Word: byington
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...last week named its first ambassador to the new Southeast Asian nation of Malaya. Appointed by President Eisenhower: Career Diplomat Homer Morrison Byington Jr., 49, born of U.S. parents at Naples, Italy, educated at Phillips Academy and Yale ('30), veteran of foreign service in Cuba, Yugoslavia, Italy (ten years) and Spain, credited by old foreign service hands as having "the smoothness with which machinery rolls." Last job: minister of the U.S. mission in Madrid...
...quite sure why. Writer-Producer Parke Levy argues that the show's success is the result of "basic sociological and psychological factors." Bride's star, fluttery Spring Byington, veteran of stage and screen, thinks "people get a lot of fun from this show, but the fun is based on good feeling. You get to know the family, and they are kept pretty much in character so they don't confuse the audience." CBS's Hubbell Robinson, vice president in charge of TV programming, notes that Bride inherits a great many viewers from the preceding I Love...
Desirable Dames. What Bride's viewers see is a mishmash of kittenish domestic humor. Spring Byington lives with her daughter and son-in-law (Frances Rafferty and Dean Miller); a next-door neighbor, Pete Porter, adds a welcome touch of acid as a wisecracking foe of mothers-in-law, and Verna Felton plays a low-comedy crony of Spring's. Verna recently had a bit part in the movie Picnic, and when the film was on location in Kansas she got more attention from the natives than all the rest of the company. Director Joshua Logan was perplexed...
...Actress Byington sees an even more important message. Primed by extensive off-camera reading ("Books to me are my favorite stuff of the world"), with a working knowledge in psychology that ranges from Vedanta to Karen Homey, Spring believes that her role of Lily Ruskin in Bride proves that "Lily hasn't lost her appetite for life and is now free to do ridiculous things. She can play with life much more because she is mature of heart. She isn't stopped because other people are not doing it. She drives to Mexico alone. If something appeals...
Even the season's situation comedies are wreathed with mistletoe: Medic finds its weekly tragedy at an office Christmas party; Spring Byington goes Christmas shopping on December Bride; Red Skelton plays an O. Henry tramp on Christmas Eve; Robert Young stages an old-fashioned Christmas on Father Knows Best; Dragnet repeats its Christmas heart throb of last year and the year before; Eve Arden deals with enchanted music boxes on Our Miss Brooks...