You probably won't make it through this one but here it is if you want to peek. This is Where There's Smokey, an unsold TV pilot produced by Desilu in 1959. It stars Soupy Sales as a bumbling fireman and Gale Gordon as his long-suffering chief, and I wonder if it was ever humanly possible to make something funny out of the premise of a bumbling fireman. Rod Amateau, who directed it and co-wrote, later did some pretty successful shows ranging from The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis all the way to The Dukes of Hazzard, but you can kinda see why this one didn't sell. It was a pretty complete flop in '59 and for a long time, they didn't even play it off on one of those "Vacation Playhouse" anthologies the networks used to run, airing unsold pilots in the summer.
Eventually, Soupy was popular enough from his other work that they aired it on one of them around 1966. As a loyal Soupy fan, I remember watching it and being pretty disappointed. I was also puzzled at first by the presence of Mr. Gordon, who was by then a fixture on The Lucy Show and in no need of another series. That was before I realized I was watching something that had been on the shelf for a long time.
You might want to watch a little. Jack Weston and Louise Glenn are in there, plus there's narration by Paul Frees. The player below should run the whole show in three parts…but I'll bet you don't watch all three. Thanks to some reader of this site named "OM" for letting me know about this one.
