Mama (TV Series) - From Live To Film

From Live To Film

However, by the end of the 1955-56 season, even though the ratings for Mama were still respectable, viewership had decreased and Maxwell House, the show's sponsor, complained that not enough viewers were buying their coffee. As a result, in July, 1956, CBS canceled the program. Carol Irwin, the show's producer, urged viewers to write the network demanding a return of the program. As a result, 175,000 letters poured into CBS and the network immediately renewed the show. Unfortunately, with its prime-time schedule already filled, CBS scheduled Mama at 5:00pm on Sunday afternoons beginning December 16, 1956. This time, 26 episodes were filmed. However, the less-than-desirable time slot resulted in Mama's ratings being very low. Mama was ultimately canceled in March, 1957 with several episodes left unaired.

Nevertheless, after eight years of playing Mama Hansen, Peggy Wood was finally honored with an Emmy nomination as best actress in a drama series. Even though she didn't win, on the night of the 1956-57 Emmy Awards, in admiration for the long-running success of Mama and the great affection the public felt for Wood, the Television Academy asked the actress to present the last award of the evening, Best Single Program of the Year, which went to Playhouse 90's Requiem for a Heavyweight.

In the fall of 1957, all of the 26 "filmed" episodes of Mama were aired on New York's WPIX-TV Channel 11. However, as the live (kinescoped) episodes are largely lost, Mama is unfamiliar to later generations of viewers.

In 1985, the Museum of Broadcasting in New York City presented a retrospective of Mama by arranging screenings of several of the live television broadcasts (1949–56) which had been donated by various sources, as well as a seminar featuring the actors who played the Hansen children—Rosemary Rice (Katrin) and Dick Van Patten (Nels) and longtime director, Ralph Nelson. In addition, the Museum discovered all 26 episodes of the filmed Mama (1956–57) in a CBS storage facility in New Jersey, and these episodes were not only part of the screening exhibition but were also added to the Museum's collection. Rice donated several kinescopes she kept from the show for the exhibition.

The opening and closing musical pieces were the "Holberg Suite" and "The Last Spring," by the Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg. Director-producer Ralph Nelson, himself of Norwegian descent, went on to direct the film Lilies of the Field.