I really like this show but can't seem to identify a particular episode. The episode involved a woman that refused to move out of her home for an urban renewal project and the end result was that the "new" project ended up being a new block of tenements! Pretty funny. I thought Molly Picon was in that episode, but recently saw "I Won't Go" and that isn't the episode I'm thinking of. Anyone know which episode I'm thinking of???? Thanks!
shareI think this is the one your looking for:
Episode #36 "Occupancy, August 1st" 10-21-62
Guest Star(s): Charles Nelson Reilly, Molly Picon, John Anderson,
Maurice Shrog, Heywood Hale Broun, Howard Freeman, Dana Elcar.
Synopsis: Mrs. Bronson moves in to an unfinished apartment building
taking up residence in her "new" apartment
It's not that she wouldn't move out it's that see moved into the new one before it was finished.
Actually there were two episodes on this theme. The woman was named Mrs. Bronson as I recall. In one episode she was refusing to move out of her old apartment and they had to get her to leave. I believe that is the one where she moved only when they agreed to make her new building have certain 'features' she insisted upon and when it was done, this modern building designed by an award-winning architect (Charles Nelson Reilly) looked just like the old tenement it replaced. In the other episode, the new building wasn't ready on time but Mrs. Bronson moved in anyhow. I remember one scene in that episode where Muldoon is following Mrs. Bronson around her unfinished kitchen trying to ask her some questions and she says "Stop, sit down, it's like being followed around by a telephone pole.'
shareAs I recall, this was a single episode where she moved into the new apartment, even though they hadn't even put up the walls. I remember because Reilly threatened to jump rather than go along with the tenement design.
THe earlier episode with Picon was one where she played a matchmaker who matched elderly people with movie stars.
There are three episodes with Mrs. Bronson.
1) She refuses to leave her apartment, even though the rest of her neighborhood has been demolished. This is "I Won't Go!" from the fall of 1961.
2) She moves into her new apartment, even though the building isn't finished yet. This is "Occupancy, August 1st" from the fall of 1962. This is the one that ends with the new building looking like a tenament.
3) She starts a matchmaking service, and matches ordinary people with celebrities they've never met. I think the name of this one is "Joan Crawford Didn't Say No," and it's from the spring of 1963. It's one of the last episodes.
Why did they think that premise was so funny that they needed to repeat it two more times?
shareThere definitely was an episode in which Mrs. Bronson (Molly Picon) refuses to move out of her apartment; the building is the last one stil standing in the building of the Cross-Bronx Expressway (which was a real-life battle in the East Tremont section of The Bronx in the 1950s).
The joke is that everyone who goes up to Mrs. Bronson's apartment to try and talk her into moving ends up helping her do her housework. That included Al Lewis, who appears (before he joined the cast as Leo Schnauzer) as the frustrated landlord.
Toody and Muldoon are the last ones to be sent up after everyone else has failed. And in one of the funniest scenes of the whole series we see the two of them washing Mrs. Bronson's dishes and singing the Yiddish song "Oif'n Pripitchok" together with her.
One of the really great things about this series is not only that is was so funny but that much of the humor reflected the real-life people who lived in the Bronx back then -- true ethnic humor, about Jews, blacks, Italians, etc., but without being the kind of stereotype humor that nowadays makes people uncomfortable. Of course, this was before people became so sensitive and easily offended.
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This episode reminded me of being a kid living in a building just a few dozen feet from the Cross Bronx Expressway. I remember my school mates being so worried about their homes being torn down. I couldn't understand where this new road could possibly go. We already had streets everywhere. Plus my part of the Bronx was hilly. So how could a new road not snake around hills like my street did?
The show is almost real. There was all sorts of personal nuttiness playing out at the time.
In the show I don't remember if they mention the new project by name. The real place is Co-Op City. It was and might still be the world's largest housing development. It was supposed to offset those displaced. Most didn't go there. They scattered to the wind, out of the Bronx. My friends were going to strange far away sounding places like Hackensack. It really troubled me, as if they were being exiled these dark and forbidding places. My folks stayed put all through the construction, I liked the constant blasting. Finally I got to see how the highway hooked to to the George Washington Bridge, now it made sense.
Biograph was a few blocks from my grandmothers house. We knew Car 54 was filmed there. I could swear the precinct house seen in the beginning was the one off Tremont Ave. Many of them looked alike though.
This past weekend, the Decades channel (love it!) showed dozens of CAR 54 episodes. "Occupancy: August 1" was my favorite. I remember seeing it as a child and finding it funny; it's even funnier now. It also made me nostalgic for the "old" New York. Sure, there were plenty of problems to go around then, just different ones. So goes "progress."
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