The Adventures of Tugboat Annie (1958)

Overview

The Adventures of Tugboat Annie is a 1957 Canadian-filmed television series starring Minerva Urecal as Annie Brennan, the role originated by Marie Dressler in the 1933 screen classic Tugboat Annie. Urecal was the fourth actress to portray Tugboat Annie; the others were Dressler, Marjorie Rambeau in Tugboat Annie Sails Again, and Jane Darwell in Captain Tugboat Annie. Norman Reilly Raine's stories of the salty tugboat captain Annie Brennan, a character based on the life of Thea Foss, first appeared in prose form in the weekly US journal Saturday Evening Post in the late 1920s. She was soon developed into a movie character, depicted in three films, portrayed by a different actress in each. Finally, in 1954, a television series was commissioned by the independent American production company TPA. The pilot took two whole years to complete, at a then-record cost of $129,000. Elsa Lanchester, Jay C. Flippen, and Chill Wills were all in line for major roles at one point or another at this early stage. The series was filmed in Toronto harbor and was first shown in Canada, having attracted ratings good enough to interest American television stations. What had succeeded in Canada proved a disappointment in the United States, where the viewing audiences had presumably become accustomed to greater sophistication than the simplistic humor of this series.