Love, American Style
Genre	Romantic comedy Anthology
Starring	Varied per episode
Theme music composer	Charles Fox Arnold Margolin
Country of origin	United States
No. of seasons	5
No. of episodes	108(list of episodes)
Production
Running time	42–44 minutes (1969–70 and 1971–74) 22–25 minutes (1970–71)
Production companies	Parker-Margolin Productions, Inc. Paramount Television
Original release
Network	ABC
Release	September 29, 1969 (1969-9-29) – January 11, 1974 (1974-1-11)
Related
Happy Days Wait Till Your Father Gets Home

Love, American Style is an Americananthology comedy television series that aired onABC from September 29, 1969, to January 11, 1974. The series was produced byParamount Television. During the 1971–72 and 1972–73 seasons, it was a part of ABC's Friday primetime lineup that includedThe Brady Bunch,The Partridge Family,Room 222, andThe Odd Couple. It featured some of the earliest work of future starsDiane Keaton ("Love and the Pen Pals"),Sally Struthers ("Love and the Triangle"),Albert Brooks ("Love and Operational Model"), andHarrison Ford ("Love and the Former Marriage").Room 222 starKaren Valentine appeared in four episodes.Brady Bunch starAnn B. Davis andThe Partridge Family starDave Madden each appeared in two episodes.

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Each episode of the show featured multiple stories of romance, usually with a comedic spin. Episodes were stand-alone, featuring various characters, stories and locations. The show often featured the same actors playing different characters in many episodes. In addition, a large, ornate brass bed was a recurring prop in many episodes.

Charles Fox's music score, featuringflutes,harp andflugelhorn set to a contemporary pop beat, provided the "love" ambiance, which tied the stories together as a multifaceted romantic comedy each week. For the first season, the theme song was performed bythe Cowsills. Beginning with the second season, the same theme song was sung by theRon Hicklin Singers, also known as the voices behindthe Partridge Family (based on the Cowsills), among others, featuring brothersJohn andTom Bahler (billed as theCharles Fox Singers). This second version of the theme was kept for the remainder of the series, as well as on most episodes prepared for syndication.

The title is loosely derived from a 1961 Italian comedy film calledDivorzio all'italiana (Divorce, Italian Style), which receivedAcademy Award nominations in 1962 forBest Director forPietro Germi and forBest Actor for starMarcello Mastroianni. The film was later spoofed in 1967 byDivorce, American Style, starringDick Van Dyke. Thesnowclone "(xxx), (nationality) Style" became a minor cultural catch-phrase as the 1960s progressed.

The original series was also known for its 10- to 20-secondblackouts between the featured segments. These were performed by a house troupe that featured futureRockford Files cast memberStuart Margolin, futureVega$ leading ladyPhyllis Davis and a young character actor,James Hampton, who was known to television audiences of the era as Private Dobbs from the TV seriesF-Troop. These clips allowed the show to be padded to the required length without adding to the main segments. They generally consisted of risqué,burlesque-stylecomedy-of-manners visual jokes.

During its first four years on ABC,Love, American Style was popular with viewers and received decent ratings, although it never ranked among the top 30 shows in theNielsens. For a few seasons,^[quantify] it was part of a lineup of ABC Friday night programs that includedThe Brady Bunch,The Partridge Family,Room 222, andThe Odd Couple.

Some of the show's segments also served aspilots for proposed television series. Many never made it beyond the pilot stage, but two resulted in a series:

• On February 11, 1972, the show presented the animated segment "Love and the Old-Fashioned Father." This would become the pilot to afirst-run syndicated animated series byHanna-Barbera,Wait Till Your Father Gets Home, which debuted that fall.
• Two weeks later, on February 25, 1972, the show aired a segment titled "Love and the Television Set", a story aboutRichie Cunningham, his family and friends. The premise and characters were later used for the 1974 television seriesHappy Days, and the episode would later be recognized as ade facto pilot for the series. (It had originally been produced as a pilot forNew Family in Town, which was not picked up). For syndication, the segment was retitled "Love and the Happy Days."^[1]Happy Days, in turn, launched an extensive franchise of spinoffs into the 1980s.

The series was also flexible enough to include repurposed pilots that had already failed or been retooled. One first-season example was "Love and the Good Deal," which was actually the original, unaired pilot for thesitcom adaptation of theNeil Simon play andmovieBarefoot in the Park, with a different cast than the series.^[2]

At the start of the 1973–1974 fall season, the ratings forLove, American Style andRoom 222 had plummeted. As a result, both shows were canceled mid-season. The series received severalEmmy nominations, including two for Best Comedy Series for 1969–70 and 1970–71. The show subsequently became adaytime standard on ABC from June 1971 to May 1974, and later in syndication, since it was readily edited down to a half-hour by the proper interweaving of the clips with a main segment. It effectively made nine seasons out of five. This allowed for heavystripping.

A decade after the show left the air, a new version aired onABC's daytime schedule from December 23, 1985 to August 15, 1986 entitledNew Love, American Style (including an updated version of the theme performed byLou Rawls), but was canceled after only eight months because of low ratings againstThe Price Is Right on CBS. A third edition, starringMelissa Joan Hart andMariska Hargitay among others, was shot as a pilot for the 1998–1999 television season, but was not ordered as a series. Nevertheless, ABC aired the pilot on February 20, 1999.^[3]

• 1969-70 - #58, 13.2 rating^[4]
• 1970-71 - #47, 17.2 rating^[5]
• 1971-72 - #33, 19.3 rating^[6]
• 1972-73 - #41, 18.4 rating^[7]
• 1973-74 - #75, 11.7 rating^[8]

On November 20, 2007,CBS DVD (distributed byParamount) releasedLove, American Style, Season 1 Volume 1 on DVD inRegion 1. Season 1, Volume 2 on DVD was released on March 11, 2008.^[9]

Wikimedia Commons has media related toLove, American Style.

• Love, American Style atIMDb
• Release ofLove, American Style on DVD planned

• American Broadcasting Company original programming
• 1960s American anthology television series
• 1969 American television series debuts
• 1974 American television series endings
• 1960s American comedy television series
• 1970s American comedy television series
• Television series by CBS Studios
• American English-language television shows
• 1970s American anthology television series

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