Episode 219 – “Okay, Mother” (July 18, 1950)

What I watched: The only surviving DuMont Network episode of the daytime game show “Okay, Mother.” The series was hosted by Dennis James and Judith Meade. This episode guest-starred Judith Doniger and was directed by Lou Sposa. It aired on July 18, 1950 at 1:00 PM on DuMont, and is available to view on the Internet Archive

What happened: Dennis James leads a group of ostentatiously-dressed housewives in a series of chants, describing it as the mom’s time to relax in the afternoon. He reads out a series of “mothergrams”, long-winded riddles. The woman in the audience who gets it right wins a small prize, like a bottle of perfume or a can of lighter fluid (?). One of the questions references the protective powers of DDT. There are apparently some younger women in the audience, and one of them gets the question.

Needs more floral prints, I say.

After a quick plug for “milk of magnesia tooth paste”, to cut down on “mouth acid,” The next game involves audience members challenging James to supply the other half of a rhyming couplet. People in the 50s loved these little quips. James improvises a lot of responses, but complains when he gets “Edna” for what he says is the thousandth time. He finds an old guy in the audience, who gets a chance to answer a “mothergram” to win a Polaroid camera. The old guy doesn’t get it.

James continues with this routine, finding a couple of other guys. The second lucky contestant is a woman with a thick Italian accent, who doesn’t get the answer of Edgar Allen Poe, which to be fair requires a lot of cultural background. This is followed by reading a letter nominating a “mother of the week.” The letter is about an adoptive mother who took in four kids and helped out a nearby couple. It’s honestly pretty sweet. The mom gets sent a nice wristwatch, and we get an ad for Bayer Aspirin, which is “so gentle mothers even give it to small children.”

Up next is a comedy sketch, where James takes on the role of “little Dennis”, a disobedient kid. It’s kind of reminiscent of the Stuart sketches from MAD TV. Playing the role of the responsible mother is female co-host Judith Meade. He then does another tour of the audience, asking if they would spank their baby for getting their clothes wet. There’s a bit of a debate, but the spankers win a poll of hands. This is about four years after the release of Dr. Spock’s Baby and Child Care.

This is definitely some kind of fetish thing.

The show uses an overlay to present two images of James to advertise a 2-in-1 sale. The final segment is a presentation of the “honor mother” Judith Doniger, an opera singer. She plugs an upcoming concert in October of “long-haired music”, which at this point in time referred to opera. James signs off with one final plug.

What I thought: Daytime television was, and to an extent still is, the province of the housewife. In contrast to the more masculine world of primetime, this was programming that aimed to be something light that women could have on in the background while they cleaned or took care of the kids. Of course, this was also largely programming made by men who had a broadly stereotypical and not generally high perception of their target audience — hence programs like Okay, Mother.

Okay, Mother was already well into its run by the summer of 1950. It had started off as a local program on WABD in 1948, before getting picked up by DuMont in early 1949. The origin of the title came from James’ days calling wrestling, when he would address basic facts to the presumably ignorant “mother” to avoid insulting the intelligence of the presumably knowledgeable male viewer. This gives you something of an idea of the show’s perspective of women.

Okay, Mother aims to pander to the stereotypical housewife. The prizes are all household goods, ones that would fit within a likely small budget. James’ paean to motherhood is pitched as broad as possible. It reminds me a bit of Jimmy McGill doing bingo at the retirement home, saying what he thinks dim-witted old people want to hear. There’s a lot of kissing on the cheek, and theatrical flirting with very young girls that reads uncomfortably today.

Maybe I shouldn’t be so quick to assume a condescending disconnect between audience and viewership. After all, Okay, Mother ran for three years and had a fairly major sponsor (drug company Bayer). The large female studio audience certainly seems to like the show. The confines of 1950s femininity were strict and sometimes unflattering, but no doubt many women looked at them as more of a comfort than a burden. All the same, I can’t imagine watching this every day and feeling like television took me seriously. Even The Lone Ranger seems like it has more respect for its audience’s intelligence.

This is the only surviving episode of Okay, Mother. (This is another consequence of daytime TV being considered feminine — very little of it has been preserved.) Dennis James would go on to have a long career in television, spending more time on screen than anyone else up until 1976. Maybe we’ll see him again.

Coming up next: The Lone Ranger tries to get me to reconsider that tenuous compliment, assuming I can find the episodes.