was carried on for the remainder of the series, as well as on most episodes prepared for syndication.

In many ways, the show initiated the "mini comedic soap opera" form used and "perfected" later on by Aaron Spelling for The Love Boat. While it lacked the connective threads that The Love Boat used, it generally told the same sort of "cotton candy" light, emotional stories about underlying aspects of love, romance, and human relationships.

The title is loosely derived from a 1961 Italian comedy film called Divorzio all'italiana (Divorce, Italian Style), which received Academy Award nominations in 1962 for Best Director for Pietro Germi and for Best Actor for star Marcello Mastroianni. The film was later spoofed in 1967 by Divorce, American Style, starring Dick Van Dyke. The snowclone "(xxx), (nationality) Style" became a minor cultural catch-phrase as the 1960s progressed.

The original series was also known for its 10-to-20-second drop-in silent movie-style "joke clips" between the featured segments. This regular troupe featured future Rockford Files cast member Stuart Margolin, future Vega$ leading lady Phyllis Davis, and a young character actor, James Hampton (F Troop, The Longest Yard). These clips allowed the show to be padded to the required length without padding the main segments. They generally consisted of then-risque, burlesque-style comedy of manners visual jokes.

During its first four years on ABC, Love, American Style was popular with viewers and received decent ratings, although it never ranked among the top thirty shows in the Nielsens. For a few seasons, it was part of a power-house line-up of ABC programs on Friday, which included The Brady Bunch, The Partridge Family, Room 222, and The Odd Couple. At the start of the 1973-1974 fall season, the ratings for Love, American Style, and Room 222 had plummeted. As a result, both shows were canceled at mid season. The series received several Emmy nominations, including two for Best Comedy Series for 1969–1970 and 1970–1971.

The show subsequently became a daytime standard in syndication, since it was readily edited down to a half-hour by the proper interweaving of the clips with a main segment, effectively making ten seasons out of five. This allowed for heavy stripping.