Neo-Retro-Crash TV Thursday:More that a bartender called Nick

Among the men credited with inventing the situation comedy and how it is perceived and accepted into modern times is Desi Arnaz, but this blog is not about Desi Arnaz.  Today we will discuss the smartest thing that was ever done at Desilu Studios.  

Every fanboy out here now thinks that we are going to talk about Star Trek.  There are a million blogs about Star Trek.  I believe half the damn internet is dedicated to it.  Star Trek is important in television history, but it isn't a sitcom.

I'm talking about the man called Sheldon Leonard.  I just heard the sound of people collectively uttering the word "who?" and scratching their heads.  Almost all of you have seen Sheldon Leonard and payed him no attention.  As an actor he was never a star or even a beloved sidekick.

In the shallow end of the pop culture pool, Sheldon Leonard is best known as Nick the Bartender in the beloved holiday classic It's a Wonderful Life.  In the deep end, He's the producer and director of some of the most classic shows that ever existed.

In the land before cable, when kids were raised by television shows that ran before they were born, Sheldon Leonard provided us with some of the things mthat have mad and continue to make us laugh until we hurt,

So today we all need to take a moment and ponder the wonderful legacy left to us by a guy who nobody remembers.  At some point in your life, Sheldon Leonard probably made you smile.  The man set a standard that modern television programs have yet to be able to live up to.

Listed below are just his television achievements.  You should read the included bio to learn about his achievements in Radio and Film.  Remember the next time your watching Dick Van Dyke fall down or Andy Griffith hand out some home spun wisdom, those moments were brought to you by Sheldon Leonard, a guy who was more than just Nick the Bartender.

Producer
The Andy Griffith ShowThe Danny Thomas Show (also as Phil Brokaw 1957–1961)
The Dick Van Dyke Show (also one on-screen appearance in the season 3 episode "Big Max

Calvada")
I SpyMy World and Welcome to ItGomer Pyle, USMC (also one on-screen appearance in the season 5 episode "A Star Is Not Born")
From a Bird's Eye ViewShirley's World

Director
The Andy Griffith ShowThe Danny Thomas ShowThe Dick Van Dyke ShowMy Favorite Martian (pilot only)

I Spy

Life and careerLeonard was born in New York City, the son of middle class Jewish parents Anna (Levit) and Frank Bershad,[2][3] and graduated from Syracuse University in 1929.

As an actor, Leonard specialized in playing supporting characters, especially gangsters or "heavies", in films such as It's a Wonderful Life (1946; as bartender Nick), To Have and Have Not (1944), Guys and Dolls (1955), and Open Secret (1948). His trademark was his especially thick New York accent, usually delivered from the side of his mouth. In Decoy (1946), Leonard uses his "heavy" persona to create the hard-boiled police detective Joe Portugal.
On radio, Leonard played an eccentric racetrack tout on The Jack Benny Program in the late 1940s and early '50s, and later in the TV series of the same name. His role was to salute Benny out of the blue in railroad stations, on street corners, or in department stores ("Hey Bud. C'mere a minute."), ask Benny what he was about to do, and then proceed to try to argue him out of his course of action by resorting to inane and irrelevant racing logic. Ironically, as "The Tout," he never gave out information on horse racing, unless Jack demanded it. One excuse the tout gave was "Who knows about horses?"
Leonard was part of the cast of voice actors on the Damon Runyon Theatre radio show (1948-1949). He was part of the ensemble cast of theMartin and Lewis radio show.[4] He also appeared frequently on The Adventures of the Saint, often playing gangsters and heavies, but also sometimes in more positive roles. Sheldon Leonard was also a regular on the radio comedy series The Adventures of Maisie in the 1940s. During the 1950s, Leonard provided the voice of lazy cat Dodsworth in two Warner Bros. cartoons directed by Robert McKimson.

In the adventure movie The Iroquois Trail (1950), Leonard played against type in the significant role of Chief Ogane, a Native American warrior, who pursues and fights the frontiersman Nat "Hawkeye" Cutler (George Montgomery) in a climactic duel to the death with knives.

Later in the 1950s and 1960s, he established a reputation as a producer of successful television series, including The Danny Thomas Show (aka Make Room For Daddy) (1953–64), The Andy Griffith Show (1960–68), The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961–66), and I Spy (1965–68). Leonard also provided the voice of Linus the Lionhearted in a series of Post Crispy Critters cereal TV commercials in 1963-64, which led to a Linus cartoon series that aired on Saturday (and later, Sunday) mornings on CBS(1964–66) and ABC (1967–69). He also was briefly the star of his own television show Big Eddie(1975), where he played the owner of a large sports arena. The show lasted for only ten episodes.

The character of Andy Taylor was introduced in a 1960 episode of The Danny Thomas Show, The Andy Griffith Show. Leonard is informally credited with developing the practice of using an episode of a series as a backdoor pilot episode for new series, in which a guest star is introduced as a new character with the intention of using this character as the basis for a new show.

Leonard also has the distinction (along with author Mickey Spillane) of being one of the first two Miller Lite spokesmen. Using his trademark accent, he told the audience, "I was at first reluctant to try Miller Lite, but then I was persuaded to do so by my friend, Large Louis." One of his last acting roles was a guest appearance on the TV seriesCheers, in which he played Sid Nelson, the proprietor of "The Hungry Heifer," Norm Peterson's favorite eating establishment.

Leonard died on January 11, 1997, at the age of 89,[5] and was buried at Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery in Culver City, California. Bill Cosby, whom Leonard cast in I Spy, described Leonard as "my last father" when he dedicated an episode of Cosby to both Leonard and his slain son Ennis Cosby. Bill Cosby also included an impersonation of Sheldon Leonard in one track of his 1966 hit comedy album Wonderfulness. The track, "Niagara Falls", describes Sheldon Leonard's honeymoon at Niagara Falls.

His name served as a namesake for the characters Sheldon Cooper and Leonard Hofstadter in the American sitcom The Big Bang Theory, as the writers are fans of his work.