One of the most entertaining ongoing conversations during this Semiquincentennial summer has been about depictions of the American Founding in popular culture. Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton has reigned supreme in recent years, and before that there was another popular Broadway musical, 1776. Mel Gibson’s film The Patriot has plenty of fans, as does the HBO miniseries John Adams. The list of formative literature about the period includes Longfellow’s “Paul Revere’s Ride,” Cooper’s The Spy, and Esther Forbes’s Johnny Tremain. But I enjoy discussing a more obscure — and less successful — work, a busted sitcom pilot called 1775. Starring Oscar nominee Ryan O’Neal (Love Story, Paper Moon), this program had a solid premise with remarkable, albeit unrealized, potential to depict the Revolutionary era in clever ways.
When CBS aired 1775 on Saturday, September 5, 1992, the network billed it as a “special presentation” in an effort to lure viewers from its competition on the other networks: the college football opener between the No. 1 ranked Miami Hurricanes and the Iowa Hawkeyes, an episode of Cops, and a rerun of The Golden Girls. O’Neal stars as Jeremy Proctor, a Philadelphia innkeeper with a fashionable wife named Annabelle (Lesley-Anne Down) and three unmarried daughters. Naturally, Jeremy’s worried about money. Revolution is in the air and that’s bad for business. The rebellious youngest child is tired of riding the old family nag and wants a horse of her own. The vain and pretty middle child wants a boyfriend, but she must wait for her nerdy, homely older sister Maude to get married first. Desperate to reunite Maude with her ex, Jeremy and Annabelle decide to take the girls to the upcoming Freemason’s Ball. Tickets and gowns are expensive, though, so Jeremy asks for money from his brother-in-law, George Washington (Adam West). Although Jeremy’s improbably quick trip to Mount Vernon is fruitless, Annabelle gets the money from her sister Martha.
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