Synopsis of TV Show

"Hello Larry (Hello Larry…)
Two kids to raise alone just ain't that easy (Hello Larry...)
The questions they are asking aren't that breezy,
The answers you are giving don't always pay,
But that's the way it is with kids today…”

After his divorce, sitcom dad Larry Adler moved himself and his two teenage daughters from Los Angeles to Portland, Oregon. He got a job as the host for a radio talk show, and from the looks of it, this single dad had his act together. His callers phoned in, he answered with his trademark "Hi, you're on the air with Lar," and then he doled out his patented funny and outspoken advice. Between calls, he joked around with portly engineer Earl and flirted with lovely producer Morgan. Easy, right?

But at home, Larry’s teenage daughters had real-life problems. They missed their mom (played by Shelly Fabares, who occasionally came to town for guest appearances), and their friends back in L.A. They had problems with boys and with kids at school who weren't especially enamored of that brash new radio host blabbing over the airwaves who also happened to be their dad. So, the confidence with which Larry advised his callers didn’t always apply to the way he raised his own kids, and from this premise, a sitcom was born…

The tone and single-parent premise of the show was certainly reminiscent of One Day at a Time, and rightly so—executive producers Dick Bensfield and Perry Grant worked on both shows. Hello, Larry aired after another single-parent sitcom, Diff’rent Strokes, and in an attempt to boost Larry’s ratings, the network tried to inject a little of the Drummond family popularity into the Adlers. Backstory was created: Philip Drummond and Larry were in the army together, and Drummond’s corporation owned the Oregon radio station where Larry worked. This way, cast members from Diff’rent Strokes could appear a handful of times in Larry, and vice versa.

In the fall of 1979, Meadowlark Lemmon, formerly of the Harlem Globetrotters, joined the cast (as himself), playing a local sporting goods storeowner. And incidentally, even though it's not as much fun as stunt casting tidbits, in the winter of 1979 the show was often interrupted or pre-empted altogether for news reports on the Iranian Hostage Crisis. By the time that international brouhaha was settled, Hello, Larry was off the air, ending its run in April of 1980.

Release History of Prime Time Show

1/26/79 - 4/30/80 NBC

TV Sub Categories

comedy

Television Network

NBC

Television Studio

T.A.T. Communications

TV Cast

Larry Alder McLean Stevenson
Leona Wilson Ruth Brown
Diane Alder (1979-80) Krista Errickson
Marion (occasional) Shelley Fabares
Tommy Roscini (1979-80) John Femia
Morgan Winslow Joanna Gleason
Meadowlark Lemon (1979-80) Meadowlark Lemon
Earl George Memmoli
Ruthie Alder Kim Richards
Henry Alder (1980) Fred Stuthman
Diane Alder (1979) Donna Wilkes

Other Prime Time Links