Uncle John’s Supremely Satisfying Bathroom Reader® (62 page)

But Gelbart’s pilot didn’t make the 1976 fall season lineup—Silverman wanted the show recast. He’d already picked John Ritter for the male lead. A relatively unknown Norman Fell was cast as the nosy landlord, with veteran actress Audra Lindley as Mildred. But the original female leads were fired and another pilot was ordered.

Before moving to ABC, Silverman was president of CBS Entertainment. So Silverman got NRW Company, producers of
All in the Family
and
The Jeffersons,
to develop
Three’s Company.
He instructed them to make it “the same kind of breakthrough in sexiness that
All in the Family
was in bigotry.”

NRW renamed the roommates and gave them ordinary jobs that
people could relate to: David Bell became cooking student Jack Tripper; civil servant Jenny became florist Janet Wood, played by Joyce DeWitt; and aspiring actress Sam became naive jiggle queen Christmas Snow—Chrissy for short—played by an unknown Suzanne Somers.

Playboy bunnies: Female rabbits can mate as little as 12 hours after giving birth.

The show premiered on March 15, 1977—and ABC’s ratings immediately went through the roof:
Three’s Company
ranked #11 among all the network shows for the 1976–77 season. Combined with
Happy Days
and
Laverne & Shirley,
the show made ABC’s Tuesday-night lineup the most-watched night on TV from 1977 to 1980.

The success of
Three’s Company
astounded ABC execs. It broke ratings records, even beating CBS’s M*A*S*H, a feat no other show could accomplish—but critics hated it. The
New York Times
suggested that a blank television screen was better than tuning in to the show.

In February 1978, the same week that
Three’s Company
hit #1 in ratings,
Newsweek
magazine did a feature on the trio that would forever mar the ensemble’s relationship. The article reported that the National Religious Broadcasters was lobbying against the show’s “immoral programming.” But it wasn’t the negative publicity that bothered Ritter and DeWitt, it was the cover—featuring Suzanne Somers most prominently, with the two others behind her.

The veteran actors feared that Somers was compromising the cooperative effort to secure her own stardom. She was being aggressively marketed by her star-maker agent, Jay Bernstein—who had helped launch Farrah Fawcett’s career—and began hawking hammers for Ace Hardware, posing for
Playboy
(twice), and performing in Las Vegas and Atlantic City. But when she fired Bernstein in 1980 so hubby Alan Hamel could take over, it was the beginning of the end. “After that, it all went to hell in a handbasket,” said Ted Bergmann. “Hamel was about as ill-equipped to do the job as anybody could be.”

The husband-and-wife team pushed for more money: they wanted $150,000 per episode, the same amount Alan Alda was getting for M*A*S*H, and demanded part ownership of the show. Somers
believed she was the secret of the show’s success, but the producers said it was the pratfalling Ritter…and he was only getting $50,000 an episode.

The world’s most-used public mailbox: at the intersection of Madison and Halsted Streets in Chicago. It has to be emptied six times a day.

So Somers went on strike—she didn’t show up for work, claiming “back injuries,” which infuriated her co-stars. Then she threatened to sue the producers and her on-screen roommates for conspiracy. Negotiations crumbled, and by the time Somers did return to work, the producers had had it—they wanted to get rid of her.

But ABC execs feared ratings would drop if the jiggle queen was dropped completely, so her role was cut to one minute a week. Chrissy suddenly went away to care for her sick mother. Somers was secluded to a small set, where Chrissy talked to Janet on the telephone from her mother’s. Slowly and quietly, Chrissy Snow was phased out of the show.

Somers left the show in 1981, but it proved a costly mistake: She walked away from $4.5 million in residuals, and DeWitt and Ritter wouldn’t even speak to her.

Somers’s replacement, ex-L.A. Rams cheerleader Jenilee Harrison, played Chrissy’s country cousin, Cindy Snow, and the writers tried to develop her character without using the trademark suggestive jokes. Bad move: ratings dropped. Harrison was dropped, too.

A new blonde was brought in to facilitate the dirty talk. As Terri Alden, Priscilla Barnes gave
Three’s Company
the shot in the arm it needed to regain its #1 status. But the success was short-lived: the producers didn’t want to repeat the experience they had had with Somers, so they didn’t let the writers develop Barnes’s character. Another bad move. The show couldn’t sustain its ratings, and ABC cancelled it.

The one-hour series finale aired on May 15, 1984 as a hurried attempt to provide closure to the millions of viewers who had watched the show and the characters develop over the years. Janet married her boyfriend Phillip, Jack fell in love with their neighbor Vicky, and Terri moved to Hawaii to care for sick children.

John Ritter went on to star in more than 20 TV projects, including the spin-off bomb,
Three’s a Crowd.
He’s also appeared in motion pictures, most notably Billy Bob Thornton’s
Sling Blade.
Joyce DeWitt dropped out of sight after
Three’s Company,
going on a 13-year spiritual odyssey around the world.

Audra Lindley and Norman Fell were lured off Three’s
Company
to star in their own show, The Ropers. They left at the height of
Three’s Company’s
popularity; The Ropers flopped after a single season. Throughout the 1980’s, Fell worked steadily in supporting roles on the big and small screens. Lindley returned to the stage and made guest television appearances on Friends and
Cybill.
She died of complications from leukemia in 1997. Fell died of natural causes the following year.

When Fell and Lindley left Three’s
Company,
they were replaced by Don Knotts. Knotts played the leisure suit–wearing bachelor, Mr. Furley, and the audience loved him. The producers actually had to edit Knotts’s lines because his laughs were so long. After Three’s
Company,
Knotts made several films, including Return to
Mayberry.

And Suzanne Somers? The networks wouldn’t touch her for almost a decade after her battle with ABC. She rehabilitated herself as a bankable commodity when she became the spokesperson for the ThighMaster exerciser in 1990. The attention landed her the lead in the sitcom
Step By Step
in 1991 and a job as co-host of Candid Camera in 1998. But since then she’s been marketing a line of exercise equipment…the FaceMaster and the ButtMaster.

Place-Name Origin:
“California was named by the Spanish, not from their language but from their literature. In 1510 Garcia Rodriquez de Montalvo wrote a book entitled
Sergas de Esplandian (Feats of Esplandian),
in which he created the imaginary realm of
California:
an island ruled by Black Amazons ‘at the right hand of the Indies…very close to that of the Terrestrial Paradise.’ When the first Spaniards arrived in the southern portion of California in the 1530s, they believed it to be an island and so called it California.” (From
Inventing English: The Imaginative Origins of Everyday Expressions,
by Dale Corey)

One out of every 14 women in America is a natural blond (and one out of every 16 men).

You’ve heard people talk about how much things cost back in the “good old days”
—
heck, you might even remember them yourself (Uncle John does). Talk about nostalgia…check out these prices.

IN 1900:

Seven-shot revolver: $1.25

Bicycle: $20

Grand piano: $175

Men’s leather belt: 19¢

Alligator bag: $5

IN 1910:

All-expenses-paid trip to Bermuda for nine days: $37.50

Bottle of Coke: 5¢

Imported spaghetti: 12¢/box

Cigarettes: 10¢/pack

Wage for postal workers: 42¢/hr.

IN 1920:

Life insurance premium: $16.40/yr.

Chocolates: 89¢/lb.

Eggs: 64¢/doz.

Box of 50 cigars: $2.98

Public school teacher’s salary: $970/yr.

IN 1930:

Christmas tree light set (eight bulbs): 88¢

Electric toaster: $1

Motor oil: 49¢/gal.

Washing machine: $58

IN 1940:
Coffeemaker: $2

Movie ticket: 25¢ (day); 40¢ (night)

Golf balls: $1.88/doz.

Bayer aspirin: 59¢

Minimum wage: 30¢/hr.

IN 1950:

Jackie Robinson’s salary (’51): $39,750/yr.

Roll of film: 38¢

Toilet paper (20 rolls): $2.39

Corvette (‘53): $3,498

Combination 19" television/FM radio/phonograph: $495

IN 1960:

Refrigerator: $200

Polaroid Camera: $100

Mercedes Benz 220S: $3,300

Breakfast (two hot cakes and two strips of bacon): 33¢

Clearasil: 98¢/tube

IN 1970:

Answering machine: $50

Sirloin steak: 97¢/lb.

Tennis racket: $25

Movie projector: $80

Orange juice: 35¢/qt.

IN 1980:

Cordless telephone: $300

Six-pack of Budweiser: $1.99

Video camera: $360

Cadillac El Dorado: $19,700

Herbert Hoover never accepted his presidential salary.

Our previous
Bathroom Reader
included an “Oops!” about a government cafeteria named after Alferd Packer. After our friend Jeff Cheek read it, he sent us this amazing story.

Alferd G. Packer holds a unique spot in American jurisprudence. He is the only U.S. citizen ever charged, tried, and convicted for the crime of murder and cannibalism.

Born in rural Colorado in 1847, Packer drifted into the Utah Territory, supporting himself as a small-time con artist, claiming to be an experienced “mountain man.” In the fall of 1873, he persuaded 20 greenhorns in Salt Lake City to grubstake an expedition to the headwaters of the Gunnison River in Colorado Territory. He swore that the stream was full of gold and promised to lead them to it if they would finance the operation.

With Packer leading, they plunged into the San Juan Mountains and promptly got lost. The party was near starvation when they stumbled into the winter quarters of the friendly Ute tribe. The Indians nursed them back to health, but the leader, Chief Ouray, advised them to turn back. Winter snows had blocked all trails. Ten of the party listened and returned to Utah. The other 10, still believing Packer’s tales of gold-filled creeks, stayed with him.

Ouray gave them supplies and advised them to follow the river upstream for safety, but Packer ingored this counsel and plunged back into the mountains. The party split up again. Five turned back and made their way to the Los Pinos Indian Agency. Fired up with gold fever, the others continued on with their con man guide. Days later, exhausted, half frozen, and out of food, they found refuge in a deserted cabin. Most of them were now ready to give up and go back to Salt Lake City.

The exception was Alferd Packer. He was broke, and returning to Salt Lake City would cost him his grubstake. When the others fell asleep, Packer shot four of them in the head. The fifth woke and tried to defend himself, but Packer cracked his skull with the barrel of his rifle. Then, he robbed them.…He also used them for food.

Most Americans say that if they had to resort to cannibalism, “they’d eat the legs first.”