HAPPY ODD COUPLE DAY!
Here’s a tease for the movie version showing on TCM
And here’s the original TV intro; the voiceover part was dropped in later seasons:
I’m recalling a Mark Evanier post of six months ago, addressing that TV opening:
“On November 13th, Felix Unger was asked to remove himself from his place of residence. That request came from his wife. Deep down, he knew she was right, but he also knew that someday he would return to her. With nowhere else to go, he appeared at the home of his childhood friend, Oscar Madison. Sometime earlier, Madison’s wife had thrown him out, requesting that he never return. Can two divorced men share an apartment without driving each other crazy?”
Specifically, the part about Felix returning to his wife: was that inserted because of fear that Felix and Oscar might be perceived to be…(horrors) gay by the American television viewing audience? Yet that concern apparently DIDN’T exist in the movie version or the play that was produced, of course, in an earlier time.
If his observation is accurate, and I believe it is, why was that done? I suspect it’s because the producers’ thinking was that people go to to the theater and the movies, but TV comes into one’s house, and delicate sensibilities needed to be protected from such “untoward inferences”.
ROG