He & She is an American sitcom that aired on the CBS television network as part of its 1967–1968 lineup. He & She is widely considered by broadcast historians to have been ahead of its time. Its sophisticated approach to comedy was viewed as opening doors to the groundbreaking MTM family of sitcoms of the 1970s, beginning with The Mary Tyler Moore Show in 1970. The character of Oscar was openly the pattern for the Ted Baxter character, for which creator Leonard Stern granted permission. (More from Wikipedia)
When I first encountered Hamilton Camp, he was in a supporting role on one of my favorite sitcoms of all time, He & She. The show starred Richard Benjamin (as a cartoonist) and Paula Prentiss (as a social worker) as a married couple; they have one of the longest lived marriages in Hollywood (52 years and counting). One of the Benjamin character’s cartoons had become the basis of a television show; the perfectly cast Jack Cassidy co-starred as the egomaniacal actor who played “Jetman” on that show. Hamilton Camp played the folksy handyman for the apartment building where the couple lived, and the cast also featured Kenneth Mars as a firefighter who often walked into their apartment via a plank that he extended from the firehouse into a window in their apartment.
Despite the stellar cast, innovative plot lines, and a lead-in from Green Acres, the show was cancelled after only one season. He & She is now considered to be a ground-breaking series that paved the way for the MTM shows of the 1970’s like The Mary Tyler Moore Show and The Bob Newhart Show; they ran back-to-back for years, and I never missed them. Those shows basically ruined me for television programs in future years.
(June 2013/2)
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