"Occassional Wife"--social attitudes?

I recall a TV show Occassional Wife in which a young man has a female
friend pose as his wife so he could advance at his job. His employer
believes only married men are worthy of promotion.

wdstarr...

Okay, now what was the show that the inverse of that premise? I
recall that it was about to police officers, male and female, who
had to keep their marriage a secret due to a departmental rule
against spouses serving too closely together. (I think they were
both on the same detective squad, or maybe were officers in the same
precinct.) They had separate but adjacent apartments in the same
building and put in a secret connecting door in the common wall
between them.

altec3220...

MacGruder and Loud, I think.

Anim8rFSK...

Yeah, that was it. It was hard to feel sorry for them; probably valid
reasons not to have married couples sharing a patrol car. And do you
really need to be together 24/7? Only good part was Kathryn Harrold.
rrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

wdstarr...

Yep, that's it, thanks. It surprises me that this was as recent as
1985; I'd had it mentally filed as being from my late childhood,
i.e., early to mid 1970s.

Anim8rFSK...

I . . . sort of remember that. But the 'separate but ajacent
apartments' and 'secret door' is from Occassional Wife isn't it?

wdstarr...

Hmm, maybe it is.

The theme of each episode was continuation of ruse and risk of
discovery. I think at the end they fell in love for real.

IMDB says only one season and surpringly in 1967.

Ian J. Ball...

FTR, this show was effectively remade as "Ned & Stacey" c. 1995.

In the early 1960s and earlier companies did check into a manager's
home life as part of his job qualifications. When a prospect
interviewed for a management job, someone would take the wife out to
lunch and subtly check her out as well. If the wife failed the job was
lost. Wives were expected to participate and frequent off-hours social
functions, either alongside their husband or together with the other
wives while the men did their thing.

Anim8rFSK...

Well, if you were single and asked for a raise or promotion, you'd get
"why do you need that" where a married guy would get "oh, you need more
for the wife and kids"

I never knew of any real world "wife has to pass muster" situations, but
if you used your wife and home for business meetings and dinners, had
the boss over, etc., obviously it's gonna make an impact.

hancock4...

I don't think it's done nowadays, but in the past it was common for
business people to have dinners for each other and clients and wives to
be present. As someone mentioned, look at Bewitched.

I think today with spouses being busy with their own jobs people don't
have time for this.

Anim8rFSK...

It still goes here with clients visiting from out of town.

I wonder if this still goes in Japan with "salarymen" who work very
long hours.

Another factor on preferring married men was that the spouses were
motivators. If your neighbor got a nice promotion and bought a new car
or his wife got new furniture, your wife might be bugging you to get a
promotion too. We don't like to admit that attribute in ourselves, but
it was certainly there and companies took full advantage of it.

[That sort of "rat race" and "keep up with the Jones" was one of the
things the hippie generation revolted against in the 1960s--they saw
their parents into it and they disliked it. Of course, those kids
conveniently forgot that it was that very lifestyle that enabled their
parents to send them to college and be free to sit around all day and
think about those things. Most kids in college didn't have it so easy
and had to work.]

Today of course we usually don't care if someone is married or not, man
or woman, etc., and private lives are more respected. The home is much
more separate from the office these days.

JXStern...

Maybe.

Again, I was surprised this show was plausible as late as 1967, but I
guess old attitudes still continued by then. I do know a prospect for
head of a major corporation was carefully checked out for his social
skills and his wife in those days.

et472...

I've never even heard of the show, but I would think there was enough
inertia that it would still be valuable at the time. Enough of society
had likely come into contact with such practices, so it wasn't a foreign
concept, even if it had changed or was changing at the time of airing.

The show probably wouldn't have worked when the actual practice was strong,
because nobody would be critical of the practice. I can't see TV having
a comedy that was very critical of some general practice at the time. But
as the practice declines, or is recently out of practice, it is a time
that fun can be made of the practice.

Of course, wait too long, and you end up with a lot of viewers who
have no experience with the real practice, so it just can't be as funny.

Anim8rFSK...

Oh, sure. Into the 70s easily.

Anyone see the show? Anyone remember employer-home contacts from those
days?

weberm...

No, but I read a short essay about it here a few days ago:

JXStern...

I remember the show.

It was a bit of "high concept" even then, not a whole lot more
realistic than the contemporaneous "Beverly Hillbillies".

The attitudes still exist today, if you want to make partner at a big
law firm, or the like, it will help in most cases if you're either
side of a married couple who can entertain colleagues and clients.

Just like it helps if you're running for major public office.

Jude Cormier...

"Bewitched" reflected a lot of that same attitude as well in regards to
Darrin's advertising career and Samantha often having to entertain clients
in their home. A few episodes even had the client being nosy about Darrin
and Sam's married life.

Anim8rFSK...

I always thought that was weird. The Stephen's had a nice, but clearly
modest starter home. You'd think Larry Tate would take people to HIS

hancock4...

"Modest starter home"? I hope someday to own a home like that!

Kyle B....

Seriously - did you ever see the size of that living room? Or the
kitchen? And there were several sets of french doors opening to a nice
patio. Darren had a den downstairs, and there were at least three
bedrooms - the upstairs was big enough so that there was a rear
staircase to the kitchen.

Anim8rFSK...

Those rooms aren't very big. They SEEM big because there are walls
missing and the cameras are shooting into them from a distance. But if
that place was really there and they had to shoot inside it like a
reality show, they wouldn't be able to move.

There's a guy with a website will all sorts of pics of the house (which
doesn't even have a backside) and computer recreations and such. I
think that rear staircase would make his head explode. :-)

Now, they did seem to have nice big yards (at least front and back; on
the sides they're literally touching the other houses).

home, or the country club.

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