'Dancing With The Stars' Season 14 Dream Casting
MTV Sets Premiere Date For Pauly D's 'Jersey Shore' Spinoff
The Five: Housekeepers
Being a housekeeper may seem like a simple job, but not if you play one on TV. Housekeepers on TV not only have to make sure everything stays clean, they also have to act as surrogate parents, stand up for the family when they need it, offer sage advice, and occasional scream and drop something fragile when they find a dead body. Who are your favorite housekeepers? I'll tell you some of mine:
Mr. Belvedere: He once worked alongside some of the greatest minds in history, and now he's matching wits with Bob Uecker. Quite a step down, I must say.
Rosie the Robot: I loved the Jetson's sassy robot, even if she didn't always seem to work properly. My only question is, if everything in your home is automated anyway, why do you need a housekeeper? If nothing else, I give her credit for being the only maid on this list who is herself a vacuum cleaner.
Florence Johnston: The Jeffersons was one of those shows I watched with my parents as a kid and then later caught in syndication. I don't think Florence was the first or last TV housekeeper with an attitude, but she's one of the most memorable. She knew that no matter how badly she was treated by Mr. Jefferson and how much he bloviated and gesticulated, he wouldn't be able to get along without her.
Edna Garrett: More commonly known as "Mrs. Garrett," she's most recognizable for her role on The Facts of Life, but before that she played the housekeeper on Diff'rent Strokes, the show which spun off The Facts of Life. I place Mrs. Garrett in the same category as Mrs. Cunningham from Happy Days, as I think both characters embodied a kind of maternal instinct that always seemed to come very natural to the actresses playing them.
Lurch: Trust me, if you want to keep solicitors to a minimum, you want Lurch as your butler. Also, the behemoth could play a mean harpsichord. Rumor is that actor Ted Cassidy, who played the role of Lurch and would later become the voice of Godzilla in a series of Hanna-Barbera cartoons, actually did play the harpsichord on The Addams Family.
7 Comments