Variety’s obit.

Here’s a nice recent interview.

Of the Laverne and Shirley principals, only Lenny (Michael McKean) survives. Both Laverne and Shirley have now passed on, as have Squiggy and The Big Ragu. They all died relatively young – aged 69 to 75. (McKean is 75 now.)

I suppose I haven’t thought about Cindy Williams in this millennium. If you had asked me yesterday to guess whether she was alive, my likelihood of a correct answer would have been the same as my chance of calling a coin flip correctly.

And yet her passing makes me sad. I reacted to her passing the same way I react when I hear of the loss of a high school classmate that I remember fondly, but have not thought about since graduation.

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She never did a nude scene. The closest she came, oddly enough, was when she mounted a comeback at age 50 in Meet Wally Sparks, the cast of which gave a fresh spark to the word “eclectic” (A few examples: Cindy, Rodney Dangerfield, Burt Reynolds, Gilbert Gottfried, Ron Jeremy, Jerry Springer, Sir Mix a Lot. Full list here.)

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In the first episode of I Love Lucy, somebody said “Why don’t we have a cigarette?” The result looked like this:

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They took the cigarettes out of a wooden box and never identified the brand, so the show wasn’t cashing in on a product placement. It was just a general pro-smoking message! Worse yet, Lucille Ball was obviously very pregnant (in real life) while she puffed away. She wore robes and aprons to hide it because her character was not pregnant, but it was painfully obvious whenever her contour could be seen. (Note how in the scene above she was in a very odd outfit for wandering around the apartment.)

Later in the episode, there was an obvious product placement. Fred and Ricky each drank a bottle of Ruppert beer on camera, and when they set the bottles down, the labels were conveniently turned toward the camera and in focus.

He was playing hide-and-seek in Bangladesh, but was never found by his playmates. He was eventually discovered in Malaysia, more than 2,000 miles away. When it comes to hide-and-seek, he is the GOAT.

(He hid in a shipping container, fell asleep … etc. And, yes, it sounds like a plot to a contrived movie, but it was no fun for him. He was lucky to live through it after being in the container for a full week that left him starving and dehydrated.)

Variety’s obit

Although critics liked it, The Addams Family series was not particularly successful, having been abandoned by ABC after only two seasons. It nonetheless left a strong impression, far greater than expected for a black and white sitcom with anemic ratings (62nd in its second season). It is clearly remembered by all my boomer friends, and I can recall that it had cultural resonance at the time. It made the cover of TV Guide more than once, and there was a short period back in the day when my asshole high school buddies and I would always substitute “Why, thank you, Thing” for a simple “thanks.”

It endures in syndication, and has been lovingly rebooted again and again. As a commenter notes, both seasons are available on archive.org for those interested. Thank you to commenter (and of course, to Thing.)

After “The Addams Family” finished its two-season run, Loring joined Phyllis Diller’s sitcom “The Pruitts of Southampton.” The critics were somewhat less enthusiastic about that series. In 2002, TV Guide ranked The Pruitts of Southampton the 20th worst show of all time. (Full list.)

As an adult, Lisa did turn in one nude performance that I know of, in an obscure, low-budget 1989 horror film called Iced. She did a lot of tubbing, including a full (partially underwater) frontal:

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Way back in 2007, Brainscan did a collage from this poor-quality VHS.

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Those actually look like they would be damned sexy scenes if we had them in high definition.