Harold Peary - Leaving Gildersleeve

Leaving Gildersleeve

By 1950, however, Peary's run as Gildersleeve was over. With CBS in the middle of a talent raid that had already lured Jack Benny and other NBC stars, Peary was offered a CBS deal of his own, after he chafed over NBC's and Kraft's reluctance to let him use his singing voice more often on Gildersleeve and to give him more part in the show's ownership than he already had. Radio historian Gerald Nachman, in Raised on Radio, said Peary and his agents at MCA had negotiated fruitlessly to get Peary a bigger stake in the show's ownership. When CBS began luring Benny (also an MCA client) and others away from NBC, mostly by offering the performers better capital-gains terms against the still-high postwar U.S. taxes than NBC was willing to do, Peary listened and signed with the network.

The problem was that Kraft wasn't willing to make the move with him. And they had a successor ready---Willard Waterman, whose voice resembled Peary's and who had known Peary since their early Chicago days. Waterman refused to appropriate the famous Gildersleeve laugh, believing Peary alone should have title to that trademark, but otherwise slipped easily into the role. Without Peary, however, Gildersleeve struggled on a few more radio years (by its final season, listeners heard only repeat broadcasts of earlier episodes) and bombed on television.

At CBS, Peary began a new situation comedy, The Harold Peary Show, sometimes known as Honest Harold, a title that was actually the name of the fictitious radio show the new character hosted. Radio veteran Joseph Kearns (later familiar as Mr. Wilson on television's Dennis the Menace) played veterinarian Dr. Yancey, known better as Doc Yak-Yak and resembling former foil Judge Hooker. The new show also borrowed a few Gildersleeve plot devices, such as running for mayor and engagements to two women. In what was possibly a desperate attempt to recreate the Gildersleeve magic, it even brought in actress Shirley Mitchell, virtually recreating her Gildersleeve role of Leila Ransom, under the name of Florabelle Breckenridge. Additionally, Honest Harold's secretary at the radio station, Glory, bears a more than passing resemblance to Gildersleeve's Water Department secretary, Bessie: both are stereotypical giggly blondes. Despite these efforts to recreate the power and ratings of "The Great Gildersleeve", The Harold Peary Show lasted only one season of 38 episodes.