Bringing Up Buddy

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Bringing Up Buddy is a 39-episode situation comedy television series which aired on CBS during the 1960–1961 season. In the story line, Frank Aletter, a native of Queens, New York, plays the orphaned Buddy Flower, a bachelor stockbroker, who is reared by his overprotective and meticulous aunts, Violet Flower and Iris Flower, played by Enid Markey (1896–1981) and Doro Merande (1892–1975), respectively. The program debuted on October 10, 1960, and finished its original episodes on June 28, 1961. Like the longer-runnng Leave It to Beaver on CBS and later ABC, the program was created by Joe Connelly and Bob Mosher.^[1]

Aletter was married from 1958-1974 to Miss America of 1955, Lee Meriwether, who guest starred in the April 17, 1961, episode as nurse Gloria Arnold. The aunts insist that Buddy see the attractive young and single nurse for a checkup that he does not need. The two were then married to each other.^[2]

Among guest stars was Edgar Buchanan, best known for his role as the eccentric Texas justice of the peace Roy Bean and as Uncle Joe Carson in CBS's Petticoat Junction. In the episode Buchanan posed as a big-game hunter, but most of his adventures were figments of his vivid imagination. On April 10, 1961, the aunts arrange a date for Buddy's friend "Fennimore Cooper" played by Jimmy Hawkins, better known for his role as Scotty on ABC's The Donna Reed Show and as the five-year-old Tommy Bailey in It's a Wonderful Life. However, the aunts become concerned when a men's magazine is found in Fennimore's room. In the episode which aired on May 8, 1961, the aunts again pressure Buddy, who plays a 34-year-old character, to marry, and then a woman leaves an unattended baby in the back seat of their convertible. In the penultimate episode entitled "Buddy and the Teenager", the character agrees to teach a course at a junior college, only to find that a student played by Cheryl Holdridge develops a crush on him.^[2]

The program is also remembered for its original theme song by George Tibbles, who also was a screenwriter for ABC's (later CBS) My Three Sons starring Fred MacMurray.^[3]

The program aired at 8:30 Eastern on Mondays between Pete and Gladys starring Harry Morgan and Cara Williams and The Danny Thomas Show. Its competition was the new detective series Surfside 6 set in Miami on ABC and Dale Robertson's Tales of Wells Fargo Western series on NBC.^[4] In the following season, CBS returned Robert Young to the 8:30 Monday time slot in his Window on Main Street nostalgia comedy, which also failed to develop an audience.

Irene Ryan, who would be cast in 1962 as "Granny" Clampett on CBS's blockbuster The Beverly Hillbillies, starred in two episodes of Bringing Up Buddy in the role of Cynthia Boyle. In 1964. Aletter co-starred as the husband of the fictional character played by Cara Williams on her own CBS series The Cara Williams Show.^[5]

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