The Life Of Riley
1 9 5 3 - 1 9 5 8 (USA)
212 x 30 minute episodes
A different sort of sitcom family - a blue-collar clan of the
type infrequently seen on television (either then or now) - began
their regular run on US television on the second day of
1953.
The Life Of Riley starred former motion-picture
heavyweight William Bendix as the mildly tormented and befuddled
Chester A. Riley, a riveter at an aircraft plant.
Sympathising with, if not causing, his travails, were his wife
Peg (Marjorie Reynolds), daughter Babs (Lugene Saunders), son
Junior (Wesley Morgan), neighbour Gillis (Tom D'Andrea), Honeybee
Gillis (Gloria Blondell), and friends Wlado Binny (Sterling
Holloway) and Otto Schmidlap (Henry Kulky). Martin Milner played
Don Marshall, Babs's boyfriend.
In a line that epitomised the mock crises that formed the
sitcom genre, Riley would look at the viewer at some point during
each episode and exclaim "what a revoltin' development this
turned out to be!"
This was actually the second incarnation of the character. In
1949, on the DuMont network, Jackie Gleason had starred as Riley
(with Rosemary Decamp as his wife and Gloria Winters and Larry
Lees as the children). Gleason was about to find greener pastures
as comedy host of a variety program that would in turn spawn
sitcom classics.
The Life Of Riley is one of a handful of TV comedies
that feature no audience laugh-track, whether real or
"canned", and viewing the episodes - which display
credible writing and acting - make one realise how integral the
'laugh-track' is to television comedy.
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