Saturday, February 9, 2013

Saturday Morning's Greatest Hits: Won't You Fly Home, Bill Spacely? (1963)

While "Epp Opp Ork Ah Ah" gets all the attention from The Jetsons' lone season in primetime, it wasn't the only song played on the show.

In the episode, "Miss Solar System", Jane (Penny Singleton) goes undercover, suspicious of George (George O'Hanlon) being assigned by his boss, Cosmo Spacely (Mel Blanc), to be a judge at the Miss Solar System beauty pageant. So Jane becomes Miss Western Hemisphere, and while we're not sure that is also Penny doing the singing, Jane wows 'em with "Won't You Fly Home, Bill Spacely?", a parody of "Won't You Come Home, Bill Bailey?". You've probably seen an excerpt of this track used in a Boomerang house ad to promote The Jetsons.



As you can probably tell, the plot was lifted from any number of I Love Lucy episodes where Lucy was trying to cut in on Ricky's act at the Copa. Somehow, this made the big reveal that much more predictable.

9 comments:

magicdog said...

I do remember this! Even as a kid I knew the song was a knockoff of "Bill Bailey", but enjoyable nonetheless.

I don't know if Penny Singleton actually sang the song or not; from what I've gathered she did sing earlier in her career.

hobbyfan said...

One of toondom's greatest mysteries, still unsolved. Anyone else want to jump in?

Steve Kay said...

How about the barbershop quartet episode from the 80s series? That one was funny too.

Whoever sang for Jane in this episode, whether it was Penny Singleton or not, was the same singing voice for Wilma Flintstone in "The Happy Household"

hobbyfan said...

I need the episode title for that episode if you've got it, Steve.

Thanks, though, for the heads-up on "Happy Household". I'll see if I can pull that at some point, along with the Flintstones ep that had Fred & Barney singing in a bathtub........

Steve Kay said...

It was "The Odd Pod"

No Problem, hobbyfan :-) I just remembered another one. In "The Rock Vegas Story" Betty sings a number with Barney and I think it's that same singing voice again this time for Betty. This episode and "The Happy Household" are both from season 2.

hobbyfan said...

I remember the Rock Vegas Story. I thought that might actually have been Mel Blanc & Bea Benaderet, two radio veterans, dueting on "When You're Smiling". I'll have to do some further research. I do know it's definitely Blanc singing his part.

Steve Kay said...

You may be right about Bea Benaderet. I haven't seen the Vegas episode in a while.

hobbyfan said...

I'm going to finally hunt those eps down if YouTube has them available.

Unknown said...

I think it is jean vanderpyl wilma Flintstone.