7.8 /10 1 Votes
8.5/10 TV No. of seasons 1 Running time Under 30 minutes First episode date 26 September 1961 Network CBS Number of episodes 36 | 7/10 IMDb Country of origin United States No. of episodes 36 Original network CBS Final episode date 5 June 1962 Number of seasons 1 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Starring Robert Sterling
George Chandler
Reta Shaw
Jimmy Hawkins
Burt Mustin
Forrest Lewis
Christine White
Jimmy Mathers Cast Robert Sterling, Jimmy Hawkins, Christine White, George Chandler, Reta Shaw Similar Bringing Up Buddy, Oh! Those Bells, Pete and Gladys, The Tab Hunter Show, Mrs G Goes to College | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Ichabod and Me is a 36-episode American situation comedy series set in a small New England town and starring Robert Sterling and George Chandler. It aired on CBS from September 26, 1961, to June 5, 1962, and was produced by Joe Connelly and Bob Mosher, in association with Jack Benny's "JaMco Productions".
Contents
Cast & characters
The storyline features Sterling in the role of 44-year-old Robert "Bob" Major, a widower and newspaper reporter from New York City who moves to the fictional town of Phippsboro to purchase and edit the local paper, The Bulletin. Chandler plays the 63-year-old meddlesome former editor, Ichabod Adams, who has become the municipal traffic commissioner but keeps an eye on Sterling to make sure that the newspaper meets specifications. At the time of his "Ichabod" role, Chandler was also the president of the Screen Actors Guild.
In addition to the two main leads, the cast includes Reta Shaw as Aunt Lavinia, Bob's housekeeper; Christine White as Abigail Adams, Ichabod's daughter and Bob's girlfriend; Jimmy Mathers, the younger brother of Leave It to Beaver's Jerry Mathers, as Benjie, Bob's six-year-old son; Jimmy Hawkins, also a semi-regular on The Donna Reed Show and later Petticoat Junction, as Jonathan Baylor; Burt Mustin, Gus the Fireman on Leave It to Beaver, as Olaf; and Forrest Lewis as Colby.
Overview
The pilot, titled "Adam's Apples", was broadcast on April 24, 1960 on CBS's General Electric Theater with Ronald Reagan. The episodes shown that season were "Ichabod's Niece", "The Phippsboro Story", "The Old Stowe Road" (with Mary Treen), "Ichabod's Romance", "Bob's Housekeeper", "A Letter from Juliet", "Teenage Journalist", "Parking Problems", "Bob's Redhead" (with Merry Anders), "Election Fever", "Jonathan's Romance", "The Purple Cow", and "Big Business". Notably, Rod Serling appears as Eugene Hollinfield in the episode "The Celebrity", which was shown on March 20, 1962.
Summer rebroadcasts continued until September 16. The series ran at 9:30 Eastern on Tuesday in a favorable time slot sandwiched between The Red Skelton Show and The Garry Moore Show, both in the Top 15. At the end of each Skelton broadcast, George Chandler urged viewers to stay tuned to Ichabod and Me. Yet viewers left CBS for that half-hour in droves, as Ichabod and Me failed to develop a loyal audience. The competition for Ichabod and Me was not considered formidable. It consisted of the second half of the Leslie Nielsen police drama The New Breed on ABC (until November 14, when The New Breed moved to 8:30 PM and Bert Parks' game show Yours for a Song began airing at 9:30 Eastern), and the second half of The Dick Powell Show, an anthology series on NBC. Ichabod and Me was sponsored each week by The Quaker Oats Company.