I Married Joan is a television situation comedy that originally aired on NBC from 1952 to 1955. It starred veteran vaudeville, film, and radio comedienne Joan Davis as the manic wife of a mild-mannered community judge, Bradley Stevens (Jim Backus). The show announced itself each week as "America's favorite comedy show, starring America's queen of comedy, Joan Davis, as Mrs. Joan Stevens." Davis got the couple into and out of numerous wacky jams, with or without the help of her younger sister (played by her real-life daughter, Beverly Wills). Episodes usually began with Backus as Judge Stevens recalling yet another merry mishap, followed by the unfolding of the mishap, and ending with Stevens summing it up. I Married Joan aimed at the viewers making a hit out of I Love Lucy, a year older and already television's top-rated situation comedy. Despite Davis's physical and verbal comedy talents, however, the show lasted only three full seasons in first-run production before falling victim to weakening ratings. Various retrospectives of the show have suggested Joan Davis did it as much to help secure her daughter's as well as her own financial future; Davis herself did little if any show business work after the series ended, beyond shooting an occasional television pilot, before her unexpected death of heart failure in 1961. In the early 1980s, American cable television viewers saw I Married Joan once again: the CBN cable network bought the old episodes and began showing them, in 1982-83, in a late-night block that included another TV sitcom, Gale Storm's legendary My Little Margie. This resurrection of I Married Joan remained on the air almost as long as the show had been broadcast in the first place. The show is now said to be seen in scattered viewings on small, localised television stations, while copies of Davis's radio work of the 1940s remain in circulation among collectors.
