The Phil Silvers Show

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077: Sgt Bilko Presents

The motor pool platoon has a new recruit who's written a play that's opening in Roseville. Bilko scents an opportunity to exploit the lad's talent to make a bit of money as a theatrical producer.

It's not a great one, but it's not bad.

I googled the actor who played the young playwright, Gordon Polk. Sadly he died three years later at the age of 37, during heart surgery. He appeared with Steve McQueen in a film called Wanted: Dead or Alive about a year after this Phil Silvers Show episode was made.

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078: Papa Bilko

Opens with a charming flashback to Normandy in 1944, showing Bilko being generous and friendly to a French family there. On occasion, for flashbacks to the war in previous episodes we've seen Bilko sporing a full head of hair, but here he's shown, more realistically, with thinning and receding hairline.

Actually I googled images of Phil Silvers from the '40s, and I think he may have been wearing a hairpiece in real life.

Anyway .. back in the present-day late '50s, a handsome young private by the name of Pearly is very popular at Fort Baxter due to his natural winning way with women. Bilko is anxious to have him transferred to the motor pool platoon, in the hope of gaining access to the same social circles, or at the very least having a crack at some of the cast-offs.

And when Bilko manages this, he has Pearly provide lessons in attracting the fairer sex.

Meanwhile, the little girl from the French family turns up to see "Papa Bilko" at Fort Baxter and she's a rather attractive young woman now. The master sergeant becomes hilariously over-protective.

An unusually original idea, for once not revolving around a money-making scheme. Pretty good one. I think you could even call it a rom-com. Of sorts.

I recognised Pearly immediately - not someone I could have put a name to, or even another film or TV part, but Google tells me he's Robert Webber, who appeared with Henry Fonda in Twelve Angry Men the same year. Later, he was in The Dirty Dozen and Private Benjamin.

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079 Bilko Talks In His Sleep

Bilko smooth-talks one of the waitresses at the local diner into a date at the most expensive restaurant in town (poor Joanie, eh?) but he's broke.

How to raise the necessary cash? Clearly there's a way to con it out of the men of the motor pool. But it turns out that Bilko talks in his sleep, which - unfortunately - allows Grover and Ritzik to cash in on his devious little secrets.

The manner in which he gets his own back stretches credulity way past breaking point, but it's pretty funny, especially with the wry little twist at the end.

I liked this one a lot.

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080: Cherokee Ernie

The motor platoon men are going on furlough. But when they come to collect the money they've saved for the trip from the welfare fund, Bilko is somewhat reluctant to hand it over. It transpires, eventually, that he's lost it on the horses again.

Quite why Bilko's men are still willing to trust him to look after their cash is a bit of a mystery, but as with all Phil Silvers Show episodes - you've got to cut it a bit of slack.

A young corporal named White Eagle who's a Native American tells Bilko about a lucrative poker game. "For a guy who's got a pack of cards, it's a paradise", he says.

There's some entertaining dialogue here about "the bond between the red man and the white man", and the young Native American uses the term "honest injun" to reinforce the veracity of one of his remarks.

I wonder if perhaps those are the sort of script touches we wouldn't see in a 21st century sitcom. Bilko even does an impromptu Red Indian dance, complete with the whoop with hand over mouth. It must be said though that the Native American characters are all shown in a positive light, as normal, modern Americans - apart from the elderly members of the family, who look like rejects out of a Western.

Bilko manages to demonstrate that Oklahoma is still legally owned by the Cherokees and becomes the central figure in a national news story. You could argue that this is one of those episodes that goes a little too far.

The term "Native American" is not actually used in this episode; the term "Indian" is used very freely.

David White, who played Darren's boss in Bewitched is back in this one. Interesting how the same bit part players often keep coming back as different characters.

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081: Bilko Buys a Club

Bilko wants to buy some land to open a nightclub. Meanwhile, a number of National Guardsmen are coming to Fort Baxter for two weeks, and Bilko sees an opportunity to make some money out of them. Especially when one of them turns out to be a millionaire (yep, we've had this plot idea before).

But Bilko doesn't know which one, and this story is basically a farce based on mistaken identity.

Average, but I liked it.

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082: Lieutenant Bilko

Bilko's finally leaving the Army; it's his last day. His men urge him to stay but he's determined to leave.

But it turns out that Bilko received a temporary commission to Lieutenant during the war, and by an administrative error, it was never cancelled.

He's been Lieutenant Bilko the whole time. And of course his first thought on finding this out is to calculate the back pay that he's missed - $60 a month (!) since 1943!

The plot takes a bizarre twist with Lt Bilko being assigned to a mission to go 30 miles up in a balloon, wearing a pressure suit.

This episode was of course filmed a couple of years before Gagarin became the first man in space and it's implied that Bilko would become the first human being in the ionosphere. Why the unfit head of the motor pool at an anonymous camp in Kansas might be chosen for this duty is not explained. It doesn't actually happen. But more importantly it just has nothing to offer to the plot.

It's not without its amusing moments but it's a bafflingly odd one.

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083: Bilko at Bay

Bilko's off to New York with Rocco and Ernshaw (Again? Really? Maybe it has something to do that the show was filmed there) and he has a hot date.

They go there by car, stopping off for free meals with various relatives of the motor pool platoon along the way.

But when they stop off at the Doberman residence - a guest house, apparently - they find two fugitive bank robbers hiding out there, posing as fishermen.

Similar to the old Steptoe & Son episode The Desperate Hours. I wonder if this old Phil Silvers Show story was an influence?

Either way, it's very good. Possibly brilliant. Another departure from the usual Bilko-tries-to-get-rich formula.

One of the bank robbers is played by the same actor who played a disreputable reporter earlier in a second series episode.

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084: Bilko F.O.B. Detroit

Bilko has to go to Detroit to pick up some new trucks, and the Colonel's a little worried that he might stay away from the camp a little longer than necessary - like he did the previous time.

Naturally, as soon as Bilko and his men arrive in the Motor City, the wily master sergeant looks for an excuse to stay as long as possible. But to make sure their stay is as comfortable as possible, Bilko has to resort to some devious manipulation.

It's another bizarre one, revolving around Bilko's idea to persuade the truck manufacturer to sell basic training kits to the US Army.

There are of course some serviceable gags, but it doesn't really work.

What does F.O.B stand for? I don't know.

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085: Bilko and the Flying Saucers

Frank from Kojak is back, this time playing a sergeant in the US Army. The episode opens with him reminiscing about Bilko with a club singer who remembers him from the war, where they both served (she was in the USO) in the South Pacific.

Interesting that most of Bilko's WW2 backstory refers to the Far Eastern theatre, though we do see him serving in Normandy one one occasion. Whether anyone in the US Army (very senior officers notwithstanding) did serve in both the Far East and Europe, I'm not sure.

Anyway .. said club singer (an attractive blonde woman) gives Bilko a call out of the blue, which presents him with an urgent need to go and visit her in Washington at the weekend.

An order for UFO sightings to be reported to the Pentagon gives him the opportunity he needs. The '50s were, of course, the decade of the Flying Saucer - and the golden age of science fiction. There's even a subtle reference in this story to the classic 1951 film The Day the Earth Stood Still.

Not a bad one, especially funny in the way Bilko dupes Ritzik into his Flying Saucer story to get him to corroborate it.

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086: Bilko and the Colonel's Secretary

Colonel Hall's secretary has been posted elsewhere, which presents Bilko with a problem. He needs to make sure the new one will be similarly pliable in helping him get round the Colonel, and keeping the motor pool platoon out of duties they don't want.

Unfortunately, when she finds out that Bilko wangled her transfer to Fort Baxter, she becomes profoundly uncooperative - because she didn't want to be transferred away from her previous post (and boyfriend). Bilko and his men find themselves lumbered with the worst possible work details on the camp.

It's a formula we've seen a few times in the past - Bilko conniving to get rid of an awkward officer (or an officer's secretary in this case). But it works. It's not a great one but it's OK. I must say though, Bilko's final act of manipulation, after his first attempt fails, is inspired.

Ronald Colman, the Hollywood actor who started his career in silent films, gets a mention in this one. He died a few months after this was first shown.

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087: Doberman the Crooner

When Bilko discovers that someone on the camp has a wonderful singing voice, he naturally sees an opportunity to make a lot of money.

But who is it? After a few rounds of delightful mistaken identity farce, we find out that it's Doberman.

But he only sings well when he has a cold.

It's a good one, but it peaks early.

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088: Bilko Presents Kay Kendall

The English acress and comedienne Kay Kendall is coming to Roseville, as part of a promotional tour for her new movie.

Meanwhile, Bilko is putting on a music festival with "daring folk dancers" (WACs in risque costumes) at Fort Baxter. But when Colonel Hall sees a dress rehearsal and refuses to allow it on the camp, he's forced to attempt to persuade a theatre in the town to put on his show.

But when the devious master sergeant runs into Ms Kendall at a hotel in Roseville, he decides to persuade her to participate in his theatrical plans. Initially he attempts this by impersonating a stereotypical upper class Englishman. Beyond hilarious.

Kay Kendall, who of course plays herself in this, was a bona fide movie star. She's off-the-scale charismatic and has a wonderful comic touch here. You may well be wondering why then, like me, you hadn't heard of her. And that's because she died at the age of 32 in 1959, from myeloid leukemia. I have no doubt that she'd have had a notable career into the '70s and '80s and would have been a household name to this day if she'd lived.

Frank from Kojak is back again, this time playing a press agent. I think he must hold the record for the number of different Phil Silvers Show characters.

Interestingly this one was co-written by Neil Simon, later of The Odd Couple fame.

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089: Bilko's Cousin

Bilko's cousin, a young man called Swifty, is joining the army and as luck would have it, his first posting is Fort Baxter.

This is for me one of the all-time great Phil Silvers Show episodes. I've remembered it well since I first saw it in the '70s.

Despite having played a different (but similar) character earlier in the same series, Dick Van Dyke is back to play Swifty.

Bilko is delighted at the news that Swifty is coming to Fort Baxter, assuming that he'll have a similarly devious and cunning partner for his dubious enterprises. Imagine the poor master sergeant's disappointment when young Swiffington Bilko turns out to be a likeable but gormless hillbilly.

Given that Dick Van Dyke played a likeable but gormless hillbilly in the last show he was in, perhaps he was fortunate not to end up typecast! But he does it beautifully well. His timing and comic airhead manner are impeccable. It's easy to understand why he became a star in his own right. And he absolutely elevates this episode to timeless classic status.

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090: Bilko's Pigeons

An order comes through from the Pentagon that carrier pigeon training and breeding is to be discontinued. This is bad news for Bilko especially, as - under the pretence of looking after the camp's pigeons - he's actually been running a pigeon racing betting business.

On the bright side, the pigeons turn out to be valuable birds.

It's based on a gag about Bilko repeatedly selling the same homing pigeons. Nothing if not predictable, but I did enjoy watching the wily master sergeant outsmarting Ritzik. Also there's a particularly funny scene where Grover and Ritzik get one over on him. This turns out in the end to be a very good one.

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091: Cyrano de Bilko

One of Bilko's men, a shy but likeable sort of chap called Harold whom we haven't seen before, falls for a local girl called Natalie. Bilko helps him organise a date with her.

Unfortunately, the poor lad doesn't make a good impression. So Bilko writes her a love letter for him (hence the Cyrano reference in the title).

I must say, Natalie is an absolute babe. It's troubling to see these beautiful women from the late '50s, then to think that they're either dead or very old now.

I loved this one. It's a very clever farce based on the old mistaken identity schtick. Equally interestingly, Bilko's devious cunning and guile is spent here entirely in the pursuit of defending one of his men against what he sees as a threat of being duped, then trying to get himself out of the mess he finds himself in. Not trying to line his own pockets.

This third series definitely hasn't been as consistent as the first two, but it's heartening to see that there are a few belters and this is the third in a row.



Funnily enough Lee Meriwether, who plays Natalie here, went on to play Catwoman in the film version of Batman in 1966. Keen readers (is anyone actually reading these?) may recall that the last Bilko babe who prompted some Google research on my part - Julie Newmar, aka "Stacked Susie" - also played Catwoman (but in the TV series).

Lee also appeared in The Time Tunnel and Star Trek in the '60s. She's 87 and still with us, happily.