The Terrible Catsafterme

SEASON 1 – NBC

Theme music composed by Richard Mack

• 001. Pilot (aka The Fur Coat)- 10/15/1952
  • Judge Bradley Stevens (Jim Backus) has a talk in his chambers with the Mitchells (Hal March, Shirley Mitchell), who are filing for divorce. He tells them through flashback how he met his wife Joan (Joan Davis) on a flight to Chicago, where she was handling her first flight by herself as attendant. At first, he was irritated at her ineptness, but gradually began to see the humor in it. He relates that this is how a successful marriage works when you marry a ‘character’ like Joan. In fact he knows that she has bought herself a fur coat without his knowledge, and he plans to come home to their house in Lawrence, California early to watch the fun ensue when it was delivered. At home, Joan shares the news of the coat with her neighbor Minerva Parker (Hope Emerson), but she misunderstands and thinks Joan is expecting a baby. Mr. Mitchell stops by to speak to the judge and tells Joan that Bradley’s advice didn’t work and that all men have their breaking point. Joan tries extra hard to conceal the fur coat when it is delivered, telling Bradley that it is a leg of lamb and stuffing it in the freezer. That night she tries to retrieve it, but Bradley won’t fall asleep. Eventually he tells her that he knew all along and it is okay that she bought the coat, which is now frozen stiff. 8/16/14

• 002. Career – 10/22/1952
  • Brad mediates a divorce hearing in his chambers between Mr. (Sheldon Leonard) and Mrs. Magruder (Sandra Gould), and advises Mr. Magruder to allow his wife to have a career if that’s what she wants. Relating a story about Joan, in which she gets a phone call from her friend Evelyn Saunders who has become a successful actress and then decides to put aside her housework and become an actress herself. Her first job is in a commercial in which she plays a floor scrubber opposite a model (Jane Easton) who is using the advertised Magic Mop. Her aspirations are quickly doused when she finds herself working harder than she was at home, as well as getting covered in mud. Mr. Magruder listens to Brad’s advice. Later Brad invites potential campaign contributor George Chester (Earle Ross), while Joan has the same idea with Martin Bishop (Howard Freeman), although neither realizes it and Chester and Bishop are mortal enemies. Joan and Brad spend the evening trying to dine with them in separate rooms, until they finally meet and manage to bury the hatchet so they can all dine together. Margie Liszt is Brad’s secretary Miss Burton. Shepard Menken is commercial director Frank, and Bob Sweeney is his assistant Al. 8/16/16
• 003. Ballet – 10/29/1952
  • Judge Stevens councils Mr. and Mrs. Milton Fisher because Milton is just too tired and falls asleep constantly. The Judge recalls when his wife Joan was too lethargic to get anything done, so he suggest that she get some exercise via taking ballet classes. She winds up in Mrs. Turner’s beginner’s class with mostly children. Joan fumbles through the class and is upstaged by the girls, but later that night Brad comes home and finds an exhausted Joan and all of the chores completed. It turns out though that she hired the students to complete it all. Later Bradley gets a surprise call from Mr. Fletcher, president of the bar association and invites him to dinner. However he ends up bringing home a woman named Delores Standish, and explains that he had splashed her with his car and felt the need to buy her a new dress… then ran into Mr. Fletcher in the store. Thinking Fletcher would wonder about him buying a dress for another woman, Brad tells Fletcher that she is his wife. Joan is furious about having to play Brad’s sister rather than wife, but reluctantly goes along, acting jealous all the way. Then her old high school sweetheart Francis Riley shows up for a visit, and she continues posing a Brad’s sister. Brad is not only jealous, but gets pulverized as Francis recreates some of his old football plays for Mr. Fletcher. When Brad really seems heart, Joan nurses him and Francis and Delores end up leaving together. Brad fully intends to explain everything to an understanding Fletcher over dinner, but Joan has cooked some of the utensils into the turkey as she prepared it while angry. 1/3/18
• 004. Jitterbug – 11/5/1952
  • After telling the bailiff (Phil Arnold) that he doesn’t give any special considerations to friends or relatives in the traffic courtroom, and after charging gang member Wesley Newkirk (Robin Morse) the full ticket amount, he is forced to live up to his word when Joan is brought in for a traffic violation and he charges her fifty dollars. Joan is forced to pay the money out of her new dress fund, so when Brad gets home, she tries to charge him by the items for his dinner. When he won’t hear of it, she invites the telephone repairman (Peter Leeds) and his co-workers to an all-you-can-eat dinner for $1 per head. They run her ragged and eat her out of house and home, while Brad sits back and amusedly watches. He then takes her $4.00 and goes out to eat on his own, leaving her with a bare kitchen. Brad tries to put it all aside the next morning, but Joan still insists on getting her $50 back. When the neighbor girl Sally (Janice Carroll) to use the phone to call her boyfriend Johnny, she tells Joan that she has a dilemma because she wants to go out with him but has to babysit that night. When Joan hears that she will make fifty cents an hour, Joan volunteers to do the babysitting. Brand invites her to out that night with friends of his named the Robertsons (Rolfe Sedan, Florence Ravenel) who want to meet her, but she declines. Joan dresses in formal attire to make Brad think she is going out with other men for money, then changes into saddle shoes and a skirt to look like a high school teen. Between watching the wrestling match on TV, she checks on the kid in bed, but is interrupted when one of Sally’s friends named Alvin (Leon Tyler) comes over and flirts mercilessly with Joan, forcing her into dancing the Jitterbug all over the room. Just then the parents come home and catch them. They turn out to be the Robertsons, and they have Brad with her. He pretends she is just a neighbor of theirs and forces her out quickly. That night she doesn’t come home until 3am, and then has the audacity to ask him again for the $50. He refuses, but when she says she’ll return it to him in the morning, he gives it to her. She then tells him that Alvin got aggressive, so she hit him on the head with her shoe and had to take over driving the car… and was arrested for speeding again. The money will be returned to Brad the next morning in the courtroom. Teddy Hart is one of Joan’s diners. 6/26/22
• 005. Crime Panel – 11/12/1952
  • Dr. Johnson (Hal Taggart) comes to see Brad in his chambers and asks him if he’ll come on the panel TV series American Speaks along with Joan, to comment on the need for alert citizenship in the war on crime. Brad questions having Joan on the show since she doesn’t know a lot about crime and is afraid she’ll go overboard in trying to research it. Sure enough, Joan gets obsessed with listening to the radio crime shows, including The Adventures of Mr. Twilight. Just as he is about to reveal the identity of the murderer, she accidentally unplugs the radio and misses it. When she can’t sleep, she gets the idea to call her neighbor Betty Cosgrove (Ann Chaffee) since she listens to all of the mystery shows, but it turns out that she missed it as well. She then tries calling the police since she believes that they have nothing else to do on the night shift than to listen to the radio shows. The police however mistake what she’s asking and think that there was a murder in their house. Betty comes over wanted to speculate on the killer. Joanie decides that she and Brad should try and re-create the crime. The police officers (Jim Hayward, Tom Duggan) show up, and believe Brad is actually dead. Eventually Brad wakes up, and the officers are understanding about the mistake. Once they get to bed, Joan is able to sleep exactly one minute before the alarm clock goes off. Joanie still feels inadequate about her knowledge about crime, and when Brad tells her that criminals usually open up only to other criminals, Joan dresses up like a gangster moll, and heads over to the pool hall. Joan quickly impresses the Rocky (Gil Frye) and the other criminals in the hall with her pool ability… until she tears a slice of the felt out of the table. When the cops show up unexpectedly, the gangsters leave Joannie there with guns in her hands. Joan gets thrown in jail, but she is quickly bailed out by Brad. That evening they go on America Speaks together along with another couple, from Dr. (Jack George) and Mrs. Thaddeus Wardle (Jesse Sinberg). After no sleep the night before, Joan cannot keep her eyes open, and falls asleep leaning on Dr. Wardle as he is trying to answer a question. That night, Bradley can’t sleep because he felt so foolish on the show. Joan wants to go to sleep but he is listening to another crime show… and turns it off just as they are getting ready to announce the killer, staring the whole process over again. 10/17/22
• 006. Brad’s Class Reunion – 11/19/1952
  • At Joan’s encouragement, Brad plans to attend his class reunion at Stanford University, but after looking through his class yearbook, Joan becomes convinced that he is still in love with his old classmate Jeanie Richards. She tries to jog his memory of her by dressing in different outfits that Jeanie might where, then has her Aunt Vera (Elvia Allman) call and pose as her. However, it is Brad’s old friend Charlie Henderson (Hal Smith) who calls, but Joan thinks that Brad is reminiscing with Jeanie. Joan then creates a fake radio broadcast indicating that the road is washed out at Stanford, but Brad is on to her. Joan and Aunt Vera then try to make sure that Brad think he is ill with “potchilitis” by cranking up the heat while they wear winter parkas and taking his temperature after dipping it in coffee. But once Joan sees a current picture of Jeanie and finds out that she is fat and ugly, Joan confesses what she’s done to Brad and sends him off to his reunion. Joan then realizes that she’s been looking at the wrong picture and that Jeanie is still beautiful. 12/13/15
• 007. Hunting – 11/26/1952
  • Brad plans to take a camping trip to Lake Tanamungamuck with his friends Tom and Pete, but Joan plans on going along as well. Brad tries to dissuade her but she is hellbent on going. She first pretends she just came back from fishing when Tom and Pete are visiting. Then she takes horseback riding lessons since that would be how they would get to their campsite. Finally she tricks Brad into camping in the living room by hiding the bedding and couch cushions in the garage. Brad turns the tables and shows her how it will be roughing it in the wild, by opening the door and windows and letting the cold air in, pouring leaves, dirt, and bugs on her, forcing her to drink water from the fish bowl, and pouring water on her head. By the next morning, she is too exhausted to go with him. 9/1/14
• 008. Joan’s Curiosity – 12/3/1952
  • Joan brings in the mail one morning and immediately opens one of the letters to Brad from one of his friends. After mixing the envelope into her plate of pancakes, and dousing the letter with syrup, Brad takes issues with Joan brazenly opening his mail in the first place. He says it’s one thing for him to let her read it, but to open it without permission makes her a snoop. She takes offense at this and defiantly tells him she’ll never look at another piece of his mail. However, when a deliveryman (Richard Keene) brings a package for Brad, Joan can’t stop staring at it or wanting to open it. Joan’s Aunt Vera comes over and Joan makes her hide the box so she can’t find it. Once it is hidden in the closet, Joan can’t stop looking for it. Vera tells her that a better exercise would be to get in the closet with the box and tell herself she doesn’t care what is in it. But once she gets in there, she immediately opens it, unleashes an inflatable rubber boat that starts to inflate, nearly pinning Joan against the ceiling. Aunt Vera has to stab it to deflate and let Joan out of the closet. When Brad gets home, Joan admits what she did, and he chastises her again for being so nosy and rude to open his mail, this time ruining his boat. He tells her that he never lets his curiosity get the better of him. He seems to be able to prove this, and Joan starts leaving giant packages around the house addressed to her, and he never succumbs to the curiosity. The Joan brings home a giant package with holes and written instruction on the packages about feeding and watering it. Brad brings home his court stenographer Joe Perkins (Bob Sweeney) to transcribe some notes for him, and he is quite curious himself. Joan sneaks into the box and makes animal noises, then exits and feeds it meat and fish. She then gets out and sticks a giant tail out, pushes the clean bone out, and finally after she scares Perkins out of the house, she exits dressed in a gorilla suit. Brad simply asks her when dinner will be ready. The next day, they have forgiven each other, but Brad proves he is curious about one thing: what Joan is cooking. When he looks in the pot to see, and fake snake pops out. NOTE: Walter Johnson is verbally credited for appearing in the episode but isn’t seen in the synciated version. 10/18/22
• 009. Birthday – 12/10/1952
  • Brad criticizes the way Joan has been handling the budget and tell her that he is going to take it over and shut down all of her accounts. Later Joan finds a date book that Brad left behind with that day circled and ‘birthday’ written by it. Thinking it must be Brad’s birthday, Joan plans a surprise party for him and goes down to the court to ask Brad for some money. When he refuses, she dresses like a judge and interrupts him during a heated case to make another plea. That doesn’t work either, so she goes to a dress shop where she still has an account open and works a deal with a customer (Kathleen Freeman) to put the lady’s dress on her account and then accept 75% of the cash value for her to keep. Agnes (Kay Wiley) the shop clerk insists on having Joan try on her purchase, even though the dress is far too large for her. Joan is able to get out with the money just before Brad calls to cancel her credit there as well. When Brad comes early that night as they are decorating, Joan hatches a plan to get Brad to take her out while Vera decorates the house. Joan chooses an activity that she thinks Brad will hate in order to get him home by the time of the party. They wind up at a hockey game but Brad gets too into the game to leave. By the time they get home, all of the guests are gone. Brad has no idea what is going on, and tells her that it isn’t his birthday that day… it’s hers! When Joan is upset that he forgot her birthday, he surprises her by having her friends come out of their hiding places for her surprise party. Richard Reeves and Maurice Cast are attorneys. Herb Vigran and Vince Barnett are hockey fans. Jane Easton and Connie Van are shop customers. 9/9/18
• 010. Bazaar Pie – 12/17/1952
  • Joan is assigned to make pies for the Women’s Welfare League’s charity bazaar buffet supper. While making them, Joan and her Aunt Vera discuss finding Vera a man. They are visited by Arthur, the valet for their new neighbor, retired diamond broker Senor Rodriguez. Joan has the idea to buy a $5000 ring for Vera to wear so that Rodriguez doesn’t think she’s a golddigger. She sends a note over to him, but he assumes that it is from Joan and he comes over and makes a pass at her. Later Brad finds out that Joan has charged his account for the ring, but Joan cannot locate it. Assuming it was baked into one of the pies, they attend the bazaar and rifle through the pies in search of it…unsuccessfully. Later Vera tells them that she had actually returned the ring earlier. She also tells them that she got a date while wearing it…with Arthur the valet. 9/30/14
• 011. Dreams – 12/24/1952
  • Joan is excited to tout the fact that she is married to a judge when she meets up with three old high school girlfriends, but she soon realizes that her friend Maria has numerous sports accomplishments, Minnie is a fragrance tycoon, and Gloria is an adviser to the President. Joan starts to think that marrying Brad has held her back and she daydreams about holding the jobs of her friends. Joan decides to strike out on her own and find her claim to fame, but when she hears her three girlfriends lamenting to Brad about how much they wish they had their own man, Joan changes her mind and appreciates what she has. 9/29/15
• 012. Acrobats – 12/31/1952
  • Despite her dislike of amateur plays, she agrees to perform as a brunette in the lead of the latest Ladies Club play. Meanwhile Brad thinks that Dean Gilmore, the dean of the State University Law School is going to ask him to be the keynote speaker at their graduating ceremony. Convinced that this could lead to a Federal Judge position, he tells Joan to go buy some formal attire for a dinner with the Dean and his wife. While Joan is shopping, she runs into Mrs. Gilmore (Geraldine Carr) at the hat shop. Not knowing it is her, Joan ends up in a physical fight with her. When Joan finds out who she is, she tries to disguise herself by wearing the wig from her play to dinner, but loses it before the others arrive. Trying to sneak out, she ends up part of the acrobat show that is part of the restaurant’s entertainment. The cat is out of the bag as to Joan’s identity and Brad is furious… until the Dean comes and congratulates Joan for standing up to his wife. 7/18/15
• 013. Bad Boy – 1/7/1953
  • After sentencing a criminal to prison, Bradley agrees to take in the criminal’s son Tommy to determine if he needs to be sent to a boarding school. Tommy is nearly incorrigible, but Joan thinks that all he needs is love. She tells him the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bookies and lets him and his friends tie her up, but when she takes him to a movie, Tommy steals a lollipop and a dollar from another kid. Joan gets accused of being a kleptomaniac and is thrown into jail. Joan decides to teach him a lesson by pretending to plot to kill the her husband. When Tommy sees him ‘die’ of poisoning, he breaks down crying with remorse. This shows them that he is a good kid after all, and Tommy vows to go straight. Sandra Gould plays Bernard’s mother. 8/16/14
• 014. Circumstantial Evidence – 1/14/1953
  • When Brad tries to discuss his work with Joan, she is too interested in reading about the Blonde Bandit in the newspaper. He drops a hint that couple break over women not being interested in their husbands’ work, so she quickly asks him if she can come down to the courthouse and watch him decide cases. She watches him questions suspect Rocky Slattery for robbery, while sitting with Rocky’s wife (Shirley Mitchell). Joan and Mrs. Slattery go to lunch together and she is able to convince Joan that her husband is innocent. Joan invites her over to dinner so that Brad can hear her plead her case, and even hires a group of five children to pose as Rocky’s, but Brad refuses since he is not allowed to be swayed in his opinion. Joan decides to teach him a lesson by showing him what circumstantial evidence looks like, so she drops hints that she is actually the Blonde Bandit. When a cop named Joe comes to the house to drop off something for Brad, he spots Joan with her mask and robbery tools, and tries to arrest her. Brad convinces him that she is his wife, but also decides to teach her a lesson. He has Joe gather up an ex-con named Fancy Barney and some of his gang to come over. Barney shows up and tells Joan that he and the organization want a cut of her jewelry for allowing her to operate. She gives him some of her own jewelry before Brad intervenes and throws him out, acting as if he believes Joan could be guilty. Furthermore gang members are positioned all over the house running a still in the bedroom, acting as bookie in the closet, and running a casino in the kitchen. As they go to bed that night, Joan congratulates him on the ruse, but says that it only further proved what circumstantial evidence looks like. Brad tells her that Rocky not only confessed to the robberies that day, but that Mrs. Slattery was found to be the Blonde Bandit. Rusty Hamer is one of the children. 9/12/20
• 015. Uncle Edgar – 1/21/1953
  • When Joan starts getting phone calls from elderly females, Brad admits to her that his Uncle Edgar (Robert Sweeney) is coming for a visit. Knowing that he is a notorious wolf, they vow to try and keep him busy so he doesn’t break any ladies’ hearts. However when Edgar purposely overfills the popcorn maker while they are trying to keep in for the night and popcorn fills the entire kitchen, Edgar is able to sneak out. Joan tracks him to the Sunshine Social Club where the Social Club director (Robert Jellison) thinks Joan is looking for a date, and sets him with the wild dancer Mr. Hotchkiss (Robert Pike), who dances her around the room until he falls down a flight of stairs. Joan decides to keep Edgar busy by posing as her own Aunt Susie, who Edgar is anxious to date. While they are out to eat, they run into a woman named Agatha (Dorothy Adams), who was snubbed by Edgar. She makes a scene and calls Joan a hussy. Joan, still posing as Susie, suggests they go back to her house. When they get there, Brad calls and asks that Joan join him and Judge Peterson (Richard Keene) and his sister for dinner. She declines, but they come to the house to try and talk her into going out, and it is revealed that the Judge’s sister is Agatha, still reeling from being stood up. With Edgar in the kitchen, Joan has to go into the closet several times to change between Joan and Aunt Susie. Eventually Edgar comes out, and Agatha faints. Bra, who still doesn’t realize that Joan is Susie, throws Edgar and Susie out. Joan takes off her wig, and finally tells Brad she gives up, and that it is his turn to entertain Edgar. The next morning, Edgar decides that he likes how fiery Agatha was, and goes to ask her out again. 12/30/20
• 016. Moosehead – 1/28/1953
  • Joan buys a hat and has it delivered C.O.D. and then attempts to butter up Brad so he will pay for it. He points out the many other purchases she has irresponsibly made and refuses to give her the money for the hat. However, he does give her $50 so that she can buy a housewarming gift for his colleague Judge Bunker (Philip Tonge). When a deliveryman (William “Billy” Benedict) shows up with the hat, she has trouble deciding whether to send it back or pay for it out of the $50. She even gives the deliveryman a cigar and some pie and milk in order to stall him. Her friend Betty (Kathleen Freeman) comes over and suggests that she might be able find a nice $50 gift for $25 at an auction, so she pays for the hat and the two of them head to the auction. She plans to bid on a nice lamp, but she is distracted by another lady (Henny Backus) wearing the same hat she just bought. In the meantime, she misses the lamp, and the auctioneer (Sheldon Leonard) has started bids for a moose head. Still thinking she is bidding on the lamp, she bids $25 on the moose head and wins it. She later tries to convince Brad that a moose head would make a great gift, but he isn’t buying it and insists that she buy something sensible with the $50. In order to try and get the money back for the moose head, so she conducts her own auction, putting all of the furniture up as well, but working it out with Betty to be the hight bidder on everything except for the moose head. She plans to have Betty wear her new feathered hat in order to identify her in the crowd, but the same lady from the auction enteres wearing the same hat again. Another customer (Robert Spencer) removes the feather from Betty’s hat, so Joan winds up selling all of the furniture to the lady in the hat. She puts the moose up for acution nine different times and can’t get a bid on that, however. Joan later buys nice linens for the Bunkers, and when they take the gift to the Bunker house, they find that it has been Mrs. Bunker who purchased all of their furniture. As Brad and Joan lay in their living room, which is empty of everything but the moose head, Brad tells her that Judge Bunker is going to return all of their furniture as long as she returns the check… and trades him the linens for the moose head, which he thinks would be perfect for his den. Brand lets Joan keep the hat with his compliments. 2/19/23
• 017. Fireman – 2/4/1953
  • Joan gets a late-night visit from Mabel Henderson (Geraldine Carr) who has had a fight with Harvey and says she’s going to leave him. When Joan sides with her, it bites her later when they make up. Later Joan goes to visit newlywed neighbors, fireman Tom (Hal March) and Louise Regan (Mary Ellen Kaye), and when her conversation turns toward honeymooning in Las Vegas, the couple get into an argument, causing Louise to leave Tom and come stay with the Stevens. Brad nearly talks Louise into going back home, but Joan doesn’t like how Brad used her as an example, and her anger causes Louise to reconsider and decide to fly to Reno. Joan tries to stop this by going to see Tom at the fire department, and ends up following him to a fire where she has to disguise herself as a fireman and help put out a fire. Tom and Louise reconcile, as do Joan and Brad, who had threatened to fly off to Reno as well. Phil Arnold, Michael Reagan, Hal Taggart, Frank Stanlow, and Robert Spencer are firemen. NOTE: Mabel’s husband named Harvey would later become “Charlie”. 8/17/16
• 018. Memory – 2/11/1953
  • Joan gets a call Harriet Trotter (Gail Bonney), who has hosted meetings of the Mayor’s Welfare Committee that Brad has attended and invites her and Brad over for dinner. Joan accepts the invitation for 7:30, but by the time 7:30 rolls around, she has forgotten the invitation and she and Brad are eating a spaghetti dinner. She suddenly remembers the the appointment, but forgets who it is with, only that the person’s name has to do with horses. Brad surmises that it is an old bridge friend named Pete Sadler (Donald Brodie). They assume that he is the person, so they head over to their house and basically invite themselves to dinner with Pete and his wife Polly (Kay Wiley), filling themselves up with spaghetti once again. When Brad mentions that his stomach feels like a teeter totter, Joan suddenly remembers the name Trotter, so they are off to dinner number three… spaghetti again, with Mr. (Edward Earle) and Mrs. Trotter. The next morning Joan vows to write down messages since her memory is so bad. She gets one that day, and writes it on a book of matches. Unfortunately, she sells the coat to a man collecting for a second-hand store. Remembering only the name ‘Berger’, Brad surmises that the message might be from State Supreme Court Judge Pressburger, and that he might be getting ready to recommend Brad as his replacement and attempts to hypnotize Joan to remember the message. When that fails, Joan heads to the second-hand store and tries to retrieve the coat, even though it means hiding from the manager (Frank Jacquet), locking herself in the store, and then posing as a mannequin in a failed attempt at eluding a police officer. Nevertheless, she retrieves the coat and finds out that the message was merely from Brad’s secretary calling on his behalf to tell her not to make hamburgers for dinner because he had them for lunch. Joan now blames the bad memory on Brad for not remembering that he told his secretary to phone her. 12/30/20 
• 019. Draft Board – 2/18/1953
  • The draft board wants to recruit Brad to join the board and send him a letter to report to their office. Joan thinks he is being drafted into the Navy, and insists that he ask for a desk job. Brad insists that he will not settle for sitting behind a desk, so Joan turns the house into a virtual ships barracks, simulating serving mess, a bumpy ride, and hammocks in the sleeping quarters. Brad and Joan bet who can get into the hammock first. Joan almost wins two new hats by lowering the hammock, but Brad ends up victorious when she falls out anyway, and Joan gets no new clothes for six months. As Joan is packing, Brad phones home and tells her that he has only been asked to serve on the board. Instead of being happy, Joan is worried because she rented their house for a year. Joan gets the idea to gaslight the renters George (Charles Smith) and Agnes Burton, so when they show up Joan and her friend Harriet (Mary Treen) act as if they are from the Far East with Joan posing as Princess Maha. The Burtons don’t fall for it, and demand that their lease be honored. As Brad and Joan wait for the Burtons to arrive, Brad learns of the renter’s name and rejoices because he knows that George Burton had just been drafted, meaning they no longer have to move. 5/9/16
• 020. Opera – 2/25/1953
  • At a meeting of the Women’s Welfare Committee, Joan is voted to be the entertainment chairman, and since none of them can agree on what kind of charity program they put on, they go with what none of them likes: an opera. One member named Elsie Ferguson is the sister-in-law of professional opera singer named Madame Cortini, who, although temperamental, agrees to perform in the program. Brad says his goodbyes to Joan for the next several weeks as she dives into all aspects of getting the production ready, from sewing costumes to printing tickets to putting up signs. As the day of the opera approaches, Brad finally sees Joan at home, but they are quickly interrupted by Madame Cortinai who is practicing at the top of her lungs, causing dishes in the kitchen to fall off the shelves. Brad refrains from asking her to quiet down, but later when all of the women are in the living room rehearsing and Joan is standing in for the dragon that Cortini is slaying, Brad interrupts since it appears that she is hurting Joan with strikes to the head from her prop sword. Madame Cortini gets angry and throws Brad out of his own house, and when he argues with her, she quits the play. On the night of the performance, Joan makes Brad go to her house and apologize. She makes him grovel before she will forgive him and agree to come back. As the actors are all getting ready, Joan tries to help Madame Cortini and winds up getting powder in her throat and the spraying throat spray in her eyes. Cortiia gets angry again and leaves just before curtain time. Brad then helps her come up with an alternate plan: playing Madame Cortini’s songs and then having Joan lip sync to them. She has trouble pretending to sing on stage, as her costume and many of the props fall apart on stage as she performs. After the show, Joan and Brad lament that they never want to sing or hear another singer again. They are happy that there aren’t any singers in their neighborhood. Just then their new neighbor Bing Crosby (himself) comes to the door to deliver some groceries to Joan. 2/19/23
• 021. Shopping – 3/4/1953
  • Joan claims she doesn’t have anything to wear for a party at his friend Fred’s house, but when Brad makes her feel guilty about her full closet as opposed to his nearly empty closet. She vows that she won’t buy anything more until he gets a new suit… but then takes him to go shopping at Hussey’s for one right away. Joan nearly drives the salesman George Harris (Bob Sweeney) crazy after talking Brad into a loud plaid suit, then making him try on more for a couple of hours… then insisting on checking out some other stores. Eventually he purchases the suit, but when he runs into one of the seediest underworld figures Flashy Fenwick, he has Joan return the suit. Harris won’t wait on her and turns her over to Frank Brooks (Noel Drayton) who insists that the suit cannot be returned since it has been altered. Joan instead tends to a nebbish customer named Charlie (Jerry Hausner) and convinces him to buy the plaid suit even though it’s eight sizes too large. He makes her alter it, which she does with a pair of scissors, rendering it completely ruined. Nevertheless Charlie is happy with the suit… but before he can leave with it, his caretaker (Arthur Lovejoy) enters the store and tells her that Charlie is insane. Still he reimburses her the $85 – plus alteration fee – so Joan is able to buy Brad a conservative blue suit and herself a dress. Brad decides he’s like a flashier suit after all, but Joan says that she bought the suit at a markdown with the stipulation that she never return to Hussey’s. Bernard Gorcey is Joe the bailiff. 6/2/19
• 022. The Stamp – 3/11/1953
  • Brad meets with stamp dealer Horace Edgeworth and purchase a rare Mozambique Purple stamp for $350, and promises to send Edgeworth a check for it as soon as he gets home. He worries about telling Joan about the stamp and decides to be ultra nice to her and bring her chocolates to butter her up. Meanwhile at home, Joan has knocked the fender off the car for the fifth time and tells her friend how she plans to be ultra nice to Brad and cook him a pot roast dinner. When Brad arrives home, they are sickeningly sweet to each other. However, when Brad asks Joan to put the check to Edgeworth in the mailbox, Joan puts the Mozambique Purple stamp on the letter. Brad then tells her how much the stamp cost, but her main concern is with herself since she realizes that she has sent it on the letter. After she tells him about it, he is so angry that he refuses to talk to her. That night she has nightmares that Brad is her judge, prosecuting attorney, and bailiff. She brings character witnesses in the form of childhood friend Imogene Hepplemeyer (Joan Davis) and the elderly Claretta Cathcart (Joan Davis). As the jduge is about to send down the sentence, she wakes up yelling. Brad quickly remembers why he is mad at her and continues with the silent treatment. He gets a call from his bailiff Joe that morning that all of the stamps that Edgeworth had sold were counterfeit and he has already cashed all of the checks he got from sales and has skipped town. He decides to forgive Joan instantly, and even more so when the mailman shows up to return the check since the letter’s Mozambique Purple stamp is no good. Brad tells her that she saved him $350 since he now has posession of the check. Joan is annoyed that he is only being nice to her since things worked out his way, but he almost lost $350. Brad later gets teh bill for the fender and starts to chastise Joan, until she reminds him of the stamp incident. He agrees that he won’t yell at her, and that she even has one more damaged fender coming on him. She tells him that she just used it. 7/27/23
• 023. Little Girl – 3/18/1953
  • Brad and Joan are expecting a visit from Janet Whitmore (Anne Whitfield), the daughter of a late business associate of Brad’s, to whom he was also the executor of his will. Joan fears that she has been living fancy in Europe and will expect the same kind of high class atmosphere during her visit, but when they meet her, they find that she is a wallflower with glasses and braces, scared of boys. They decide to set her up with young Harold Miller (Leon Tyler), who is similar in nature, wears glasses, has braces, and is scared of girls. They both try to coach them to be more aggressive in asking the other to dance, each telling a tall tale about their younger days at a dance. Through flashback, Brad relates that Joan was awkward and had no idea how to dance, and it takes the debonair Brad to show her the moves, while Joan relates the opposite story, whereby she as a slick flapper had to show the awkward Brad how to dance. Harold and Janet ask each other to dance at the same time, and wind up each running scared out of the room. Later both of them go for walks while feeling lonesome, and this time they hit it off and kiss one another, and think that this qualifies them as being ready for marriage. Harold’s stepfather Frank (Frank Fenton) and his wife (Florence Revenel) come to see Brad and Joan, and demand that they ship Janet away, but Brad and Joan think it’s smarter to teach them that they can’t survive on the $20 a week he makes at Parker’s Department store. They bring the kids over, and Brad and Joan give them $20 and then impersonate a landlord and insurance salesman, who take all of their money but $1, then act like moving men who have to repossess their furniture. Harold finally gets the message, but then Janet reminds them that her father’s will stipulates that she gets $300,000 when she gets married. Fortunately, Harold decides that he needs to make enough to match it before getting married. 4/25/21
• 024. Diet – 3/25/1953
  • Brad and Joan return from their anniversary dinner, and she asks him carry her over the threshold. When he struggles to do it, he mentions that she’s put on a little weight since their wedding. She claims that she has stayed the same weight at 116, but when she checks the scale, she sees she is now 123. This is a concern because she has signed a contract that she has to weigh the same she did in high school when she stars in commercial for Grubers low calorie salad dressing, which will earn her a donation to her club’s women’s aid fund. She immediately starts an intense diet by eating just a small square of toast for breakfast the next day. She then has to wait until noon before she eats again, and even still, she pushes the clock’s hand forward and scarfs it down in a matter of seconds. She has so much temptation to eat a ham from the refrigerator that night that she tells the club members that she is going to drop out. Instead, they offer to keep her from eating, so every woman pitches in to help keep temptation away from her at every turn. This helps her get to the finish line and lose the weight. However, when she starts to film the commercial that contains a table full of fattening foods, she starts ravaging the food as the host it talking about how she stays thin by only eating their salad dressing. She can’t stop eating it, and even drinking the salad dressing straight from the bottle. It earns her the $200, but she goes to bed completely bloated and back to original weight of 116. 8/20/21
• 025. Model – 4/1/1953
  • While Brad and his bailiff Joe are doing work in the living room, Joan and her Bridge club Jean (Joanne Jordan), Mabel, and a third woman (Fay Baker) are laughing it up in the kitchen as they play. Brad goes in to ask them to be quiet, causing the ladies to start picking on Joan for allowing Brad to push her around. Eventually Joan decides that she and the ladies will move into the living room, forcing the guys to work among them. The women are so distracting that Brad decides to give up working, leading to an argument before they go to bed. When Brad mentions being the breadwinner, Joan decides to get a job herself. After spending all day looking for a job, she tells Mabel that the only thing she finds is a job as a stock girl in Armand’s Dress Salon. Joan decides to tell Brad that she got hired as a dress designer so that he will have more respect for her job. She winds up working alongside a girl named Elsie (Shirley Mitchell). She has dreams of getting married and quitting her job and can’t believe that Joan doesn’t want to stay at home and just be a housewife. Joan says she’d rather be independent so no one can tell her what to do, but soon she sees that her boss (Irene Barton) and the models are brutal to work for. When Joan comes home from her first day at work, she falls asleep on the couch. The next day, Elsie continues to dream about getting out of work, while Joan still touts her freedom and independence. Joan decides to tell Brad that she’s going to quit, admitting that she thought Brad would be asking her to give up her job by now. When she calls his office, Brad’s secretary Miss Bromley (Margie Liszt) tells Joan that Brad is headed there to ask her to quit the job. She says that Brad knew that Joan couldn’t last long in a menial job, but since she’s a designer, he figured she wouldn’t be leaving any time soon. On his way in, Brad runs into Mrs. Dimsdale and Martha Carter, who are there to see a demonstration of dresses by Armand himself. Armand is able to take a long piece of fabric and wrap and drape them on the models so that they look like a completed dress. Joan then tries to do the same thing to show Brad that she is working as a designer. Her creations are less impressive as the models are forced to hold them in their mouths, have them tied around their legs so they cannot walk, wear them over their eyes, and wear them like an arm sling. Back at home, Joan is happy to serve Brad the breadwinner breakfast in bed. 7/27/23
• 026. Lateness – 4/8/1953
  • Brad is waiting at the box office to see a whodunnit play called Summer Hotel. With the curtain going up in ten minutes, Joan is back home, fresh out of the shower, and answering phone calls from her friends who are wanting to play Bridge. Brad is incredibly annoyed when she shows up fifteen minutes after the show has started, now with no chance of getting in before intermission. After briefly giving Joan the silent treatment, Brad finally forgives her. She is thankful that he didn’t cancel their trip for the following week but tells Joan that she must pick up the reservations by 4:00pm the next day. She says this will work out because she has to pick up some new shoes downtown that day as well. He cautions her that she cannot be late and he knows how she gets when she shops for shoes. She arrives at the shoe store twenty minutes before her 4pm deadline and shocks the salesclerk Robert (Robert Jellison) by picking out her shoes, trying them on, and being ready for checkout in a matter of seconds. However, she then sees some other shoes and begins trying them on. She soon builds up a stack and begins comparing the ones on her feet to the model legs that are already wearing shoes. She winds up getting her arms stuck inside the fake legs and has to rely on Robert and another clerk named George (George Perroni) to get try and get her free. By the time she finishes, she has missed her deadline for getting the tickets. Brad is naturally angry again, but surprisingly, he agrees to see if Judge Carter could forget about covering for him that weekend, and instead cover him for the following weekend so that Brad and Joan can reschedule their getaway. Brad remembers that Judge Carter is with his wife at a dinner party that night, so he decides to wait until after midnight to call him and ask him, so that Carter doesn’t stay up all night studying up on Brad’s cases. Joan agrees to stay up so that Brad can sleep, but she keeps nodding off. She rigs a bottle of water to spray her every time her head starts to bob, but it doesn’t work when her head bobs the wrong way and the water sprays next to her. When she finally wakes up, it is 6:30 in the morning. Joan quickly shuts all of the blinds and changes the clocks to make it like it is 12:30am. She then pretends to call Judge Carter and ask him to make the switch. When the milkman comes, the postman delivers a letter, and a cock crows outside, Joan has to make up ridiculous excuses why these things are happening. Joan then sends Brad to bed, resets all of the clocks to the morning time, and wakes him right back up and tells him it is morning. She then secretly calls Judge Carter while Brad is in the shower and asks him to not report for Brad’s cases that day. She finds out from him that Brad had already called him the night before while Brad was alseep. Brad finds the whole thing hilarious that she jumped through so many hoops to convince him it was still midnight. The following week, Joan brags that she has gotten everything ready for the trip and packed their items and sent them ahead. However, she then realizes that she has packed their plane tickets and sent them away as well. 11/26/23
• 027. Eviction – 4/15/1953
  • Joan is too late getting home from her Women’s Welfare League to make dinner for Brad, so she quickly throws a roast into the oven. When he arrives home, he is famished and wants to get fed, but then finds that the meat is raw. He is particularly irritated when he realizes that the club cost him his dinner. Later at the next club meeting, the ladies find out that they have been evicted from their clubhouse, and the order is signed by Judge Bradley Stevens. The blame Joan, but she says she can get it cleared up for them. Brad won’t even consider cancelling the eviction, because it was based on a petition from the others in the area that claim they make too much noise, and too many cars are parked in front of the house for a residential area. He says the eviction was ordered by the zoning commission and he must sign the order. Joan retaliates by formally evicting him from the bedroom thanks to his snoring – sound violation – and putting his feet on her – parking violation. The next morning, Joan makes Brad scrambled eggs with onions, which causes her to tear up. Brad thinks she is crying, so he agrees to address the ladies in the club and explain why he can’t rescind the eviction order. Joan brings along onions that make everyone cry… including Brad, who realizes that it was just a dirty trick. However, he does realize that the club is important, so he brings over the zoning commissioner, Thomas H. Harris so that he can see how nice and calm the ladies in the club are. Unfortunately, Joan has instructed them all to be extra noisy, so Brad will get sick of them meeting in their house. The ladies come out into the living room, pretending to be training for the Air Raid Wardens, while the other half sing Tenting Tonight on the Old Campground and play their tambourines, while Joan accidentally knocks out Harris with her arm splint. Later Joan brings in a new honorary member to the club, who she wants to make Chairman of the Housing Committee: Mrs. Thomas H. Harris. 8/20/21 
• 028. The Recipe – 4/22/1953
  • The Stevens host the Petersons, Brandts, and Cavanaughs for an evening of games. Joan feels fiercely competitive with the snooty Helen Cavanaugh (Emlen Davies).  During a game of charades, Joan desperately tries to convey the phrase “ice cream has no bones” which causes the team to lose, and at the end of the night she takes further criticism from Helen. Later the Women’s Welfare League plan for their annual fair where they have beat out the other clubs for several years in a row thanks to Helen’s soup, but Joan volunteers to enter her soup as well. Joan uses Mabel to help pick out the best soup, but Nancy tells Joan that Helen is going to prepare oxtail soup using the recipe from Alfonso’s restaurant, the favorite soup of the judge. Joan goes to the restaurant to get the recipe herself, and ends up taking a job as the assistant cook. Joan muddles through trying to assist Alfonso (Don Brodie) in making a French meal while trying to steal the oxtail soup recipe by hiding in the vat in which the ingredients are added…on top of her. Even though she is caught when the range is turned on, she wins the contest with the oxtail soup…but has made so much of it to replicate the recipe, she has to fill the bathtub with it. 1/3/18
• 029. Repairs – 4/29/1953
  • Brad had asked Joan to have the roof checked when he noticed some loose shingles, but she forgot and consequently the roof leaked during a rainstorm and damaged the plaster. Brad tells her he will handle the roof but she’ll have to have the ceiling repaired out of her own money. Since this will cost $20, she tells her friend Clara Foster (Myra Marsh) she will have to skip having her hair done. Clara suggests that Joan repair it herself, so she tries, but only manages to cover herself in plaster and create an even bigger hole in the plaster. When Brad comes home for lunch, she has to hide it from him, despite the fact that he keeps taking multiple trips through the bedroom. She brings in the plasterer Mr. Johnson (Jesse White) but now the bill is $120 since the hole is now much larger. In order to try and make up the money, she and Clara scour Joan’s attic for something to sell. They find an old harp, but Joan gets her head caught in it, while Clara falls in a trunk and gets locked in. Joan eventually escapes but knocks the harp over and caves in the bedroom roof. Brad berates her for costing so much money instead of just doing it right the first time, but then realizes he forgot to have the roof repaired so consequently it leaks again and destroys the ceiling plaster. 6/2/19
• 030. Secrets – 5/6/1953
  • Joan is being nominated for the presidency of her Ladies’ Club, while Brad has some terrific news as well: he is being considered for a Federal Judgeship. He insists that Joan not tell anyone, since it isn’t certain yet that he will get the job. Joan wants to tell the news to her friends Elsie, Clara, Nancy, and Barbara the news, but Brad doesn’t want her to tell anyone since it isn’t guaranteed. Brad wants to keep the news just between the two of them until it is finalized. However, when he arrives at court the next day, he receives congratulations from Joe the Bailiff, then hears it on a phone call from Jack, and in person from his friend Phil. His mother calls from Pawtucket, Rhode Island to congratulate him, and he receives a congratulatory wreath. Brad is disappointed and angry with her. He then gets a phone call from his old friend Jim Randolph, who invites him to have lunch near the courthouse where he can give him $1500 to pay back and $300 loan that Bradley once gave him. Brad decides he will use the money to buy a fur that she’s always wanted but decides not to tell her about the surprise. She overhears part of the conversation and wants to know what he was talking about, so Brad says he’ll tell her half of the surprise but will only tell her the second half if she keeps the secret for 24 hours. He tells her that the husband of someone she knows has come into the money but doesn’t want the wife to know as she might use it to buy a fur. In order to ensure she keeps the secret; Joan voluntarily has her own phone disconnected until that evening. However, when all the ladies stop by her house, she manages to relay the entire secret through charades and doesn’t say a word. Each lady leaves the house thinking that it is her husband who got the money but doesn’t want to buy them a fur. That afternoon, each lady returns to Joan with their angry husband who was not able to return the fur that the wife purchased. They each throw the coat at Joan and tell her that she can try to return them. When Brad comes home that evening and sees all of the coats, Joan tells him that the ladies are in the kitchen having a meeting. She then goes in there and imitates each of their voices to a tee and ‘conducts’ a pseudo-meeting, now knowing that that the ladies have all returned to the house. Eventually, she comes out and sees them, and they tell her that their husbands have allowed them to keep the coats after all. However, they feel bad that Joan is the only one who doesn’t have a coat. After they leave, Brad tells her the full secret and presents her with her own fur coat. Joan wants to surprise the ladies by meeting up with them wearing the coat. She asks Brad to keep the secret, so agrees to, and then immediately calls one of the husbands to brag about the coat he bought. 11/26/23
• 031. The Artist Show – 5/13/1953
  • Brad criticizes Joan for going shopping and buying matching Oriental back scratchers because she is bored. He encourages her to do something more productive with her free time like doing something more constructive like get involved with civic affairs with her Women’s Welfare Lague. Joan agrees, and at the next meeting she proposes the idea to her fellow members and chairman Clara Foster. They agree to have the State Senator Charlie Adams come to their next meeting, and Joan calls him and makes all of the arrangements. When Joan gets home, she coincidentally finds that Brad is trying to arrange a lunch with Adams, as he is someone who can help Brad obtain a federal judgeship. Brad is surprised with how familiar Joan is with him, as she keeps calling him by his first name. He hopes she can maintain the familiarity with him as it might help him with a promotion. However, at the luncheon, Joan somehow manages to remove Adams’s toupee while she is delivering her introduction to him. After she accidentally puts it on the waiter, she then has to tell him that it is a small dog when he questions what she has. After dropping it into a finger bowl, he realizes it is his and storms out. Mabel advises Joan to be pre-emptive and tell Brad she is leaving him before he leaves her. She takes her advice and starts packing when Brad gets home. When she tells him what she did to the toupee, Brad is in such shock that he absentmindedly helps her pack and sends her on her way. When he comes to his sense, he calls her back and tells her that Senator Adams will forgive what happened and tells Joan to invite them over for dinner. However, Brad makes it clear that Joan is to only listen to Mrs. Adams, as she is a cultured and intelligent woman who likes to study art. Joan is offended by this notion, so she attends an art school to try and learn enough to be conversational. The teacher has to paint a live male model, but after watching another student (Lee Patrick) and her technique, Joan winds up painting her own thumb. When Joan accidentally paints on the other woman’s canvas, she and the lady wind up painting all over each other’s canvasses… which leads to a paint fight, during which they paint all over each other and the model, finally playing tic tac toe on his torso. When the teacher finally stops them, Joan finds out that the lady is Mrs. Adams. When Joan tells Brad about the incident, he cannot believe it. Mrs. Adams then comes over to thank Joan, as Joan’s painting that Mrs. Adams winded up painting on ended up winning first prize in an art contest. Mrs. Adams is not only thrilled with Joan, but she congratulates her on getting second place in the contest with her painting of the thumb. 4/2/24
• 032. The Threat – 5/20/1953
  • After going to see a Mr. Magoo cartoon and a movie, Joan is nervous because the movie was about a criminal who came back to shoot and kill the judge that sentenced him. She becomes even more fearful when she finds out that one of the criminals who Brad had sentenced, Rocky Collins, has been released. That night, she thinks that Rocky has gotten into their bedroom, but she is actually seeing her own big toes and mistaking them for bloodshot eyes. The next day, Brad tells Joan he has to work late, and she wants to into the office with him so that she can watch over him in case Rocky shows up to shoot him. Brad declines the offer, so Joan disguises herself as a fat Swedish housekeeper so that she can clean his office and keep an eye on him. When he calls Joan at home to tell her that everything is okay, Joan grabs the extension and lays under his desk to talk to him. Soon Brad realizes that the housekeeper and Joan are one and the same. Then when the Chief of Police Charles Hammon brings a gun into the chambers to show Brad some evidence in a case, Joan knocks him off of his feet twice. Later, while telling Mabel about her concerns, the mailman delivers a package for Brad, and when Joan hears her own watch ticking, she thinks it is a gun and douses it with water. It turns out to be a new hat for Brad. He winds up calling Dr. Blake (Bob Sweeney) to check on her. He tells Brad that although her concerns may be unfounded, they are very real. As they are talking, Rocky Collins shows up at the house to see Brad. She chases him into their room with a knife and then tells Brad and the doctor about him. They think she is imagining him, but Blake thinks they should humor her and pretend he is actually there. They wind up speaking to Collins as if he is in the living room when he is really hiding in the bedroom. Eventually, Collins comes out and surprises everyone. He tells Brad that he heard they had hired extra police protection since he was released, and he wanted to assure them that he wasn’t coming after Brad. He mentions that there have been plenty of criminals sentenced, and in fact, another one named Whitey Smith has just been released. The whole cycle of nervousness and fear starts over when she starts thinking about Whitey Smith. 4/3/24
• 033. Country Club – 5/27/1953
  • Brad and Joan visit with friends Tom (Frank Gerstle) and Alice (Emlen Davies), who often play golf together at a country club. Tom has become friendly with a Supreme Court judge which promises to advance his career. Joan feels bad because Brad won’t join the club because he’d rather spend time with her. Since she has no golf talent, she decides to take 12 golf lessons in one day in hopes of learning the game, much to the frustration of her golf instructor (Sheldon Leonard) who puts up with Joan’s tomfoolery and horrible balance. Although the lessons fail, Joan still tries to help by dressing the house up in antiques and making taffy when she finds out that the conservative country club committee is coming for a visit. Since she accidentally put too much glycerin in the taffy, everyone ends up getting literally wrapped up in it…and when they eat it, it sticks their mouth shut. It turns out that the Stevens get accepted in the club when committee member Mr. Kenworthy (Hal Taggart) wins a golf tournament because his wife’s (Kay Wiley) jaw was too tired from the taffy for her to talk and disturb his game. 5/16/17
• 034. Theatrical Can-Can –
  • The Women’s Welfare League discuss their upcoming play The Colonel’s Daughter for the Lawrence Hospital charity fund. After Barbara (Joanne Jordan) gives an update on the cast consisting of Joan, Elsie (Sandra Gould), and Mabel, and some of their husbands. When the chairman Clara calls on Joan’s update on the expenses incurred, she admits that they are in the red, having spent way more than the number of tickets they have sold, for which all of the members gang up and blame Joan. She thinks she has a solution and asks Brad if he would be willing the to spend the $250 his lawyer’s club has budgeted him for entertainment for their banquet. Brad states that the men would never go for an amateur play and would much prefer a line of chorus girls. Joan tries to solve this by having her club members dress as chorus girls and put on a show for Brad, but he won’t take the bait. She tries to convince him that men would rather see a play than the dancers, but when they ask the milkman (Richard Keene) which he would prefer, he says he’s rather see chorus girls. Later, as Brad is getting ready to head out to the banquet, he gets word that the city commissioner and mayor are going to be at the affair. He thinks they are too prim and proper for chorus girls, so he has no choice but to ask Joan to gather the women’s group together and have them do the play. He tells Joan to have the ladies meet them at the Zebra Room at the Hotel Mayflower. However, when she calls the ladies, she tells them to be at the Mayflower Room at the Hotel Zebra. Consquently, she is the only person in the play. After repeating her solo opening scene twice, she attempts to play the lead Lulu Belle, her father Col. Desmnd Culpepper, mother Magnolia, her suitor, and other characters, by doing quick changes off stage and re-entering as other characters, even simulating a sword fight. Despite the chaos, and nearly knocking over the set pieces, the mayor and commissioner think that the play is the best entertainment they’ve seen in ages. In fact, when the ladies in the club get word of how successful it was, they decide to step aside and let Joan do the play by herself the next night as well. NOTE: Harvey Dunn and George Neise are listed in the cast, but do not appear in the syndicated version. 8/24/24
• 035. Neighbors – 6/10/1953
  • The Stevens are thrilled when the noisy neighbors the Carstairs move out. Joan wants to make sure that the new neighbors will be quiet, so she gets advice from members of her Women’s Welfare League group and offers the house to the elderly Drexel and Agatha Murdock, who move in immediately. Unfortunately, they have dogs who bark all night. Joan confronts Mrs. Murdock (Lee Patrick), but she is more concerned that Brad will keep up her blue-ribbon prize-winning dogs. Joan tries to report the dogs to the police, but when she tries to capture the dogs barking over the phone, they remain quiet. When Joan barks to try to incite them, the officer accuses her of impersonating the dogs. Joan consults a vet and finds out that the dogs bark because they want attention, so she spends the night in the dog’s house so Brad can get some sleep. The plan ends up backfiring because Brad had stationed a policeman outside the house to catch the dogs in the act, but they remain quiet since Joan is with them. Sandra Gould plays Mildred Webster. 3/9/15
• 036. Talent Scout – 6/17/1953
  • Brad and his colleague Jim (Barney Phillips) discuss a racket in which two guys claim to be talent scouts, take in a bored housewife and convince her that she can be an actress, then extort money from her and set her up with a fake screen test at a major studio. Brad laments that any man should have a wife that stupid and gullible. Meanwhile Joan is at a drugstore being taken in by two such men, Joe (Jerry Hausner) and Harry (Bob Sweeney), and Joan falls for it completely. That night when she tells Brad about it, he immediately phones Jim and tells him that Joan could easily act as a witness. Jim tells him not to tell Joan, but to supply her with the requested $500 in marked bills. Joan reports the next day to the men and they put her through an acting test, and she passes with a high score of 900%. But when they ask her for the money, she has no idea where she can get it. She attempts to get it from her lady friends, but they turn her down. Then she acts as if she needs a tonsil operation and asks Brad for it. Once he gets her to tell what she really needs it for, he hands over the exact amount… in marked bills. Joan reports to the movie studio, and the director believes she really is the double they’ve been waiting for. They put her through several scenes with her co-star Bonzo the Chimpanzee (himself), having her take pointers from the chimp as the plays a scene where she finds the victim of a plane crash, and reacts by dancing with the monkey because she’s never seen a man before. That night, Joan laments being made a fool of, and what’s more, losing her acting career. She refuses to testify, until Brad points out that she can use her acting ability to pretend that she had worked undercover to sting the men performing the racket. 2/20/20
• 037. Honeymoon – 6/24/1953
  • The Judge counsels a couple and relates the story of his honeymoon, during which Joan accidentally locks him in a burglar-proof closet. While trying to pick the lock, she gets her hairpin jammed in it, so he is in there for 11 hours straight. Joan is forced to feed him through a hole in cut in the door until the handymen can melt the lock. In the present, he goes on to tell the husband how he gets his wife to maintain the house by promising a diamond bracelet after six months of pristine housekeeping. He is assuming Joan will forget, but back at home Joan is discussing with her neighbor Betty (Betty Lou Gerson) that she is finally due her bracelet. When Brad comes home without the bracelet, Joan enacts revenge by trashing the house for a visit with his important friends the Andersons. Eventually Brad tells George Anderson (Tim Graham) what is going on and Joan does likewise with Mrs. Anderson. George helps Brad by taking off his shoes and flicking ashes on the floor, saying how it is nice to live so casually. Eventually Brad gives the Joan the bracelet after all, and the ladies start having the men whip the house back into shape. Herb Vigran and Paul Dubov are the handymen. 9/1/14
• 038. Business Executive – 7/1/1953
  • Joan and Brad have some of Brad’s old lawyer friends, David (Robert Foulk) and Steve (Ross Elliott), over for a visit, and neither can help but notice how successful they’ve become working as executives of the railroad and an oil company. Joan is clearly envious of their wives’ fur coats and jewelry, which makes Brad start to ponder whether he should have ever settled on being a judge rather than entering the corporate world. He decides to do something about it and accept a job offer from a friend named Bill Morrison to work as an executive of the Humphrey Canning Company. Joan suspects that Brad is better suited to be a judge, and that night she has a dream that Brad has become an executive and is now fat, bald, and having frequent heart attacks and ulcers. Confined to a wheelchair with the gout, he spends his days barking orders at his servants and making business calls, all the while forgetting that Joan is his wife and then solving is problems with her by giving her money. Her dreams end with her telling him that she wants a divorce. She wakes up and tells Brad she doesn’t want him to become an executive, but he insists that he’s already heading down that path. He wants Joan to attend a gathering with Mr. Humphrey’s, the company president, and wants her to buy a mink to wear to the affair. When Brad’s secretary Miss Bromley calls Joan and tells her how miserable the Judge seems to be switching jobs, Joan decides that she wants no part of buying a new mink. Nevertheless, Brad insists that they buy one and forces her to accompany him to the store to buy one. At the store is another couple named Harry (Joe Besser) and Agnes (Shirley Mitchell), who are also arguing over a mink. However, Harry doesn’t want one, while his wife insists that she get one. Harry and Agnes long for a relationship like Brad and Joan’s, where they each want what is best for the other. Harry says that he had quit the post office to become an executive but is now miserable and has a selfish wife who only takes and takes. They each propose marrying Brad and Joan, but ultimately they both feel guilty and they change positions, whereby Harry wants to buy the mink and Agnes doesn’t want one. After hearing all of this, Brad decides to forget becoming an executive and decides to remain a judge after all. 8/24/24
• 039. Broken Toe – 7/8/1953
  • Joan gets angry when Brad accuses her of being a hypochondriac while she is suffering with a cold, made even more valid when Joan has a sudden recovery when she wants to play Bridge with her friends. Later Brad takes a walk and is brought home on a stretcher. Joan makes fun of him and accuses him of over-reacting as well…but Dr. Griswald (Frank Gerstle) diagnoses him with three broken toes. Joan feels terrible and attempts to visit him that night, but crotchety Nurse Everett (Lee Patrick) won’t let her in after visiting hours. Joan feigns an illness and gets checked in as a patient, but while sneaking into Brad’s room, she is talked into trading places with Mrs. Hodgkiss (Almira Sessions), who is trying to avoid having her gall bladder out. When Joan realizes this, she tries to escape from the doctors who are going to wheel her to surgery. She ends up fainting when she sees a needle, and when she comes to, she looks for the operation scars…but the doctors were notified of their mistake before they actually ever cut into her. Barney Phillips is one of the doctors. 9/30/14

SEASON 2

• 040. Brad’s Moustache – 10/14/1953
  • When a neighbor girl named Amy Smith (Pattee Champman) stops by the house looking for her mother, she mentions that she’d like to meet Judge Stevens. When Brad introduces himself, she is surprised at the way he looks, thinking that a judge would look more stern. Joan suggests that Brad’s youthful looks might contribute to the fact that he’s never been asked to run on the circuit court. Brad is skeptical of the idea at first, but Joan talks him into it. Once he has the mustache, he comes home with many tales of women crossing streets and fighting through crowds just to greet him. It doesn’t take long at all before Joan becomes jealous and is asking him to shave it off. Brad refuses and says now that he has become used to it, he likes it. The more Joan thinks about it that night, the more she can’t stand the thought of other women gushing over him, so while he is asleep, she shaves it off. The next morning as she is ready to show him his face in the mirror, he tells her that the nominating committee from the circuit court would like to talk to him about running for office. She quickly tells him that he needs to get more rest and has him go back to sleep. She then sneaks out to see Frank Macker (Joe Besser), salesman of theatrical makeup, hair pieces, and fake mustaches. She buys one for Brad and is told by Macker that nothing will make it fall off except for hot water. She manages to stick the fake one on him before he wakes up. That night the nominating committee members Ed Rushmore (Griff Barnett) and Johnny Fitzgerald (Lewis L. Russell) come over with their wives (respectively, Martha Wentworth, Norma Varden) to feel Brad out. Everything goes well until Joan is asked to serve tea. She tries to ensure that Brad doesn’t drink any of the hot liquid, but eventually Brad insists that she fill his cup. The mustache does start to fall off, but Joan saves the situation by kissing him and sticking it back on. As the men and their wives are leaving, Ed tells Brad that he should shave his silly-looking mustache off because it may cost him votes. Joan offers to shave Brad and is able to remove the mustache in a matter of seconds, much to Brad’s surprise. He mentions how impressed he is with the close shave, and she that she had one too. 12/21/24
• 041. First Lie – 10/21/1953
  • Joan spends the afternoon shopping with her friends Helen and Nancy, but Joan returns everything but one dress before she even gets home. She says that Brad told her not to buy any new clothes and she got to have all of the fun of shopping without making all of the purchases. Nancy suggests that Joan just tell Bradley that she is wearing last year’s dress with a new belt. She performs the same exercise on her husband Charley (Don Brodie) with her new hat when he comes to pick her up. Although she and Bradley make it a practice never to lie to one another, she tells Brad that her new dress is old and it is only the belt that is new. Joan keeps verifying with Brad that he believes that it is not a new dress. That evening she realizes that the tag is stilling hanging off the back of it, so she goes to great lengths to keep her back hidden and attempts to claw it off. She even says she is sitting on the couch in a contour fashion to relax her heart and lungs. Feeling guilty, Joan goes on the TV show Marriage Clinic, where spouses can get advice on their failing marriages. Joan is wearing a mask to hide her identity, which is a good thing because Brad winds up on the panel of advisors. Joan tires to hide her identity and tries to avoid talking about her problem. The host of the show brings up the fact that she had lied to her husband. The other advisors tell her that a minor lie is not big deal, but Brad disagrees and says that small lies often give way to bigger lies and more marriage problems. Brad then sees that the contestant has her name ‘Joan’ embroidered on her handkerchief. Joan tells a wild tale about lying to her spouse when he caught her flying around the room. She ‘flies’ off the set, and Brad doesn’t let on that he knows it is her. However, he calls his friend Tom (Barney Phillips), and has him bring over a lie detector in order to find out what Joan is up to. Joan is so nervous that she is ready to confess, as soon as they first start questioning her. When Brad asks about her address, she thinks he is asking about the dress and once again confesses. When Brad does in fact act about the dress, she tries to turn off the machine and winds up electrocuting herself. Brad laughs it off and tells her that he knew all along that she was lying but wanted to treat her a less. Since he is holding the lie detector cable, when he says he knew the dress was new all along, the lie detector goes off again. 2/19/22
• 042. Furniture Quick Changes – 10/28/1953
  • Brad uses a child psychologist named Laura R. Hammond (Evelyn Scott) in one of his cases, and after it is over, she tells Brad that he needs to take some time off to relax because he is working much too hard. He decides to take her advice and take the rest of the day off. Meanwhile at home, Joan is working with her friend Mabel on selling raffle tickets for a charity event. Mabel randomly suggests that Joan should rearrange her furniture to freshen things up in the house. With Mabel directing the changes, Joan does all of the heavy work of moving the furniture around, then they leave to go sell tickets to some of their friends. After they leave, Brad gets home and sees the furniture in different locations and decides to immediately take a nap. After visiting with their friend Charlotte and seeing how her furniture is arranged, she decides to come back home and change the furniture to look more like Charlotte’s. The leave again, and Brad wakes up, sees the furniture in a different location, and immediately calls Dr. Hammond to make an appointment to see her. He goes back to sleep, then Joan and Mabel return again after seeing Helen Randolph’s furniture and change it again. Joan then decides that she likes the furniture the original way. Brad wakes up and sees the furniture again and heads over to see Dr. Hammond. When he gets home, he sees the furniture back in its original location. Joan sees him inspecting it, and she becomes curious as to what is wrong with him. Brad has another appointment with Dr. Hammond, who tells him that he must have an inner conflict and advises him to get out and do things with other people besides his wife. Perhaps interested in Brad herself, she invites him to meet her that evening at the boardwalk at the seashore. She advises him not to tell Joan, who has become suspicious about Brad’s odd behavior. She discusses it with Mable, who speculates that Brad may be seeing another woman. She suspects that he will come home and say that he wants to spend some time with ‘the guys’. When he does exactly that, Joan follows him to the boardwalk, where Brad meets up with Dr. Hammond, and begins to engage with the midway games, while Dr. Hammond tries to get him away from the games and out to the beach to look at the romantic sky. Joan not only follows him but gets inside the fortune telling machine and replaces the robotic mannequin in the box so that she can spy on Brad and Dr. Hammond. Joan has to go through the motions of the robot lady when a pair of couples try to have their fortunes read. She finally puts up an “Out of Order” sign to get people away from her, but it just leads to the maintenance man (Frank Mitchell) coming by to try and oil her. Later, Joan and Brad laugh about the predicament. Joan asks if she might be able to talk about Dr. Hammond about a friend of Mabel’s whose husband is being targeted by another woman. Joan goes to see Dr. Hammond and asks her as a woman what she would do if someone were trying to steal her man. Dr. Hammond tells her that she would punch the woman in the nose. Joan takes her advice and punches her. Joan returns to Brad in the waiting room and tells him that she feels much better. Dick Keene is the ring toss barker. 12/21/24
• 043. Sister Pat – 11/4/1953
  • Joan’s sister Beverly Grossman (Beverly Willis, Joan Davis’ real life daughter) comes to stay with them so she can attend the local Southside Junior College. Pretty soon she starts to overtake the house by cutting up Brad’s newspaper and constantly being on the phone. Brad retaliates by hiring three men – Jack from Idaho, Fred from Texas, and pipe smoking Cousin Dave. In addition, Dave brings along his cousin Sam (Jerry Hausner). Joan sends Beverly in to find out if they are phonies, but they end up loving how she helps them with their homework and become freeloaders. In order to drive them out, Joan wakes them up early and puts them on a regimented schedule. Beverly is sad when she thinks they have all moved out, but they quickly return saying how much they enjoyed their new schedule. 5/26/15
• 044. Tropical Fish – 11/11/1953
  • Brad has been collecting tropical fish, and Bev advises her that she can get closer to him by taking an interest in his hobby. She buys him a Cambodia Betta at the pet store, not knowing that this fish is a cannibal, which ends up eating all of Brad’s other fish, including his ultra-rare Tropicana Africanus. Joan tries to replace it but the only one in town is owned by the Aquarium Society who won’t part with it. She ends up breaking in to steal to the rare fish, but gets caught as she is ready to leave, so she poses as Miss Fisher, a reporter from the Fish Fanciers Digest there to cover a club meeting. She ends up getting roped into saying a few words the group, which she stumbles through, mostly making jokes. Brad ends up showing up to the meeting, just before the stolen fish becomes loose in her pants. She finally gets it into a pitcher of water, where it gives birth to more fish. Brad gives up the hobby and they discard everything in the house that reminds them of fish. Robert Foulk is the store owner. Tom Peters is Biff. Alan DeWitt is Professor Pemberton. Marjorie Bennett is the visitor. Leon Tyler is the doorman. 5/16/17
• 045. Culinary Nightmare – 11/18/1953
  • Joan is preparing a chicken Eldorado dish for Brad, and tells Beverly she’s barely go enough food for the two of them so she makes sure that Beverly is going out to eat that night with a boyfriend. Meanwhile, Brad is at the country club with a publisher named Bill Manners (Dick Elliott) to whom he hopes to sell a series of articles. Brad invites Manners over for dinner, and then calls Joanie to tell her the news. Joan tries to warn him that she won’t have enough, but Brad is standing right by Manners and can’t back out now. Joan starts looking for more to eat, and since it is close to the Thanksgiving holiday, all of the stores are closed. Brad then calls her back to tell her that Manners’ wife is joining them as well. Joan then tries to stretch the food by watering down the soup, stuffing the chicken with a piece of bread and a cracker, ironing out the piece of fish to stretch it, and filling the cream puffs with air from a bike pump. Brad calls to tell her that they will also be bringing Manners’ son Tom and his girlfriend. Eventually, the cream puffs and chicken simply explode. After the horrible dinner, Joan tries to make it up by packing a picnic lunch for the Manners and herself and Brad. Unfortunately, the neighbor dog Rover climbs in the picnic basket and eats all of the food when they arrive. A group of young picnickers – Dick, Linda, Joey (Robert Easton) and his girlfriend – come along, and Joan tries to integrate into their group, stuffing her pockets with their sandwiches. Joan mounts a swing and while Joey and his girlfriend start necking, she swings by and takes their food. She serves up the squab to everyone, but the picnickers show up and claim the food. Brad is able to convince the Manners for one final chance, and they have them over for a big turkey dinner. However, after skipping meals for the last two days, the Manners have lost weight and feel great, and decide to go for a long walk instead of eating dinner. Manners gives Brad the job of writing the articles after all, and Brad and Joan finally have the candlelight dinner they set out to have in the first place. 6/26/22
• 047. Bev’s Boyfriend – 12/2/1953
  • Bev is infatuated with hot rod owner Tom Peters (Tom Peters), but Tom seems only interested in his car Agnes. Joan visits Tom and pretends to be interested in cars to grab his attention and then invites him over. Despite Joan’s best efforts to set Tom up with Bev, he falls for Joan instead. Joan agrees to go out with him, but shows up in hillbilly fashion with gaudy eyebrows, a flapper wig, and blacked out teeth. This still doesn’t dissuade Tom, so Brad helps her convince Tom that they have multiple children which sends Tom running… right to his hot rod where Beverly is waiting for him. Billy Benedict is the delivery man. Robert Spencer is the waiter. 11/1/16
• 055. Mabel’s Dress – 1/27/1954
  • It’s Mabel’s birthday, but when Joan finds a gift in the closet she assumes it’s for her. She eventually finds out that Charlie had hidden it there for Mabel… but not before she ‘alters’ it with a pair of scissors. This causes a rift between the Stevens and the Hendersons, which means that Brad and Joan do not get an invitation to Mabel’s birthday party. They attempt to have their own party, but everyone is at Mabel’s party so Brad and Joan have to have a ‘party’ of their own. Eventually Joan decides that if she takes Mable her famous orange cakes as a birthday surprise, she will be invited in. It works like a charm until the cake explodes after cleaning fluid was accidentally spilled onto it. All is eventually forgiven until Joan accidentally gives Mabel a gift that she had intended for Brad: the book How to Be Happy Though Fat. 7/18/15
• 061. Mountain Lodge – 3/10/1954
  • Brad and Joan have a ‘life can beautiful fund’, but each of them simultaneously write a check and empty it; he buys a mountain cabin from his friend Mr. Tuttle and she buys a motor boat from Mr. Fenster (Robert Foulk). When Brad tells Joan what he did, Joan panics and then berates Brad for buying it without discussing it with her. She tries to get him to return it, but Brad insists that they spend a weekend there and if they don’t like it, Mr. Tuttle promised he would refund the money. Joan initially refuses to go, but then gives in, deciding to make sure that Brad hates the cabin. Bev and Tom come along to help sabotage the trip by hiding the food, and firewood, drilling holes in the ceiling, removing the distributor rotor from the car, and then leaving in their own. As soon as Brad finds that he can’t get a fish bite in the lake and that he doesn’t want to keep the cabin. They get ready to leave but Brad can’t get the car started. Joan found the rotor and tossed it in the lake, not knowing what it was, so they are stranded at the cabin with no food. They attempt to fish, but only manage to catch a giant turtle that Joan can’t bear to eat, so she lets it go and makes the soup from a hot water bottle. When Brad spots the turtle, Joan is forced to admit the truth. She makes a small dinner from the single egg the turtle left behind. Both starving, they are grateful to have a roof over their heads… until it starts to rain and the get doused through the holes that Joan had Tom put in the roof. 9/5/18
• 062. Home of the Week – 3/17/1954
  • As Joan and Brad read the Gazette newspaper, Brad is disturbed that there is a piece in the Talk of the Town section indicating that there are judges on the take, while Joan is irritated that her friend Helen Cavanaugh (Adele Jergens) had her home featured in the Rotogravure section. When Helen stops by to gloat, Joan calls the paper pretending that they had been pestering her to feature her home. Reporter Albert Kellner (James Nusser) and his photographer Murphy take the bait and tell Joan they are coming over. Joan then quickly borrows expensive decor and a Gainsborough painting for the photo shoot. However this leads to more gossip in the paper about a judge who must be taking bribes since his home is decorated so lavishly. Brad gets together with other judges to figure out who the guilty judge is, while Joan gets another call from Kellner asking to come back for more photos. She gets the judges occupied with fixing the sink, while she re-furnishes the house. When she overhears what they are doing, she tires to hide the expensive items, but they ultimately find it. However after they investigate, the Gazette is forces to print a retraction and apology. Joan’s home is featured in the paper after all, but Helen makes sure that the paper prints that all of the expensive items were on loan. Tim Graham is Judge Hammond. Grady Sutton has a walk-on in the newsroom. 5/27/15
• 064. Changing Houses – 3/31/1954
  • Mabel admires Joan’s early American furnishing, and Joan is in love with Mabel and Charlie’s functional modern decor. They agree to change houses for a week so they can each get a feel for whether they want to re-decorate their own houses. Joan and Brad quickly find the modern furniture non-functional when they get stuck in the walls while trying to go to bed. They agree to trade back right away, but Joan spills a bottle of blue ink on Mabel’s white carpet. She takes it to get it dyed blue to keep it and then buy Mabel a new white carpet. It turns out that Mabel has spilled peroxide on Joan’s blue rug and is trying to get it bleached and buy Joan a new blue rug. Joan sees Mabel at the carpet store and tries to hide inside a rug, and then behind one that is being beaten. When they roll out a rug for Mable, Joan is inside of it. Later the couple discuss what happened and how it all worked out, when Joan spills peroxide on her blue rug…and suggest that they do it all over again. 12/1/14
• 065. Jealousy – 4/7/1954
  • The Ladies Club has brought in guest lecturer Dr. Carlos Salazar (Philip Van Zandt), and Joan has suggested that he stay at Mabel and Charlie’s house to save on expenses. Unfortunately Charlie is enraged with jealousy by Salazar and the fact that he kisses Mabel’s hand frequently. Joan brags that Brad is never jealous, but when Salazar’s lecture indicates that a husband who isn’t jealous doesn’t love his wife, Joan starts to worry. She tries unsuccessfully to make Brad jealous by telling him that she has gone out with a man who once kissed her on New Year’s Eve, and then by bringing Salazar to stay in their home. Salazar tells Joan not to worry because Brad is a rare intelligent and neo-stoic type and that to make this type jealous could induce violence in them. Joan is so pleased that she kisses Salazar, which does in fact make Brad jealous. He comes out with a gun to go duck hunting, but Joan freaks out thinking he is going to shoot them. Brad gives Joan a sedative which ends up getting drank by Salazar, who then passes out in the closet. Joan finally gets him out without Brad’s knowledge, and Salazar quickly leaves town. Brad and Joan both discuss the futility of jealousy, but it backfires when Joan agrees to house another guest lecturer… this time an attractive woman. 2/13/16
• 066. Get Rich Quick – 4/14/1954
  • Joan’s father comes visiting and looking for money to help buy stock in Superior Development and Investment Enterprises, where he has already sunk $250 in a South American uranium mine. Joan goes to the firm and meets its president J. Ferrington Randolph and demands her father’s money back, and ends up getting duped into investing $250 of her own. Next Brad meets with Randolph and when he finds out that Brad is a judge, he gives all of the money back. Later it is discovered that uranium was in fact found in their mine, so Joan and her father go back to Randolph and ask to re-invest… all while the District Attorney is telling Brad that Randolph is about to be arrested for fraud since Superior doesn’t even own the mine. After Randolph takes Joan and her father’s money, he gets a tip that the D.A. is closing in on them and sells the company to Joan dirt cheap. Former customers come barging in demanding their money back, while the office furniture is getting re-possessed. Joan is nearly arrested, but eventually they nab Randolph at the airport instead. As the cops share the company ledger with Brad and Joan, it is revealed that Brad too had invested $250 with the firm. Herb Vigran plays one of the disgruntled customers. 5/9/16
• 072. Joan’s Haircut – 7/7/1954
  • Joan and Brad laugh over a new haircut sweeping the country, and when Joan goes to get her hair done for her and Brad’s upcoming reunion, her stylist mistakes her disdain for the haircut and gives her that very cut. She is scared to show Brad and sends him off to get his haircut, and as he’s falling asleep, he mentions his old classmate Butch Henderson (Richard Reeves), and his barber Larry (Jerry Hausner) gives him a ‘butch’ haircut. Joan tries desperately to get out of going to the reunion, but Brad grows to like her hair. She tries to trick him by putting a bandage on his head while he is sleeping and telling him that he’s been in a coma for three weeks following a head injury at the reunion. When former classmates hear that Brad and Joan can’t make the reunion, they all come to see him. As he’s replaying one of his old football plays, he runs his head through the closet door. 12/1/14

SEASON 3

• 073. New House – 9/29/1954
  • Brad and Joan browse new house with Realtor Mr. Edwards (Joseph Kearns) and they both fall in love with their dream house, although Brad thinks they can’t afford it. When they can’t get the house out of their minds, they end up finding a way to purchase the house and put a down payment on it. As they are visiting it, they find another couple there named Roger and Janet Tobin (Dan Tobin, Sheila Brumley) who claim the house is theirs. A visit to the Reliable Realty Company’s Mr. Simpson (Tim Graham) only proves the two different Realtors accepted down payments from both couples by mistake. The Stevens arrange to have their furniture moved in, but the Tobins do the same thing. For a time, both couples occupy the house and the wives each attempt to make breakfast. Joan tells Brad they she is going to hatch a plan to drive them out, and soon an old hag (Joan Davis) from next door visits the house to warn them about her bees and police dogs. The Tobins decide to give up the house. Brad thinks Joan was brilliant, but soon the real Joan appears from the other room. The Stevens move in but are fearful of the neighbors…until they find that the hag has moved out and the Tobins have moved in next door. 1/19/15
• 075. Wall Safe – 10/13/1954
  • While Joan is putting up a picture, she finds a hidden panel above the fireplace with a wall safe behind it that belonged to previous owner Abner Cartwright, a rich old man whose fortune was never found. She cannot wait to get in the safe so she hires a safecracker to break in, despite telling Brad that she wouldn’t open it. Inside she finds a treasure map of the back yard and enlists her friend Mabel to help follow the map and dig up the yard. Brad pretends to go golfing but stays behind to watch the ‘show’ – then pretends to come home and secretly drops more clues in the holes they’ve dug. Eventually he lets on that he had already been in the safe and created the treasure map, and tricked Joan into digging holes to plant bushes. He also notices that Joan has oil on her outfit and thinks that she’s struck oil, hurriedly filling in the holes himself so no one would know it’s there. Once he’s done, Joan admits that she realized earlier that he’d written the map, and she had actually poured oil from cans into the holes. 11/2/14
• 076. Alienation of Affections – 10/20/1954
  • Brad is irritated with Joan when her old school friend Chuck Albright gives her a kiss at a party. To make up for it Joan goes shopping to get Brad a gift and meets veterinarian Dr. Randolph Fisher (Wally Brown) and tries to help him find a gift for his wife Genevieve (Vivi Janiss). She thinks they are cheating together and threatens to sue Joan for alienation of affections. Mabel suggests that her husband Charlie pose as Brad to speak to Genevieve, but Mabel gets jealous when Charlie gets too over zealous with kissing Joan. Randolph comes over to warn Joan that his wife is on her way, and when Brad finds him there, he poses as a doctor giving him an examination for his insurance policy. Joan bribes the milkman Mr. Owens (Hal March) to pose as her husband for Genevieve. The ruse nearly works until she returns and find her husband at the house… along with Charlie, Mr. Owens, the plumber, and Brad. Making matters worse, Mabel shows up and finds Joan kissing Charlie once again. 3/10/15
• 077. Bombay Duck – 10/27/1954
  • Joan feels inferior to Brad’s colleague Judge Lionel Cushing’s (Paul Keast) wife Alice (Emlen Davies), who acts as his legal secretary and knows the ins and out of the law business. Joan decides to brush up on her skills by attending Peabody Business College, and agrees with Mr. Peabody (Jacques George) that she will work to pay her $200 tuition. On the day of her first class, Brad blindsides her with asking her to prepare Bombay Duck for dinner with the Cushings, so she attempts to prepare the duck in her class while practicing her typing. At the end of the class, Mr. Peabody tells her that she needs to address and stuff 4000 envelopes as part of her work to raise her tuition money, which she attempts to do while preparing dinner using her ingenuity to automate the process. However the work is all for naught when she has to open every single envelope when a signed confession that the judges are working with comes up missing. They then find that Mrs. Cushing has written a recipe on the back and put it in her purse. Joan agrees not to give away her secret with the condition that she re-stuff the envelopes for Joan. This leaves Joan assisting Brad as his secretary, a task she handles quite incompetently. 2/5/17
• 078. Clothes Budget – 11/3/1954
  • Joan needs a new address for the Westside Charity ball, especially since the snooty Helen Cavanaugh is going to be there. Brad insists that the average woman only spends $412 a year on their wardrobe and he’d be happy to get off that easy. Joan agrees to take the $412 right now and then not ask for any more for a year. She ends up spending the full amount on one French import dress in order to impress Helen. Believing that she has gotten an all-new wardrobe, Brad gives away the rest of Joan’s clothes to the charity. Joan is surprised when she gets home to find all of her clothes gone, and through another misunderstanding the one dress remaining is also taken by charity worker Mr. Frisbee (Bernard Gorcey). The Westside Charity board lead by Helen accuses Brad of mismanaging the charity’s funds, pointing to Joan’s extravagant spending. When she attempts to explain, she is interrupted by women coming to the door and returning the dresses she donated, plus a full closet of clothes that her friend Clara got for her from around the neighborhood. All is eventually explained, but when the Westside Charity returns to get half of the clothes, they take all of them again. Fritz Feld is Andre. 12/13/15
• 080. Two Saint Bernards – 11/17/1954
  • When the little neighbor Susan (Sharon Baird) brings over her new pet chihuahua to show Joan, this gets Joan itching to get her own dog, but Brad won’t hear of it. Although she had put in an order to get one at the pet store, Brad demands that she go over and cancel the order. When she gets there, the pet store proprietor (Jerry Hausner) cancels the order, but then tells her that she can get a Saint Bernard for the same cost. Not wanting to pass up a great deal, she takes one, named him Hector, and takes him home. Brad stops in at the store to make sure Joan had cancelled the order, then is charmed by another Saint Bernard himself, and the pet store proprietor gives him a deal as well. He brings home one he named Tony, but he and Joan both try to hide the dogs from the other, until they finally run into each other while trying to conceal them. When Joan makes the dogs a huge dinner of beef stroganoff and shrimp, Brad realizes they cannot afford to feed two of them, and tells Joan she’ll have to take her dog back. Before she can take any back, one of the dogs disappears, so she goes to the police station to file a missing dog report. The first desk sergeant (Bill Kennedy) agrees to do it since her husband is a judge, but when another sergeant (Phil Arnold) takes over for him, he refuses to. Joan grabs the microphone from the dispatcher (Joe Devlin) and puts out an APB on the dog. Later at home, Brad confesses that he has fallen in love with both Hector and Tony and wants to keep them both, but they still have to find the missing dog. When Joan goes to the basement to get a flashlight to look outside, she finds Tony… who is actually Antonietta, and has birthed a litter of puppies. They realize they will become attached to all the dogs, and could expect to have a $300 a month food bill. Susan stops by and tells Joan that she and her parents felt bad that they lost their dog, so she brings yet another Saint Bernard as a gift. 4/26/21 
• 081. Manhole Cover – 11/24/1954
  • Joan is distracted by a loose manhole cover outside their house that rattles every time a car hits it and keep her up at night. Joan takes the complaint to City Hall but gets the runaround from both the Sewer Department clerk and Street Department clerk. Joan wants Brad to use his influence as a judge to get it addressed but he refuses. However when Joan tries to fix it herself with a spike that causes Brad to blow out his two of his tires, he demands that the manhole cover gets fixed. Meanwhile Joan’s choral group loses its conductor, so Joan pleads with Brad to convince famed conductor Friedrich Gottschalk (Sig Ruman), whose case Brad is currently hearing. He refuses, but Joan goes to see Gotchau and drops Brad’s name anyway which convinces him to participate. Brad finally uses his clout to get the manhole cover repaired, a task that is performed as the choral group attempts to sing Voices of the Earth, with the noises seemingly fitting into the arrangement. Joan finds she can no longer sleep without the manhole cover noise, so she has Brad simulate it. 10/27/16
• 083. Home Movies – 12/8/1954
  • Brad and Joan return from a vacation in Hawaii only to find that Joan has forgotten to shut of the radio, stop the milk, and lock the back door. But irritating Brad most is that she hasn’t mailed his opinion on the Brighton case, with which she had disagreed. Brad believes she did it on purpose and leaves home to stay at his club. When Judge Desmond Palmer (William Forrest) calls and offers to name Brad as his successor to the Court of Domestic Relations, Brad and Joan, who has invited her bridge club friends to come over and watch their 16mm films of their vacation, agree to put the argument on hold and pretend nothing is wrong. They show the movies to everyone, most of which make Joan look foolish, particularly when she is caught in a wind that blows up her dress. The Judge still declares them the happiest couple he knows, but they start fighting again as soon as he leaves. But when he returns to grab his briefcase they fall in each other’s arms again…where they remain after he leaves. Maxine Semon is the maid Frieda. Charlotte Lawrence is Violet. 1/19/15
• 084. Big Louie’s Parole – 12/15/1954
  • Joan’s friend Dorothy (Dorothy Granger) shows Joan a newspaper article about gangster Big Louie, who has a parole coming up and Brad will have influence on whether he is released. Joan gets a threatening call warning that Brad will be in danger if he doesn’t make the right decision. Meanwhile a police lieutenant (Barney Phillips) captures a thug visiting Brad, but it turns out to be Brad’s friend Martin Logan (Ben Welden), an actor who has played gangsters in the movies. Brad sends Martin to his house, where after her initial fear, she convinces Martin to act like an East Coast syndicate gangster Scratch Hennesey with Joan as his moll Brainy Annie to scare Lefty Barker (Lewis Charles) and his gang and tell them to lay off Judge Stevens. The plan works well at first but they recognize Logan as the actor, so the gangsters hold Joan and Martin as hostages. Joan tries to charm them, then fights them off with equipment in the sporting goods store where they are hiding out. One of the gangsters brings Brad there, and they are trailed by the police and the gang is arrested and thrown in jail. The lieutenant reveals that Lefty had actually wanted Brad to keep Louie in jail, so their efforts were all for naught. Joan realizes suddenly that Martin is still tied up at the sporting goods store. Frankie Darro is Shorty. Dick Crockett and Paul Baxley are gangsters. 2/3/17
• 086. Joan the Matchmaker – 12/29/1954
  • Joan is looking for a man for her friend Sally Shepherd (Sally Kelly) who is staying at her house. Having no luck, she decides to spread a rumor that Sally is an oil magnate so she tells her gossip friend Clara Wheeler. Soon two suitors named Joe Rollins (Jerry Hausner) and Ted Morgan (Jack Kruschen) show up at Joan’s house looking for Sally. They agree to team up and ward up other suitors, and wind up throwing Brad out of the house when he comes home. Joan gets a call from Sally that she has run into her old boyfriend Wally Brown (Wally Brown) and that they are getting married. Joan sends the men on their way by telling them that she is in fact Sally and has seen their true colors. Wally and Sally come to the house and begin to celebrate with the Stevens, but when Brad, who has also heard the rumors, tells Wally that Sally is rich, he gets furious and leaves since she kept it a secret. Joan wants to make Wally jealous, so she visits an escort agency and orders up a man named Max (Harry Bartell) from the agent (Alan DeWitt) to come pursue Sally as part of the act. Wally arrives first, and when Max arrives, he assumes Joan is Sally and starts fawning all over her. Joe and Ted return as well, and by the time Brad gets home, he finds three men kissing Joan. Sally comes in and Joan tells the men that she is Sally so they start kissing on her, finally making Wally jealous. Sally and Wally reconcile, and Joan explains all to Brad… but when she realize that he is the only man who didn’t kiss her that day, she throws him out. He returns and lays on a passionate kiss. 5/29/20
• 087. The Wedding – 1/5/1955
  • Wally wants to propose to Sally but he is too tongue tied to do it, so he has Joan carry messages back and forth with her upstairs. When Joan makes the proposal for Sally, she declines and wants to hear it from his lips. As he explains why he can’t say it to her, she overhears the proposal while he is saying it to Joan. She gleefully accepts and they being to plan their wedding. Joan discourages her from having it at City Hall, and offers up their living room. Sally agrees and the couple tell Joan to just make sure and let them know how much everything is. Joan hires wedding planner Mr. Saxton (Joseph Kearns), and she and Brad are willing to go all out since Sally is paying for it. They plan for white doves, an orchestra, fancy dinner, and orchids flew in from Hawaii. Later Sally confesses that all of the money she inherited is tied up in trust funds, so she only meant that they will pay back the Stevens once Wally ‘makes good’. Immediately the start skimping by substituting the orchids for dandelions, the doves for a parrot, the feast for beer and sandwiches, and the orchestra for Brad whistling. Sally gets angry at Joan for botching everything and tells her that everyone warned her that Joan was a busybody. She declares the wedding off, and Brad keep her from protesting since that is what they wanted. Joan then has to take a parting shot at her by indicating that she was not a busybody and had every intention of delivering the fancy wedding. And with that, the wedding was back on. During the rehearsal with only Freida present, Brad pronounces them man and wife. Freida points out that since Brad is a judge, they are now officially married. Sally and Wally opt to skip the fancy ceremony and simply head out early on their honeymoon to Yellowstone National Park. When Mr. Saxton shows up and begins decorating, Joan grabs Brad and says they can renew their vows with the Justice Mr. Lewis (Billy Bletcher) since they’ve paid for the party. 5/30/20
• 088. The Maid – 1/12/1955
  • Joan wants to hire a maid named Tillie (Virginia Rose), but even though Brad thinks it is out of their budget, she quickly wins him over when she feeds him some of her home cooking. For the next two weeks, Brad and Joan are in ecstasy as they enjoy her culinary delights, but Tillie then drops the bomb on them that she is quitting. She had originally come to California to see movie stars, but working with the Stevens hasn’t yielded her any success in that department. Joan then pretends that she gets calls from multiple movie stars, and Brad does impressions of Cary Grant, Clark Gable, and Ronald Colman over the phone. Tillie seems hellbent on meeting movie star Rodney Parker (Philip Van Zandt), so Brad goes to visit Parker, who is willing to do this favor for Brad since they are from the same fraternity Phi Gamma Epsilon. He agrees to meet Tillie, but cautions that she might start making more demands to meet additional stars if they don’t put a stop to it by having him come on to her aggressively then cast her aside to disillusion her. Meanwhile Joan doesn’t know Brad has visited with Rodney, so she tries to approach him at his hotel with the same request. Rodney thinks that Joan is Tillie, so he begins pursuing her all around the apartment, nearly knocking her off the balcony of the high-rise in the process. Once Tillie shows up, he realizes he’s been chasing the wrong woman, and they later all agree to have dinner over at the Stevens. Afterward Tillie drops another bomb: she is quitting in order to become a cook for Rodney Parker. 2/20/20
• 089. Money in the Shotgun – 1/19/1955
  • When Sally has good luck with an antiques dealer named Mr. Holkenson (Tony Ward), Joan sells Brad’s old breakfront for $600, and think he will be pleased that he can now buy a camper he’s always wanted. When he comes home with Wally, they discuss taking the wives on a fishing trip on a borrowed boat, but Joan isn’t interested because she gets seasick. When she starts to tell Brad about the money, they start talking about antiques selling and he mentions that his breakfront is worth $1500 but would never dream of selling it. In a panic, she hides the $600 inside his rifle in the closet. She then makes a call to Mr. Holkenson, who agrees to sell her the breakfront back for the $600. Unfortunately when she goes to retrieve it, she can’t get it out of the gun and winds up getting her finger stuck in it. Eventually she gets free, but before she can get the gun, Wally borrows it to take duck hunting while on the fishing boat. When Joan finds out, she immediately tells Brad she now does want to join Wally and Sally for the trip. The water is extremely rough which makes it even more of a challenge to get the gun away from the men and try to retrieve the cash. Brad gets the gun from her before she can, but she makes him promise not to shoot any ducks before he eats lunch. She attempts to make him eggs and bacon amid the boat’s swaying. When Brad sees ducks, he fires at them anyway, causing Joan to jump overboard to retrieve the dead duck that has the $600 in its mouth. 9/12/20
• 091. The Allergy – 2/2/1955
  • Brad is running for Superior Court Judge against Judge Casper T. Bennington (Dick Elliott), who is basing his campaign on his wholesome family life. Brad thinks he’ll have no problem putting his home life against that of his opponent. When Joan starts to come down with a cold, Brad sends him to see Dr. Smith, who diagnoses her sniffles as an allergy. She and Brad try to figure out what she is allergic to, and it seems she only sneezes when he gets near her. The doctor advises that Brad leave home temporarily to give Joan some relief. Bennington starts spreading rumors that there is marital strife in the Stevens house, so Brad’s advisor Walter Patten (Robert Foulk) advises him to move back home. Joan figures out that as long as they are ten feet apart, she will not sneeze. The Judge is visited by TV host Jimmy Dooley as well as Bennington and his wife, who confronts the Stevens on the air, pointing out the face contortions Joan makes anytime she is near Brad. Joan retaliates by blowing pepper into Mrs. Bennington’s face and instigating a fight between them, which goes on to haunt him in the campaign. Joan later figures out that she was allergic to Brad’s shaving cream, but everything is okay now that Brad has grown a full beard. 2/13/16 
• 095. The Lady and the Prizefighter – 3/2/1955
  • Brad and Joan attend a prizefight with their friends Wally and Sally in which boxer Dynamite Tucker gets knocked out within seconds, causing Joan to lose a bet with Sally. Joan is convinced the fight was rigged, so Brad in his capacity as Boxing Commissioner questions Tucker and his manager. While re-enacting the fight, Wally accidentally knocks out Dynamite. Joan suggests a charity exhibition fight between Wally and Dynamite for her Women’s Club charity. Wally has a huge head and starts talking like a tough guy. Joan pleads with Dynamite that he take it easy on Wally, but during the fight Dynamite annihilates him. In her anger, Joan punches Dynamite and knocks him out as well. While illustrating what she did, she also knocks out Brad. Mushy Callahan plays himself as the guest referee. 11/2/14
• 096. How to Win Friends – 3/9/1955
  • After a hearty meal, Brad invites Joan to have lunch with him the next day. Joan remembers that she can’t go because it’s the day she normally plays Bridge with her friends Mildred, Vi, Mabel, and Ruth (Marjorie Bennett). However she isn’t sure where it is being held, so she starts calling them. All of them have a suspicious excuse of why they can’t make it, so Joan decides to spy on them. She finds them the next day having an outdoor lunch and talking about the excuses she made to exclude her. However it turns out that they are planning a surprise testimonial for Joan as outgoing president of the Ladies Club on Tuesday. After Joan leaves, they realize they can’t hold it on Tuesday, so they reschedule it for Wednesday, unbeknownst to Joan. She decides to play a trick on them and plans to arrive at the Blue Room at the Pierre Hotel ahead of them, so they won’t be able to find her until they arrive at the club. When Joan gets there, she talks to the waiter (Hal Taggart), who confirms an afternoon luncheon. However it turns out to be for a guy named Fatso (Dick Elliott) with the Loyal Order of the Brotherly Broncos. Joan is beside herself, thinking that the girls played a joke on her. She decides to enlist the aid of Oliver Putnam (Anthony Warde), who is giving lessons on how to win friends. He gives her life rules like talking to people about themselves, flattering people, saying people’s names, shaking their hands, and avoiding arguments. When she gets home, she gets the call about the testimonial that is happening on Wednesday. At the testimonial, Joan attempts to use her new methods, but she winds up insulting everyone, abruptly ending the lunch. That afternoon she falls asleep and dreams about killing herself because she has alienated Brand the the ladies. After failing to poison, shoot, or hang herself, the voices tell her to jump out the window. She winds up waking up with all of the ladies standing over her, telling her they over-reacted. They all bestow her with gifts like a necklace, perfume, and flowers, but the slip they chipped in on is a size 40. She insulted by this and throws them out. Brad then points out that it is the price tag, and not the size. Joan then call Oliver Putnam for further lessons. NOTE: This is the final episode of Geraldine Carr, who was killed in an automobile accident six months before this episode aired. 2/19/22
• 098. The Jailbird – 3/23/1955
  • One day an injured crow flies into Joan’s kitchen and makes friends with her. She names him Christopher, but unbeknownst to her, the crow is actually an accomplice to a jewel thief named Glue Fingers Sebastian (Harry Bartell). The crow begins stealing jewels from the neighbor Janet Tobin (Sheila Bromley) and bringing them to Joan. When Joan finds them, she believes that she might be a kleptomaniac. Sebastian poses as Dr. Oglethorpe and comes to ‘diagnose’ Joan in order to get the jewels back that Christopher has stolen. Police end up arresting both Sebastian and Joan, but soon realize that it is actually the crow that is planning the jewelry heists. Harry Guardino is Officer Brannigan. Sid Tomack and Barney Phillips are police detectives. 9/29/15

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