ALL SCI-FI

[Pow]

My Living Doll was a sitcom created by Jack Chertok. The series premiered on September 27, 1964 on CBS, it lasted one season for 26 episodes and was filmed at Desilu Studios.

Premise: Psychiatrist Bob McDonald (Robert Cummings) is given his friend Dr. Carl Miller's (Henry Beckman) latest invention. Miller is a scientist for the U.S.A.F. and has invented an android (Julie Newmar). The android is called AF 709 and is a lifelike beautiful woman named Rhoda.

Dr. Miller is being transferred to Pakistan and he wants Bob to take care of his android. Bob is reluctant at first, but in time, becomes intrigued with the idea of educating the sophisticated but naive android about society, as well as being the perfect woman.

-- Cynthia Lowry, Associated Press, 20 September 1964.

A psychiatrist who accidentally becomes the uncomfortable custodian of a gorgeous robot named Rhoda whose plastic external and computer innards were made for space experiments . . . My Living Doll is just one of a number of excursions into comedy-fantasy which network television will be taking during the current season. It is produced by Jack Chertok whose My Favorite Martian was a hit last season.

[Bud Brewster]

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I was hoping I could find espisode of this series on YouTube, but what they have are clips and this interesting behind-the-scenes documentary.

But it is indeed interesting.

____________ My Living Doll (1964-1965) S1 E1


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I can't helping thinking that the basic premise was doomed to failure.

Julie Newmar was a sexy lady who played a robot. Robert Cummings could be attracted to her physically, just because she looked like . . . well, Julie Newmar. But he could never have a relationship with her the way Larry Hagman did with Barbara Eden in I Dream of Jeannie!

In fact, the very suggestion that Bob was attracted to Julie's character was a bit disturbing!
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Pow]

Another thing that doomed the series was that Cummings & Newmar did not hit it off.

[JKB-1]

Spent the weekend digging for an online conversation a dozen years back... Turns out it never got to the point where I actually raised the question of why there were so many "I've got a secret" situation comedies in those few years, and what they meant, together or individually. So now I will subject you guys to that here.

The "why so many" is -- of course -- because one was successful. Another suggestion has been that the fantastical elements are actually metaphors for things that can't be discussed openly, but that the writers really wanted to discuss. But each TV series was different, in both the mundane situation and the fantastical intrusion into it. Were these differences representing a different real-life thing, or a different metaphorical approach, or just changes to reduce the possibility of lawsuit?

"My Living Doll" was possible in a way that meeting a witch, or a genie, or even a martian wasn't. Slightly. Still, I'm not sure what hints we can mine from it for interacting with ChatGPT. It's probably a metaphor for something. I suggest the same thing as the myth of Pygmalion and Galatea. It should be noted that Shaw's play "Pygmalion" had a musical adaptation "My Fair Lady" that came out as a movie in 1964.
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That does not compute...
at least, I am not going to bother to compute it.

[Bud Brewster]