This is the opening for the sitcom, I Married Joan, which debuted on NBC in 1952 and lasted three seasons. Obviously conceived to replicate the appeal of I Love Lucy over on CBS, it starred Joan Davis as a dizzy wife who was always getting herself and her husband into trouble. Her long-suffering hubby was a judge played by Jim Backus and he spent a lot of time loving her despite her latest screw-up, whatever it was.
That and the theme song are almost all I remember about the content of the show. It hit syndication immediately after exiting NBC and the ABC affiliate in Los Angeles seemed to run it at almost any hour of the day. It was kind of like, "Gee, we don't know what else to put on. Let's run I Married Joan." I recall watching it at 8 AM as I got ready for school and I recall it being on when I got home…and there was one night when I was around eight when I awoke in the middle of the night from a terrible dream. It was so ghastly that I couldn't get it out of my mind and calm down enough to go back to sleep.
I didn't want to wake my parents but I had to start thinking about something else — anything else. For some reason, all I could think to do was to sneak out into the living room and watch a little TV with the sound kept low enough to not roust the folks. I tiptoed out, turned the volume down to zero, turned on the TV and waited as the picture came on, whereupon I planned to dial the audio up to the minimum level possible for me to enjoy whatever was on. As it turned out, what was on was I Married Joan…at 4:00 in the friggin' morning. I stood there in my jammies, staring at the set and thinking, "I must be the only person in the whole world watching this at the moment."
Here's the opening of I Married Joan. Catchy theme song.
