The Phil Silvers Show
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The Phil Silvers Show (originally titled You'll Never Get Rich) was a comedy television series which ran on CBS from 1955 to 1959 for a total of 143 episodes (including a 1959 special). It starred Phil Silvers as the conniving Master Sergeant Ernie Bilko of the United States Army, who spent the bulk of his time trying to wheedle money through various get-rich-quick scams and con games. The series was created and largely written by Nat Hiken, and won three consecutive Emmy Awards for Best Comedy Series. The show is sometimes titled Sergeant Bilko in reruns.
The show's success transformed Silvers from a journeyman comedian into a star, and writer-producer Hiken from a highly-regarded behind-the-scenes comedy writer into a publicly recognized creator. Hiken had previously written for Fred Allen and Milton Berle. Ironically, CBS scheduled the first season of Bilko against NBC's Berle; the sitcom's breakout success played a part in ending the reign of Hiken's former employer as "Mr. Television."
The American television business was already moving westward to Los Angeles, but Hiken insisted on filming the series in New York City, believing it to be more conducive to the creativity and humor.
The series was originally set in Fort Baxter, a sleepy, unremarkable (and non-existent) U.S. Army base in Kansas. The supporting cast included Harvey Lembeck as Cpl. Rocco Barbella, Allan Melvin as Cpl. Henshaw, Herbie Faye as Pvt. Sam Fender, Maurice Gosfield as the slovenly Pvt. Duane Doberman, Joe E. Ross as Sgt. Rupert Ritzik (the cook), and Billy Sands as Pvt. Dino Paparelli. Bilko's platoon frequently featured so many secondary cast members that few had lines and most just filled up the backgrounds.
The soldiers regularly helped Bilko with his schemes, but were just as often Bilko's "pigeons," ripe for the plucking. Bilko exhibited an odd paternalism towards his victims, and would doggedly shield them from all outside antagonists. The character's attitude toward his loyal platoon has been described thusly: "They were his men and if anyone was going to take them, it was going to be him and only him."
Bilko's swindles were usually directed towards (or behind the back of) Col. John T. Hall (Paul Ford), the overmatched and beleaguered post commander who had early in his career been nicknamed "melon head". Despite his flaws and weaknesses, Col. Hall would get the best of Bilko just enough to establish his credentials as a wary and vigilant adversary. The Colonel would often be shown looking fretfully out his window, worried without explanation or evidence, simply because he knew that Bilko was out there somewhere, planning something.
The show's setting changed with the fourth season, when the men of Fort Baxter were reassigned to Camp Freemont, in California. This mass transfer was explained in storyline as being the inadvertent result of a Bilko con gone wrong. In reality, creator Hiken had departed, and it was an easy excuse to move the production to California and fill the episodes with celebrity guest appearances from nearby Hollywood.
In the series finale, Ernie Bilko discovers a doppelganger of Colonel Hall, whom he uses to cheat the other officers for a bogus charity effort. The real Colonel Hall learns of the scam, and Bilko, Henshaw and Barbella end up being locked away in the guardhouse. As Colonel Hall looks at his prisoners on a newly-installed closed-circuit TV system, he quips: "It's a wonderful show, and as long as I'm the sponsor, it will never be cancelled." The camera turns to Bilko's image on the TV, and as it zooms in, he waves and says, "Th-th-that's all, folks!" So ended the series.
Guest stars included Dick Van Dyke, Eric Fleming, Fred Gwynne, Alan Alda, and many others.
Following the show's cancellation, Silvers frequently played off his durable Bilko persona. In 1963, he starred in The New Phil Silvers Show; the series attempted to transplant his mercenary character to a factory setting, but the result proved unpopular. He appeared frequently on The Beverly Hillbillies as a character called Honest John. He played an unscrupulous Broadway producer on an episode of Gilligan's Island. An episode of The Lucy Show guest-starred Silvers as a demanding bank inspector. At one point Lucy's boss, Mr. Mooney, remarks that Silvers reminds him of a Sergeant he used to know. Silvers also portrayed greedy connivers in films such as It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. Some of the show's other actors went on to star in the sitcom McHale's Navy.
The program, which was filmed in black-and-white, was widely rerun into the 1960s. The advent of color television rendered it, and many similar programs, less marketable than they had been previously. The series was rerun on Nick at Nite during the 1990s. Its popularity was especially enduring in Britain, where it is still shown occasionally by the BBC. In May 2006, 18 of the show's 143 episodes were compiled into a three-DVD 50th anniversary collection.
The Phil Silvers Show was the basis of a critically and commercially unsuccessful 1996 movie, Sgt. Bilko starring Steve Martin, whose extremely dry character bore no resemblance to Phil Silvers' Sgt. Bilko.
[edit] Trivia
- On the episode of The Flintstones that introduced the family pet Dino, the snorkasaurus could speak; the voice and its inflections were an imitation of Phil Silvers. Another Flintstones episode, "Astro'nuts," includes an unnamed sergeant who is unmistakably a cartoon version of Sgt. Bilko. A longer-running Hanna Barbera Bilko homage came in the character of Top Cat, whose vocal inflections and persona overtly mimic those of Phil Silvers. Top Cat's troupe of felines is also based on Bilko's platoon.
- Nat Hiken named Phil Silvers' character after Steve Bilko, a legendary minor league slugger of the 1950s whose formidable Pacific Coast League power never carried over to his major league career.
