“My Living Doll”

Bob Cummings and Julie Newmar starred in this out there sitcom about a robot in the form of a beautiful robot and a psychiatrist stuck looking after her. Critics felt the series had potential but it was clobbered by NBC’s Bonanza. A move to Wednesdays didn’t help much. Neither did Bob Cummings’ abrupt departure in early January. A total of 26 episodes, five without Cummings, were broadcast during the 1964-1965 season. Why didn’t it catch up? As Rhoda the robot would say, it just didn’t compute.

In March of 1964, as the television networks finalized their schedules for the 1964-1965 season, comedy was the word of the day. CBS got a big boost when Lucille Ball changed her mind and agreed to continue The Lucy Show for another season (it would ultimately run until 1968) after ABC cancelled The Greatest Show on Earth, which was produced by Ball’s Desilu Productions. Without The Greatest Show on Earth, Desilu would have no television programs on the air during the 1964-1965 season and thus Ball decided to keep The Lucy Show on the air [1].

TV Guide Advertisement – September 26th, 1964
Copyright © TV Guide/Triangle Publications, Inc., 1964 [1]

On March 15th, Val Adams reported in The New York Times that there would be a total of 37 half-hour sitcoms on the air during the fall of 1964, with NBC and CBS adding four new comedies and ABC adding five [2]. Among the projected sitcoms on the CBS schedule was The Living Doll,starring Julie Newmar as a robot. Wrote Adams: “Why anyone would want to take a thing of beauty like Miss Newmar and make her mechanical is something only C.B.S. knows” [3].

Not all of those 37 sitcoms mentioned by Adams would eventually make it to the air in September of 1964. But The Living Doll — soon retitled My Living Doll — was one of them. Jack Chertok, responsible for My Favorite Martian, would produce the sitcom, which was given the 9-9:30PM time slot opposite NBC’s powerhouse Bonanza and The ABC Sunday Night Movie. Robert Cummings and Jack Mullaney were signed to join Newmar in the series during April of 1964 [4, 5].

The official designation for Newmar’s character was AF 709. But the beautiful robot went by the name Rhoda Miller (Dr. Miller, played by Henry Beckman, was her creator). Cummings, in his fourth television series (after My Hero from 1952 to 1953, The Bob Cummings Show from 1955 to 1959 and The Bob Cummings Show from 1961 to 1962), would star opposite Newmar as Dr. Robert “Bob” McDonald, a space agency psychiatrist charged with taking care of Rhoda.

Mullaney, meanwhile, would play Dr. Peter Robinson, physicist and Bob’s best friend. Both were bachelors. Rounding out the cast was Doris Dowling as Bob’s sister Irene, who doubled as his housekeeper. (In his April 25th, 1964 “TV Ticker” column Larry Wolters reported that Richard Long “is to be Julie Newmar’s leading man” in My Living Doll [6]. Was Long considered for the role or was Wolters simply mistaken?)

Production on My Living Doll began at Desilu’s studios in Culver City, California during the last week of July 1964 [7]. In an interview with Julie Newmar for The Los Angeles Times, Cecil Smith revealed that CBS had spent the past two years trying to find her a television series. He also lamented that her character would be a robot, writing that she “is so magnificently assembled a female, so noble a construction (in monumental proportions) that it’s hardly fair she will not be real” [8].

Newmar saw things differently: “But this is Galatea, and Bob is Pygmalion. This is the ideal brought to life. Here is a woman very intelligent. A perfect mind, a perfect body. But no emotions. She does not nag, she does not complain. She is never contentious. She is utterly guileless. It is Bob who must invest her with personality. It’s a part that I think is perfectly espoused to my personality.” [9]

At the beginning of September, just weeks away from the new fall season, there were mixed reactions to My Living Doll. The Chicago Tribune, lumping the series together with Bewitched, Broadside and Flipper as “the cuties” (Gilligan’s Island and Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C., on the other hand, were “wider and wilder” programs) felt its chances of success weren’t good [10]. The Los Angeles Times, on the other hand, stated that My Living Doll (along with Bewitched and The Rogues “are pegged in the trade as major hits of the year” [11].

My Living Doll premiered on Sunday, September 27th, 1964. Reviewing the first episode for The New York Times, Jack Gould suggested that the series could become “a popular novelty hit” but wasn’t ready to call it such without viewing a few more episodes:

Julie Newmar is playing a stunning robot that has the makings of the ideal female companion. it does what it is told but does not answer back. With Miss Newmar giving a light and amusing performance as the automated dish, the premise could work out. it will depend on how skillfully the heavenly looking object is introduced to the ways of human existence.

Bob Cummings, and old hand at chaperoning pretty girls, again is cast in his familiar assignment. The producer of “My Living Doll” is Jack Chertok, who comes equipped with references that are promising to the future. Last season he introduced “MY Favorite Martian.” [12]

Slightly less impressed on the whole was Cecil Smith, calling My Living Doll “a fairly amusing show that in a season less cluttered with comedies might be outstanding” but lavishing praise on Newmar:

It offers Julie Newmar in a sheet, which is a pretty wonderful thing in itself when she wonders into psychiatrist Bob Cummings’ office. Then we discover she is a robot being readied for space research whose name is Rhoda and who is part of a project AF 109.

After some nonsense in which psychiatrist Cummings is persuaded that Rhoda is unreal, the show ends on the premise that he will keep her in charge while he experiments in programing human emotions into her.

Incidentally, Rhoda responds instantly to any command the psychiatrist gives, which is pretty intriguing. Miss Newmar is gorgeously aloof, Cummings is his usual nimble self, and both Jack Mullaney and Doris Dowling are principals in the proceedings. [13].

According to Arbitron, the premiere ranked 43rd (for the period running Wednesday, September 23rd through Tuesday, September 29th) with a 16.9 rating. By comparison, NBC’s Bonanza was 2nd with a 27.0 rating [14]. The show did have one big fan in the form of comedian Red Skelton: “There are some other shows I like. Bewitched is funny, very funny. And that Living Doll. When I saw that I wanted to build a robot myself but they sold me an Erector set. All I could build was the Eiffel Tower” [15].

CBS was satisfied enough with the performance of My Living Doll to renew it for a full season in late October [16].

Episodes of the series saw Bob trying to teach Rhoda about humanity while at the same time keep her out of trouble. It was often the case that she had to get into trouble in order to learn anything. Some plots revolved around things Rhoda could do extremely well. In one episode she takes Bob’s instructions to heart when he asks her make sure he completes a magazine article he’s writing. She looks him in their apartment. Ironically, the article was about domineering women and how to avoid them.

Rhoda’s ability to calculate how the dice will fall comes in handy when Bob tries to help a compulsive gambler. And when a card shark, looking for Peter, confronts Bob instead, Rhoda is able to tackle the pool table like a pool. She’s also able to mathematically compute the perfect date — out of 250 women working at the space agency — for lovesick Peter. And she’s so perfect that a millionaire playboy wants her to be his eighth wife.

Other episodes focused on aspects of humanity Rhoda didn’t know anything about. Bob and Irene use different tactics when trying to explain love to Rhoda: Bob wants to talk about and Irene decides to simply tell Rhoda to fall in love. Rhoda also didn’t know how to laugh until she met a pharmacist-turned-comedian and didn’t realize stealing was wrong (or understand what stealing was) until Bob asked her to help pick out a gift for Irene and she walks out of a store with the perfect jewelry.

Despite her appearance Rhoda was still a robot and robots sometimes don’t work the way their supposed to. For example, in one episode she has an adverse reaction (vertigo) to reading Alice in Wonderland. In another her auditory components go on the fritz at a fancy dinner forcing Bob to forsake his date to deal with his robot. She knows how to operate a plane, which helps Peter with his sky diving, but doesn’t know how to land.

On December 10th, The New York Times reported that CBS was mulling changes in its schedule. Specifically, the network wanted to give The Beverly Hillbillies a better lead-in [17]. The sitcom, in its third season, had ranked first in the Nielsen ratings during its first two seasons but was faltering. It aired on Wednesdays from 8:30-9PM after low-rated C.B.S. Reports. One option was to move C.B.S. Reports and replace it with something that would give The Beverly Hillbillies a stronger lead-in.

The following day, in what The New York Times called “the most extensive [changes] made by a network in midseason,” CBS adjusted its schedule by cancelling two shows (Mr. Broadway and The Reporter) and moving 14 others [18]. C.B.S. Reports was moved to Mondays at 10PM; Mister Ed and My Living Doll replaced it on Wednesdays from 7:30-8:30PM. A new series, For the People, would eventually take over the Sunday 8-9PM time slot.

CBS President James T. Aubrey admitted that the schedule changes were in large part an attempt to help The Beverly Hillbillies. “There is every indication that the very young viewer apparently is controling [sic] the set in the early evening. We have had complaints from parents that they could not watch ‘C.B.S. Reports’ because that’s when their children watched. But putting ‘Mr. Ed’ and ‘My Living Doll’ in the hour at 7:30 we will be building a better lead-in for ‘The Hillbillies.’ We think it will return to the top 10 or the top 15″ [19].

My Living Doll had its last Sunday broadcast on December 13th; it moved to Wednesdays beginning December 16th.

On January 4th, 1965 CBS announced that Bob Cummings had been released from his contract at his own request after filming 21 episodes of My Living Doll but would not be replaced. The New York Times took that to mean that the network didn’t have much faith in the series [20]. According to Herb Lyons “Bob Cummings’ decision to quit his faltering My Living Doll TV series didn’t surprise those close. He’d wanted out ever since the first ratings came in” [21]. Larry Wolters echoed that thought, writing that “Cummings is reported to have been unhappy with the role almost since the start” [22].

Bob Cummings in My Living Doll

Wolters would reveal on January 27th that My Living Doll would write Robert Cummings out of the series by sending his character to Pakistan. “You don’t have to believe that, tho. He is withdrawing because he was dissatisfied with the slim role he had as co-star with Julie Newmar” [23]. The final episode with Cummings aired on February 10th. The next week it was indeed reveald that Dr. Bob McDonald had been sent to Pakistan. Taking over as Rhoda’s caretaker was none other than Dr. Peter Robinson.

Peter, of course, had no idea Rhoda — who he adored — was a robot but soon adapted to his new role. Doris Dowling and her character, Bob’s sister Irene, was also written out of the series. Replacing her as housekeeper for Peter and Rhoda was Nora Marlowe as Mrs. Moffat. The Los Angeles Times, in its television previews, became increasingly critical of the series as the season progressed:

January 13th, 1965
Rhoda the robot has many talents, but apparently not when it comes to winning an audience. Series had to change nights, and now a dissatisfied Bob Cummings has left the cast. Rhoda proves she’s a shapely Picasso in tonight’s episode. [24]

February 3rd, 1965
Rhoda the robot accidentally joins a group of female astronauts who are undergoing special tests. No wonder Bob Cummings has given his notice. [25]

February 24th, 1965
Rhoda becomes a prima ballerina when the star of the ballet is injured. Unbelievable. [26]

March 3rd, 1965
Rhoda the robot is picked as a model for a high-style fashion show in Paris. This gets peter in dutch with his gal, Ann, who had the job. The series novelty has worn off. [27]

During the final five episodes of the series Peter and Rhoda got into all sorts of trouble. In one episode, Rhoda is asked to travel to Paris for a fashion show, meaning Peter’s girlfriend Ann won’t get the job. In another, her circuits are fried by the sun and she becomes dangerous. Eddie Foy, Jr. guest starred in the final episode of the season, broadcast March 17th, 1965, as a Mrs. Moffat’s brother, a broken down nightclub performer who wats to revitalize his career by making Rhoda his new partner.

When CBS revealed its 1965-1966 television schedule in early February My Living Doll was nowhere to be found [28]. The schedule would be revised several times before Fall 1965; Lost in Space eventually replaced My Living Doll on Wednesdays. However, in her February 19th column Hedda Hopper reported that Ezra Stone, who directed the bulk of the show’s episodes, had told her the “future of the show depends on reaction to the last five segments without Bob Cummings” [29].

Hopper also revealed that Cummings was planning to sue CBS and that the network wanted John Forsythe to take over should My Living Doll return for a second season. On February 23rd, however, she reported that Forsythe wouldn’t be able to take over for Cummings because his new show (The John Forsythe Show) had been picked up [30]. It didn’t matter anyway. Even if Hopper was correct, My Living Doll wasn’t renewed in the first place, and there was no need to look for a replacement.

Based solely on November/December Nielsen ratings, My Living Doll ranked 79th out of 96 programs [31]. Whether or not it eventually picked up after moving to Wednesdays or how the last five episodes without Cummings did is unknown. However, if the ratings had improved, it seems likely that CBS would have renewed the series. Repeats were broadcast throughout the summer of 1965; the final repeat aired on September 1st.

As for the famous sheet Julie Newmar wore in the first episode when she was introduced to Dr. Bob McDonald, it cost $500 and was designed by Elois Jenssen over the course of three weeks with the help of Jane Dutton, seamstress:

Miss Jenssen conducted a careful search for the right weight of raw silk, measured the various lateral dimensions of Miss Newmar, and stitched some two-and-a-half yards of material into an approximate size 12 by exercising artful tuckings, seaming, and hemmings. An elastic rims the strapless bodice and the sheet fastens with strategically placed hooks and eyes. [32]

Said Jenssen of her creation: “Zippers are not flexible enough for the effect we wanted. It looks like a sheet, but it’s made like a gown–it’s designed to look artless, but it really is a very sophisticated garment” [33].

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Last Updated May 29th, 2009