The New York Times wrote, this week: "The show, which at various points in its
run was 15 minutes or a half-hour long, told gently humorous tales of the
fictional Johnny, a banker, and Mary Kay, a homemaker. Mr. Stearns, who wrote
the episodes, often drew from the couple’s lives for inspiration."
The program left the DuMont Network in 1948. It soon became
an NBC show, and then, for a time, aired
on CBS. For part of 1949, when it returned to NBC, it was seen five nights a
week. The show remained on the air until
1950.
Johnny Stearns died in California in December of 2001, at
age 85. The New York Times reported this
week that Mary Kay Stearns died in November, in California. She was 93.
In The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV
Shows, 1946-Present (Ballantine Books, several editions), historians Brooks and Marsh wrote about
the popularity of the Mary Kay and Johnny show:
"That sponsors were quite uncertain of the
effectiveness of TV at this early stage...is illustrated by the following. A few weeks after the program premiered, the
sponsor, who had no way of knowing whether anyone was watching (there were no
audience ratings), decided to conduct a test by offering a free mirror to the
first 200 viewers who wrote in their comments on the program. Just to be safe,
the company ordered an extra 200 mirrors so as not to disappoint anyone..." Brooks
and Marsh wrote that 8,960 letters were
received from TV viewers.
