Everyone who watches TV gets the occasional crush on some performer. It can be triggered by a look, a smile, a swimsuit…often, something utterly non-sexual. But something about someone on the screen makes a connection with you. This is especially prevalent during adolescence, although I have one friend who's in his late sixties and still catching every appearance of Ann Miller, hoping she'll be wearing something that shows her legs. One of my many crushes, actually managing to momentarily displace Mary Tyler Moore, involved a show called Harry's Girls that ran on Friday nights, commencing in September of 1963.
Larry Blyden played a song-and-dance man who was touring Europe in a U.S.O. revue with three young, pretty ladies. The storylines mostly centered around him becoming their father-figure, big-brother and all-around protector, sheltering them from horny servicemen.
I was thirteen that year…a very dangerous age, hormone-wise, and I could have fallen for any of the three women. Hell, a thirteen-year-old boy could get aroused by the picture of Betty Crocker on the pancake flour box. My particular lusting opted for Susan Silo. She's the brunette — third from the left — in the above photo.
How much did I enjoy watching Susan on Harry's Girls? Well, when J.F.K. was shot, a goodly portion of my grief was over the fact that news coverage preempted Harry's Girls and my chance to see her that week. Did Oswald have to shoot the president on a Friday? And then, the following January when the series was cancelled, I was truly crushed. It never re-ran anywhere, and though she continued to turn up on other shows, I more or less forgot about lovely Susan. Laura Petrie got me again on the rebound.
More than a quarter-century later, I was at a Christmas party at the offices of Cunningham-Escott-Dipene, which is one of the top agencies for voiceover performers. This was when I was voice-directing the Garfield cartoon shows, employing many of their clients. One of the agents there, Paul Doherty, introduced me to a delightful older gent named Lou Krugman who, alas, is no longer with us. I am unable to find a photo of Lou to post with this but turn on TV Land at almost any hour and you'll see him, especially on various old sitcoms starring Lucille Ball. (He played the director in that episode where Lucy got the chance to play a showgirl in a murder mystery. On The Dick Van Dyke Show, he played Nunzio, the fellow who sold Rob Petrie a wholesale fur coat. Here's a link to his listing in the Internet Movie Database. As you'll see, he was in just about everything at one time or another.)
I chatted a while with Lou and then Paul came over and said, "Mark, I'd like you to meet Susan Silo."
"Susan Silo?"
Yes, Susan Silo…looking just about the same as she did on TV when I was thirteen. I immediately launched into a bad vocal rendition of the theme song from Harry's Girls. This shocked her because, as I said, the show has aired nowhere since the first week of 1964. There were then no tapes around, no place I could possibly have learned the theme, but to have remembered it all those years. (She has only recently latched onto cassettes of a few episodes.) I immediately hired her to play a role on a Garfield that taped the following week — a role which, at that moment, I had yet to write. She was so good, she appeared on many subsequent episodes, and many other shows I've voice-directed.
I saw Susan at the Hollywood Collectors' Show last Saturday and it reminded me that I oughta tell the above story. We also should start a campaign to get some cable channel to run Harry's Girls and I should direct you to her web page at www.susansilo.com, where you'll see what a busy actress she is, both on-camera and doing voiceovers, and you can listen to voice demos. If you should happen to fall in love, just remember: I saw her first.
