As chaotic as the holiday season is for the rest of us, imagine what it’s like in Hollywood. There might not be any snow to drive through, but you try coming up with a seasonal storyline every year that’s both fresh and inoffensive. It’s no wonder things got a little messy behind the scenes.
The Munsters
The Christmas episode “Grandpa Leaves Home” marked the first appearance of Pat Priest as Marilyn Munster after Beverley Owens left the series, so the opening credits were reshot. However, Priest is only seen from the side and has no lines in the episode, with the hope that was enough to convince dumb viewers not to notice she was suddenly a different person.
Bewitched
“Sisters at Heart,” in which racial tensions in Westport come to a head at a Stephens Christmas party, was written by a class of South Central high school students after visiting the set. Producers were so impressed that they made the episode with very few changes.
I Love Lucy
I Love Lucy broke a lot of ground, introducing multi-camera setups, TV’s first pregnant woman, and its first mixed-accent marriage. “The I Love Lucy Christmas Show” also gave us the first clip show, consisting almost entirely of Lucy and Ricky’s reminiscences of the previous six seasons.
Dragnet
Since it aired just five days after the FCC approved new standards that allowed for color broadcasting, the 1953 Christmas episode “Big Little Jesus” was the first network television episode to air in color. Of course, nobody has color TVs, so they still saw it in black and white.
The Simpsons
The “Santas of Many Lands” segment of the Christmas pageant in the series premiere “Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire” was inspired by creator Matt Groening’s second-grade report on Christmas in Russia, when he was told “because Russia’s a communist country, there no Christmas, please sit down, Matt.”
Married… With Children
Season two’s “You Better Watch Out,” in which the Bundys save the day after a hired Santa falls to his death from a helicopter in their backyard, was based on a real incident that occurred in Arizona in 1932. When a stuntman who was supposed to parachute as Santa showed up drunk, a mannequin was thrown in his place, horrifying the audience when its parachute didn’t open.
21 Jump Street
Likewise, the discovery that Sergeant Harry Truman Ioki is not Japanese but a refugee from Vietnam in “Christmas in Saigon” is based on actor Dustin Nguyen’s own experience fleeing the country as a child. The main difference was the death of Ioki’s parents in the process.
The Six Million Dollar Man
In 1976’s “A Bionic Christmas Carol,” the mansion owned by the Scroogey Horton Budge is the same one used 16 years earlier as the home of Norman Bates in Psycho. Let’s hope someone cleaned it out in the interim.
Wonder Woman
The building Diana parks at in the opening scene of “Pot of Gold” is part of the DC extended universe — it’s down the street from The Daily Planet on Lois & Clark: The New Adventure of Superman. It’s in London on Wonder Woman, but maybe Superman moved it.
Cheers
In “A House is Not a Home,” the house Diane wants to buy is the same one where she and Sam experienced an uncomfortable evening with the newly cohabiting Frasier and Lilith in “Dinner at EIght-ish.” Apparently, they were squatting in it.
Gilligan’s Island
The flashbacks of the castaways’ first day on the island in “Birds Gotta Fly, Fish Gotta Talk” is repurposed footage from an unaired pilot. If you look closely, you can see a bunch of characters who got left on the cutting room floor.
Family Ties
A flashback to Christmas past in “A Keaton Christmas Carol” shows Steven Keaton dressed as Santa. This is mostly because actor Michael Gross had grown a beard between seasons, so he needed Santa’s to cover up his own.
Happy Days
When the Cunninghams wrestle with an animatronic Santa Claus in “Guess Who’s Coming to Christmas,” one of the packages in its hand goes flying, hitting actor Randolph Roberts in the face. That wasn’t supposed to happen, and it gave Roberts a real black eye.
The Waltons
Although the Waltons lived in Virginia, their TV show was filmed in California, so of course, any time it snowed, it was CBS magic. In “The Best Christmas,” however, there’s a snowball fight, which Judy Norton revealed in 2020 was achieved with a crushed ice machine.
Taxi
The filming of “A Full House For Christmas” was the setting of the crew’s infamous confrontation with “Tony Clifton,” Andy Kaufman’s alter ego, who he’d negotiated to play Danny DeVito’s deadbeat brother. “Tony” caused such chaos, however, that “he” was fired, which was probably for the best. Kaufman would have been disappointed if it had actually worked.
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