Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman (soap opera satire, starring Louise Lasser)

     (Syndicated, 1976 - 1978;
      CBS LateNight, 1977 - 1978)

     [Norman Lear (who produced "All In The Family" and the talk
      show satire "Fernwood 2-Night") produced this soap opera satire
      which ran for a couple of years; the title character was a
      droopy suburban Ohio housewife who was afflicted by all the 
      afflictions of many a modern soap opera housewife and then 
      some, notably an embarassing "waxy yellow buildup" on her 
      kitchen floors;

      another character, Garth Gimble, played by Martin Mull was
      discovered to be a "wife beater" and he eventually impaled
      himself on an aluminum Christmas tree stand in the closet;

      although this was a campy send-up of soap operas, the joke
      was a hoot for a few years but like the "Batman" series and
      other satires it got tiresome eventually tiring out its 
      title character who left the series herself before it ended;

      a few of the supporting cast who appeared in the series
      included Martin Mull, Orson Bean, Dabney Coleman, Shelley 
      Berman, Shelley Fabares, Richard Hatch and Tab Hunter;

      the series was first run as a syndicated series, and then
      was picked up for late-night broadcast on the "CBS Late Movie"
      when they ran out of movies; after Louise Lasser left the
      series, the title was changed to reflect the name of the
      fictional town...

      aka: "Forever Fernwood"

      later, after "Forever Fernwood" ran out of steam, producer
      Norman Lear extended the franchise even further by creating
      creating a fictional local talk show as fodder for even more
      satire, called "Fernwood 2-Night"]


Theme: "Premiere Occasion"

    [not to be confused with the composer of the pop disco anthem,
     "Love's Theme", Barry White was the pseudonym of a British
     composer who wrote for production music libraries; his piece
     was undoubtedly chosen to play up the parody, since it was
     a typically lush pseudo-sophisticated library string THEME]

     Composer: Barry White (British PRS/ASCAP)
              [pseudonym of Robert Charles Kingston]

     1978 Publishers: Southern Lib. Of Rec. Mus., Ltd. (British PRS); and
                      Southern Mus. Pub. Co., Inc. (ASCAP)

     2001 Publisher: S L R M/Southern Music Corp. (ASCAP)
                       

     Copyright Date: Dec. 30, 1965; EF  41 468.
     Renewal   Date: May   5, 1993; RE-627-344.

     Recordings: 
               [from the "Southern Library of Recorded Music"]



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