Wednesday, October 7, 2015

My Brother the Angel (aka The Smothers Brothers Show) : A Wolf in Sheik's Clothing (1966)

The Smothers Brothers Show (also known as My Brother the Angel) was an American half-hour sitcom that ran for one season (32 episodes) between September 17, 1965 and April 22, 1966.  Dick Smothers played himself as a rising young executive at Pandora Publications.  Tom played his brother, who had been lost at sea two years earlier but now shows up as an apprentice angel assigned to do good deeds on Earth in order to become a full-fledged angel.  He receives his orders from an unseen and unheard boss named Ralph.  As was typical for their careers, Dick was the straight man to Tom's antics.  Tom's efforts to help people never seems to work as planned, so Dick has to help clean up the mess.

Co-created by Aaron Spelling, the show suffered from creative differences between the brothers and the producers.  The Smothers Brothers would, however, go on to have a successful TV show in 1967 called The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.

The Smothers Brothers Show aired on CBS, Friday nights at 9:30 p.m. ET.  It was the last CBS situation comedy to be filmed in black-and-white.  Jocelyn appeared in episode 31, A Wolf in Sheik's Clothing, which originally aired on April 15, 1966.

Based on notices in Variety, it appears that this episode was shot in March of 1966.  Below is the only image that I have found for this appearance by Jocelyn, a publicity photo with a snipe on the back that says:

"Wolf in Sheik's Clothing - Tom Smothers masquerades as a special adviser to a sheik in order to prevent the sheik's daughter, Jocelyn Lane, from marrying his brother, on "The Smother's Brothers Show" Friday, April 15 (9:30 - 10:00 PM, EST) on the CBS Television Network. - picture stamped April 13, 1966."


I have read that the show was rerun on US cable TV in the 1990's, but it has not been released on home video in any format.  There are a few episodes floating around that I presume were recorded from those TV showings in the 1990's, but Jocelyn's episode, sadly, is not among them.

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