"I Figured I'd Better Shut Up While I Was Ahead"

A quarter century after school let out forever for Our Miss Brooks, Eve Arden was introduced to new filmgoers playing that with whom her most famous alter ego usually butted heads---a high school principal (in the Grease films) just as clueless but only half as incendiary as pompous Osgood Conklin.

A KNUS (Denver) radio host and eventual classic radio encyclopedist, John Dunning, hooked up with Arden as the veteran actress/comedienne planned a house party combining castmates from Our Miss Brooks and her later television exercise, The Mothers-in-Law. She acknowledged fans still tended to tie her earlier film roles to Connie Brooks; they likely identified the more familiar image of Arden as the wisecracking best friend to the put-upon heroine. But in the same patient movement she dispelled the tie, as gently firm as Connie might dispel Conklin’s bombast or bashful biology teacher Philip Boynton’s indifference.

"I did a lot of pictures that were off the beaten path," Arden said. "I did Dough Girls, in which I played a Russian, I played Night and Day and played a French actress in that . . . Dark at the Top of the Stairs. A lot of things that were quite far." She also played Peerless Pauline in At the Circus, having the honour of telling Groucho Marx's J. Cheever Loophole, "I've waited so long to find someone like you," to which she had the honour of Groucho's Loophole retorting, "Oh, someone like me---I'm not good enough for you, eh?"

So, Dunning asked, just whence hailed Miss Brooks? "I think Miss Brooks was closer to being an extension of me than anything," Arden replied. "I can't explain that too well, except that when I grew up I knew a lot of teachers, they were friends of my aunts, and I think that had a lot to with what Miss Brooks became." They must have been transcendent of time, place, and remuneration; Shirley Booth had the first crack at auditioning for Our Miss Brooks and flunked---as producer Harry Ackerman noted, she couldn't see past the era's underpaid teacher to find and have fun with the character.

Dunning steered Arden toward David Shipman's book, The Great Movie Stars, a chapter of which was devoted to Arden, whom Shipman credited with saving many a film; her first appearance on the screen, Shipman had written, “always caused an appreciative buzz" sincet she "could do more with a glance, suggesting surprise, disapproval, distaste, all at the same time," as Dunning transcribed Shipman's assessment.

That proved news to Arden, who couldn't bring herself to see her own film work until much later in her life. "I had a great complex because I had an extremely beautiful mother who had been in the theater for just a short time," she replied, "and I grew up thinking I was some kind of monster, because people would say, 'Isn't it too bad she doesn't look like her mother?' So I had a rather bad feeling about myself, and I couldn't stand to go and sit at rushes, or go to premieres, you know. Only when the studio forced me did I go to one."

Arden was never unattractive. Bob Hope sang "I Can't Get Started" to her in The Ziegfeld Follies of 1936 (the song eventually became ill-fated jazz virtuoso Bunny Berigan’s calling card); she looked like she might have been itching to get to the Rainbow Room because you were finally going to work up your nerve to ask her to dance. Two decades later, as a TV Guide solo cover (she’d also done a cover with Gale Gordon, who played Conklin on radio and television), Arden resembled Lucille Ball’s more commonsensible but no less anxious sister. (A nice irony, that: Lucy herself turned down Our Miss Brooks to stay with My Favourite Husband--—but she recommended Arden for the part.) And, somewhere between Follies ’36 and TV Guide, there lurked sets of Arden among the movie star paper dolls in many a young girl’s collection.

What a difference several decades made. "I'm beginning to see these pictures, occasionally on The Late, Late Show," Arden crooned. A half wry, half shy chuckle. "And, of course, now it's quite pleasant. I think, 'Well, that gal isn't that bad at all. She looks rather lovely'."

At the time she spoke to Dunning, Arden was struggling to finish her eventual memoir (The Three Phases of Eve) while working on theater tour with her husband, Brooks West. (They married while both debuted on series television, he in My Friend Irma--—also birthed in radio--—and she on Our Miss Brooks.) "Every place we played, people brought me little cassettes of the radio show," she said. "And of course I adored doing the radio show." Between recordings of the radio version and the film copies she kept of the television version ("That wasn't really work; we actually did Miss Brooks for TV in two and a half days"), her four children got to know their mother's signature role after she had departed it.

For all that she kept the show close to her heart, Arden needed time enough before she became comfortable with Our Miss Brooks as her eternal signature. Dunning at the outset asked about it, and Arden didn’t flinch, considering she had left the comely, witty teacher behind when Grease and Grease 2 fans were barely alive.

"Well, I'll tell you," she said, staccato chuckle punctuating the cadence. "I originally loved the theater. I still do. And I had always wanted to have a hit on Broadway that was created by me. You know, kind of like Judy Holliday and Born Yesterday. And I griped about it a little. And someone said to me, 'Do you realise that, if you had a hit on Broadway, probably a hundred or two hundred thousand people might have seen you in it, if you'd stayed in it long enough. And this way, you've been in Miss Brooks, everybody loves you, and you've been seen by millions.’ So, I figured I'd better shut up while I was ahead."

Revealed at last. Connie Brooks’s real prize pupil.

The Opening Bell: The Way It Was, 19 July

1948: CLASS IS IN SESSION---Two auditions and one reworked audition script later, one of old-time radio's most beloved situation comedies premieres as a regular series.

Well, I'll tell you. I originally loved the theater. I still do. And I had always wanted to have a hit on Broadway that was created by me. You know, kind of like Judy Holliday and Born Yesterday. And I griped about it a little. And someone said to me, 'Do you realise that, if you had a hit on Broadway, probably a hundred or two hundred thousand people might have seen you in it, if you'd stayed in it long enough. And this way, you've been in [Our] Miss Brooks, everybody loves you, and you've been seen by millions.’ So, I figured I'd better shut up while I was ahead.

---Eve Arden, to radio historian John Dunning, a quarter century after school let out at Madison High forever.

Making a bona-fide star of Arden as the sardonically attractive high school English teacher, Our Miss Brooks will enjoy a ten-year radio life amidst which it enjoys a concurrent five-year television life. Pretty fly for a star who turned out to have been the third choice for the role that made her name, after Shirley Booth tried but failed an audition and Lucille Ball, reportedly, was considered next to audition but didn't because of her commitment to another CBS radio comedy, My Favourite Husband.

Written cleverly by Al Lewis (who also directed many episodes), Our Miss Brooks's radio life will make and secure the show's reputation as a thinking person's situation comedy. It also makes stars of cast members Gale Gordon (as blowhard principal Osgood Conklin), Jeff Chandler (as nebbish, almost indifferent biology teacher Philip Boynton), and Richard Crenna (as clumsy, adenoidal student Walter Denton). Rounding out the well-aligned cast are Jane Morgan (as absentminded landlady Margaret Davis), Gloria McMillan (as principal's daughter/Denton paramour Harriet Conklin), and Leonard Smith (as witless star school jock Stretch Snodgrass), with Mary Jane Croft in a recurring role as catty English teacher Miss Enright.

Rounding out the cast will be Leonard Smith as witless jock Stretch Snodgrass, Jane Morgan as absentminded landlady Margaret Davis, Gloria McMillan as principal's daughter Harriet Conklin, and jill-of-all-trades Mary Jane Croft in occasional appearances as catty fellow English teacher Miss Enright.

She never played the comedian offstage---she didn't need to be the funniest person in the room, unlike so many comics, who find it difficult to get off. She went out, got the laughs, and went back to her ranch in the [San Fernando] Valley. She was just a wonderfully unselfish actress, and was just so up all the time; she made you feel good to be around her.

---Richard Crenna, remembering Eve Arden to Gerald Nachman, in "Valued Families," from Raised on Radio. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1998.)

Shirley Booth, unable to find the lighter side of the put-upon teacher's life as Arden in due course did, wasn't exactly left in the cold, not with an Academy Award and a couple of Emmys (as television's sardonic housekeeper Hazel) in her not-too-distant future. Lucy? She had a pretty decent future in her own right . . .

CHANNEL SURFING: THE ABSOLUTE BEST OF OUR MISS BROOKS

21 NOVEMBER 1948: THE MODEL SCHOOL TEACHER---That would be Connie, who's been nominated for such a magazine citation, but the men in her life---from Dopey Denton to Blowhard Conklin to Bashful Boynton---seem more impressed with the sultry reporter who's come to profile her.

1 MAY 1949: THE GRUDGE MATCH---When Walter learns who joined Harriet when she went to the movies alone the night before, he insists on settling it in a grudge match . . . with Conklin not only setting aside his usual professed rule against school violence but looking to referee the bout himself . . . so he can watch Walter get whatever passes for his brains turned into tapioca pudding.

5 JUNE 1949: SCHOOL KEY---There's only one thing wrong on the day Madison High is supposed to receive a district attendance award---thanks to absentminded Mrs. Davis, in whose custody it was left for the morning, the key to the school is missing and nobody can get in or answer its phones.

17 JULY 1949: THE CARELESSNESS CODE; OR, GREAT CAESAR'S BUST(ED)---Levying petty fines for often spontaneously-enacted school safety rules is the way Conklin plans to finance a new bust of himself, to replace a bust of Julius Caesar in front of the school library---until frequent defendant Connie finds a way to teach him the hard way how finely pettiness comes to bury Caesar's would-be successor.

19 SEPTEMBER 1949: WEEKEND AT CRYSTAL LAKE; OR, KEEP YOUR HEAD---Boyton invites Connie to spend the weekend boating at the Conklins' Crystal Lake retreat---but with everyone seeming to think he plans to re-enact a certain scene from An American Tragedy, she may be seasick before she even steps into the boat. As Conklin puts it so inimitably, "He plans to end his romantic obligations to Miss Brooks by bashing her over the head with an oar and using her as bass bait!"

9 APRIL 1950: DYEING EASTER EGGS---It's to die for when Stretch unwittingly refills Mrs. Davis's suddenly busy powdered soap dispenser with Walter's newly-invented, delayed-action, powdered Easter egg dye---but the mishap's an unexpected blessing for at least one victim.

23 APRIL 1950: THE TAPE RECORDER---The tales of the tape don't necessarily ensure simple endings, as Connie hopes to convince penny-pinching Conklin it's not a bad idea to buy a tape recorder for school use.

5 MAY 1950: THE DEACON JONES SQUARE DANCE TROUPE---Connie balks at signing up to tutor the children of a touring square dance troupe, until she learns how generously they'll pay for one summer month---and how her favourite square might be rounded up for the gig, too.

21 MAY 1950: THE RARE BLACK ORCHID---It's what Conklin wants Connie to protect as a surprise for his wife (guest Paula Winslowe)---which probably seems akin to asking a mongoose to protect a cobra so far as Conklin's concerned.

22 DECEMBER 1950: WALTER'S RADIO BOMBAY---With Conklin delayed awaiting a bamboo furniture delivery at home, Walter's science project radio panics acting principal Connie into dismissing school early when it delivers news of an impending hurricane . . . that nobody realises is heading for Bombay, not Madison.

PREMIERING TODAY . . .

1891---Raymond Bramley (actor: Howie Wing; David Harum).
1901---Juano Hernandez (actor: Jungle Jim; Mandrake the Magician), San Juan.
1914---Lou Krugman (actor: The Romance of Helen Trent; Dear Mom; Gunsmoke), Passaic, New Jersey.