The Patty Duke Show: Season One

Product Details

From 1963 to 1966, American audiences were treated to the weekly comic hijinks of identical twin cousins, Patty Lane, a normal American teenager living in Brooklyn Heights, New York and Cathy Lane, her Scottish cousin freshly arrived in the United States to finish her secondary schooling. Patty Duke, already an Academy Award-Winner for her role in The Miracle Worker, played the roles of both girls. The Patty Duke Show immediately won over television audiences and ran for three fun-filled seasons, totaling 104 hilarious episodes. For the first time all 36 episodes are available on DVD in this 6-disc set!








As The Patty Duke Show demonstrates, from its very first episode in 1963, there's no teenager, then or now, who more personified early-'60s American Teen than Patty Duke. And the hit sitcom is still as funny and endearing as ever--and lots of fun to watch as a whole season. Plus there's something else that can be appreciated a few decades after the fact: as the double star of The Patty Duke Show, playing trendy wisenheimer American Patty Lane, and her "identical cousin," the cultivated Cathy, who grew up in Scotland, Duke pulled double acting duty throughout the show, and her performances as each teen are enthusiastic and impressive.

Duke's smiling, open persona, and her ease with her costars, is one reason for the show's appeal. When playing Patty, she's given the '60s standard-issue role of Young Alien in a Teenage Human Body--speaking an unfamiliar language (Patty: "Would you swing an X here?" Dad: "I assume in some unknown language that means you want my signature") and following peculiar tribal customs (Younger brother Ross: "So what happens at a slumber party, anyway?" Mom: ""Everything but slumbering!"). Yet Patty is lovable, and the audience is always rooting for her, even though it's always hoped that Cathy, the cultured, well-behaved cousin, will "rub off" on Patty.

Duke was already a Broadway veteran and an Oscar® winner for The Miracle Worker when she starred in the show at age 16. As the fantastic documentary included here informs, the show's producers chose to shoot in New York, whose child-labor laws were more lax than California's, so that young Duke could work 12 hours on set instead of 5. And the doc shows just how much acting Duke really had to do. As the present-day Duke recalls, "They had to bring in 'real' teenagers to teach me how to do the dances, the latest craze," she says. "I was too busy working to know about any of that stuff." Also standouts are the veteran character actor William Schallert, who played Patty's bemused dad, and Paul O'Keefe as the bespectacled pesky younger brother, Ross. The show was the brainchild of TV powerhouse Sidney Sheldon, who went on to create I Dream of Jeannie and Hart to Hart. Sheldon wrote nearly every episode in the first season himself, honing his craft in the still relatively new TV format of sitcom. This boxed set is a treasure trove for any fans of '60s TV, or of Patty Duke--and that should include pretty much everyone. --A.T. Hurley

Customer Reviews ::

Superb Cast Struggles With Insipid Writing - mothball raven - so cal
During its first season, the Patty Duke Show was #18 in the Nielsen ratings. Along with The Donna Reed Show (#16), it was one of only two shows on the ABC network to make the Top Twenty. Still it did not win its time slot against NBC's superb, The Virginian. The Patty Duke Show achieved its highest ratings during its first year and they tapered off with each succeeding season.

There is a reason for this, despite the fact that there was little marked difference in the series' approach during these years. People got hip to the fact that the writing was very insipid and increasingly more out of touch with youth as the series dragged on. Not that it was ever that in touch with youth to begin with. The fact that they are still hanging out in a shake shop is stupid enough, but the music they play on the jukebox sounds as if it was from the big band era. And it always seems to be the same song.

Another amusing thing about the show is that Patty's bit-part girlfriends always look years ahead of her in the fashion department. She bobs around with her over-the-top perkiness, stupid flip hair-do and a characterization that is insulting to all teenagers, even then.

Too bad the writing is so awful, because this is a first rate cast trying to work with the horse manure that's shoveled their way. William Schallert has always been one of my favorite character actors. Jean Byron does well with the awful "doting wife" material she has to struggle through. Eddie Applegate, despite being in his thirties when the series was shot, is a rather convincing teenager, despite the fact that his character, like all the others, is one-dimensional and unbelievable. Paul O'Keefe bugs me a lot as Ross, the dorky younger brother. I can't stand this guy, but maybe that's a compliment.

Applegate, O'Keefe and Byron added very little to their acting resumes after the show was canceled. This was their high point and it's extremely dated. But dated is what we expected. This show was already dated when it first aired in 1963.

I still remember my older sister watching this tripe on her tiny bedroom TV with Dippity-Do, rollers and a portable hair dryer going. I went to the den and watched The Virginian with my brother and dad.

For the uninitiated and the budget conscious, The Patty Duke Show is running in the wee hours on the THIS-TV network. You might want to DVR your favorite episodes and spare the expense of owning something overly formulaic that you will seldom watch.

I know that other reviewers here are big fans of the show. I love old TV too, and I'm glad Shout Factory put this out. It's great that it's available. But as with a lot of this retro TV, sometimes the fact that an old TV show is finally issued on DVD is more exciting than the show proves itself to be upon viewing.