Classic Television - Prime Time

The Sandy Duncan Show

Original channel

CBS

Original run

September 17, 1972 – December 31, 1972

Starring

Sandy Duncan

Tom Bosley

Marian Mercer

Pamela Zarit

Alfie Wise

Eric Christmas

M. Emmet Walsh

Funny Face and The Sandy Duncan Show are two American sitcoms aired by CBS starring Sandy Duncan as part of its 1971 and 1972 fall lineups, respectively. Both series were created and produced by Carl Kleinschmitt.

In the spring of 1971, after having appeared in numerous television commercials and having a great success on Broadway in the 1970 revival of The Boy Friend (which won her a Tony Award nomination for Best Actress In a Musical), Sandy Duncan's show business career was quickly ascending. She had just completed her first major motion picture - The Million Dollar Duck for Walt Disney and was about to start on her second film - the screen adaptation of the Neil Simon play Star Spangled Girl which was to be produced and released by Paramount Pictures. Duncan was also signed by Paramount to film a television pilot loosely based on the 1957 film musical Funny Face which they hoped would be picked up by CBS to be part of their 1971–1972 fall television schedule. A pilot was filmed in the spring of 1971 and CBS executives were very enthusiastic. As a result, Duncan was already being touted by the network as the brightest new star of the 1971 fall season.

When the series returned in the fall of 1972, it underwent a major renovation. This included renaming the program from Funny Face to The Sandy Duncan Show, as well as having new cast members, an additional producer, different writers, a slightly revised format, as well as filming it with three cameras in front of a live audience. In The Sandy Duncan Show, Sandy now worked for the advertising firm of Quinn & Cohen, where her supervisor was one of the partners, Bert Quinn (Tom Bosley); the other partner was Leonard Cohen (Alfie Wise). Two of her neighbors, Kay Fox (Marian Mercer) and Alex Lembeck (M. Emmet Walsh) were also close friends. Motorcycle police officer Alex constantly worried about Sandy's status as a single woman living alone, which he saw as being inherently dangerous; and as such, appointed himself as her chaperone/protector. Sandy had a very sweet and slightly naive nature and was prone to try to help anyone whom she felt needed help, including total strangers, so Alex's fears were not totally misplaced.

Despite these changes, The Sandy Duncan Show was not successful. Although the critics generally liked Duncan, many of them did not find the show greatly improved or vastly different from Funny Face. In fact, some reviewers went so far as to say that the program was a somewhat pale imitation of The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Also, moving the show to Sunday nights did not help in terms of viewership. The series attracted a much smaller audience on Sunday nights than Funny Face had the previous year on Saturday nights, especially when it had the strong lead-in of All In The Family. In its new day and time slot, The Sandy Duncan Show had to compete with ABC's The F.B.I. and the NBC Mystery Movie. As a result, it was also canceled at midseason, with the last episode (#13) airing on New Year's Eve, 1972.