(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"]
[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"]