Three's Company

views updated

Three's Company

Three's Company was the definitive mindless television sex comedy, speaking to a generation ripe for the numbing. Running on ABC from 1977 to 1984, it reflected the swinging needs of the viewers, and was the vehicle through which a major Hollywood blackballing took place.

Three's Company starred John Ritter as the prat-falling chef Jack Tripper, Joyce DeWitt as the sensible florist Janet Wood, and Suzanne Somers as the prototypical dumb blond secretary (and minister's daughter), Chrissy (full name: Christmas) Snow. As the series opened, Janet and Chrissy needed a third roommate for their Santa Monica apartment. The morning after the going-away party for their last roommate, they found a man sleeping in their bathtub, and, upon learning that he could cook, they let him move in. Nothing sexual ever went on between the roommates, but not for Jack's lack of leering. While he was hitting on anything in a skirt, he had to pretend to be gay so the landlord would allow the living arrangement, which was still a new idea in the 1970s.

Usually joining the trio at the local hangout, the Regal Beagle, was Jack's sleazy best friend Larry Dallas (Richard Kline). The landlords were impotent Stanley and sex-starved Helen Roper, played by Norman Fell (who also played an uptight landlord in The Graduate) and Audra Lindley. Jack often had to distract Mr. Roper by coming on to him and disgusting him into leaving; though it was never given a name, Jack's faux homosexuality manifested itself in limp wrists, simpering, and hissing. The Ropers were spun off in 1979, and Jack, Janet and Chrissy's new landlord was Ralph Furley, a leisure-suited nebbish played by Don Knotts.

Three's Company was chock-full of pratfalls (Ritter's forte), double entendres, and misunderstandings ("I overheard Janet say she's late … oh my God, she must be pregnant!"). In a typical episode Jack gives someone cooking lessons, but a roommate thinks he's giving "love lessons."

The show became hugely popular, and was featured on the cover of Newsweek in February 1978, with a staged shot of Somers with her underwear falling off and Ritter leering over her shoulder, something that never happened on the show. Even the theme song ("… where the kisses are hers and hers and his… ") implied sex where there was none.

Three's Company made a celebrity out of the buxom Somers, who got her big break with a few seconds of screen time in George Lucas' American Graffiti, along with half a dozen other actors. In the summer of 1980, Somers asked her Three's Company producers for the same amount of money the male stars of the era were bringing home—a share of the profits and a fivefold salary increase, from $30,000 to $150,000 per episode. The producers didn't go for it, and, making an example of her, held her to her contract for a final year. During the 1980-1981 season, Somers appeared only in one-minute inserts at the end of each show, featuring Chrissy talking on the phone to one of the characters; it was explained that Chrissy was tending to her sick mother in Fresno. The inserts were taped separately on a closed set. Soon Chrissy was written out of the show, and Hollywood closed its doors on Somers.

Somers' first replacement, in the fall of 1980, was Chrissy's cousin, the blond and clumsy Cindy Snow (Jennilee Harrison). After a year, Cindy moved out to go to UCLA Vet school, but still stopped by. In the fall of 1981, lanky nurse Terri Alden (Priscilla Barnes) moved in. In 1984, Janet got married, Terri moved to Hawaii, and Jack met his true love Vicky Bradford. Jack and Vicky spun off into Three's a Crowd (1985-86), where they lived together (Vicky didn't believe in marriage) above Jack's restaurant. Jack's foil this time was Vicky's disapproving father, who also owned the building.

Most of the show's stars became indelibly associated with their roles (with the exception of Knotts, who will always be remembered as Barney Fife in The Andy Griffith Show). Somers did make a comeback, mostly by continuing to look good as she aged, which she owed to a product she will be forever associated with, the Thighmaster (and later, the Buttmaster). Besides exercise books and videos, she also wrote and spoke out about surviving abuse.

—Karen Lurie