Letters to the Editor
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And on a star-spangled night, my love...
you can rest your head on my shoulder;
and by the dawn's early light, my love
I will defend your right to smile
Love American Style
that's me and you!
(theme songs, dontcha just love 'em)
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Pretty Dated Language.
For example, if I were to say to my parents, "I'm twanging for Bunny," they'd tell me I'll go blind.
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you forgot Laurence Luckenbill
He was the leering, dark-haired and usually disappointed goofball in many of the between-sketches vignettes.
Also remember that "Happy Days" began as a sketch called "Love and the Happy Days," in which a girl pretended to like Richie just so she could see his television. It featured Marion Ross and Ron Howard, but not Tom Bosley.
I used to love the show too, and would sneak down the hall at 10 pm Friday nights as a young teenager to watch in secret. Probably taught me lots of things that I've long forgotten where they came from.
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I used to watch this show I guess in the Mid-70's
The several times I watched LAS were as a kid before all of the soap operas started. I hated soaps so I'd just stay tuned in until LAS was over. I was probably way too young to understand anything much more than the fact that there were lots of lovely girls on the show each week, and that many of them were very sweet. It was a very sweet hearted show.
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Sex from the TV
Sadly, "Love American Style" wasn't in syndication where I lived. Being a little younger than the author, everything I ever learned about sex was on this new-fangled cable station called Cinemax. I'm in my 30s and I'm still waiting for the "talk" from my dad.
No wonder I'm so screwed up.
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Ah, Sweet Nostalgia
This show was on from my 5th through 9th year, and sometime around age 8 I inadvertantly saw some episodes. I would sneeeeeak down the hallway to the living room, my footy pajamas masking the sound of my approach. Then I would peak around the corner and watch from where my mom and dad couldn't see me. Why did I want to watch the show? Well, the theme song and the opening. Aside from that I didn't know what the hell I was looking at.
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I have the exact same memory of watching the re-runs as Reiter.
Except only in the summers did they run it in the daytime where I lived. During the school year, it was on at 10 o'clock at night. On Fridays, I think.
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failed pilots
A number of those LAS episodes were actually failed pilots that ABC tossed into the show in order to see at least a little return on them.
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Oh my goodness!
I remember watching this show; it was such a hoot. Thank you for letting us know that it's out on DVD. I'd completely missed the release.
*sigh* I miss the 70's, indeed.
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Don't forget the brass bed
I was an impressionable nine year old boy when this show first came on. It was my parent's bowling night, leaving me to my own devices and this show was must-see TV for me. If it wasn't exactly sex I learned about, it was the desire for sex...and love in all its wide variety of permutations that came through in all those different couplings each week.
The show ended just before I started dating and it took me a while to realize that dating was still more bound by tradition than LAS implied. I was actually shocked as a HS freshman when my modern free-thinking date still expected a corsage for the Homecoming dance.
Lessons learned - enough that I actually managed to get married, where I have no doubt that this show was THE influence that had me insist on getting brass bed as a newlywed. Actually, I regretted that decision too. Obviously someone in the crew kept that thing polished.
Like that other well known series that featured different actors each week, every story ended up with a twist of some kind. Sure they got predictable for a while, even for a kid, but it was still fun. I wonder what my kids would think if I brought this home?
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Nostalgia Rules!
My favorite thing about watching LAS re-runs is seeing actors who are well known today doing bit parts. You know they were excited to get a part on a nationally syndicated show at the time but now they probably want to burn every copy they can find! My next favorite thing, of course, are the groovy hairstyles and clothing :->
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Sigh . . .
How innocent were our first glimpses into matters of the flesh. Nowadays, our kids get to see their governor apologizing to his wife and the state for paying for sex on Valentines Day!
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Oh, I remember all right...
I felt vaguely dirty and kept casting a glance over my shoulder to see if my parents were around. I'm pretty sure they wouldn't have approved. I would love to see it again!
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That was Stuart Margolin
Laurence Luckinbill wasn't on "Love, American Style." That was Stuart Margolin, who later played Angel on "The Rockford Files."
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Fetishes, Love American Style.
I still remember the episode that featured a shapely woman who wore black lace gloves, and refused to take them off. I cannot recall if she played a stripper, but she was perfectly comfortable in the(implied) nude, save the gloves!
Her beau tried everything to get her to remove them, but to no avail. Her hands remained such a mystery! To this day, I find black lace gloves, terribly sexy. And I actually (occasionally) wear gloves. Honest.
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How I miss the 70's!
I remember this when it was part of must see Friday as a 12 year old after the Brady's,Partridges and the Odd Couple. Also, even for the times I was a pretty naive kid, so I'm sure much of it went over my head. Maybe I'm just reflecting through the eyes of a child but it seemed that the seventies were the last decade of innocence, from the clothes to the attitudes and especially the music I miss it. 12 year olds now go to rainbow parties (thanks for putting that in my head Oprah)-I'll take LAS any day.
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I remember it, so I must not have gotten any
I recall the show, and I recall thinking that it was distinctly not funny, at the time. I also did not find the sexual content very racy. It may be that, in a home with an absence of any sex talk, where mores came from the television, I could not be shocked by something that I could not conceive of as being taboo. Taboo creates fetish, as the man said, and so that show could only exist in a very, very narrow set of expectations and a very well delineated culture.
In short, the show could only be funny if one found "kids today" and "these days" to be obvious, and it could only be outrageous if one found "kids today" and "these days" to be boundary breaking. In other words, "Love, American Style" always appealed to the generation older than the one it depicted. Even the stars were of the previous generation. The Smothers Brothers and George Carlin were not going to be on it. In fact, it was exactly like "The Love Boat" and "Fantasy Island," in that its primary function was to repair outrage, to heal challenges to older mores, to show a complacent group that all is well. For those like myself and Amy who were younger than the swingers and much younger than the target demographic, it could either be dissuasive or simply bland. Its transgressive element was, I hate to say, so minimal that it could only be appealing in an atmosphere of severe restriction.
Then again, we each have our own pricelessly sexualized shows from our youths. I will never try to explain to anyone why I found "The Bugaloos" to be sexy. I know it was just me in my place at my time in my house, and I fear that "Love, American Style" may have been idiosyncratically intriguing for other people in other times in other houses filled with other families.