This is the 1956 Christmas episode of the Ozzie and Harriet program, as rebroadcast in 1964 with an introduction and postlude. We get to see how the Nelsons changed in the intervening eight years, and see David and Rick’s wives and children, and hear the dreamy Rick sing “The Christmas Song.”

I want to run right out and buy one, and design my home around it. Unfortunately, that’s not possible quite yet. This was designed for a contest sponsored by V-Ray, makers of 3D rendering technology for the Rhino modeling software, and the computer itself doesn’t actually exist yet. But it was awarded one of the top three prizes and has been getting a lot of attention, and I’m sure that one of the computer manufacturers will want to bring this beauty to market.

Philco PC from Dave Schultze on Vimeo.

“Grandpa’s Christmas Visit” was broadcast on December 22, 1955, during the show’s second season. Grandpa Collins comes from Joplin, Missouri, to visit Bob, Margaret and Chuck. He looks an awful lot like an older version of Bob, and has the same way with the girls, and, as you might imagine, much merriment ensues…

Grandpa’s Christmas Visit from the Internet Archive:

After a terrible day at the office, Gart gets on the commuter train home to Connecticut. It’s dark and snowy outside, and the weary Gart drifts off to sleep. When he wakes up, the conductor is calling out the stop for Willoughby. The train has been transformed into something from the nineteenth century, and when he looks out and sees a summer afternoon in a small town of 100 years ago, with a band playing, a couple of barefoot boys walking by with fishing poles, and a horse-drawn wagon waiting at the station. When he questions the conductor about the town, he’s told it’s a quiet place where a man can slow down and “live his life full measure.” When he goes to the steps to look out, the train jars back into motion, and Gart wakes up in his seat, back in the present.

Gart’s life at work and at home become more and more difficult, and he has two more dreams of Willoughby on the train. The third time, he gets off and walks through the town square, where people greet him by name and he feels a sense of calm and peace he hasn’t known in many years. Has he escaped to a new life or jumped to his death?

I watched this episode for the first time when I was ten years old, and I remember it well. I knew nothing about the world of advertising, of course, but I knew what it was like to have troubles and to long to escape to another place and time, where it’s always sunny and the band plays on.

The ending was shocking to me, unbearably sad but also sort of beautiful in a way. It was a vision of what Heaven might be like. My father had died a few months before, and I worried over the idea of an afterlife a lot. The image of Heaven I had from church and especially from the book The Littlest Angel by Charles Tazewell just didn’t make sense to me. I couldn’t picture my father sitting on a cloud playing a harp and polishing his halo. But after seeing this episode, I thought that maybe when your body dies, the real you goes someplace nice like Willoughby. I found this thought very comforting.

I have been watching all the Twilight Zone episodes again, and realizing what an important influence they were on me when I was growing up. They made me think, much more so than anything we read or talked about at school.

[Update 4/16/2011: Removed the link to the full episode which is no longer available on the CBS website.]

Born Josephine Cottle, her career began in 1940 when she won a national talent contest called Gateway to Hollywood. The official prize was a movie contract RKO contract under the name Gale Storm. She fell in love with contest’s male winner, Lee Bonnell, who she married in 1941.

In the 1940s, Gale Storm appeared in many B movies but her big break came in 1952, when “My Little Margie” premiered as a summer replacement for “I Love Lucy.” Both shows were set in Manhattan and revolved around madcap women and their crazy schemes which often involved dress-up and deception, always backfired and both amused and exasperated the men in their lives.

But Margie was younger than Lucy and single, living alone in a Fifth Avenue penthouse with her handsome, widowed father, businessman Vern Albright. Many of the plots revolved around Margie’s attempts to advance her father’s career or protect him from romantic entanglements. When things fell apart, as they always did, Margie would do her classic “Margie gurgle” and Vern would say, “Well…that’s my little Margie!”

This program was never a critical favorite, but it was lively and popular, and I remember it well. I loved Margie’s glamorous lifestyle with her handsome, indulgent father. I thought her behavior was appalling, but loved her high spirits and was fascinated by the way she got away with the most outrageous antics just because she was so adorable.

“My Little Margie” was an unusual show because it began on television but crossed over into radio. The program ran from 1952-1955, and Gale Storm went on to new comedy, “The Gale Storm Show,” (known in syndication as “Oh, Susanna”) in which she played cruise director Susanna Pomeroy. Storm, who recorded several songs during the 1950s, sang on her new program, and three of her records from this period were commercial successes : “I Hear You Knocking,” “Teenage Prayer” and “Dark Moon.”

In later years, she continued to perform on the stage and in guest spots on television programs. Her 1980 autobiography, “I Ain’t Down Yet,” revealed her struggle and eventual success overcoming alcoholism.

Storm’s first husband died in 1987, and in 1987 she married former TV executive Paul Masterson, who died in 1996. Gale Storm and Lee Bonnell had three sons, Phillip, Peter and Paul, and a daughter, Susanna. Storm is survived by her children, eight grandchildren, four great-grandchildren, plus a lot of fans for whom she will always be Our Little Margie.

My Little Margie Episode from the Internet Archive