When TV historians tell you that the sit-coms That Girl, Julia, and The Mary Tyler Moore Show were the first American TV series to feature a working woman who wasn’t a domestic servant as the lead, they’re just wrong.
The actual honor goes to a sit-com called Private Secretary that debuted almost at the dawn of television – 1953 – and ran quite successfully for 5 seasons on CBS. The show was built around the talents of actress Ann Southern, who had risen to fame in the 1940s playing brassy, wisecracking heroines with hearts of gold, most notably as the star of a series of B-movies for M-G-M as aspiring showgirl Mazie Ravier.
Moving to television was a shrewd career move as, by 1953, Sothern was already in her mid-40’s and well past the sell-by date for most showgirl roles in the movies. In Private Secretary, she played the title character, Susie McNamara, although she was much more what we would now call a Personal Assistant than secretary for a very powerful talent agent, Peter Sands, played by Don Porter.
The show also featured Ann Tyrell as the agency’s easily flustered receptionist and Susie’s best friend, Vi Praskins. Jesse White, who would later find his greatest fame as the Maytag Repairman, had a recurring role as “Cagey” Calhoun, a much lower-rent rival agent to Sands.
Most of the plots centered around schemes Susie came up with to help her boss. The schemes would then backfire, but somehow manage to work out favorably for her boss by the fade out. The show began by alternating the same time slot with The Jack Benny Program and always performed well in the ratings. In fact, the show was renewed for a 6th season when Sothern, who owned a piece of the show, got into a dispute with the producer over how big a share that should be.
Sothern walked away from Private Secretary, along with series regulars Porter, White & Tyrell to launch The Ann Sothern Show, which ran an additional 3 seasons. Meanwhile, Private Secretary reruns were retitled Susie and had a long, successful run in syndication, showing up as late as 1990 on Nickelodeon’s Nick at Nite program block.
Sothern continued to work on stage and television until a back injury sustained while appearing in a play finally forced her to reduce her work schedule. Porter went on to work for most of his life also achieving some fame as father to girl surfer, Gidget in both Gidget Goes to Rome and the short-lived ABC sit-com that starred Sally Field.
Private Secretary appears to have fallen into public domain, but to date, only around 16 episodes (out of more than 100) have been available on home video.
