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by Cary O'Dell
The lead characters were sophisticates. In the film, he was a college professor turned theatre critic; she was a well-respected, freelance writer. They had just recently upended their lives not only due to the husband’s recent career change but also due to their recent move to the suburbs, having just settled into a grand but decomposing Tudor-style home outside the city. They were also the parents to four children (all boys) and they owned one very large and rambunctious dog. In the film, they were known an as Laurence and Kate Mackay, but on TV, they became Jim and Joan Nash. He was college professor again (or still) while she remained a writer. They still had the kids, the dog and the big house. Except for the success of its then-running “The Man From UNCLE” series, MGM (once the biggest, brightest studio in town) had had trouble at this time finding success on the small screen. So, they hoped that this big-screen-to-small-screen transfer would do the trick. They even went so far as to have “UNCLE” stars Robert Vaughan and David McCallum make guest appearances—as their “UNCLE” characters—in season one of the series, all in the name of cross promotion. (Later, when “Man From UNCLE” spun off “The Girl From UNCLE,” that series’ star Stefanie Powers also made a short cameo on “Daises.”) Originally cast in the lead role for the TV show was Eleanor Parker but she departed the program before it ever began in a dispute over her salary. After Parker’s exit, actress Patricia (“Pat”) Crowley took the lead and Mark Miller was cast as her TV husband. Crowley had emerged as a show biz presence in the early 1950s in the lead role in 1951’s daytime TV show “A Date With Judy” and then via such movie roles as “Forever Female” with Ginger Rogers and in “Money from Home” with Martin and Lewis. She augmented her film roles with TV appearances in episodes of “The Twilight Zone,” “Bonanza” and on “The Man From UNCLE.” Her co-star, handsome Mark Miller, began his career on TV in 1954 with a role on “The Inner Flame.” Later he had the lead in the TV shows “Bus Stop” (based on the famous Marilyn Monroe film) and the sitcom “Guestward Ho!” One of his daughters is actress Penelope Ann Miller. Completing the cast were Kim Tyler as eldest son Kyle; Brian Nash as Joel Nash and
The TV version of “Daises” debuted over NBC on September 14, 1965 and has the odd distinction of having as a lead-in the infamous “My Mother, The Car.” I’m sure NBC had its reasons to pair these two show together…or one would think. But they didn’t seem to have too much in common other than, I suppose, being, technically, both “family sitcoms.” But, a closer look, would soon reveal that, in their way, they were both radical new takes on motherhood as seen on the small screen. For “My Mother, the Car,” a mother’s voice coming out of the radio of a junker car of course speaks for itself, but it was actually on “Daises” where our idea of a small screen motherhood really got shook up. First, Joan Nash didn’t much care for housework. And didn’t really care to cook either. And she didn’t care if the other moms in the neighborhood didn’t approve. Yet, she was a good mom; she took care of her kids. But she also worked—often and successfully. She wrote articles for national magazines back when that was still a way to earn a living. As portrayed in the series, “By Joan Nash” was a nationally-known and respected byline. The mom-works-as-a-writer trope was a major boon to TV sitcoms in the 1960s and ‘70s. It allowed for the “woman of the house” to have a career but still be regularly at home—usually working from the kitchen table—whenever some domestic crises erupted with the kids, the house, or the dog, etc. Earlier, Loretta Young when she returned to TV in “The New Loretta Young Show” (1962-1963) bought into this device and, later, so did Mrs. Muir of the “Ghost and Mrs. Muir” (1968-1970). But, in any event, “Daises” was different. Since Mrs. Nash was a successful writer and he was a college professor, no one on this show was “wacky.” So what is a sitcom to do? Instead, the produces made use of problems with their house and their lovable but still kid-like kids.
From the get-go, Mark Miller seemed to recognize that he and his new primetime show were breaking some new ground. He said in a July 1965 interview, “Well, you know. Two careers. She writes an article making fun of husbands and… Anyway, the thing is, I’m the head of the family. I tell her, ‘It’s all right as long as you don’t destroy my masculinity.’ The idea is two bright, charming, witty, sophisticated people… We’ve tried not to make them TOO sophisticated, of course.” Sometimes Joan’s career did though get in the way. For example, once she wrote, under a male moniker, an article on fishing for publication that also published “girlie” pics. All goes well until editor shows up at the house and wants to meet the man that wrote this article! Yes, the episode becomes a tale of mistaken identity. Then, in the program’s debut episode, Joan has also published a provocative article under a different name but people find out its her anyway. And though the piece is not autobiographical nor reflective of her marriage, she still has to try to explain everything away. Since Joan Nash was always portrayed as a good and successful writer and not such a great housekeeper some episodes revolved around that conundrum. Though the family employed a maid, we sometimes see Joan wrestle with the societal expectations of what a “wife/mother” is supposed to be. In episode four of the series, “Dinner on the Rocks,” Joan wants to prove something—mainly to herself—about being able to make a wonderful, gourmet dinner for her husband and his university colleagues. Things do not go as planned. Then there’s the penultimate episode of the series where Jim’s ego takes a bruising when Joan is, with her own earned money, able to buy Christmas gifts for the family and others without any assist from him. Of course, for every episode that explores gender role-realignment and the like, many others are pretty much familiar family sitcom fare. For example: the family has to adjust their lives to a new maid; the house is in need of repair again, and the twins become convinced their dad is a secret agent. (Cue the “UNCLE” guys!) Still, there’s enough new and forward-thinking about Mr. and Mrs. Nash—and that’s not even mentioning the double bed that Mr. and Mrs. Nash are regularly seen sleeping in!—to mark “Daises” as a primetime breakthrough. Therefore, it is completely understandable that in 1995, in season seven of her show, “Rosanne” reunited many of the greatest moms from TV history. In that intra-episode dream sequence, Pat Crowley occupied that show’s kitchen set alongside four other maternal TV icons: Barbara Billingsley (“Leave It To Beaver”), Alley Mills (“The Wonder Years”), Isabel Sanford (“The Jeffersons”) and June Lockhart (“Lassie”). “Please Don’t Eat the Daises” did well enough in its initial season of 30 episodes to beget a renewal for a second. The series even—in a photo where most the cast was upstaged by Ladadog--made the cover of “TV Guide” in January of 1966. But, in their second season, and saddled with a new timeslot, “Daises” began to dip and NBC cancelled the series after 28 more episodes were produced. Unfortunately, though not unheard of, 58 total episodes is not that enticing to stations for repeating. (One hundred installments is usually considered the magic number.) Hence, despite its interesting innovations, “Daises” has too often been denied being seen in rerun and, hence, has never been given its full due. |
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“Please Don’t Eat the Daises” began its life as a book of humorous intertwined essays by writer and playwright Jean Kerr. It was first published in 1957. Three years later, it inspired a big screen MGM film starring Doris Day and David Niven; it premiered in 1960. Five years after that, MGM decided to turn it into a TV series.
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