FRIDAY NIGHT BOYS: Bilko on DVD

Saturday, 4 September 2010

Bilko on DVD

Phil Silvers returns as Sgt. Bilko on DVD
The 1950s sitcom allowed her father to 'take flight,' the comic actor's daughter says. 'Bilko's' first season is out on DVD Tuesday.

July 27, 2010
By Susan King
Los Angeles Times

Comic actor Phil Silvers had been kicking around in show business a long time by 1955. He had appeared in burlesque, won a Tony on Broadway in 1952 for "Top Banana," played second bananas in movies and even co-wrote the classic tune "Nancy With the Laughing Face."

But just as Lucille Ball with "I Love Lucy" and Jackie Gleason with "The Honeymooners," it was a TV series that made Silvers a household name.

"I had adoration before, but it was never anything like this," Silvers once said. "It was a limited-type adoration. Now they adore me all out."

Originally titled "You'll Never Get Rich" — and quickly retitled "The Phil Silvers Show" — the 1955-59 CBS comedy series became one of the best-loved series of the so-called "Golden Age of Television." On Tuesday, CBS Video is releasing on DVD the first season of "Bilko," the title by which it is best known today.

Its lasting influence can be seen in such sitcoms as "McHale's Navy," "Hogan's Heroes" and " MASH," just to name a few. And in 1996, Steve Martin starred in the ill-fated movie version "Sgt. Bilko." With its witty scripts, fast-paced plots and memorable main character — the shrewd, slick but ultimately lovable con man Bilko — the series seems as fresh today as it did more than 50 years ago.

Created by writer Nat Hiken, who would later do "Car 54, Where Are You?," the series fit Silvers liked a glove. He played Master Sgt. Ernest G. Bilko, who was the head of the motor pool at the sleepy Ft. Baxter in the fictional town of Roseville, Kan. Bilko was always coming up with get-rich schemes, scams and other crazy ideas. Helping him were Cpl. Rocco Barbella (Harvey Lembeck) and Cpl. Steve Henshaw (Allan Melvin). His clueless superior was Col. John T. Hall (Paul Ford).

Other members of his platoon were played by Herbie Faye, Maurice Gosfield, Joe E. Ross and Mickey Freeman. Several young actors who went on to greater fame, including Dick Van Dyke, Alan Alda, Fred Gwynne and Pat Hingle, also guest-starred in the show.

"Bilko" won the Emmy for comedy series three years in a row, with Silvers winning for his performance in the first season.

Acting teacher Candace Silvers, one of the actor's five daughters, was born two years after "Bilko" left the airwaves in 1959. (The series was canceled not because of declining ratings but because of the expense of having such large ensemble cast.) When they were young, she says, she and her sisters weren't familiar with "Bilko." In fact, when he received an award, he told the crowd that all his daughters wanted to watch was David Cassidy in "The Partridge Family."

When her father was on camera in front of an audience, "he had a license to be who he truly was," she says. "When he was in the real world, he had to dumb down. He couldn't be as expansive as when he had a captive audience who allowed him to take flight."

Though Bilko is always scheming to make money, he never takes advantage of people. In one episode from the premiere season, he comes up with a plan to get a young private's money back after he had lost in a card game.

"He helped Neil Simon, who was a junior writer on 'Bilko,' " says Candace Silvers. "Neil would show up all the time and say I'm going to write a play, I'm going to write a play. And my dad said sit down and he helped him write his first play. George Kennedy, he was the guy out of the Army who was hired to make sure all of their uniforms were correct and doing according to Army regulations. My dad liked him and gave him a few lines."

Silvers suffered a stroke in 1972 while he was appearing on Broadway in his Tony Award-winning performance in the revival of "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum," but continued to work until his death in 1985 at the age of 74.

Underneath his fast-talking patter, Bilko had a kind heart, as did Silvers, his daughter says. "My father was such a gentle, wonderful visionary."

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jul/27/entertainment/la-et-phil-silvers-20100727