That Girl
| That Girl | |
|---|---|
That Girl logo
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| Genre | Sitcom |
| Created by |
Bill Persky Sam Denoff |
| Starring |
Marlo Thomas Ted Bessell Lew Parker Bernie Kopell Rosemary DeCamp |
| Theme music composer | Sam Denoff Earle Hagen |
| Opening theme | "That Girl" Theme Song |
| Composer(s) |
Warren Barker Luchi De Jesus Dominic Frontiere Harry Geller Earle Hagen Walter Scharf Carl Brandt |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Original language(s) | English |
| No. of seasons | 5 |
| No. of episodes | 136 (list of episodes) |
| Production | |
| Executive producer(s) | Sam Denoff Bill Persky Marlo Thomas Danny Thomas |
| Producer(s) |
Danny Arnold Jerry Davis Sam Denoff Bernie Orenstein Bill Persky Saul Turteltaub |
| Camera setup | Single camera |
| Running time | 22–25 minutes |
| Production company(s) | Daisy Productions |
| Distributor |
Metromedia Producers Corporation Worldvision Enterprises CBS Television Distribution (current) |
| Release | |
| Original network | ABC |
| Picture format | Color |
| Audio format | Monaural |
| Original release | September 8, 1966 – March 19, 1971 |
That Girl is an American sitcom that ran on ABC from 1966 to 1971. It starred Marlo Thomas as the title character Ann Marie, an aspiring (but only sporadically employed) actress, who moves from her hometown of Brewster, New York, to try to make it big in New York City. Ann has to take a number of offbeat "temp" jobs to support herself in between her various auditions and bit parts. Ted Bessell played her boyfriend Donald Hollinger, a writer for Newsview Magazine; Lew Parker and Rosemary DeCamp played Lew Marie and Helen Marie, her concerned parents. Bernie Kopell, Ruth Buzzi and Reva Rose played Ann and Donald's friends. That Girl was developed by writers Bill Persky and Sam Denoff, who had served as head writers on The Dick Van Dyke Show (with which Thomas's father, Danny Thomas, was closely associated) earlier in the 1960s.
That Girl was one of the first sitcoms to focus on a single woman who was not a domestic or living with her parents. Some consider this show the forerunner of the highly successful The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and an early indication of the changing roles of American women in feminist-era America. Thomas' goofy charm, together with Bessell's dry wit, made That Girl a solid performer on the ABC Television Network, and while the series, in the overall ratings, never made the top thirty during its entire five-year run, it did respectably well.
At the end of the 1969–1970 season, That Girl was still doing moderately well in the ratings, but after four years Thomas had grown tired of the series and wanted to move on. ABC convinced her to do one more year. In the beginning of the fifth season, Don and Ann became engaged, but they never actually married. The decision to leave the couple engaged at the end of the run was largely the idea of Thomas. She did not want to send a message to young women that marriage was the ultimate goal for them, and she worried that it would have undercut the somewhat feminist message of the show.
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