Note: This is one of my list of the 400 Most Notable TV Shows Set in New York City, in honor of the 400th Anniversary of the founding of NYC - the full explanation and list of titles can be found by clicking my username (DeanNYC) and looking for the list on my Profile Page.
Reviews of each show are being posted under their respective titles.
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Barry Kemp is a name you might know from comedy television. He created "Newhart," the series where Bob Newhart played a Vermont Innkeeper. Kemp was also responsible for the first ever comedy miniseries: "Fresno," a parody of nighttime soaps, which starred Carol Burnett, Dabney Coleman, Charles Grodin and Teri Garr.
"Newhart" had just ended its run and Kemp offered CBS a new series he co-created; the network snapped it up. "Princesses" premiered on Friday Nights at 8pm in the Autumn of '91.
But one of the worst kept secrets about the series at the time was the behind the scenes rifts happening during production.
Julie Hagerty was the star of the show, and for good reason. She had the comic pedigree, having been in such classic films as "National Lampoon's Animal House," and "Airplane!" and having worked well with directors Woody Allen and Albert Brooks in the 1980s. So, she received top billing. Hagerty played Tracy, college roommate and best friend to Fran Drescher's character, Melissa.
Tracy was to marry a businessman she only knew for six weeks, and who set her up in a gorgeous duplex apartment right on Central Park with skyline views.
Twiggy entered the scene, as the semi-actual Princess, Georgina, a woman who married into the title for an archipelago between Great Britain and France, and who was previously a "showgirl," now widowed from her royal husband. She also was promised the apartment and was already there when the others arrived.
When Tracy discovered her fiancé's philandering and multiple ex-spouse ways, she breaks off the engagement, but stays in the apartment along with Melissa and Princess Georgy. If this sounds a little convoluted, you're keeping pace with all of the television critics of the day!
Here's the point: Despite Julie Hagerty's wealth of comic experience, it was the little known Fran Drescher who was the breakout star, getting most of the funniest lines and just owning every scene she was in.
I tried to confirm exactly what happened, but I wasn't able to dig up the specific dirt. However, we could put one and one together and note that Hagerty walked off the show after the fourth episode aired. Princess, indeed. It was stated that this was a mutual agreement between the production company and Hagerty, but, come on! That's just the PR talking.
This obviously complicated matters for CBS as they were also dealing with the fact that the star of another sitcom, Redd Foxx of "The Royal Family," died of a heart attack the same week that Hagerty exited. But the network kept it simple. Instead of trying to find a replacement for Hagerty and to retool the program (that was doing really poorly in the ratings anyway), they simply canceled it outright.
New York played a part because of the glamor of the city, the odd jobs the characters were doing to make it, while living in a kind of palace and the need for the three characters to rely on each other.
In some ways, this program was a precursor for a more successful one coming a few years later about a group of ladies trying to have it all in NYC, "Sex and The City." For that, "Princesses" deserves a nod.
But, the other point is that Fran Drescher and Twiggy bonded and stayed friends long after the series ended.
And it was on a plane flight to England, several years later, that Fran was making to visit Twiggy, that she coincidentally met a CBS programmer. They started talking, touched on this series and the exec offered Ms. Drescher a chance to create her own show. The program she eventually pitched to the network was a little sitcom that was titled: "The Nanny."
One final notable thing - the show's theme song, "Someday My Prince Will Come," was lifted from the first Disney animated feature length film, "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" and covered by The Roches!
