Story
The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew were both successful book publishing franchises, owned by the Stratemeyer Syndicate, a publishing group which owned many successful children's book lines.
The Hardy Boys are brother amateur detectives. Frank is the elder of the two and Joe is two years younger. The two boys live in the fictional city of Bayport, New York with their famous father, Fenton Hardy (Ed Gilbert), a private detective formerly with the New York Police Department.
In addition to the Hardy Boys, their stories feature two other characters with some regularity: Aunt Gertrude (Edith Atwater) and a platonic female friend of the boys, Callie Shaw (Lisa Eilbacher), who also does part-time work for their father, Fenton. Other characters which played a major part of the Hardy Boys books, such as Chet Morton (Gary Springer), appeared only briefly in the series.
Nancy Drew is the amateur sleuth — she prefers the term "part time investigator" — daughter of attorney Carson Drew. She lives with her father, Carson (William Schallert), in the fictional town of River Heights, Illinois which, by the nature of the cross-over element of the series, cannot be too distant from the Hardy Boys east coast United States home town of Bayport.
In addition to Nancy Drew and her father, her stories feature two other characters with some regularity: her close friend George (Georgia) Fayne (Jean Rasey and, later for three episodes, Susan Buckner) and Ned Nickerson (George O'Hanlon Jr., son of actor and voice talent George O'Hanlon). Another prominent character from the Nancy Drew books, Bess Marvin (Ruth Cox), made only two appearances in two-part episodes.
In the novels on which the series was based, Nickerson is explicitly identified as Nancy's boyfriend; in the television series, their romance is more ambiguous.
In the first season, Nickerson is a law student who does part-time work for Carson Drew. In the second season, Nickerson is re-introduced, with no reference to his earlier appearances, in a scene, in which he is apparently introduced to Nancy Drew for the first time, as a young hotshot lawyer from the city District Attorney's office. In this second appearance he is played by Rick Springfield.
The TV show marked the first time that the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew met and worked together; they had never done so in the context of the books at that time (up to that point). In the first episode of the second season ("The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew Meet Dracula") they meet in a hotel room in Europe; the boys tracking their father, who was working on a case with Nancy Drew. The meeting gets off on the extreme wrong foot, when Nancy throws Frank to the floor, karate-style.
Though the relationship between Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys is somewhat platonic, there is a heavily-implied romance between Nancy Drew and Frank Hardy. In one episode ("Mystery of the Hollywood Phantom") they kiss briefly.
Read more about this topic: The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries
Famous quotes containing the word story:
“So every journey that I make
Leads me, as in the story he was led,
To some new ambush, to some fresh mistake:
So every journey I begin foretells
A weariness of daybreak, spread
With carrion kisses, carrion farewells.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“We bank over Boston. I am safe. I put on my hat.
I am almost someone going home. The story has ended.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“A good story is one that isn’t demanding, that proceeds from A to B, and above all doesn’t remind us of the bad times, the cardboard patches we used to wear in our shoes, the failed farms, the way people you love just up and die. It tells us instead that hard work and perseverance can overcome all obstacles; it tells lie after lie, and the happy ending is the happiest lie of all.”
—Kathleen Norris (b. 1947)