That Girl

That Girl

Category: Sitcom

Created By: Sam Denoff and Bill Persky

Stars: Marlo Thomas, Ted Bessell, Lew Parker, Bernie Kopell, Rosemary DeCamp

Number of Seasons: 5

Number of Episodes: 136

Original Channel: ABC

Original Run: September 8, 1966 to September 10, 1971

That Girl is an American television situation comedy that ran on ABC from 1966 to 1971. It starred Marlo Thomas as the title character, Ann Marie, an aspiring (but only sporadically employed) actress, who had moved from her hometown of Brewster, New York to make it big in New York City. Ann had to take a number of offbeat "temp" jobs to support herself in between her various auditions and bit parts, though she nonetheless was able to afford a spacious Manhattan apartment as well as an extensive wardrobe of mod fashions. Ted Bessell played her boyfriend Donald Hollinger, a writer for Newsview Magazine; Lew Parker and Rosemary DeCamp played Lou Marie and Helen Marie, her concerned parents. Bernie Kopell and Ruth Buzzi played Ann & Donald's friends.






Each episode began with a pre-credits teaser in which an odd incident would occur or a discussion would foreshadow the episode's story. The scene would almost always end with someone exclaiming "...that girl!" just as Ann wanders into the shot or the character notices her. The words "That Girl" would appear over the freeze-frame shot of Ann. The opening credits featured Thomas, in character, ambitiously strolling the streets of New York and flying a kite that bore a resemblance to her. In the last season, lyrics were added to the theme song. The presence of Neil Simon's The Star-Spangled Girl with Sheilah Wells listed in the "Sophie Rauschmeyer" role among the Broadway titles shown indicates this version of the opening was filmed between June 5 and August 5 of 1967.



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That Girl was the first show to focus on a single woman who was not a domestic or living at home. Some consider this show the forerunner of the highly successful Mary Tyler Moore Show and Murphy Brown. Thomas' goofy charm, together with Bessell's dry wit and the strong chemistry they shared, made the show a strong performer during its five-year run.
In the beginning of the fifth season, Don and Ann became engaged, although they never actually married. The decision to leave the couple engaged at the end of the run of the series was largely the idea of Thomas herself. She didn't want to send a message to young women that marriage was the ultimate goal for them.[1]

That Girl was created by writers Bill Persky and Sam Denoff, who served as head writers on The Dick Van Dyke Show earlier in the 1960s. Scriptwriter Richard Baer wrote ten episodes for the series.





Popular Culture

The show's theme song and opening visuals have been parodied in pop culture several times. They appeared as a series of T-shirts, then as a Saturday Night Live skit featuring an African American remake That Black Girl, as a sequence on episodes of Animaniacs, The Simpsons and Roseanne.

It was also parodied in the precredits teaser of an episode of The Nanny where Maxwell's guest-starring mother encounters Fran at the florist, in another episode of The Nanny where Peter Bergman, playing himself acting in The Young and the Restless casts Fran in the soap by asking for a co-star like "that girl!" while pointing to Fran.







Popular Culture continued

The series Family Guy took their digs in with the "That Guy" sequence in "Mr. Griffin Goes to Washington". In another "male" take on the show's opening, an episode from Ugly Betty had Fabia forcing Wilhelmina Slater into making an exchange: She'll give up her wedding date to Wilhelmina in exchange for the services of Wilhelmina's assistant, Marc St. James, after Fabia evoke those famous opening lines.

Marlo Thomas played Rachel's mother in the series Friends. Phoebe can sometimes be seen wearing a That Girl t-shirt.

Once on Mystery Science Theater 3000, while being forced to watch a B-movie, one of the characters in the audience says of the movie "It's Marlo Thomas in 'That Guy'!" The series would also be used as inspiration several times as riffs during MST3K's ten-year run.



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