8 /10 1 Votes8
Country of origin CanadaUnited States Running time 30 minutes Original release 1957 – 1958 Final episode date 1958 | 8/10 IMDb No. of episodes 39 Original network Syndication First episode date 1957 Number of episodes 39 Genre Sitcom | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Starring Minerva UrecalWalter Sande Similar The Adventures of Hiram, AES Hudson Street, The Ann Sothern Show, The Adventures of Kit Car, Alcoa Theatre | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The Adventures of Tugboat Annie is a 1957 Canadian-filmed comedy television series starring Minerva Urecal as Annie Brennan, the widowed captain of the tugboat "Narcissus," and Walter Sande as Horatio J. Bullwinkle, the captain of the "Salamander." The syndicated series lasted for 39 episodes.
Contents
Background
Norman Reilly Raine's stories of the salty tugboat captain Annie Brennan, a character based on the life of Thea Foss, first appeared in prose form in the weekly US journal Saturday Evening Post in the late 1920s. She was soon developed into a movie character, depicted in three films and portrayed by a different actress in each (Marie Dressler in Tugboat Annie, 1933; Marjorie Rambeau in Tugboat Annie Sails Again, 1940; and Jane Darwell in Captain Tugboat Annie, 1945).
Development
In 1954, a television series was commissioned by the independent American production company TPA. The pilot took two years to complete, at a then-record cost of $129,000. Elsa Lanchester, Jay C. Flippen, and Chill Wills were all in line for major roles at one point or another at this early stage. The series was filmed in Toronto harbor and was first shown in Canada, having attracted ratings good enough to interest American television stations. What had succeeded in Canada proved a disappointment in the United States, where the viewing audiences had presumably become accustomed to greater sophistication than the simplistic humor of this series. The show was also screened in the United Kingdom, but is now totally forgotten.
Plot
Annie Brennan, widowed and the former skipper of a garbage scow, now captains a ship owned by the Severn Tugboat Company. A sympathetic, 50-year-old woman, her adventures consist of the humorous situations that develop when she attempts to assist people in trouble. Horatio Bullwinkle, a rival tugboat captain refers to her as “The Old Petticoat.” The two of them traded insults and stole jobs from each other throughout the run of the series.