October 23, 2015

Maybe you don't remember "I’m Dickens, He’s Fenster," but I do.

"Onscreen, the sandpaper-voiced [Marty] Ingels was best known for his role in the short-lived sitcom 'I’m Dickens, He’s Fenster,' broadcast on ABC in the 1962-63 season. Mr. Ingels (as Fenster) starred opposite John Astin (as Dickens), as one of a pair of jovial carpenters. Off screen, Mr. Ingels — who began his professional life as a talking peanut and was later a booker of celebrities on television commercials, a frequent TV guest star and a voice-over artist whose credits include Pac-Man in the animated series of the 1980s — was by all accounts highly voluble, genially combustible, energetically litigious and unmistakably larger than life."

I'm sorry to see him go, this man most famous for being the husband of Shirley Jones. As for litigious, I remember when Shirley Jones sued The National Enquirer for an article that — as the U.S. Supreme Court decorously put it — "alleged that respondent drank so heavily as to prevent her from fulfilling her professional obligations."  I taught that case, Calder v. Jones, in Civil Procedure class many times.

But I loved "I’m Dickens, He’s Fenster." 1962-63. That was during the JFK administration. Before we knew John Astin as Gomez on "The Addams Family," which didn't start until 1964, the highly transformative year that followed the Kennedy assassination, the year of The Beatles, the Civil Rights Act, and much else. 1962, that was a different time, and John Astin and Marty Ingels were carpenters. (Shirley Jones was Marian the librarian in "The Music Man" in 1962, long before "The Partridge Family.") Do you think it was funny? He's a segment all about "It's not funny":



ADDED: I made an "I'm Dickens He's Fenster" tag, because I've written about this TV show before. Twice. Both times were back in 2004, the first year of this blog. April 17, 2004:
Why isn't TV more like the Internet? Why can't I just watch any old episode of, say, Dobie Gillis or I'm Dickens, He's Fenster whenever I want? Why can't I sit down any night and call up, say, "The Dalton Girls"? (Althouse trivia experts should know that was the first movie I ever saw in the theater. According to an IMDB user summary it's "Just another 'B' western, except the outlaws are babes." I see the plot was "After the Dalton boys are killed by the law, one of the Dalton girls is forced to kill a lecherous mortician who tries to rape her...)
Maybe I need to make a "Dalton Girls" tag...

AND: Weirdly, that April 17, 2004 post has Donald Trump in it. I'd just watched an HBO on Demand documentary called "Born Rich" — "a nice documentary, made by a born-rich guy who had access to other born-rich kids, because (as I learned in the documentary), born-rich people are an inbred subculture": "There's a nice variety of rich kids to react in different ways to. And I must say one of the nicest ones was Ivanka Trump, which has to remove a layer of loathsomeness from Donald Trump."

8 comments:

Robert Cook said...

I remember it. I used to watch it when I was about 6, I guess. We still lived in Indiana at the time. Was it on Friday evenings. In my mind I have it and the Flintstones conjoined, as if one followed the other on the schedule.

CJinPA said...

That was an innocent, silly clip.

I watched it, and then a related clip, a somewhat recent interview by Jerry Rose of Ingels and Shirley Jones. Jones was amazingly beautiful and later, still attractive, sounds very much like Hillary Clinton.

Robert Cook said...

Actually, seeing the year it was on, I would have been 7. I also remember another show on around that time, HARRIGAN AND SON. (In looking for the exact title on IMDB, I see it premiered on the day I turned 5.)

Rob said...

The next season ABC deFensterated the sitcom.

Robert Cook said...

So few comments. I guess no one does remember the show!

Bob Ellison said...

Thanks for the link, Professor. My sons and I are laughing and arguing about it.

I love the idea of people descending into gang-war over whether or not a joke is funny. I'm in the "it's funny!" gang on this one and have a pipe wrench to prove it.

eddie willers said...

This and "Car 54, Where Are You?" made this 10 year old laugh.

Just saying Gunther Toody cracked me up.

Bilwick said...

I remember "Dickens/Fenster" well, and enjoyed it. I also had a "thing" for the female lead. the lovely Emmaline Henry.