70 Years!

Seventy years is how long I've gone not knowing that young Timmy on the 1950s TV show Lassie was an orphan—a foster child!

I'll admit this is not the most devastating piece of knowledge that you can acquire. Say you do one of those 23AandMe DNA searches and find that you're related to David Berkowitz, Son of Sam, a serial killer that held the citizens of New York City in paralyzing fear about going out at night in the 70s?  He was known as the .44 caliber killer. Dave was caught through research into a parking ticket and is sill incarcerated. If you are a relative, you might be able to visit. Bring documentation and maybe a Bible. He's discovered religion.

And how did I come to know this tidbit of information about Timmy? I read June Lockhart's New York Times obituary by Anita Gates. June just passed away at 100. How's that for not knowing she was alive the day before?

In one highly reveling sentence in the obit I learn of Timmy and the woman who played the mother before June:

"Ms Lockhart replaced Cloris Leachman in the role of Ruth Martin, a farm wife and the foster mother of Jon Provost's character and the courageous collie Lassie in 1958 before the beginning of the show's fifth season."

I don't know when I started to watch Lassie, but I'm sure my little boy eyes probably weren't aware that there was an actor change in the mother's character. Cloris Leachman! She went on to be in movies, notably The Last Picture Show, where she won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in 1972, to being Marry Tyler's sidekick Phyllis on the Mary Tyler Show., and then turning that character into her own show, Phyllis. 

I also suspect I was never clued in that there were two actresses who player Lois Lane in Superman. I was an only child, and didn't have an older brother or sister who might have set me straight.

Orphans and widowers were common in the comics and television. There was the comic strip Little Orphan Annie where Annie's parents died and she was sent to an orphanage. 

And of course the comic strip Dondi, the European waif whose Italian mother died during childbirth and his father, an American G.I. dies in combat.

Three of the most famous TV widowers were Stephen Douglas on My Three Sons, and Andy Griffin on The Andy Griffin Show. Widowers let the writers bring in more plot lines with dates.

The best widower was Lorne Greene's Ben Cartwright on Bonanza. His three sons, Adam, Hoss and Joe were from three different mothers, all deceased.

If there were crime TV shows back then, then Ben's Ponderosa ranch being searched with ground penetrating radar for three women in graves buried somewhere would have easily been a good pilot for a Western detective on a horse Just saying

But the biggest revelation from my childhood was that Franklin W. Dixon didn't really write the Hardy Boys books I devoured. Not only did he not write them, he didn't exist. He was complete fiction! The books are still being published by Simon and Schuster. I mean, who still wears sweaters?

This shook my foundation. Through delivering flowers for the family flower shop from an early age, I had a complete freedom to roam around Manhattan.

Imagine if I went up to the New York City offices of Simon and Schuster and asked the receptionist if I could meet Franklin W. Dixon? I might have needed help to get back home after fainting at the piece of news that he doesn't exist. Okay to no Santa Claus, Easter Bunny or the Tooth Fairy, but no Franklin W. Dixon?

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