His Honor, Homer Bell

Props to FT Depot for finding the two episodes that are on YouTube! I am a Gene Lockhart fan and had heard about this series. It appears it was shown as reruns until the 1960s until it just disappeared. Sadly, so much early TV history has been destroyed, because the TV stations saw no reason to keep old TV shows that were taking up space (think of the tragedy of Dumont TV's shows dumped in Hudson Bay.). The two episodes that were found are in decent condition. The show is about a kindly judge, his orphaned niece and their housekeeper. The judge dispenses wisdom to his niece with typical sitcom mixups. Thankfully there is no ridiculous laugh track, which makes the show more heartwarming.

The show was an NBC show and was apparently syndicated. There is not much information about the show online. The two episodes are "Homer's birthday" where Casey the niece and the housekeeper want to buy the Judge a present and a mixup what to get him abounds and Casey, Girl Tycoon where Casey starts her own business.

Like I said, I hope more episodes are found. I've seen most of Gene Lockhart's movies, it was a joy to see him in a sitcom. These episodes were found by accident, so I'm hoping more are hiding, waiting to be found.

P. S. The opening credits are cool, even though the statue in the beginning looks more like Warren G. Harding than Gene Lockhart.