What I watched: The sixth episode of The Life of Riley, an early sitcom. The episode starred Jackie Gleason, Rosemary DeCamp, Lanny Rees, Gloria Winters, and Sid Tomack. It was directed by Herbert I. Leeds, and written by Irving Belcher, Reuben Shipp, and Alan Lipscott. “Assistant Manager” aired on NBC at 9:30 PM on Tuesday, November 8, 1949, and is available to watch on Internet Archive.
What happened: We open with Babs begging her mother for a new coat over breakfast, which costs a whole $33. Junior, on the other hand, wants money for his new girlfriend, fearing that if he doesn’t pay his share he’ll get a reputation as a “jiggalo.” Riley walks in, and promptly denies their requests. Apparently his pay as a riveter at an aircraft factory doesn’t go as far as it used to due to inflation.
Peggy sees the grease on her husband’s overalls and wishes that her husband had a job where he didn’t have to do such dirty lower-class work. Depressed at this situation, Riley slinks out the door. At the factory, Riley bemoans his fate to Gillis while slacking off. But a call comes in from above: Riley is being offered a new job, as Assistant Manager! Finally, he can leave the assembly line behind. A stunned Riley mumbles “Where’s the floor, I’ve got to sit down.”
As it turn out, however, this is a misunderstanding. Riley was told to polish the desk for the actual new assistant manager, but due to the heavy noise of the factory floor he misheard. Riley gets all dressed up for what he believes is his new job, wearing a suit, ditching his trademark lunchpail, and taking a cab to work.
At work, Riley tells the secretary that “the new assistant manager is here.” The chief recognizes Riley, but the mix-up continues. Eventually, Riley realizes the truth. Well, at least it happened before the end of the episode. But now Riley has to go home to a family excited about their father’s new job. Desolate, he tells his family that he’s thinking of quitting his new “job” and going back to the humble work of riveting. He says that once people become bigshots they become repulsive, and “I don’t want to be any more repulsive than I already am.”
The next day, Riley is finishing off polishing the desk when the phone rings. His family is on the way up, paying him a surprise visit at work. Riley quickly changes back into his suit, and somehow convinces the secretary to keep up the illusion. They brought him business cards and photos and everything. Then Gillis comes in and spoils everything by casually blurting out the truth. Stupid Gillis. The family briefly pretends that they still believe the ruse and beg Riley to quit his “job”, thus allowing him to save face in his own mind.
What I thought: We’ve known since the beginning of the series that Riley worked as an airplane mechanic (it was at least in the synopsis, although I can’t recall if it was actually mentioned in the episode.) It’s a nice, wartime-esque job, that establishes our protagonist as both a humble “rude mechanical” and a patriot. But that’s been background for the previous five episodes, which all focused on Riley’s attempts to maintain control over his household. By moving the action to the factory, where Riley has no control, the series makes itself more interesting and its protagonist much more sympathetic.
But by 1949, patriotic factory jobs were starting to lose their appeal. The lionization of the working class that accompanied the rise of left-wing politics in the 1930s was fading away in favour of the middle-class suburban zeitgeist of the 50s. On a more practical level, manual workers were still making far less money than the managerial class that profited off their labour. “Assistant Manager” builds off the mentions of money troubles in the previous episode, by explicitly identifying the problem as stagnant wages during a period of inflation. (Sounds familiar.) Mind you, this was 1949, so stagnant working-class wages could apparently still get you a three-bedroom house in Los Angeles.
“Assistant Manager” focuses on Riley’s attempts to transform his class status, to become one of the middle-class middle-managers who were becoming the American masculine idyll. The episode shows how class is more than just money: even a dumbass like Riley knows he has to dress differently and act differently, leaving the lunchpail at home and the overalls in the garbage. But of course, this is a sitcom, so it’s all a wacky misunderstanding and class transformation is impossible.
There’s actually something potent behind this episode’s plot. For working-class people, the possibility of ascending to the managerial class was something that was always dangled in front of them but never actually attainable. Or, when they did get there, they found their position rapidly being proletarianized — today the words “Assistant Manager” don’t conjure the respect and awe depicted in this episode, but rather the image of a beta-male sub-boss at a fast food restaurant.
Potent, too, is the way in which all the Riley family decide that they love being humble workers only after having the trappings of the bourgeoise snatched away from them. Future (and perhaps past) sitcoms would play this trope straight, with characters quitting their job-for-an-episode after realizing that their former, more humble station was actually best for them. This is one of the ways in which capitalism normalize itself, the ways in which we pretend that the conditions forced on us are our own moral choice. Who would have guessed The Life of Riley would stumble across such a cynical but clear-sighted viewpoint?
Gleason gives a genuinely distraught performance here. I’ve seen him described as miscast in this role, and perhaps that’s true, but he always leaves a big impression in a way his costars don’t. In “Assistant Manager” he is able to sell the diminished, quiet stature of a man humbled and shamed. (Seriously, was John Steinbeck a ghost writer for this episode or something?)
Also this week: we have a laugh track! I’m not sure if this was a new addition for the series’s sixth week, or if it was just cut off from the versions of previous episodes that made it online. I’m also not sure if this was canned laughter or response from a genuine studio audience. I would suspect the latter, if only because the track reacts how you should to Life of Riley — a few decent chuckles, but nothing uproarious. Most notable is an extended burst of applause for Gleason when he makes his first appearance. Even in this relatively ignomious role, people could see that Jackie Gleason was important.
Coming up next: We’re in sort of a three-show rotation at the moment, and it’s already lead us back to Suspense!
The Eternal Couch Potato 