Friends (1979)

Debuting March 25, 1979. ABC, 7/6pm Central

Friends was a limited-run series produced by Aaron Spelling specifically for ABC’s early Sunday evening 7/6pm Central ‘family’ timeslot. A one-hour ‘dramedy’ with laughtrack added, Friends presented three southern California 11-year-olds from different upbringings just beginning to navigate adolescence. Pete Richards (Charles Aiken) came from a seemingly traditional family, with parents Frank and Pamela (Andy Romano and Karen Morrow), while Nancy Wilks (Jill Whelan) experienced life within a broken home, living with her father Charley (Dennis Redfield). Completing the central trio was Randy Summerfield (Jarred Johnson), the son of a Black lawyer, Warren (Roger Robinson), and his wife, Jane (Janet MacLachlan).

Additional cast members included Charles Lampkin as Randy’s grandfather and Alicia Fleer as Pete’s older sister Cynthia. According to Bob Leszczak’s book on Single Season Sitcoms 1948-1979, the role of Cynthia was originally intended for someone else. Karen Morrow reported to Leszchak, “Helen Hunt was supposed to play my daughter, but when she saw that her part was greatly overshadowed by her younger brother on the show, she bowed out.”

Episodes of Friends would explore the typical “trials and tribulations of adolescence,” written in a way to resonate with young viewers. These included the awkward and formative experiences of dating, the complexities of family dynamics, the pressures and social landscape of school, the universal challenges of growing pains, and the importance of friendship. The initial episode, “Going Out”, had Pete decide to emulate Randy, who has already begun ‘going steady’ with a girlfriend. Smooth Randy teaches awkward Pete how to approach girls, with Nancy as his first target. Nancy falls for Pete on the first date, but after trying to arrange a second, finds Pete was just ‘playing the field’. Parents all around decide dating should wait a while.

In the untitled pilot (airing the second week), the trio all experience difficulty communicating with their parents. Pete’s dad is coming to see him play basketball, but Pete hasn’t told him he is benched most of the time. Randy wants an after-school paper route, but his dad is worried about their family’s successful image and doesn’t think it would ‘look right’. Meanwhile Nancy’s happy lifestyle with her dad is threatened when her very conventional aunt wants Nancy to come live with her. Anne Schedeen and Pat Crowley guest star; Crowley is the only actor to have appeared both in Friends (1979) and Friends (1994).

In “Grandfather Arrives”, a visit by Randy’s granddad Tug Summerfield charms the trio of friends but also sparks old family arguments between Randy and his dad. “Pressure” revolved around Randy’s failing grades due to his many extracurricular activities. Pete and Nancy try to help, but this leads to him expecting them to do his homework for him. When he tries cheating, this only leads to bigger troubles, getting him benched at basketball. Meanwhile Cynthia falls in with the wrong crowd and changes her hairstyle. Finally, in “A Case of Bad Timing”, when Pete is unexpectedly hospitalized for a tonsillectomy, he must face his fears while Nancy and Randy learn the true value of friendship.

The pilot of Friends was filmed a full year before the series aired, and the remaining four episodes filmed seven months later in October/November 1978. Production photos reveal the young cast had clearly aged in the meantime, as kids do. Friends aired its five-episode run over five consecutive Sundays in March and April 1979. The series was created by A. J. Carothers, a speechwriter, playwright, and screenwriter whose credits include creating Nanny and the Professor (1970-71), and writing for Hero at Large (1980), Making of a Male Model (1983), Goodnight, Beantown (1983-84), and The Secret of My Success (1987). Executive producers were Aaron Spelling and Douglas S. Cramer. The series was recommended viewing by the National Education Association, and it received the Film Advisory Board’s “Award of Excellence” as well as the Southern California Motion Picture Council’s “Golden Halo Award” for outstanding programming. The show, however, did not get a fall series pickup.

12-year-old Jarrod Johnson from Jackson, Mississippi was the most prolific and experienced of the trio of young actors. Jarrod had started acting at age four in The Final Comedown (1972). From there, I count over a dozen screen credits prior to Friends, including that of series regular on The Lost Saucer (1975) and Szysznyk (1977-78). He also appeared in a handful of ABC Afterschool Specials, including the infamous “My Mom’s Having a Baby” and its sequel “Where Do Teenagers Come From?” where a trio of youngsters receive very frank lectures on the facts of life by a school educator. The number of these appearances pale in comparison to how many TV commercials he was on. Oscar Meyer, Pringles, McDonalds, Crest, Kodak, Downey, Dairy Queen, Pepsi Light, Parkay, Accent Seasoning, the United Negro College Fund, and the National Bank of Detroit was the list I found. After Friends, Jarrod was in an episode of The Incredible Hulk, then he left acting. However, he did film his own Super 8 Star Wars fan film called Death Battles, co-written with friend Ramon Young.

Jill Whelan (also 12 at the time) remains the most recognizable of the Friends actors. She began acting while still in elementary school and started appearing in TV commercials. She was offered a role in a touring production of Annie about the same time she was ‘discovered’ by Aaron Spelling. This led to her turning down the supporting role on Annie to star in Friends. But she had already appeared as Captain Stubing’s daughter Vicki on The Love Boat the prior November. For the fall of 1979, Whelan was added as a regular cast member, growing up in front of the world over 190 episodes. She still sometimes takes an acting role and has been an ambassador for Princess Cruises for the past decade.

13-year-old Charlie Aiken hailed from Ridgewood, New Jersey and got his start in TV commercials. After taking the initiative to express interest in getting into this line of work, his mother dialed up Alfred Lutter’s mom (another Ridgewood child actor), who hooked them up with an audition. Then for a time circa 1977-78, Charlie was in demand as an all-American ‘everyboy’ appearing in some 25 ads for everything from Cheerios to Burger King, Cookie Crisp, Bubble Yum, Wonder Bread, Milk Bone, Kenner, Matchbox, and Pringles, where he asks for Roy Clark’s autograph and is fed potato chips instead. “Mmm, good!”

His break into acting came when he was cast in CBS TV pilot The Wilds of Ten Thousand Islands (1977), which went unsold. This led to an appearance on The Love Boat in the 1978 Halloween episode “Ship of Ghouls” some five months prior to the airing of Friends. His Love Boat casting even made the local paper back in South Carolina where grandma lived. He would commute from New Jersey to Los Angeles with his mother when he had acting jobs. In his spare time, he liked playing guitar, listening to albums, and skateboarding.

Like Johnson, he also left acting shortly after the series, appearing only in TV movie Hardhat and Legs (1980) according to IMDB, but I often find information on child actor profiles to be quite incomplete. Interestingly, TV critic Jerry Krupnick likened the visage of Aiken’s Pete to that original cherubic face of classic TV.

“If you have been patiently waiting all these years for the return of Beaver Cleaver, the little freckle-faced kid whose adventures in pre-puberty may have paralleled your own – or if you have heard your parents talk about big brother Wally and good old Eddie Haskell – or if you remember your own kids and the way they all grew up while Beaver remained the quintessential 11-year-old – then the waiting is over. The Beaver is back.

Well. not exactly the Beaver but a little freckle-faced 11-year-old who looks and acts just like America’s first TV kiddie hero, right down to the gleaming white front teeth that some orthodontist is itching to get his braces onto. The new boy in town is called Pete Richards and he’s one of three Friends who carry on in a series of that name tonight at 6 o’clock on ABC. Here we go again with a story of budding young love, of innocence, of childish peer cruelty and all those other fun things that made the Beaver such a favorite. Pete, as played to a smiling T-shirt by Charles Aiken, is best buddies with Randy Summerfield (Jarrod Johnson) and Nancy Wilks (Jill Whelan). They share the same school bus and the same lunch table, and it is easy to believe they are 11- year-olds.”

Normally, I would include a video of the show intro, clip, or a network promo; but over the last 45+ years, none seem to have ever surfaced. A single episode is viewable at the UCLA TV Archives, but apart from that, the series appears to be lost media and largely forgotten. Adding to the confusion was Stockard Channing’s series Just Friends, airing the prior year and revamped into The Stockard Channing Show, debuting the day before Friends…not to mention the enormously popular NBC sitcom that ran an incredible 10 seasons.

Of the NBC series, Karen Morrow told Bob Leszczak, “When most people see Friends on my resume, they think it’s the Courtney Cox show. To avoid a lengthy explanation, I usually just play along and tell them that I was the lady who lived upstairs with the annoying kid, to which they usually respond, ‘I remember that.'”

Some information sourced from Single Season Sitcoms, 1948–1979: A Complete Guide by Bob Leszczak.