Fri 25 Apr 2025
A TV Episode Review: HARRIGAN AND SON “Hello Goodbye.” (1961).
Posted by Steve under Reviews , TV Comedy[11] Comments
HARRIGAN AND SON “Hello Goodbye.” ABC/Desilu. 12 May 1961 (Season 1, Episode 30). Pat O’Brien (James Harrigan Sr.), Roger Perry (James Harrigan Jr.), Georgine Darcy, Helen Kleeb. Director: Sherman Marks.
While nominally a lawyer series, one watching the video of this episode below soon comes to the quick and savvy conclusion that it was in reality a comedy show instead. Maybe the thirty minute running time should have been the tipoff. Most of the series featuring courtroom cases and the like were an hour long. A half hour simply isn’t enough time to get into the nitty gritty details of a full-fledged murder case, for example.
Harrigan and Son was a – well, you guessed it – a small father and son legal firm, with the ever smooth Pat O’Brien as the father, and three relative unknowns filling out the rest of the cast. (You may, however remember Georgina Darcy playing “Miss Torso” in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window.)
The series was on for one season, long enough to be able to blink a couple of times before missing it. After James Harrigan the senior has a rough day in court, he decides to retire and let his son take over the firm on his own. After some not really very funny incidents in which he finds he’s not having any fun either, he decides that he’s not really ready to retire just yet.
Amusing, perhaps, but certainly not laugh out loud funny. I’d never heard of this one before stumbling across it on YouTube, and I’m willing to wager none of you have either.
April 25th, 2025 at 10:06 pm
I remember the show as a flat disappointment despite the great O’Brien.
April 25th, 2025 at 10:33 pm
I am inclined to concur, but there are a few other episodes on YouTube I might want to see before coming to a final decision.
Or maybe not. There was nothing special about this one.
April 25th, 2025 at 11:25 pm
I watched a few episodes when I was an old 11 and vaguely recalled the premise which was usually the slick modern lawyer son learning something about the practical practice of law, often as not from some shady old client.
April 25th, 2025 at 11:29 pm
Thanks, David. This sounds like it might be closer to the premise of the show than this episode, the one I watched.
April 26th, 2025 at 5:32 am
I actually watched it, but can remember only one episode. The theme song (the George M. Cohan tune) will come back to me at odd times over the years. I don’t remember what shows were opposite this one, but I suspect they were worse; most programs in 1961 were not my cup of tea.
April 26th, 2025 at 6:05 am
Like Jerry, I remember the theme song, but I never watched the show.
Helen Kleeb, who played the legal secretary (according to Wiki), is probably most remembered for her role as one of the Baldwin sisters (Miss Mamie) in THE WALTONS. She lived to be 96. Her fellow Baldwin sister (Mary Jackson) lived to 95.
April 26th, 2025 at 10:59 am
What I meant by flat — it was comedy without laughs, and the two guys did not connect.
April 26th, 2025 at 1:16 pm
That sums it up for me as well.
I am glad so many people remember the show, though,and some of you even watched it. I continue to be amazed.
April 27th, 2025 at 9:39 am
As I recall, Harrigan Sr. was a fun-loving character, Harrigan Jr. a stuffed shirt. Harrigan Sr.’s secretary was the dishy Georgine, Harrigan Jr.’s the older, reserved Kleeb. I guess the intended reversal of personalities was supposed to be a source of humor; maybe, instead, it was one reason Pat and Roger didn’t connect, as Barry says. Perry had a long career usually cast in strait-laced supporting roles. I didn’t realize at the time, being 10 years old, that TV provided a comfortable roost for aging actors from the’30s and ’40s like Pat O’Brien, J. Carroll Naish (GUESTWARD HO), Milburn Stone, Joel McCrea, Frank Faylen, Ward Bond, Walter Brennan, Raymond Massey, Ray Milland . . .
April 28th, 2025 at 11:53 am
Didn’t they flip the character dynamics of this one with CRAZY LIKE A FOX in the ’80s?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crazy_Like_a_Fox_(TV_series)
April 28th, 2025 at 12:00 pm
To answer my own question. If Fred’s memory serves, in CRAZY LIKE A FOX they kept the older guy “fun-loving” and the younger lead “a stuffed shirt.” In that case, CRAZY LIKE A FOX would be a copycat of HARRIGAN AND SON, nothing innovative.