“Que sera, sera…” Yes, as you can see by the post header, I was able to locate the missing Doris Day Show disc and am ready to resume the popular Thrilling Days of Yesteryear feature, Doris Day(s). (Hey…hey! Let’s not turn into an ugly mob, shall we?) It was right where I deduced my mother had stored it, and though I didn’t have too much trouble hunting it down I probably would have found it much more quickly had I startedwith the last box I looked in as opposed to the first…because that’s where it was. (It’s always the case.) By the way—I don’t want to suggest that somebody offered Mom a large bribe to hidethis DVD…but I saw her counting a large wad of bills the other night while she was sitting in her recliner. (And she doesn’t play bingo. Make of that what you will.)
This week’s installment opens with ever-faithful housekeeper (soon to be ex-housekeeper in a few more episodes) Aggie Thompson (Fran Ryan) pouring a glass of milk for each of The Widow Martin’s sons, Billy (Philip Brown) and Toby (Tod Starke), as they enjoy a hearty, nutritious country breakfast of cookies, cakes and pies. (Look…I’m just saying: there’s an awful lot of baking going on in that house.)
BILLY: How come Mom and Grandpa ate breakfast already?
AGGIE: They’re up in the attic gettin’ things ready for the White Elephant Sale…
TOBY: We’re gonna get an elephant?
BILLY: Don’t talk to him, Aggie…he’s dumb… (To his brother) A white elephant is something you don’t want—so you give it to somebody else so they can give it away…
TOBY: Boy…if somebody gave me a white elephant, I wouldn’t give him away…
AGGIE: What would you do with him?
TOBY: Paint him blackand hide him!
BILLY: See—I toldyou he was dumb…
And the hours just fly by. Upstairs in the attic, the Laird and Master of Webb Farms, Buck Webb (Denver Pyle) is trying on a jacket that’s way too small for him as his daughter Doris and Aggie sort through various bric-a-brac,
AGGIE: Hey—what goes? I thought we were supposed to be givingstuff away, not keeping it…
BUCK: Well, you can’t throw stuff away you might be able to use one day…
DORIS (patting Buck’s stomach): That’s why I’d keep that if I were you…it’s a great fit…
BUCK: Well, it shrunka little last time I had it cleaned…
Doris locates an old Easter bonnet and puts it on, asking her father if he remembers the hat. Buck replies in the affirmative, since he picked it out…and he reminisces about her sitting next to him in church. “With my two front teeth missing,” adds Doris, making a goofy face.
“Oo-wee, were you ugly!” her father editorializes. “That’s a terrible thing to say to me,” she scolds him, swatting his behind with the bonnet. “No wonder I’m insecure.”
The talk then turns to the amount of old newspapers in the attic, and Dodo is concerned because they could constitute a fire hazard. Fortunately, there’s a paper drive scheduled for next month so they’ll be able to get rid of the flammable material. Aggie then notices an antique table in one corner and asks about “this old table.”
AGGIE: As long as you’re throwing out junk, might as well put it in with the rest…
BUCK: Junk?
AGGIE: Yes…
BUCK: I’ll have you know that that’s a very valuable table…
DORIS: Don’t you know an antique when you see one?
“Yes…but I thought we’d leave your father out of this…”
AGGIE: You’re putting me on…
BUCK: My grandmother brought this all the way across country with her when she came west…
AGGIE: Looks like it had a rough trip…
“Major Seth Adams tried to make a move on Gran on top of that table, but she resisted…” Buck then goes on to state that he’s had a lot of offers to sell the table but he’s refused any and all—he’s determined that it will stay in the family. “Well, if it’s going to stay in the family,” counters Doris, “I think it could use a little work.” Buck announces his intention to take it down to the barn where he can “keep an eye on it.”
Downstairs in the kitchen, young Billy has been turned loose and allowed to squeeze many, many lemons for the purpose of making lemonade. The Webb family farmhand, Leroy B.
TOBY: Hey, Leroy—how do you spell lemonade?
LEROY: Lemonade? L-E-M-I…lemonade…L-I-M-O…no…L-E-M-N-I… (Pause) Hey…why don’t y’all squeeze some apples?
It’s always a hard lesson for kids to learn they’re actually brighter than some grown-ups. Doris and Aggie enter the kitchen with a box of items for the sale, and Doris gets a kiss from Toby as she tells him “Toodle-loo!” She notices that Billy is working on the lemonade sign, and asks him what he’s using for a writing utensil.
BILLY: Lipstick…
AGGIE: That’s mine…
DORIS: Did you get permission to take that?
BILLY: No, ma’am…
DORIS: Well, now what have I told you about that?
BILLY: Well, we were just borrowing it…
AGGIE: It’s okay…
DORIS: No, it’s not all right, Aggie…and he knows better…
“Don’t contradict me in front of the boy…ever!” So Doris takes time out to lecture her son on the importance of respecting other people’s property (pay attention now) and orders her son to march upstairs and get his paints for the sign, or there’ll be no roast chicken for dessert. She hollers after both of them that they’ll be back around 3, and the boys pass their grandfather as they are on their way up to their room. Buck is carrying in another box of crap for the church sale, and the three of them haul the items out to the car.
DORIS: You know something? I kind of hate leaving those kids alone…
AGGIE: Oh, Leroy will keep an eye on them…
BUCK: That’s like being alone…
DORIS: You’re a big help… (As Buck closes the gate of the station wagon) Okay?
BUCK: Make more sense if you let the boys watch Leroy…
I did snicker at this, because Leroy is a moron. A scene dissolve finds our favorite moron in the barn, feeding a baby goat. (You never saw a baby goat—or “kid,” to use the preferred nomenclature—at Sam Jones’ place.) Toby and Billy are trying to pull the antique table down from where their grandfather has stored it.
LEROY: What are you fellas doin’?
TOBY: Oh, nothin’…
LEROY: That sure is a lot of noise for doin’ nothin’…
BILLY: We gotta get this table down…
LEROY: Y’all need any help?
TOBY: We’re gettin’ it all right…
The boys are planning to use the table to set up their lemonade stand, which prompts Leroy to drop a giant hint: “An ice cold lemonade sure’d go good right now.”
TOBY: It’s gonna cost you ten cents…
LEROY: Ten cents? For one glass?
BILLY: Think that’s too much?
LEROY: Well, I never paid more than a nickel in my whole life for a glass of lemonade…
BILLY: Maybe we’d better charge a nickel, Tobe…
TOBY: The signsays ten cents…
BILLY: So—everybody will think we’re having a sale!
Leroy tells the boys that as soon as they get set up outside he’ll be by to sample the lemonade (Toby: “Be sure to bring your nickel”) and then asks them if they’re sure it’s okay for them to take that table. “Grandpa won’t mind,” lies Billy, and besides, “it’s all beat up anyway.” As the two of them attempt to maneuver the table out of the barn, they are offered the generous help of Lord Nelson, the sheepdog formerly of Larchmont, New York.
There is then a dissolve to a car (pulling a trailer) slowly stopping alongside a picaresque country road as a harpsichord plays in the background. It is now time to introduce our guest stars this week.
The woman with the cigarette dangling out of her mouth (she answers to “Gertrude”) is the one-and-only Estelle Winwood, the venerable stage actress who made her film debut in 1933’s The House of Trent…at the ingénue age of 50. (Suffice it to say, she wasn’t exactly what you’d call in a hurry.) This probably explains why in most of the movies you remember seeing her she was already of considerable vintage; her most famous film role is that of the little old lady (“Hold me…touch me…”) seduced by Zero Mostel’s Max Bialystock in The Producers (1968) during the opening credits. (Winwood later told an interviewer she detested this role, adding she must have agreed to do it because she “needed the money.”) She was 92 at the time of her last feature film, Murder by Death(1976), and 96 when she finished her final TV gig, a 1980 episode of Quincy, M.E. (“Honor Thy Elders”).
The woman in the driver’s seat (“Bertie”) is a familiar face to Mayberry Mondays fans; actress Maudie Prickett appeared in five episodes of Mayberry R.F.D.—four as a recurring character named “Myrtle.” If you’ve seen North by Northwest as many times as I have you’ll recognize her as “Elsie,” the maid that Cary Grant and Jessie Royce Landis encounter as they’re snooping in George Kaplan’s hotel room; Prickett also appeared on several episodes of The Jack Benny Program as Jack’s acerbic secretary, Miss Gordon. But her lasting small screen fame is undoubtedly that of Rosie Hanmaker, best bud to “domestic engineer” Hazel Burke (Shirley Booth) on the 1961-66 sitcom Hazel.
GERTRUDE: Lost us again, eh?
BERTIE: Quit your beefing and get out the map…
GERTRUDE (handing her a map): Second time today…
BERTIE: Listen, getting lost this morning got us that fourteenth century French clock for eight bucks…
GERTRUDE: If you’d played your cards right, you could have got it for two…
BERTIE: We’ll get $300 for that clock from any dealer and you know it...
Yes, this week on The Doris Day Show: American Pickers! Gertrude looks up the road a ways and spots Billy and Toby operating their lemonade stand. “Maybe they could clue us in to where we are.” So the two women pull up to where our little urchins are practicing their free market capitalism.
Yes, that is the sign pointing to the direction of Webb Farms. It’s the little things that make me chuckle…because the big jokes rarely do. Bertie gets out of the car and Billy asks her if she like to buy some lemonade. She rebuffs his offer…and then she zeroes in on the table.
BERTIE: Gertrude, sweet…come see what these darling little boys have…my, my…you are clever little boys…
I’m going to take a wild guess here and postulate that Bertie’s never watched this show.
GERTRUDE (walking over): What’s up?
BERTIE: I thought you might like a little something… (She points to the table)
GERTRUDE: Now that you mentionit, Gertie…I certainly would…
The two women decide to spring for two cups of lemonade, with Gertrude purring “Be sure you have the dime, dear, before you take the lemonade…”
“It’s just that we have to be very careful how we spend our money,” Bertie explains to Billy.
GERTRUDE: We’re saving to buy furniture for our little house…
BERTIE: Which we rent…
“The one made entirely of gingerbread…” The two women, having convinced the two idiot boys that they’re innocent spinsters looking for a table for their front porch and not a couple of sharpies buying valuable antiques for pennies on the dollar, begin to fawn over the table. “I bet your daddy would be glad to get rid of it,” coos Gertrude.
Gertrude is then informed by Billy that they don’t have a father—their widowed mother is practically a single woman…though he won’t be around by the time this show makes that a reality.
GERTRUDE: Where did the table come from?
TOBY: Grandpa’s barn…
BERTIE (after exchanging looks with her sister): I don’t suppose you’d sell it to two very poorold ladies who can’t afford to buy a newtable?
“Sure we would…but you’re not them. I’m wise to you, Grandma…”
BILLY: You mean you want to buy this?
BERTIE: We’ll give you five dollars…
BILLY: Five dollars is an awful lot of money for an old table nobody wants…
TOBY: They want it…
BERTIE: I’ll tell you what…we’ll each buy another cup of lemonade…and then…you’ll have $5.20…
Like taking lemonade from a baby, Gertrude whips out a five-spot and hands it to Billy, announcing that the table “is all ours.” “Boy, wait till Grandpa hears about this,” beams Billy.
“Yeah,” chimes in Toby, “is he going to be surprised.” Yes indeedy he will—but first, the episode takes a Ralston Purina break.
Back from the commercial, Gertrude and Bertie have loaded the table onto their trailer and at the risk of telegraphing what’s to come, they probably would have done quite well for themselves had they just driven away at this point (plus I’d be done with the write-up now). But no…Lady Greed isn’t quite finished browsing for antiquities.
GERTRUDE: I don’t suppose your Grandpa has any other old tables or, uh, things in his barn—does he?
BILLY: No, ma’am…
(The two women start to walk towards the front of the car to leave)
TOBY: He has a lot of old things in his attic, though…
Jackpot! In the blink of an eye, Gertrude and Bertie are getting their Mike-and-Frank on by rummaging through the junk in the attic…and underneath a sheet, Bertie finds an antique pot-bellied stove. “It’s worth ten times that table,” she whispers to her sister.
“Do you think old Grandpa knows it, too?” asks Gertrude. Bertie isn’t sure, but she got a look at what’s in the Webb living room—“It’s loaded!”
BERTIE: Boys…I guess this is something that your grandpa doesn’t want either?
BILLY: What is it?
GERTRUDE: A stove, sonny…a very old stove…
BERTIE: He probably meant to throw it away and he just forgot about it!
BILLY: Does it work?
GERTRUDE: Gracious, no! This stove was made before people had electricity and gas…no one could use it now…
BERTIE: But we’d be glad to take it off your hands…we’ll give you, uh, twenty dollars…
TOBY: Twenty dollars!
BILLY: We’d have to ask Grandpa…
GERTRUDE: You didn’t have to ask Gramps about the table…
TOBY: That was in the barn…this is in the house!
GERTRUDE (to Bertie): Sweet, isn’t he?
Billy suggests to the two old ladies who are going to Hell for pulling a fast one on two developmentally challenged kids that they come back at 3:00 pm when Buck is due home from the church sale. With another eye blink, Buck arrives home with Doris and Aggie and Billy is bursting at the seams to tell his ma that they made five dollars! “And twenty cents,” adds his brother.
DORIS: Did you hear that—they made $5.20 selling lemonade!
BUCK: Good for you boys!
DORIS: Let’s hear it for Billy and Toby!
Huzzah.
BILLY: You know that old table that was in the barn?
DORIS (her enthusiasm dampening): Yeah…what about it?
TOBY: We sold it!
Cue the sad trombone! Billy explains that “two poor old ladies” purchased the item, and they took it away in their car and trailer. Buck walks sadly out of the house, because throttling children was still a crime in California at the time this episode originally aired. Doris gets a tremendous sad because her kids are idiots, and shifts once again into lecture mode.
DORIS: Boys…this is exactlywhat I was talking about this morning…you’ve taken something that doesn’t belong to you without permission…
BILLY: We didn’t think Grandpa would mind…
DORIS: “We didn’t think”—Billy, there you go again…”We didn’t think”…that table meant a great deal to your grandfather…he lovedit very much…
BILLY: Are you going to be mad, Mom?
DORIS: Well, I’m not very happy about it, boys…I’m really not…
“Someone’s going to bed without ice cream.” Doris reasons that, hell, it’s over and done with—but Billy explains that he said what he did “about the next part”:
DORIS: The what…the nextpart?
BILLY: The lady’s coming back for the old stove in the attic…
AGGIE (chuckling): I think they found a nest of pigeons…
DORIS: When?
BILLY: At three o’clock…
DORIS (looking at Aggie): Are you thinking what I’m thinking?
“If you’re thinking that I could clean up once I teach your kids to play poker, then the answer is ‘yes’.” Rubbing their hands together, Doris and Aggie walk away to do some Lucy-and-Ethel plotting as the scene shifts to the Fields Sisters picnicking by a scenic lake. Bertie asks her sis if she’d like some tea, prompting Gertrude to crack: “Yeah, I’ll take a shot.” Bertie then adds an olive the size of Salinas to the “tea,” and Gertrude exhibits a funny reaction after sampling what’s in her Dixie cup.
GERTRUDE: You know, Bertie…this will be the best haul we’ve ever had on this trip…
BERTIE: I knew we should have brought the truck…
GERTRUDE: No harm done…we’ll catch them on our next trip and clean them out…
BERTIE: Hmm…I’ll drink to that!
Gertrude then glances at her watch and notices it’s close to 3—“Better take our Sen-Sen and get going.” There is then a fast cut (syndication-mandated is my guess) to Doris in the barn, shutting the door to Leroy’s room. She then goes back to the door and opens it, telling him: “Take the stove out of the henhouse and put it up in the attic—and you take the pot-bellied stove that’s up in the attic and you put that out in the barn. Then you take a sheet and put that over the stove that you just put up in the attic—okay?”
“It won’t work any better up there,” Leroy can be heard saying once Doris closes the door a second time. To add a little further suspense as to whether Leroy is capable of carrying out his employer’s request, he asks her how to spell “lemonade.” She spells it correctly, which prompts him to observe: “I thought there was an ‘I’ in there someplace.” Oh, Leroy…you’re a doodle!
The Fields Sisters arrive at Rancho Webb and go up to the front door and ring the bell. Doris appears, in this getup:
DORIS: You must be the ladies my sons told me about…won’t you come in?
BERTIE: Thank you… (As the two women enter) I’m Bertie Fields and this is my sister, Gertrude…
DORIS: How do you do? Is it Mrs.?
GERTRUDE: Miss…both of us…
“Just two lonely old maids having ourselves a little vacation,” explains Bertie as Doris ushers them into the living room and there’s a quick cut to Aggie listening in the kitchen and clearly enjoying the scam her employer is pulling on the two antique hunters.
DORIS: Well…first of all…I want to apologize for my two little boys…
BERTIE: They’re dear little boys…
DORIS: Thank you…but those dear little boys sold you a worthless old table…now you know that I just can’t stand for anything like that…so, I want to give you back your five dollars and take that old piece of junk off your hands…
BERTIE: Well now, Mrs. Martin…if that’s the only thing that’s worrying you…you just put your mind at rest…
GERTRUDE: Land sakes, yes…we wouldn’t think of such a thing…besides—we really want that old table…don’t we, Bertie?
BERTIE: Oh, my yes…
While this conversation continues, Buck has joined Aggie at her listening post. The two old biddies continue.
GERTRUDE (to Doris): You’re a dear…a dear is what you are… (To Bertie) Isn’t she a dear?
BERTIE: Oh, one of the dearest!
GERTRUDE: If you’re really so troubled…we’ll take the five dollars…
BERTIE: …and keepthe table…
Not going to be as easy as you anticipated—eh, Dor? Well, that’s why she had the foresight to have Leroy do the stove switcheroo. The veneer of mutual phony politeness continues between Doris and the sisters because Bertie has brought up the matter of the stove. She informs Dor that she offered the boys twenty dollars for it…but she would be willing to go as high as twenty-five. “That means I won’t be able to get my support stockings for another month,” laments Gertrude. But what the hey—let’s make a deal.
That’s when Doris springs her trap. “If you two really want that old stove that’s up in my attic…you can have it,” she tells the two women, who barely have trouble disguising their delight. “But I don’t want one penny for it.”
BERTIE: One of the dearest…
DORIS: I’ll trade you for the table…even steven…
BERTIE (after a pause): Trade?
DORIS: You know…it still bothers me that my boys took advantage of you two lovely ladies…
GERTRUDE: It’s nothing…we love both the stove and the table…
Doris decides to go for broke. “Those boys have to learn a lesson…and if you want that stove, then I’ll just have to insist that the table is returned to me.”
The sisters, blinded by the dollar signs in their eyes, agree to the trade. In a following scene, Buck and Leroy are carrying the sheet-covered stove to the Fields’ trailer, and grabbing the table Buck announces his intention to take it back down to the barn. Leroy closes the gate to the trailer and starts to run off…and then he remembers the sheet, so he grabs that before he moseys.
GERTRUDE: Wait a minute! This isn’t the stove we wanted!
DORIS (innocently): Well, that’s the one that was up in the attic with the sheet over it…
BERTIE: Why, this stove is worthless!
DORIS: That’s what Ithought!
BERTIE: Gertrude—this woman is trying to cheat us!
DORIS: Cheat? Well, now how could I ever cheat two sweet, dear lovely ladies like you? I wouldn’t think of it! If there’s any cheating going on I think we all know who’s doing it…
GERTRUDE (her eyes narrowing): You’re no hick…
“Damn skippy! Stick around for Season 3, sistah!” Doris then drops the niceties and mentions that she should really be calling the sheriff…so the Fields Sisters decide to get the hell out of Dodge. “Your kids make lousy lemonade!” are “Gertie’s” parting words to Doris as she does an end zone dance on the front porch.
Coda time!
Kind of an unusual coda on this episode—I’m guessing this may be due to the fact that it was written by Dorothy Cooper (Foote), who eschewed the typical “one last joke” ending in favor of a more gentler presentation. Cooper-Foote was a former movie screenwriter with films like A Date with Judy and Small Town Girlbefore drifting into TV, contributing scripts to My Three Sons and Father Knows Best—the latter show earning her an Emmy nomination with writer Roswell Rogers.
Anyhoo, the remaining moments of the program consist of Doris and Aggie chatting on the porch about the Fields Sisters, both musing that “Gertie and Bertie” are no doubt hustling someone else by now, and then Doris calls up to Buck asking if he wants a cup of coffee. Buck is in his room, putting a string on a mandolin he found in the attic earlier when Leroy comes knocking at his door.
Leroy walks in, and Buck notices that he’s all dressed up (he compliments his farmhand on a new belt buckle)—it turns out Leroy has a date this evening and wants to know if it would be okay if he borrowed the truck for the evening. (Tell me Dottie didn’t dust this one off the Father Knows Best-My Three Sons pile.) Buck says okay, and hands him the keys…and then remarks to his employee: “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t have done.” (Well, surely a little breathing...)
Buck then tunes the mandolin and then starts to play Down by the Old Mill Stream as the camera pulls back out of the bedroom window and pans down to the porch, where Doris and Aggie continue to sip their coffee. Doris softly sings the lyrics of the song, and Aggie joins in (this is probably why she’s going to be fired—she can’t sing a note) as the scene fades to black. (Well, it could have been worse, I suppose.)
Next week on Doris Day(s)—you’re probably wandering how Leroy B. Simpson came to be hired at Webb Farms, and in the process was adopted as a family member and respected citizen in the Cotina community. Yeah, I wasn’t either—but we have little say in the matter, because the next installment is entitled “Leroy B. Simpson”…so join me next time, won’t you?
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