From Big Screen to Boob Tube

Topper: CBS/Landov

Best

Based on Thorne Smith's 1926 best-seller and a 1937 Cary Grant-Constance Bennett film, this sitcom — half witty, half slapsticky — turned a morbid premise funny. Anne Jeffreys and Robert Sterling were Marion and George Kerby, who die in an avalanche during a ski vacation but return home as ghosts to haunt the new owner, stuffy banker Cosmo Topper (Leo G. Carroll). The Kerbys were invisible except to Topper (and us) — bring on the sight gags! — and there was a third ghost: Neil, the Saint Bernard who'd tried to rescue them and was very fond of brandy.