Shark Bytes

I actually remember that one episode where Joan plays all the parts in a play about the Civil War. Don't remember the name of the episode though.

I always liked the show but of course I wasn't even in school yet when it was on.

I am trying to find the name to the episode when Joan ends up playing all parts to a Southern Play. It was hilarious! We had never heard of "I Married Joan" till we rented episodes on video from the Library. The kids and I thoroughly enjoyed it, but my husband hated it!

I Love this show, It's very underrated. Joan Davis is quite talented. Some of the writing was a bit sloppy, But most of the episodes were quite enjoyable.

When we saw reruns of this in the 80's, on the aforementioned CBN network, we laughingly called it "I Buried Joan", because it was so dead-in-the-water.
Joan Davis was funny...even talented, but the situations made the looniest Lucy plot seem like Shakespeare. Some of Joan's shows would end on her comedy routine and never really wind up the plot of the story..."well folks, I'm swinging from the rafters with a monkey...i can't top that...the end!"
I doubt this will see the light of day again.

AFTER READING JOAN'S BIO I LIKE WATCHING HER EVEN MORE,BUT I'M CONFUSED BY ALL THE CLAIMES ON HOW MANY EPISODES THERE REALLY ARE,AND SOME TITLES LIKE,MONEY IN THE SHOTGUN,AND THE SHOTGUN SEEM TO BE THE SAME,ARE THEY?,I CAN'T SEEM TO GET A CLEAR COUNT ON THE NUMBER OF EPISODES FILMED,BUT COLLECTING THEM HAS BEEN FUN,BUT MOST OF THE FILM PRINTS ARE FLOODED WITH TOO MUCH CONTRAST,SOMEBODY PLEASE CLEAN THESE PRINTS UP,COMPARING JOAN TO LUCY IS POINTLESS,SHE STANDS ON HER OWN,THE 100 EPISODE BOXED SET IS THE WAY TO GO IF YOUR INTERESTED IN SEEING HER IN THE ONLY NETWORK SHOW SHE STARTED AND STARED IN,I LOVE JOAN OR I LOVE LUCY,THE CHICKEN OR THE EGG,I SAY,GO JOAN,YOU HAVEN'T BEEN FORGOTTEN JOAN.

A cable channel labeled as "Family" shows this program in the afternoons, but only around twice a week. It is NOT ABC Family, it's a Christian Channel. I just remembered a couple of days that I had come across the schedule and saw that they air the show(I Married Joan). I'm not sure if they still air "My Little Margie" as well. Just look it up on the cable lineup and see if you can find it. I just saw it a couple of days. I had my DVR set up for it. However, I could not see another date it aired, but I only checked it for a couple of days. I know they do still air the "Joan" show. Hope you can catch it on TV soon!

Not only was this show a blatant rip-off of "I Love Lucy," but a bad one at that. Even the title ripped off "I Love Lucy": Replace "Lucy" with "Joan" and the verb "love" with the verb "married." NBC launched this show in 1952, a year after the Emmy-winning ratings champ "I Love Lucy" hit the CBS airwaves and took the nation by storm. NBC hoped "I Married Joan" would steal some of "I Love Lucy"'s thunder. It didn't work. Each of the three seasons this show ran, "I Love Lucy" tightly held to the number-one spot in the ratings while "I Married Joan" only managed break the Top 30 once, peaking at 25th place during its second season.

Joan Davis was certainly a capable performer of physical comedy, but the problem with this show was everything else: the super-cheap production values, the execution and direction, the horrible writing and contrived plots, and an uninspired supporing cast. Some of the hallmarks of "I Love Lucy" include its fabulous supporting players. The casting of Vivian Vance and William Frawley as the Mertzes was nothing short of a miracle. The chemistry between Lucille Ball and the great Vivian Vance is legendary, on par with Laurel and Hardy. And the sizzling chemistry between Lucille Ball and the very charismatic Desi Arnaz was palpable. This may partly be due to the fact that they were married and in love in real life. But regardless, it was there. Jim Backus was a talented and accomplished performer, but his bland portrayal of a forever clueless Bradley Stevens was no match for Joan's zaniness. And no warmth was ever felt between these characters to make them believable as husband and wife. Joan was also lacking an Ethel Mertz, someone who could stand up to Joan as Ethel did to Lucy (or at leats tried to do) to provide balance.

Another distinction between these two series is Joan Davis's very broad portrayal of Joan Stevens, played purely for the sake of laughs. Lucille Ball, on the other hand, brought a sense of believability to Lucy Ricardo (as did former stage actress Vivian Vance to Ethel Mertz). Earlier in her career Lucille Ball had been known more for her dramatic work in movies than for comedy. Her talents as a dramatic actress were clearly the foundation of Lucy Ricardo. So no matter how crazy Lucy's predicament, she always seemed geniune and real, whereas in watching Joan Stevens, the viewer is reminded every step of the way they're just watching a fictional TV show.

After "I Married Joan" ended it's short run in 1955, it resurfaced several years later in daytime reruns. At that point, it managed to achieve some success with very young viewers. But it eventually faded away and, other than a run on CBN in the early '80s, has been largely forgotten. And for good reason.

I loved this show. Jim Backus and Joan Davis were so funny. I still remember most of the episodes and enjoyed all of them.

I loved this show and didn't think it jumped when I was a little girl, however, this show DID copy several I Love Lucy episodes. A few of them were identical: The crooked BBQ, perhaps losing her ring or something else in it Thinking Brad was going to kill her Trying to become an officer in a club. I could be mistaken, and I've tried to search around the web for an episode guide, but I haven't found it yet. I know it's out there someplace, as I'm sure I've stumbled across it in the past, and probably have a copy on a disc from my old computer.

I Married Joan was an hysterical show and was much better than I Love Lucy. Jim Backus as the long suffering husband was a perfect foil for his nutty wife. Mind you, she didn't TRY to be nutty, things just worked out that way. If anyone saw the episode when Joan tried to make pressed duck for dinner.........well, it still makes me roar 50 years later.

Actually, I thought that "I Married Joan" was a much better show than "I Love Lucy". The chemistry between Joan Davis and Jim Backus was much better than anything going on between Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball. Unfortunately, the writing and production values weren't nearly as good and this is what ultimately hurt the show. To offhandedly call "I Married Joan" an "I Love Lucy ripoff" as the above poster is a rather ignorant and misinformed statement. To be sure, the shows were similar but since when did "I Love Lucy" have the monopoly on the "married couple with dingy wife" comedy show formula? "I Love Lucy" was based on a radio show called "My Favorite Husband", which in turn borrowed rather liberally from a number of radio shows that came before it, such as "The Burns and Allen Show" and "Fibber McGee and Molly" just to name a few. If anything, "I Married Joan" was a much more accurate portrayal of 50s married life than "I Love Lucy" because the husband was a judge rather than a nightclub entertainer. I realize I may be in a minority but as far as I'm concerned "I Married Joan", overhyped as it was by the announcer in the opening credits (see the post two above this) was a better and more believable show than "I Love Lucy".

Back when ABC Family was first owned by Christian Broadcasting Network (about two decades ago), they broadcast reruns of this abominable "I Love Lucy" rip-off. It had a horrible theme song sung a cappella, featuring a shot of Joan Davis kissing the teeny groom figure from a wedding cake--it looked positively phallic! Strangely enough, this was an early TV sitcom from Sherwood Schwartz, who gained immortality with "Gilligan's Island" and "The Brady Bunch."

"The Joan Davis Show! 'I . . . Married . . . Joan!' America's favorite comedy show! Starring America's queen of comedy...Joan Davis! as Mrs. Joan Stevens." Thus intones the announcer during the opening credits. Unfortunately, the show that follows doesn't come within a planetary orbit of living up to that much hype. I enjoyed this show twenty years ago on CBN, but now that I'm seeing it again on a local religious UHF, I'm having a hard time getting past how desperate and forced all the supposedly funny bits are. I recall there being some clever episodes of this show, but my memories of them are as cloudy as the dusty 16mm film. And to the poster who praised Joan Davis for knowing when to wrap it up: in its first two seasons I Married Joan was always second in its timeslot to Arthur Godfrey on CBS; when ABC added Disneyland, Godfrey was still a strong second, but poor Joan was a very, very, VERY distant third. The network (or maybe it was GE) reduced its order for new episodes and I Married Joan was immediately yanked from the schedule after the last original show aired. Whether or not she was ill in April 1955 I don't know, but that's another "reason" for the show's early demise that's been printed. Truth: cancelled due to low ratings, period.

Never jumped, Joan Davis ended it at the perfect time, after 3 seasons and 98 episodes. Other shows could learn from this example (i.e. the one that inspired the name of the site). I too wish that there were a cable network that ran this and the other classics from early to mid 1980's CBN; "Love That Bob" (a.k.a. The Bob Cummings Show) and "Dobie Gillis", and "Burns and Allen", just to name a few, should ALWAYS be running somewhere.

Blatant imitation of I Love Lucy. If Jim Backus had spoken with a Cuban accent and Joan Davis had about a billion times more talent, the two shows would have been indistinguishable.