The Feather and Father Gang

Today is the birthday of the recently late Harold Gould (1923-2013). Gould was a character actor who specialized in charming distinguished gentleman and was perhaps best known as a recurring regular on the sit coms Rhoda (1974-1978) and The Golden Girls(1985-1992), and for roles in films like The Sting (1973) and Love and Death (1974). Fewer people may remember that he briefly had his own series, on which he co-starred with the lovely Stefanie Powers, called The Feather and Father Gang.

On the show Powers played a gorgeous high-powered lawyer named Toni “Feather” Danton, whose father Harry (Gould) was a reprobate and con man, who got her into trouble half the time, and other half of the time used his con man skills and connections to help her solve crimes. I was a devotee of the show (as I was for nearly every show on ABC in the mid 1970s). The Feather and Father Gang was funny, and Powers and Gould definitely had a chemistry. Still, it only ran for 14 episodes, from 1976 through 1977. What awesome theme music!

For more about show biz past and present, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold. 

And don’t miss my new book Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube, just released by Bear Manor Media, also available from amazon.com etc etc etc