Mary Kay and Johnny

Mary Kay and Johnny
Format	Sitcom
Created by	Mary Kay Stearns Johnny Stearns
Starring	Mary Kay Stearns Johnny Stearns Howard Thomas Nydia Westman Christopher William Stearns
Country of origin	United States
No. of episodes	About 300
Production
Running time	15 minutes per episode (1947-1948, 1949) 30 minutes per episode (1948-1949, 1950)
Broadcast
Original channel	DuMont CBS NBC
Picture format	Black-and-white
Audio format	Monaural
Original run	November 18, 1947 (1947-11-18) – March 11, 1950 (1950-03-11)

Mary Kay and Johnny is the first situation comedy broadcast on network television in the United States. Starring real-life married couple Mary Kay Stearns and Johnny Stearns, the series is the first program to show a couple sharing a bed, and the first television series to show a woman's pregnancy on television.^[1]

Network runs

Mary Kay and Johnny debuted on the DuMont Television Network on Tuesday, November 18, 1947. The Stearnses created and wrote all the scripts for the show. The program was broadcast live, most of the action taking place on a set representing the New York City apartment of the title characters, a young married couple.

After a year on DuMont, the show moved to CBS for half a year, much of the time being broadcast every weeknight, and then ran for one more year each Saturday night on NBC, which broadcast the final episode on March 11, 1950.

In 1948, Mary Kay became pregnant. After unsuccessfully trying to hide it, the show's producers wrote her pregnancy into the show. On December 31, 1948, the Stearnses' son Christopher, less than one month old, appeared on the show and became a character.

Lost episodes

Before 1948, Mary Kay and Johnny was broadcast live and not recorded. In early 1948, still broadcast live, the show was also recorded on kinescopes so that it could be shown, with some delay, on the West Coast. The entire series from then until 1950 was recorded in this way. Many episodes survived in full as late as 1975.^{[citation needed]}

The fate of the NBC episodes is unknown. Fragments of the show's last few episodes survive, most on 16-mm film; these are not commercially available, though TV Land used a clip in an episode of Inside TV Land called "Taboo TV".^{[citation needed]}

The Paley Center for Media has one 1949 episode in its collection.^[2]

See also

• List of programs broadcast by the DuMont Television Network
• List of surviving DuMont Television Network broadcasts
• Lost episode

References

1. ^ snopes.com/radiotv Snopes.com: "Early to Bed"
2. ^ Entry for June 13th, 1949 episode at The Paley Center for Media website

Bibliography

• David Weinstein, The Forgotten Network: DuMont and the Birth of American Television (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2004) ISBN 1-59213-245-6
• Alex McNeil, Total Television, Fourth edition (New York: Penguin Books, 1980) ISBN 0-14-024916-8
• Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh, The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network TV Shows, Third edition (New York: Ballantine Books, 1964) ISBN 0-345-31864-1

External links

• Mary Kay and Johnny at the Internet Movie Database
• Mary Kay and Johnny at TV.com
• DuMont historical website