You Did What__ Mad Plans and Great Historical Disasters - Bill Fawcett [84]
In no time at all, Stevenson had his own show, a surefire can’t-miss situation comedy with a great new concept. The show’s name was Hello, Larry, and it was about an early-morning radio show host. After all, a TV sitcom about a radio show was obviously a can’t-miss concept (or at least a can’t-miss-twice concept).
Hello, Larry failed to last the season and has entered TV history as a certified member of the Hall of Turkeys.
His M*A*S*H character having gone down somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, and Stevenson himself having burned a few bridges with the M*A*S*H folks, he soldiered on with a new show. The problem with Hello, Larry now seemed so obvious: it didn’t advertise its biggest selling point. This was rectified with his new series, the strategically titled The McLean Stevenson Show.
It, too, sunk like a stone, as did the following year’s entry, In the Beginning (Stevenson as an old-fashioned priest with Priscilla Lopez as a streetwise nun), which garnered an even smaller audience than its two predecessors, and worse than that proceeded to offend them with its less-than-respectful content. It was yanked off the air before all of its episodes had even been aired.
From that point on Stevenson was on his way to just being a guest on quiz shows and other people’s sitcoms, and occasional dinner theater for less - than - demanding audiences who felt bad that his character had been killed on M*A*S*H.
Others are guilty of leaving successful shows to pursue bigger and better things, not just their own TV series, but bigger things like major motion pictures — and here too success is never guaranteed, nor is it even the norm. For every John Travolta Academy Award–nominated performance in Saturday Night Fever, there is a Bill Murray serious debut in The Razor’s Edge, and for every Bruce Willis (then of Moonlighting) blockbuster breakout in Die Hard, there is a Ken Wahl (then of Wiseguy) bust out in The Taking of Beverly Hills.
Take the case of David Caruso, who had landed various dramatic supporting roles in movies like Sylvester Stallone’s blockbuster First Blood. His career was going all right, but nobody was really noticing him.
Then along comes a daring new TV series that was out to redefine the words “cutting-edge TV.” It was called NYPD Blue, and faster than you can say Dragnet the show was a hit and Caruso was everyone’s favorite TV cover boy. But that wasn’t good enough for Caruso. For him, TV was only meant to be a springboard to bigger and better things, so even though the show was a success with a bright and promising future, Caruso said good-bye to prime-time TV to headline such major motion pictures as Jade and Kiss of Death. Both bombed and bounced him back off the A List until many years later, when he returned to success via TV as he once again pinned on a shield as a TV cop, this time for CSI: Miami.
However, bad TV decision making is not restricted to the male of the species.
Shelley Long’s Diane Chambers was one of TV’s most endearing and irritating characters and her cat-and-dog relationship with Sam Malone (Ted Danson) on Cheers was one of the major reasons people tuned in from week to week…but it wasn’t the only reason, as she found out when her demands became slightly excessive. As a result she decided to leave the success of the show for greener pastures on the silver screen. After an initial success in a buddy film with Bette Midler called Outrageous Fortune, Long belly-flopped along in one dreadful comedy after another from Irreconcilable Differences to Troop Beverly Hills to Hello Again.
She was still irritating, but not quite so endearing, and the audiences who tuned in to Cheers apparently had been doing so for reasons other than the presence of Shelley Long.
Cheers continued to thrive while Shelley took a long nosedive.
Everyone on this list is among so many