Each episode of the show featured multiple stories of romance, usually with a comedic spin. Episodes were stand-alone, featuring various characters, stories and locations. The show often featured the same actors playing different characters in many episodes. In addition, a large, ornate brass bed was a recurring prop in many episodes.
Charles Fox's music score, featuring
flutes,
harp and
flugelhorn set to a contemporary pop beat, provided the "love" ambiance, which tied the stories together as a multifaceted romantic comedy each week. For the first season, the theme song was performed by
the Cowsills. Beginning with the second season, the same theme song was sung by the
Ron Hicklin Singers, also known as the voices behind
the Partridge Family (based on the Cowsills), among others, featuring brothers
John and
Tom Bahler (billed as the Charles Fox Singers). This second version of the theme was kept for the remainder of the series, as well as on most episodes prepared for syndication. The title is loosely derived from a 1961 Italian comedy film called ''
Divorzio all'italiana (Divorce, Italian Style), which received Academy Award nominations in 1962 for Best Director for Pietro Germi and for Best Actor for star Marcello Mastroianni. The film was later spoofed in 1967 by Divorce, American Style'', starring
Dick Van Dyke. The
snowclone "(xxx), (nationality) Style" became a minor cultural catch-phrase as the 1960s progressed. The original series was also known for its 10- to 20-second
blackouts between the featured segments. These were performed by a house troupe that featured future
Rockford Files cast member
Stuart Margolin, future
Vega$ leading lady
Phyllis Davis and a young character actor,
James Hampton, who was known to television audiences of the era as Private Dobbs from the TV series
F-Troop. These clips allowed the show to be padded to the required length without adding to the main segments. They generally consisted of risqué,
burlesque-style
comedy-of-manners visual jokes. During its first four years on ABC,
Love, American Style was popular with viewers and received decent ratings, although it never ranked among the top 30 shows in the
Nielsens. For a few seasons, it was part of a lineup of ABC Friday night programs that included
The Brady Bunch,
The Partridge Family,
Room 222, and
The Odd Couple. Some of the show's segments also served as
pilots for proposed television series. Many never made it beyond the pilot stage, but two resulted in a series: • On February 11, 1972, the show presented the animated segment "Love and the Old-Fashioned Father." This would become the pilot to a
first-run syndicated animated series by
Hanna-Barbera,
Wait Till Your Father Gets Home, which debuted that fall. • Two weeks later, on February 25, 1972, the show aired a segment titled "Love and the Television Set", a story about
Richie Cunningham, his family and friends. The premise and characters were later used for the 1974 television series
Happy Days, and the episode would later be recognized as a
de facto pilot for the series. (It had originally been produced as a pilot for
New Family in Town, which was not picked up). For syndication, the segment was retitled "Love and the Happy Days."
Happy Days, in turn, launched an extensive franchise of spinoffs into the 1980s. The series was also flexible enough to include repurposed pilots that had already failed or been retooled. One first-season example was "Love and the Good Deal," which was actually the original, unaired pilot for the
sitcom adaptation of the
Neil Simon play and
movie Barefoot in the Park, with a different cast than the series. At the start of the 1973–1974 fall season, the ratings for
Love, American Style and
Room 222 had plummeted. As a result, both shows were canceled mid-season. The series received several
Emmy nominations, including two for Best Comedy Series for 1969–70 and 1970–71. The show subsequently became a
daytime standard on ABC from June 1971 to May 1974, and later in syndication, since it was readily edited down to a half-hour by the proper interweaving of the clips with a main segment. It effectively made nine seasons out of five. This allowed for heavy
stripping. ==Episodes==