The Patty Duke Show


The Patty Duke Show is an American television sitcom created by Sidney Sheldon and William Asher. The series ran on ABC from September 18, 1963, to April 27, 1966.
The series was developed as a vehicle for teenage star Patty Duke, who had won an Academy Award the previous year. Duke starred in dual roles of "twin cousins" Patty and Cathy Lane. The series co-starred William Schallert, Jean Byron, Paul O'Keefe, and Eddie Applegate.
A total of 104 black-and-white episodes, plus an unaired pilot, were produced by United Artists Television. ABC abruptly cancelled the series after three seasons.

Premise

Patty Lane is a normal, chatty, rambunctious teenager who lives in the Brooklyn Heights section of New York City. Her father, Martin Lane, is the managing editor of the New York Daily Chronicle; Patty affectionately addresses him as "Poppo." Her "identical paternal cousin," Cathy Lane, is sophisticated, brainy and demure; her father Kenneth is Martin's identical twin brother. Since the widowed Kenneth is often away as a foreign correspondent for the Chronicle, Cathy moves to the United States to live with Patty's family – which also includes her mother Natalie and brother Ross – and to attend Brooklyn Heights High School with Patty and her boyfriend Richard.
While the girls are physically identical, their style, tastes and attitudes are nearly opposite, which is responsible for some of the comedic situations on the show. Though the character of "Cathy" received first billing over the character of "Patty" in the show's opening credits, virtually all episodes centered around Patty's misadventures, with Cathy often only playing a minor supporting role. The remarkable physical resemblance that Patty and Cathy share is explained by the fact that their fathers are identical twins. While Patty speaks with a typical American accent, Cathy speaks with a general European accent; not surprisingly, however, both cousins are able to mimic each other's voice. Patty and Cathy have an additional identical cousin, Southern belle Betsy, featured in the season two episode "The Perfect Hostess".

Episodes

Cast

  • Patty Duke as Patty Lane and Cathy Lane
  • * Duke also "guest-starred" as Betsy Lane in the episode "The Perfect Hostess"
  • William Schallert as Martin Lane
  • * Schallert also had a dual role as Kenneth Lane in three season one episodes, and as Uncle Jed in a season three episode
  • Jean Byron as Natalie Lane, Patty's mother
  • Paul O'Keefe as Ross Lane, Patty's brother
  • Eddie Applegate as Richard Harrison, Patty's boyfriend
Rita McLaughlin served as a double for Duke in the third season, but was never credited. In the series' unaired pilot episode, Mark Miller and Charles Herbert played Martin and Ross Lane, respectively.

Major recurring

Origins

Following her Academy Award-winning role in The Miracle Worker, ABC became interested in developing a series starring Duke. The network enlisted writer Sidney Sheldon to develop a vehicle for Duke. Sheldon asked Duke to spend a week with his family at their home to generate ideas. During this time, he noticed that Duke had two distinct sides to her personality Two years earlier, the Walt Disney comedy The Parent Trap with Hayley Mills as identical twins, had been a major success. Sheldon decided to star Duke as identical paternal cousins with contrasting personalities. According to Duke, he successfully captured her personality in the two characters.
In development, Cathy was initially from Scotland. Duke learned a true Scottish burr for the Cathy character. However, Duke's accent was done "so well they couldn't understand me", concerning producers that the viewers would not like or understand her with such a profound accent. Upon going into production for the series, Cathy had a "general European" background and accent.
The pilot episode was filmed on New Year's Day 1963 at the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios in Culver City, California. Several differences in the pilot included the series being set in San Francisco; and Mark Miller and Charles Herbert portraying Martin and Ross Lane, respectively.

Seasons One and Two

Even before ordering the series, it was understood that production would shift from Los Angeles to New York City. In the previous decade, New York had dominated national network production. By the early 1960s, new formats and innovations such as coaxial cable service, film and video tape allowed for the industry to move to the West coast with the film industry. By 1963, most scripted programming was based in Hollywood, while New York served production for game shows, soap operas, and late night shows. However, at 16 years old, Duke fell under California's strict child labor laws, which curtailed the number of hours that child actors could work. Since New York did not have such stringent laws at the time, and Duke already resided in Manhattan, New York, the network relocated production of the series to Chelsea Studios and moved the series location to Brooklyn Heights.
Upon the series order, Miller declined to move on with the series. Schallert was hired after reading for producers, and reuniting him with his Byron, his co-star from The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. Sheldon and Asher wrote and produced the series, with Duke's managers John and Ethel Ross also serving as associate producers. According to Duke and others, the cast and crew members were unaware of their abuse of her.
William Asher initially served as producer. However, before going on the air, he had failed to finish a full-length episode. As a result, ABC assigned Robert Costello to produce, though he only remained until the twenty-fifth episode. Following his departure, frequent director Stanley Prager took over for the remainder of the first season, as well as the second season.

Visual effects

The dual role for Duke challenged special effects for its time, considering that television special effects were rare in the early 1960s, particularly for a sitcom. In all episodes, Duke appeared as both characters in the same frame through use of a split-screen effect. The technically ambitious traveling matte process was also used from time to time, particularly in the pilot. To complement these effects, child actress Rita McLaughlin was used as Duke's double. To differentiate the two characters to the viewing public, the character Patty wore a flip-fall hairpiece, while Cathy's character wore a more conservative turn-under hairstyle.

Season Three and cancellation

Midway through the second season, Duke celebrated her eighteenth birthday and fired the Rosses as her managers. As Duke was now old enough to work longer hours, ABC wanted to shift the show's production to Los Angeles. Duke initially was against the idea, but eventually agreed. With the move came new sets and new exterior shots, the latter of which seemed to place the home in an unnamed suburban neighborhood instead of Brooklyn Heights.
During the second season, Duke had become romantically involved with assistant director Harry Falk, and married him during the third season. He was able to direct one of the final season three episodes – in which Patty and Richard contemplate getting married – which Duke said in hindsight "was not a good idea."
The series was cancelled due to disagreements between ABC and United Artists Television over filming the series in color. ABC wanted all of its shows for the upcoming 1966–67 season to be in color, while UATV claimed filming The Patty Duke Show in color would be too expensive. The series continued airing reruns on ABC in primetime until August 31.

Music

The show's theme song, "Cousins," which has since been parodied many times over in pop culture, illustrates the two girls' differences: "...where Cathy adores the minuet, the Ballet Russe and crêpes Suzette, our Patty loves her rock 'n' roll, a hot dog makes her lose control..." The song was performed by a five-voice vocal ensemble called "The Skip-Jacks," a vocal group that worked with jazz musician Don Elliott and recorded numerous Little Golden Records in the sixties. One of the vocalists was named Stella Stevens, no relation to the Hollywood actor of the same name.

Reception

Already a budding star in her own right, Duke was further thrust into the public consciousness through the show. As the series went on, her star power from the series allowed her to enter popular music, appearing on two episodes of Shindig! in 1965 to release a Top Ten single, "Don't Just Stand There," in one of her two appearances on the series.
PopMatters wrote that although the show's episodes are occasionally very predictable, "it's all in good fun".