While pretending disdain for television in its early years, Hollywood was masking the anxiety that those funny boxes with little screens were usurping its central place in popular culture. Hollywood stars looked down on TV as beneath their importance, and the ones who defected to Television Land tended to be fallen stars like Loretta Young, their careers in decline.
With her doe eyes and high cheekbones, Young was a familiar face from golden age Hollywood, memorable from such classics as The Stranger (1946) and The Bishop’s Wife (1947). But after a string of unremarkable movies, ending with It Happens Every Thursday (1953), Young was savvy enough to change games and play for a different league. Her move to TV was successful: “The Loretta Young Show” earned good ratings and several Emmys. “The Loretta Young Show: Best of the Complete Series-100th Birthday Edition” is a 17-DVD set culling entire half-hour episodes from the long running (1953-1961) series.
She left less of an impression than her contemporary, Lucille Ball, perhaps because she chose a more challenging route. Rather than a recurring character in a situation comedy, Young played a different dramatic role each week, giving her opportunities to show a range only hinted at in her Hollywood years. She was a blond manicurist at a Kansas City barbershop one week, and the brunette just released from a Hanoi prison the next. Often she played strong independent women, juggling childrearing and jobs. It was a glimpse of the world June Cleaver never saw.
