by Moe Zilla

Created on: June 07, 2008   Last Updated: June 08, 2008

In the summer of 1978, I watched an hour-long comedy that was based on the Archie comic strip. It was shown in prime-time, using live actors in sitcom-style stories, padded out with some shorter one-joke sketches. I loved it, and hoped the pilot would become a regular series. But it drew disappointing ratings, and soon disappeared - leaving only
my strange teenaged memories of a live-action 1970s Archie.

I saw live-action Archie get in real trouble when live-action Reggie handed him the answers for a history test. Moose had to pass the test before he could play in the big football game, and while Archie and Jughead had helped him study, Reggie thought it'd be easier to help him cheat. It was a standard high school plotline, with one moment of drama when Ms. Grundy busted Archie with the answers.

"What's on that paper, Archie?"
"Words?"
"And what do the words spell?"
"'Help?'"

Of course, the story found a happy ending when Moose later forced Reggie to tell the truth. But the jokes were funny, even as they moved the story along.

"Archie, look! I got an A on my test!"
"That's a C, Moose..."

The red-headed teenager was chasing a new kind of fame. The movie "Grease" was the biggest film of 1978, and "Happy Days" was the #1 TV show in America. The networks wanted another nostalgic show about high school students - and because variety shows were popular, this show also included a couple of musical numbers. 30 years later, the songs still stick in my head - including one in which each character calls another to either invite them on a date in song or to break a date they'd had previously scheduled. ("Gotta break our date tonight, I gotta go now, I gotta go now...")

A second pilot was later created by ABC which one fan described as having a "more modern" feel. I remember laughing that this new Archie show had a theme song that was obviously trying to sound hard-edged, cool, and relevant to audiences in 1978. ("We're in the middle / of the road. / Just a teenager...") But I'd thought the songs worked better when they going for a gentle retro feel. I can still remember Betty singing wistfully about her dream "to live next door to Archie..."

The few people who saw the show have fond memories of it. (Archie's dad was played by Gordon Jump, who went on to play the befuddled station manager on "WKRP in Cincinnati.") It was later re-broadcast as an ABC "Saturday Comedy Special," but I'll always remember that it started out as the template for a primetime TV series that never was.

I'm one of the few people who ever witnessed the spectacle of a live-action 1970s Archie.

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