The Nancy Walker Show - Notability

Notability

The Nancy Walker Show was one of TV's earliest portrayals of homosexuality, with the character of Terry Folson. The public was not surprised that innovative producer Norman Lear would for once provide the viewing landscape with a gay character, regularly, in a TV series (since it was still rare and uncharted at the time), considering that Lear had been the first to introduce virginal topics such as racism, class structure, menopause, abortion, and the like within a traditional sitcom format. However, at least one American TV series had preceded The Nancy Walker Show with a regular character who was gay; the 1972-73 ABC sitcom The Corner Bar was the first in TV history to have one, with Vincent Schiavelli's bar patron Peter Panama.

When Nancy Walker signed on to star in this series, her new contract with ABC permitted her to quickly join another existing project before the 1976-77 season ended if The Nancy Walker Show was cancelled after a very short run. ABC did, indeed, drop the series after 10 episodes, and Walker was quickly hired by Garry Marshall to star in his upcoming sitcom Blansky's Beauties, a spin-off from his top-rated Happy Days. Production on the new series started so soon that Blansky's Beauties premiered on February 12, 1977, only less than two months after the cancellation and last broadcast of The Nancy Walker Show. Walker also had time to film a guest appearance as her new character, Nancy Blansky (who, like Nancy Kitteridge in her previous series, also worked in showbiz) on an episode of Happy Days in order to validate Blansky's as a spin-off of the former.

Blansky's Beauties also failed in the ratings, and was cancelled in the spring of 1977. Thus, Walker is one of the few actors in television to have starred in two failed vehicles in the same season (Walker's Blansky's Beauties co-star, Pat Morita, also earned this distinction in the 1976-77 season, having headlined his own short-lived ABC sitcom, Mr. T and Tina, in the fall of 1976, before the launch of Blansky's). After her infamous season at ABC, Walker returned to her popular role as Ida Morgenstern on Rhoda in the fall of 1977.