Arnie

I am not sure what happened to this show. Herschel Bernardi was great as Arnie, the main character. Sue Ann Langdon was excellent as his wife. Roger Bowen (Col Henry Blake of the movie MASH) was excellent as Arnies boss.

The premise was of a blue collar moving up to white collar job based upon his on the job experience & life knowledge. This is the way it used to be done before over priced college degrees, brown nosing & networking replaced this. It is a good premise.

For some reason, CBS pulled the plug on it the second season. I am not sure that they didn't cause it problems by moving the shows time slot too. For some reason, even though it's first season made a big splash, the show did not get what it needed for a long run.

This is too bad, but it might not have kept going long anyways. The real world by then had already gone to the brown nosing method. It is possible that the execs at CBS were afraid they'd bring back fairness to the workplace so they canned it.

The show came on in 1970 which was when CBS was taking extremely popular top 10 rated programs & canceling them to improve their "image".

I have to confess that I haven't see "Arnie" (I somehow remembered the title being "Here's Arnie!") in 32 years. I wish one of the networks would bring it back for a season. As I recall, it was a very solid show.

Herschel Bernardi was around for years, but I will always think of him as Arnie Nuvo, moved from the loading dock to the executive wing, much to the ire of stuffy old Oglivie. Various episodes still pop into my mind: the time they wanted Arnie to shave his mustache; the time they wanted to impress a youthful executive & wanted Arnie to wear a toupe (and Oglivie to die his gray hair); the time Arnie & his wife went on a second honeymoon; etc. (Please note: I was 8 when the show was on the air!)

I finally saw part of the movie MASH about 2001 and was probably the only person on the face of the earth, who saw Roger Bowen as Henry Blake & exclaimed "Oh my gosh! Hamilton Majors, Jr. is playing Henry Blake!" lol

If you get a chance, watch it; I know I will, if I ever do again!

I read the other comment and wanted to say that I remember watching the show, too.

The name "Herschel Bernardi" has been ingrained in my mind for all these years and I've tried off and on to remember this show that I enjoyed watching. I didn't remember it being a comedy but that's probably why I liked it. I was pretty young when it aired.

I had looked here before and missed it somehow. Today, I was talking about this with a co-worker and decided to try to look it up again.

"Arnie" has to be the show I remember. Bernardi came back to mind a few months ago when I saw a few episodes of "Peter Gunn." That made me start thinking about this show again.

I was 10 when this premiered and watched it regularly. The comment here about Arnie being moved or pre-empted because of political coverage jogged my mind a bit. Remember when that political stuff was on all the network channels and there was nothing else to watch? A nightmare for a kid in 1970. I remember Arnie being a good family show and probably had a crush on Sue Ann Langdon and didn't know it. (As I was 10!) But she was a doll. I remember Charles Nelson Reilly, too. I can't recall Arnie *ever* being shown in reruns. Come on SHOUT FACTORY! Give us a box set! The thing I was most enthused about was that my school teacher told us that Herschel Bernardi was the voice of CHARLIE THE TUNA! So we must have discussed it in class for some reason! I always watched Arnie with that in mind.

The history of TV sitcoms can be divided up into all sorts of categories. The "winners" and "losers" are easy to identify. Within those divisions, however, there is one grouping that remains most puzzling: the "near-miss" sitcom. Why didn't a certain show become a bona fide hit? What happened to derail the program before it hit the syndication jackpot?

"Arnie" was one such sitcom. Though the plot was simple (a blue collar dock worker promoted to a management job), it in truth offered all sorts of possibilities. "Arnie" (Arnold Nuvo) was played by the well-respected Herschel Bernardi, an established stage actor (notably Fiddler on the Roof) whose considerable talents were easily adaptable to comedy. On the show, Arnie remained blue-collar at heart despite the promotion, which provided a never-ending stream of conflict (and laughs) with his boss, the stuffy Hamilton Majors, Jr., played to the hilt by Roger Bowen. Established comedienne Sue Ane Langdon played Arnie's wife, Lillian. The show had other dimensions, too, including the Nuvo's two teenage kids, son Richard (played by Del Russel) & daughter Andrea (played by the blonde Stephanie Steele, who briefly challenged the Brady Bunch's Maureen McCormack and Partridge Family's Susan Dey as the teen girl sirens of the day), and Arnie's old dock-worker buddies, including the rotund Julius (played expertly by Tom Pedi), who contributed their own laughs.

The writing was smart and funny as the episodes bounced between work and family-related matters. The ingredients seemed to be in place for a longer run than just two seasons. What happened?

A confluence of factors apparently contributed to the show's demise. Not the least of which was CBS's decision to move "Arnie" away from its coveted Saturday night slot for the 1971-72 campaign, to the incredibly awkward time of 10:30 PM on Monday nights. 10:30 on Monday nights? In the spring of '72 the network finally wised up and moved the show back to its old Saturday slot, but the damage had apparently been done.

Let's also not forget the metamorphosis TV comedy went through at the same time, the introduction of the Norman Lear-style sitcoms like "All in the Family" (which made its debut shortly after "Arnie" in fall 1970) forever changing the TV comedy landscape.

"Arnie" also made some ill-advised structural alterations for the second season. Bowen and his "Hamilton Majors" character left the show, replaced by Charles Nelson Reilly ("Randy Robinson"). The delicious give-and-take between Bowen and Bernardi was thus absent for year two. And the Bernardi-Langdon coupling started to seem a little far-fetched, too, the very middle-aged, balding Bernardi hardly seeming appropriate company for the ravishing Sue Ane, who began to don more seductive attire (like mini-skirts and hot pants) to highlight her astonishing figure after being routinely "dressed down" in season one.

Maybe "Arnie" just lacked the legs to stand on its own, especially after Bowen departed after the first season. It might have been good enough to retain some of the crowd after MTM on Saturday nights, but lacked the pull to recruit viewers on its own. Still, we wish Nick at Nite or another network would bring back "Arnie," even if just for a summer run, especially the first season with Bowen.

In conclusion, had "Arnie" been introduced a few years earlier, before "All in the Family" and the new-style sitcoms, we get the feeling it might have had a longer run. Maybe the timing was just a little off. No matter, it serves as a reminder to sitcoms that there is fine line between making it big, and falling off the radar.