All Riled Up: ATL 4, STL 0

To those for whom baseball is their only touchstone, William Bendix is known as the eponymous hero of The Babe Ruth Story, a not very good movie. Bendix also had a few good dramatic roles, particularly in Hitchcock’s Lifeboat. But he became famous on the radio, and later on television, for his role as Chester A. Riley in the long-running series The Life of Riley. Now I’m old, but I’m not old enough to have remembered when radio programs were a thing. I’m not even old enough to have remembered the original broadcasts of The Life of Riley, which ran (with Bendix after an aborted attempt with Jackie Gleason) from 1953 to 1958, so I was two when it was cancelled. But The Life of Riley was a staple of afternoon rerun TV in my childhood, which featured a lot of other now-forgotten comedies like My Little Margie along with the more famous Lucy and The Honeymooners. For those who have literally no idea what I’m talking about, full episodes are available on YouTube, but prepare yourself for a somewhat more gentle comic experience than is typical today. But the basic idea is that Riley gets into trouble and then out of trouble. (I did a long search for the origin of the phrase, ‘the life of Riley,” meaning an easy life, and while I got an answer, it’s not all that interesting. But then, I suffer so that all of you might live The Life of Riley.)

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