Hello, Larry

This quasi-spin-off of Different Strokes brought well-loved McLean Stevenson back to the airways after his departure from MASH. This was one of the first to ACCURATELY portray a single father's struggles raising two young daughters. It never really developed a following, and the numerous scheduling changes made it difficult to find. This is an ideal candidate for TV Land.

"Hello Larry" was part of Fred Silverman's attempt to ruin, er, resurrect NBC from the ratings doldrums. Amongst other great works he begat "Supertrain," "Turnabout," "Diffrent Strokes," and "Hello Larry." Despite it's abysmal badness, the show ran for two seasons simply because so many of the network's offerings bombed that they had nothing better to run, a fact that beleagured network execs cheerfully admitted to. While the show was lousy and never drew good ratings (despite often being paired with "Diffrent Strokes") Mac at least was a "name" actor and supposedly a proven commodity. Poor McLean Stevenson, so loveable as the boob Henry on "M*A*S*H" never again found material as good. Unfortunately unlike fiascoes like "In the Beginning," "Condo," or even "The McLean Stevenson Show," "Hello Larry" ran long enough for people to remember it as the series that wouldn't die, and poor Mac is now probably as well remembered for being trapped in TV purgatory there than he will be for "M*A*S*H."

Hello Larry was, strangely enough, the most successful TV show McLean Stevenson was ever on. After he left MASH that is. Every single show he was the headliner for was cancelled after one season. Hello Larry ran for two. He later admitted that leaving MASH was the worst career decision he ever made and... I have to agree with him.

The show itself didn't feel complete. It was shown after "Diff'rent Strokes" and was by the same producer so in order to cement this they had a couple crossovers where Larry and Mr. Drummond met as they were old war buddies. Nothing really came of it though. After those three episodes they never met again.

The story itself was of a guy on the radio giving people advice but he wasn't very good at it. He often made smart-alec responses to what the callers would call in about. After a couple episodes it was decided to change the format around and now he was supposed to focus on his two daughters. After his divorce he moved, with them, to Portland from LA for this job.

Older daughter Diane and younger daughter Ruthie. They.. were typical sitcom kids. Nothing of real note.

In the end it just wasn't interesting enough to carry along and was dropped.

I remember watching this show in the late seventies and thinking "McLean Stevenson left MASH for this?!" But the show began to grow on me and it was fun watching a single dad raise two teenaged daughters. One episode that hit home with me was when Ruthie decided to rechristen herself as Ruth. That's my name (officially Ruth Ann, but call me Ruthie) and I can relate to being Ruth (serious, professional, etc.) as well as Ruthie (cute, informal, etc.)-it's been going on for almost 55 years. Granted, this show will never equal MASH, but McLean Stevenson could be knock-down funny when he wanted to and it was sad to see him go through so many projects (the reason he left MASH was to possibly host the Tonight Show) and it was sad to see him die without equaling his work on MASH. The show got better when Krista Errickson replaced Donna Wilkes as older daughter Diane and the other cast (Joanna Gleason, Ruth Brown, Meadowlark Lemon, etc.) did very well. This was a show that should've gotten a better chance. And that's the Ruth(ie).

Does anyone remember the call letters of the radio station where Larry worked? I've drawn a blank on this one item. As a matter of fact, I can barely remember the series. Obviously, this was not one of my father's favorites since he controlled the remote and only watched 2 or 3 episodes. Back then that was the way most families had to watch television. Also, we only had one set in the whole house. Therefore, my mom and I had to wait for dad to go out of town in order to watch anything with females, sex, or anything that was not sports or war related. My,how times have changed! We have only three people currently living in our house, but we have a total of five TV sets. Go figure!