The Brett Somers Centennial

TV personality Brett Somers (Audrey Dawn Johnston, 1924-2007) was born 100 years ago this day.

In America you take your opportunities where you can get them, and sometimes that can lead to bizarro left turns. Hence, despite the fact that she was a trained and gifted actress, Somers became best known as a tv game show panelist: she appeared on over 1,500 episodes of Match Game, starting in 1973. I meant “Bizarro” therefore by the literal DC Comics definition of the pseudo-word. Her success on the show (like that of fellow panelist Charles Nelson Reilly) was backwards, upside down. Ostensbily, back in the day, your success as an actor, writer, or whatever got you a little side work sometimes on game shows and similar platforms as a “celebrity”. In Somers case, the side work metastasized and swallowed up the purported real career. And she truly, she throve in the form. Match Game has a deserved reputation as one of the most entertaining game shows in tv history, built around the quick and naughty wit of its panelists. Not only was Somers fast on the draw, and visually striking with her colorful and garish ’70s outfits and enormous eyeglasses (did she and Reilly go to the same guy?), but she periodically filled the air with her harsh and raspy cackle. She was a living and breathing counterpart to Wayland Flowers‘ “Madame” character.

But I chose not to lead this post with an image from Match Game for a reason. For she WAS an actress. And inverate TV lovers have at least a vague idea of what lay beneath. In 1952 she became a member of the Actors Studio; the following year she married fellow actor Jack Klugman. Her OTHER best known credit was her stunt-cast recurring role as Oscar Madison’s wife Blanche on The Odd Couple during the same years as her peak celebrity on the Match Game. She was perfect in the role. As in her Match Game appearances, she carried with her an air of notoriety. She seemed like someone who had LIVED.

One gets the impression that she came from dough. Originally from New Brunswick, Canada, she moved to America’s bohemian capital Greenwich Village in the early ’40s and ended up marrying a rich businessman. But that washed out and she began to pursue acting in earnest. While she had plenty of regional theatre credits, and was in one short-lived Broadway play (Maybe Tuesday, 1958, by the Sid Caesar writers Mel Tolkin and Lucille Kallen), like Klugman she initially worked on live television dramas like Goodyear Playhouseand Kraft Theatre. Her screen credits are fewer than three dozen, mostly in television. In 1965 she had small supporting roles in two films, both literary adaptations: John O’Hara’sA Rage to Live, and William Inge’s Bus Riley’s Back in Town. In the run-up to The Odd Couple, she got a couple of nice showy turns in the early ’70s. She guest starred on The Mary Tyler Moore Show as Rhoda’s Aunt, and she and Klugman did an episode together on Love, American Style (a clear stepping stone to The Odd Couple). Later both Somers and Klugman would be guest stars on The Love Boat (because of course they would) though they were in separate episodes. Somers was also a regular on the short-lived New Perry Mason Show (1973), and made a guest appearances on shows like Barney Miller, The Bob Crane Show, and CHiPs.

Somers and Klugman were quietly divorced in 1977. Her TV career wound down by 1982. Although she did keep a hand in live theatre. Go here for a terrific little snapshot of her at the stage of her life, by character actor Rory Lance.