THEORIES OF RELATEEVEETY - ROSE MARIE AND THE GIBBONS GIRLS

There have been a lot of great TV characters who were never seen on TV:

• Carlton the Doorman ('Rhoda')
• Vera Peterson ('Cheers')
• Maris Crane ('Frasier')
• Mrs. Bloom ('The Goldbergs')
• Mr. Dennehy ('The Jackie Gleason Show')
• Mrs. Columbo ('Columbo')
• Dr. Lars Lindstrom ('The Mary Tyler Moore Show')
• Charlie Townsend ('Charlie's Angels')
• Mrs. Wolowitz ('The Big Bang Theory')
• Robin Masters ('Magnum P.I.')
• Orson ('Mork & Mindy')
• Sarah ('The Andy Griffith Show')

There are a few others, some to be found in British series.

But today we're taking a look at another great unseen character......

Sally Rogers: 

Wait till you hear. I went up to Connecticut this morning to visit my Aunt Agnes. You remember her, Rob. She's the one who says, "It is wise for a poor man to choose the weather, but it's folly for a rich man to choose a poor man"....  Don't try to figure it out. My Aunt Agnes was born on a hill.

Sally Rogers: 
I knew it, I knew it, I knew it. My Aunt Agnes was right. You know what she said when she saw Randy at the bowling alley? She said, "Sally, you can't tell a book if the title's covered."
Buddy Sorrell: 
Y'know, I don't feel very good.
Sally Rogers: 
What's the matter?
Buddy Sorrell: 

I'm beginning to understand Aunt Agnes.

(Both from 'The Twizzle')

Sally Rogers:
Hey! I got an idea for a line. My Aunt Agnes used to have a saying that went, uh, "If your heart is where the sky is bluest, then the sound of winter's twilight will be your friend."
Buddy Sorrell: 
Your aunt said that?
Sally Rogers: 
Yeah... and every time I think of it, I want to cry.
Buddy Sorrell: 
Why?
Sally Rogers: 
Because I think my Aunt Agnes is a nut!
(From 'The Thing About Women')

Sally Rogers: 
It's just like my Aunt Agnes always says, "It's better to get a rose from a casual friend than to get a can of succotash from a hoodlum."
(From "Romance, Roses, And Rye Bread”)

Sally’s Aunt Agnes sounds like she would have hit it off with Gracie Allen.  But she may have had a good reason for being a bit flighty.  Raising boisterous man-hungry triplets who were the identical cousins to Sally Rogers would drive anybody up the wall. 

Put on your waders, folks.  From this point on, we’re knee-deep in conjecture!

This is my theory of relateeveety – Aunt Agnes (whose last name was Gibbons) was the mother of these three women:

Myrna Gibbons
'The Doris Day Show' 
50 episodes

Bertha (Gibbons)
'My Sister Eileen'
(& 'The Bob Cummings Show')
24 episodes

Martha (Gibbons) Randolph'The Bob Cummings Show'9 episodes

Upon graduating high school in 1941, all three Gibbons girls left home and moved out to California to seek their fortunes – hopefully with a special fellow thrown into the bargain for each of them.  In fact, Martha married a college student who was attending California University.  But before the year was out, young Mister Randolph had quit school and joined the Army because of the attack on Pearl Harbor.  While in France assigned to King Company at some point after D-Day, Private Randolph was killed in action, leaving Martha a widow.  

BERTHA GIBBONS

(with Bob Collins)

MARTHA GIBBONS RANDOLPH
(with Bertha Krause & Charmaine Schultz)

 For a time, Bertha and Martha lived together in Los Angeles and both worked as secretaries in the same building.  Some of the businesses who were tenants in the building were the Taft Schreiber Talent Agency and Bob Collins’ photography studio.  But by 1959, Bertha thought that by living with her sister, both of them were being stifled in their love lives.  So she packed up and moved back East.  Having no intention of returning to Connecticut, Bertha moved to New York City where she got a secretarial job in the office of publisher D.X. Beaumont.  There she became good friends with Ruth Sherwood and her sister Eileen.

Martha meanwhile remained in California where she became friends with other secretaries in the building, like Charmaine “Schultzy” Schultz and a woman with the same first name as her sister, Bertha Krause.  There was one time where they formed their own singing group, the Bobolinks. 

While Bertha and Martha lived together in Los Angeles, their sister Myrna moved farther north, to San Francisco.  There she got a job at Today’s World magazine as secretary to Ron Harvey, assistant editor of the magazine.  She became close friends with Doris Martin, who came to work there as the executive secretary to the magazine’s editor Michael Nicholson.

I like to think that as the counter-culture bloomed in San Francisco, Myrna Gibbons got in touch with her inner self and then explored all facets of her life, including her sexuality… not that there was anything wrong with that……

But Doris Martin felt uncomfortable with that idea...

As Sally Rogers mentioned, Agnes Gibson lived in Connecticut.  Since the town or city was not mentioned, and as Earth Prime-Time is my personal sandbox (although I don’t own the action figures I play with in there), I’m going to claim that she lived in Meriden, once the Silver Capital of the World.  Meriden has at least one mention in Toobworld, in perhaps one of the most important TV shows ever when dealing with crossovers.  In an episode of ‘St. Elsewhere’, the son of Dr. Kiem and her husband Kevin had run away from Choate prep school in Wallingford but was later found hitch-hiking in Meriden.

Besides, I’m from Meriden originally.  And I’m a member of the League of Themselves and the TV Crossover Hall of Fame (‘The Hap Richards Show’, ‘Ranger Andy’, ‘Late Show with David Letterman’, “The Deadliest Season”.)  

My sandbox.  My rules.

One other point – Agnes Gibbons was the godmother to a woman who also bore that name.  “Aganess” (as her former boyfriend – Inspector Frank Luger of the NYPD pronounced it) lived in New York City and was about the same age as Sally, Myrna, Bertha, and Martha.  I don’t think she looked like the four of them.

O'BSERVATIONS:

My apologies for the quality of some pictures.  They are frame grabs from multi-gen copies off YouTube.

As with Aunt Agnes, Bertha's last name was never given (as far as I can tell), which is why I have Gibbons in parentheses.  And to qualify the discrepancy of Martha having the last name of Randolph, I made that her married name.  That they graduated in 1941 provided a way to get her widowed before the 1950s came around.

I shake my fist in impotent anger that the IMDb has dropped the category of searchable character names.  I bet I could have found an appropriate young man in the early 1940s with the last name of Randolph.

I didn't want to do a direct post about Sally Rogers.  Better televisiologists than me have already covered her in depth in books and online.  So I came up with this theory of relateeveety to dance around Sally as the topic.  It's probably my favorite post for this week of tributes to Rose Marie.

OTHER SHOWS SUGGESTED:

• 'Barney Miller'
• 'Saved By The Bell'
• 'Beverly Hills 90210'
• 'Combat!'
• 'St. Elsewhere'

BCnU!