In the 1960s and 70s, US TV networks were broadcasting a plethora of situation comedies, many of which featured families in a variety of shapes and sizes [1]. Child actors were integral to these programs, and part of their job was to perform the genre’s comedic conventions, make the audience laugh, and help sitcoms appeal to a family audience. Child actors performed their characters’ “childness” to help represent these idealised – and, ideally, funny – American families.

While Karen Lury [2] suggests that (adult) audiences expect child actors to simply behave as children rather than be conscious of their acting choices, by contrast young sitcom actors must knowingly perform a version of childhood in order to effectively contribute to the comedic makeup of the program. To explore how they might do this within the framework of an otherwise adult-created television show, I will consider two examples from The Brady Bunch (1969-1974).

The first is from ‘The Personality Kid’ (3:6, 1971). In this episode, Peter (Christopher Knight) decides to “improve” his personality after a friend tells him that he doesn’t have one. In one instance, he comes downstairs and has a conversation with his mother, Carol (Florence Henderson), and housekeeper, Alice (Ann B. Davis) about dinner, all while maintaining a Humphrey Bogart impression. This involves rolling his shoulders to hunch forward, baring his front teeth, elongating his vowels, and altering his pronunciation of “s” sounds.

The episode derives humour from the incongruity between Peter as a ‘normal’ boy partaking in a casual conversation about food, and the exaggerated characteristics of the much older film star. Director Oscar Rudolph emphasises this exaggeration with close-up shots of Peter’s face as he bares his teeth, and with the repetition of the line “pork chops and apple sauce, that’s swell”, which emphasises Peter’s exaggerated pronunciation. Rudolph therefore positions the audience to laugh at Peter for his ridiculousness. The episode’s humour is framed by a controlling adult perspective that is complicated by the presence of the child actor, who possesses some agency over the comedic success of each scene they are in.

Specifically, that Knight explicitly incites humour via an exaggerated performance suggests that the actor must be aware of his own absurdity, despite the program suggesting it is a consequence of Peter’s age and immaturity. An adult humorous sensibility may inform the writing and direction, but the child actor’s ability to play to this humour suggests an awareness of their own expected childishness. The presence of the child performers therefore undermines the way in which this episode frames Peter to be laughed at for his immaturity, as the actor-child cannot be as immature as the character-child.

The episode ‘Will the Real Jan Brady Please Stand Up?’ (2:15, 1971) further highlights this tension in the relationship between a child and adult character, and between the child character and the child actor. In this episode, middle girl Jan (Eve Plumb), buys a wig to differentiate herself from her sisters. To make her purchase, Jan visits a shop on her own and receives help from the shopkeeper (Marcia Wallace) as she tries several on. Most simply, this scene derives humour from the incongruity between Jan’s fair, youthful features, and the large, boldly coloured wigs, but it also finds comedy in the tension between Jan as an inexperienced shopper and her performed knowingness.

For example, Jan briefly considers purchasing a wig titled “midnight temptress”, but, after some solemn deliberation, rejects the wig on the premise that she might not “be up that late”. The laughter in the audience-response track played after this line implies that comedy is drawn from the incongruity between Jan’s performance of knowledge (that she might understand what a “midnight temptress” is) and her indication of childishness (that she goes to bed early), and between her serious consideration of this ‘adult’ wig and her naivety as a twelve-year-old girl. Marcia Wallace’s performance emphasises this, as the shopkeeper winkingly treats Jan as she might an adult shopper. An example of this occurs in the exchange:

Jan: “Well, I’m older than I look. I’m twelve.”

Shopkeeper: “That old? You carry it very well.”

The comedy here is located in the audience’s understanding of the shopkeeper’s joke, and, more specifically, her acknowledgement of Jan’s naiveté, precociousness, and young face. This scene therefore encourages its audience view Jan from the perspective of the adult shopkeeper and laugh at a child shopping for a wig. There exists an irony when we acknowledge that, in creating a successfully humorous performance, Plumb must be both aware and largely in control of this humour. Lury writes that the ‘successful child actor negotiates [the] contradiction’ between the ‘naturalistic behaviour’ that adults expect of child actors and the conscious acting that is required to perform a scene [3]. Here, Plumb’s knowingness as a child actor exists in tension with naivety of the character she plays, and yet the former must exist for the latter to be funny.

The family sitcom genre then, and perhaps comedy more broadly, complicates Lury’s contention that child performers must not be ‘seen to be acting’, lest the audience feels duped [4], as the actors and audience must share an understanding of the genre’s comedic conventions for that performance to be read as comedic. The actor must knowingly perform childhood for that childhood to be funny.

My broader project examines children’s contributions to the family sitcom genre, specifically in the 1960s. The project considers how historical child audiences engaged with the family sitcom genre and how child actors contributed to their textual conventions. As part of this research, I am currently conducting a survey to learn about people’s experiences watching 1960s family sitcoms as children. If you would like to share your family sitcom memories, please visit the survey link here.

 

Ellie McFarlane is a PhD candidate in the School of Media and Communication at RMIT University. Her research explores children’s contributions to the 1960s U.S. family sitcom TV genre as actors and audience members.

 

Footnotes

[1] Morowitz, L., 2007, ‘The Monster Within: The Munsters, The Addams Family and the American Family in the 1960s’, Critical Studies in Television, 2(1), 35-56, https://doi.org/10.7227/CST.2.1.5

[2] Lury, K., 2010, The Child in Film: Tears, Fears and Fairytales, IB Tauris & Co., London.

[3] Ibid. p. 152.

[4] Ibid. p,150.