What I watched: The fourteenth episode of The Life of Riley, an early sitcom. The episode starred Jackie Gleason, Rosemary DeCamp, Gloria Winters, Lanny Rees,, Sid Tomack, Bob Jellison and Maxine Semon. It was directed by Herbert I. Leeds, and written by Irving Breecher, Reuben Shipp, and Alan Lipscott. “Peg’s Birthday” aired on NBC at 9:30 PM on Tuesday, January 3, 1950, and is available to watch on the Internet Archive.
What happened: The episode opens with Babs and Junior surprising Peg in the morning with birthday presents — she forgot. They got her perfume and a purse. Riley has already left, so the kids assume that he’s forgotten her birthday . Junior tells his mother she’s beautiful in an oddly earnest tone. Do you see what I mean about the Freudianism?
Later that day, Riley is showing a wrapped box to his friend Waldo. It’s not a present, however: he found it on the seat next to him on the bus. Waldo thinks that this is thievery, and he should give it to the bus company to return. Riley agrees, but he looks inside the box and discovers it’s a fur made from a silver fox. Peg has apparently always wanted to drape an animal carcass around her neck.
When he gets home, however, Riley discovers that it’s Peg’s birthday, and has the fur whipped out of his hands and taken for a present. This makes her rapturously happy. Riley, of course, doesn’t manage to tell her the truth. Later that night, he’s pacing outside, trying to find a way to tell her, and Gillis comes by to complain that his wife wants fur now too. Waldo is also there, because apparently everyone just wanders around at night, and he lays a guilt trip on Riley.
Peg, meanwhile, assumes that Riley spent too much money on the fur, and says that they’ll have to return it to pay the bills. Babs also tells her mother how wonderful and attractive she is. Waldo and Riley decide to place an advertisement in the newspaper lost and found section, but he’s worried about being scammed, so he makes the description too vague to possibly be useful. Gillis apparently overhears this on something called a “party line”, and joins in the haranguing.
Riley comes up with a plan: stealing the fur, making it look like a burglar took it, and giving her a present he had saved at the shop yesterday. For some reason, Waldo thinks this is a good plan, and joins in the “robbery”, which involves wearing bandanas for some reason. Things don’t get very far before they give up.
In the morning, Gillis’s wife (apparently named “Honeybee”, and played by Semon) has seen the lost and found ad, and comes over to lord it over her friend. Riley admits to his misdeed, and Peg feels humiliated. They’re both sullen for about two minutes, and then make up. Riley gives her his actual present: a locket with pictures of the family inside, and curls from the kids’ hair. That last bit seems a little creepy to me, but Peg loves it.
What I thought This is already the third birthday episode we’ve done in the series — I think only Babs has yet to go through the procession of humiliation and misunderstanding that seem to define celebrations on this show. Life of Riley certainly has no fear of repeating itself. But there does seem to be a departure here from past birthday episodes, and one which perhaps speaks to the 1950s (that’s right, we’re in the 50s now!) gender divide.
In my article on Riley’s birthday episode (hey, if the show can repeat itself this much, then so can I), I half-jokingly described the aggressive gift-giving process as depicting Indigenous practices of potlatch. There are some aspects of that philosophy in this episode too, with Riley’s ability to give an expensive present taken as a sign of his masculine prowress. But, more than episode, this episode upholds the American code of property.
Riley’s “discovery” of an expensive fur on the bus is perhaps the most harmless transgression against property possible. He doesn’t actively or maliciously steal it, and is clearly not depriving anyone of an essential or even important possession. The episode makes no attempt to impress on us the consequences of the loss of the fur: we never even see its owner. But nevertheless, everyone in the episode (even the wayward Riley) seems to immediately recognize that the moral thing to do is return it.
Maybe it’s precisely because the fur has value only as a marker of wealth that Riley’s “theft” is assumed to be so obviously immoral. He is attempting to impersonate someone above his means. As in “Assistant Manager”, Riley has the image of class ascendance dangled before him only to have it revealed to be all an illusion. One’s identity as a member of the working class must be displayed at all times in all ways.
If you’ve noticed that I’ve written a lot about Riley in the above paragraphs, it’s because he’s still the episode’s main focus. While the premise would seem to suggest that this could be a showcase episode for Rosemary DeCamp’s Peg, she’s firmly a supporting character in it. The only real character moment she gets is saying that she knows she’ll have to return the fur for the sake of the family. Look, I get it: if you have Jackie Gleason, you want to use him. But this episode only reaffirms Peg’s status as the dullest, least-defined member of a generally dull and ill-defined family.
There’s also a gendered dimension to Peg’s role in the story. Whereas Riley and to a lesser extent Junior are consumed by their own desires on their birthday, Peg is constantly trying to keep the family afloat. The feminine role is that of constant self-abnegation, never enjoying anything for too long. In the end, when she gets a present to keep, it only reinforces her role as a wife. At the dawn of the 50s, it truly appeared as if that limited role would stretch out forever.
Coming up next: We move into the non-public-domain episodes of The Lone Ranger, and I go hunting for pirate uploads.
The Eternal Couch Potato 