Situation
The show centered on Tom Corbett (Bill Bixby), a handsome, thirty-something magazine publisher and widower from Los Angeles who had shouldered the responsibility of raising his freckled-faced, six-year-old son, Eddie (Brandon Cruz), who often cleverly manipulated his father about getting a new wife, shortly after the death of Eddie's mother and Tom's wife, Helen. Tom's domestic arrangements were managed, highly competently, by his Japanese housekeeper, Mrs. Livingston (Miyoshi Umeki), who was diplomatic and full of sage advice and would also look after Eddie, especially with his dirty work. Mrs. Livingston is best remembered for the way she addressed Bixby's character as "Mr. Eddie's Father". Tom worked with Tina Rickles (Kristina Holland), who was his secretary at the magazine company. Norman Tinker (James Komack), who was the head of another family, worked as a radical photographer at the same company, and would also become Eddie's occasional uncle.
In 1970, Bill Bixby made his debut as a director, going on to direct eight episodes of the show.
The show was canceled in 1972, when Bixby had a falling out with James Komack on the direction of the show. Many of the later episodes focused on Norman, Tom, and Eddie rather than on the relationship between Tom and Eddie. Years after the show was canceled, the show became quietly popular as reruns in syndication.
Read more about this topic: The Courtship Of Eddie's Father
Famous quotes containing the word situation:
“The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men the conviction and the will to carry on.... The genius of a good leader is to leave behind him a situation which common sense, without the grace of genius, can deal with successfully.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)
“If the new American father feels bewildered and even defeated, let him take comfort from the fact that whatever he does in any fathering situation has a fifty percent chance of being right.”
—Bill Cosby (b. 1937)
“There had been no thievery or venality. We had all simply wandered into a situation unthinkingly, trying to protect ourselves from what we saw as a political problem. Now, suddenly, it was like a Rorschach ink blot: others, looking at our actions, pointed out a pattern that we ourselves had not seen.”
—Richard M. Nixon (1913–1994)