Wendy and Me is an American sitcom that aired on ABC during the 1964–1965 television season, primarily sponsored by Consolidated Cigar’s “El Producto.”  Principally starring George Burns and Connie Stevens, the series was Burns’ first major work following the death of his wife and professional partner, Gracie Allen, who had died of a heart attack about a month prior to the debut of Wendy and Me.

In the series (a slight variation of The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show), Burns plays a somewhat fictionalized version of himself.  He is the owner of an apartment building, while Stevens plays his tenant, Wendy Conway.  Episodes typically revolved around Wendy pulling Burns into comedic situations mostly involving her husband, played by Ron Harper, and other people in the building.  As a regular part of its format, Burns would often break the fourth wall to comment directly to the audience about the episode’s events.  Burns as landlord would watch his attractive young tenant on what appears to the modern eye to be a surreptitious closed circuit television transmission with hidden cameras (he also accomplished this with his “TV in the den” in later episodes of The Burns and Allen Show).  Viewers of the show, may remember the television was not so much a “surreptitious closed circuit television” but rather a plain old television set where George Burns watched the show “Wendy and Me” along with the television audiences.  James T. Callahan appeared in the series as Danny Adams, a playboy friend of Wendy’s strait-laced husband.  J. Pat O’Malley played the apartment handyman.

Stevens’s was under contract with Warner Bros., who Burns agreed to produce another series for her, No Time For Sergeants, which appeared before Wendy and Me on ABC’s Monday night schedule.

Wendy and Me was followed on the ABC schedule by The Bing Crosby Show, an unsuccessful attempt by Bing Crosby to establish a situation comedy of his own.  Wendy and Me faced stiff competition from Lucille Ball’s The Lucy Show on CBS and The Andy Williams Show on NBC, and only lasted one season.

The Bing Crosby Show is a 28-episode situation comedy television program starring crooner, film star, iconic phenomenon, and businessman Bing Crosby and actress Beverly Garland as a middle-aged couple, Bing and Ellie Collins, rearing two teenaged daughters during the early 1960s.  In this format, Crosby portrayed a former entertainer turned architectural designer with a penchant […]

Wendy and Me is an American sitcom that aired on ABC during the 1964–1965 television season, primarily sponsored by Consolidated Cigar’s “El Producto.”  Principally starring George Burns and Connie Stevens, the series was Burns’ first major work following the death of his wife and professional partner, Gracie Allen, who had died of a heart attack […]

No Time for Sergeants came to the small screen in the fall of 1964.  It starred Sammy Jackson who had had one line in the film version.  When Jackson read that Warner Brothers was going to produce a television sitcom version of No Time for Sergeants for ABC he wrote directly to Jack Warner saying […]