The Life of Riley was a long-running sitcom, among the most influential of all sitcoms in the history of the genre; it aired over the Blue Network from 1944-1945, then NBC from 1945-1951. William Bendix starred as the lead character, Chester A. Riley, an aircraft mechanic from Brooklyn who had transported his family to work in a wartime aircraft plant in Los Angeles. Paula Winslowe played his wife, Peg. Barbara Eiler was usually his daughter Babs, while Tommy Cook, Bobby Ellis and Scotty Beckett each played his son, Junior. Ken Carpenter and Harry Von Zell were the show's announcers. The series was created by Irving Brecher and had a remarkably consistent tone and backstory for the characters (Alan Lipscott and Reuben Ship were productive writers for the series).
Brecher was a friend of Groucho Marx and had written for him on two lesser Marx Brothers movies (At the Circus and Go West). He'd wanted to create a radio sitcom for Groucho but his sponsor couldn't envision Groucho as the head of a happy family (neither can I, to be fair). Outside of the Life of Riley, Brecher's greatest claim to fame was writing the film Meet Me in St. Louis (1947).
Chester A. Riley was basically a good-natured dope; usually the problems on the show were of his own making as he'd try to find a way to sneak off work or get into a poker game; Riley's attempts at covering up his minor infractions would then escalate until he'd eventually try to make good. Of course, arriving at the time this series did, sometimes Riley's problems simply stemmed from struggling out of the Great Depression; Riley's family were always struggling to make ends meet, didn't own a car and were often in danger of being evicted for falling behind on their rent. Trying to improve his family's standing was another way in which Riley would inevitably court disaster. His main catchphrase was, "Wotta revoltin' development this is!" His favoured malapropism was "my head's made up!"
John Brown had two major roles (and occasionally a variety of other small parts) as Digby O'Dell, "the friendly undertaker" and Riley's fellow factory worker Jim Gillis. Riley's boss, Mr. Stevenson, was usually played by Alan Reed (Reed also occasionally played Peg's father). Early on, Riley often interacted with his milquetoast neighbour Waldo Binney (Francis Trout). Lou Merrill was Peg's ex-boyfriend Sidney Monahan, whom Riley remained jealous of; Shirley Mitchell was Louella Lownesbury, the southern belle who made Peg jealous (Louella was virtually identical to Mitchell's Great Gildersleeve character Leila). And there were a host of other recurring minor characters like Junior's girlfriend Marilyn Morris (whose father was Riley's landlord) and Babs' boyfriend Simon, who even had his own catchphrase ("I love ya madly!").
The secondary characters were mostly there to exacerbate Riley's problems; Mr. Stevenson was a greedy, miserly boss, always looking for an honest way to cheat his hard-working employees. Gillis frequently would get Riley into trouble by bragging about how he'd cheated his way out of work or boasting about his son Egbert's achievements; trying to emulate Gillis' behaviour or forcing Junior to beat Egbert in a competition always led to trouble.
By contrast, Waldo and Digger provided a conscience to Riley; although Waldo would frequently express admiration when Riley would boast to him about his supposed triumphs, when Riley did something wrong, Waldo would meekly correct him. As the show went on, that became Digger's role and the show's formula became one of escalating problems until Riley would chance to meet Digger ("You're looking fine-- very natural!") and relate his woes to him; Digger would supply Riley with some sage advice which he'd attempt to use in the climax (but would usually garble Digger's advice).
In the show's first year, Riley was bedeviled by Peg's Uncle Baxter (Hans Conreid), a freeloader who was always abusing Riley's good nature. The very episode where Riley finally got rid of Uncle Baxter, his brother Uncle Buckley (Charlie Cantor) took his place. In either case, neither were a good fit for the series. The Life of Riley tended to feature sitcom misunderstandings and mistakes on Riley's part, but Baxter (and to a lesser extent, Buckley) was actively malevolent and would deliberately make trouble for Riley. They were right to eliminate the characters from the series.
There were many flashback episodes to times earlier in the Rileys' lives when they lived in Brooklyn; these had very similar framing devices where Riley would boast to someone (usually one or both of his kids or one of his co-workers) about how he succeeded at something earlier in he and Peg's relationship; once he left the room, Peg would tell Riley's audience the true story, setting up the flashback. These included stories set when Chester and Peg were in high school (Paula Winslowe would raise her falsetto for these) and the days when Peg dated Sidney; they wound up covering Chester and Peg's engagement, wedding, early married life and the birth of Babs. For a comedy program, there was a lot of lore!
The series was originally sponsored by the American Meat Institute; those ads will never not be funny to me as I try to imagine who on Earth thought Americans needed to be convinced to eat meat? Later they were sponsored by Teel dentifrice, then Dreft cleaner, Prell Shampoo (P-R-E-L-L, Prell Shampoo!) and finally Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer. The latter was undoubtedly the most thematically-appropriate sponsor - a blue collar drink for a blue collar family.
In 1949, the Life of Riley became a pretty-good motion picture, written by Brecher with Bendix reprising the part of Riley and John Brown reprising Digby O'Dell. Rosemary DeCamp played Peg and noted radio announcer Bill Goodwin played Sidney Monahan. Episodes of the radio show around that time made a lot of jokes about the film; it was also adapted to radio as an episode of Lux Radio Theater.
The show became an early TV sitcom that year, with Jackie Gleason as Riley (John Brown again reprised Digby and Rosemary DeCamp again played Peg); it aired just one year, but was Gleason's big break on television and has been viewed in retrospect as a testing ground for the more successful the Honeymooners. Most of the plots were reused from the radio series (which had itself repeated scripts now and then). When Bendix was ill, Gleason played Riley on the radio for the November 11, 1949 episode.
After the radio series ended, Bendix reprised Riley yet again on television, a more successful series that lasted 1953-1955. Irving Brecher wasn't involved, however.
The Life of Riley didn't just pave the way for the Honeymooners but virtually every example of the family sitcom - a sub-genre that's mostly gone now, but which comprised much of the most popular programming from the 1950s to 1990s - can be found on this program; the bumbling, egotistical father; the sensible wife; the boy-crazy daughter; the wise yet ignored son; the wacky neighbours; the Life of Riley was a significant program in the history of the sitcom; more than that, I find it's still pretty funny. The Rileys blue collar troubles still resonate, especially as so many of the sitcoms that followed chose to place their casts in a comfortable middle to upper-middle class.
The quality of the series is, to my ears, pretty uniform throughout, although I find the last year has a few too many repeated scripts (and the latter-day actor playing Junior isn't as effective). My favourite episodes include Riley's visit to a haunted house, with a surprising touching conclusion (October 29, 1944); Riley teaching a lesson to his boss' obnoxious son Roswell on Christmas (December 24, 1944); Riley thinking Sidney's plotting a "Double Indemnity" hit against him (March 16, 1946); Riley tries to collect health benefits over a sprained ankle (May 31, 1947); Riley enrolls at a phony engineering school (September 6, 1947); the flashback story of Riley in the school play (November 15, 1947); the Rileys quarrel over whether to buy a piano or a TV set (December 27, 1947); Riley tries to control the family telephone (January 17, 1948); Riley running a neighbourhood curfew (April 3, 1948); Riley tries to study an encyclopedia (October 29, 1948); Riley turns against Junior's comic books (!) (November 5, 1948); Riley's sister gets engaged to a gambler (December 10, 1948); Riley tries to get his fellow employees their Christmas bonus (December 24, 1948); Riley's offended when he's compared to the character in the movie, "The Life of Riley!" (May 6, 1949); Peg gets a job (February 17, 1950) and Riley and Junior running competing hamburger stands (April 28, 1950).
You can hear the Old Time Radio Researchers' collection of 255 The Life of Riley episodes through this link to their website.
