Hello, Larry
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Hello, Larry was a sitcom which aired on NBC from January 26, 1979 to April 30, 1980.
Larry Alder (played by McLean Stevenson), was a radio talk show host who left Los Angeles after being divorced and moved to Portland, Oregon with his two teenaged daughters, Diane, played in the first season by Donna Wilkes and in the second season by Krista Errickson; and Ruthie, played by Kim Richards. In the first season, episodes centered on Larry at the radio station and his smart remarks to callers. The supporting cast consisted of producer Morgan (Joanna Gleason) and morbidly obese engineer Earl (George Memmoli). In an effort to make the character (and series) more likeable, in the second season, the episodes were based almost entirely around the home life of Larry and the girls, with Morgan and Earl being seen less frequently. In the second season, various supporting characters were added in the apartment building where Larry and the girls lived, in an effort to save the series. These included a black neighbor, Leona, played by Ruth Brown, who usually did not approve of Larry's parenting; Tommy, a purportedly world-wise teenage boy played by John Femia, who became a love interest of Ruthie; former Harlem Globetrotters player Meadowlark Lemon as himself; and Larry's father, played by Fred Stuthman, who moved in with the younger Alders. None of these people, nor a two-part episode in which Larry's ex-wife Marian (played by Shelley Fabares) tried to reconcile with him, were enough to save the show and it was cancelled in the spring of 1980.
Hello, Larry is sometimes referred to as a spin-off of Diff'rent Strokes. In actuality, it was conceived as a show in its own right. After struggling to gather ratings, NBC rescheduled it to appear immediately following Diff'rent Strokes, and wrote in that Larry and Phillip Drummond were old friends, thereby allowing a number of crossover episodes on both programs, in the hope of raising Hello, Larry's popularity.
Hello, Larry had the misfortune of appearing on NBC at a time when that network was at its nadir in the ratings. Although not much better or worse than any other sitcom at the time, Hello, Larry got an extremely bad reputation and was often used as a punchline when a reference to a horrible television show was needed.
The series, created by Dick Bensfield and Perry Grant, consisted of 35 episodes. Bensfield and Grant had also worked on One Day at a Time, a CBS sitcom about a single woman raising two teenaged daughters alone, and many critics noted the similarity of the two series. The show was produced by Woody Kling and directed by Doug Rogers.
