Hot l Baltimore was a short-lived 1975 television situation comedy

Situation comedy

A situation comedy, often shortened to sitcom, is a genre of comedy that features characters sharing the same common environment, such as a home or workplace, accompanied with jokes as part of the dialogue...

 series adapted from the hit off-Broadway

Off-Broadway

Off-Broadway theater is a term for a professional venue in New York City with a seating capacity between 100 and 499, and for a specific production of a play, musical or revue that appears in such a venue, and which adheres to related trade union and other contracts...

 play by Lanford Wilson

Lanford Wilson

Lanford Wilson was an American playwright who helped to advance the Off-Off-Broadway theater movement. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1980, was elected in 2001 to the Theater Hall of Fame, and in 2004 was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters...

.

Premise and run

The show took place in the fictional Hotel Baltimore in Baltimore, Maryland, and drew its title from the cheap establishment's neon

Neon sign

Neon signs are made using electrified, luminous tube lights that contain rarefied neon or other gases. They are the most common use for neon lighting, which was first demonstrated in a modern form in December, 1910 by Georges Claude at the Paris Motor Show. While they are used worldwide, neon signs...

 marquee, which had a burned-out letter "e" that had never been replaced. The half-hour series premiered January 24, 1975, and was produced by Norman Lear

Norman Lear

Norman Milton Lear is an American television writer and producer who produced such 1970s sitcoms as All in the Family, Sanford and Son, One Day at a Time, The Jeffersons, Good Times and Maude...

 for ABC

American Broadcasting Company

The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...

. (It was, in fact, the first Norman Lear property to air on ABC.) The cast included Conchata Ferrell

Conchata Ferrell

Conchata Galen Ferrell is an American actress. She is best known for playing Berta the housekeeper in the CBS sitcom Two and a Half Men, for which she received two Emmy Award nominations in 2005 and 2007.-Personal life:...

, James Cromwell

James Cromwell

James Oliver Cromwell is an American film and television actor. Some of his more notable roles are in Babe , for which he earned Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor, Star Trek: First Contact , L.A...

, Richard Masur

Richard Masur

Richard Masur is an American actor who has appeared in more than 80 movies during his career. From 1995-1999, he served two terms as president of the Screen Actors Guild . Masur sits on the Corporate Board of the Motion Picture & Television Fund.-Biography:Masur was born in New York City to a...

, Al Freeman, Jr.

Al Freeman, Jr.

Al Freeman, Jr., M.Ed. is an African-American actor and director....

, Gloria LeRoy

Gloria LeRoy

Gloria LeRoy is an American character actress best remembered for having played voluptuous Mildred "Boom-Boom" Turner in classic 1970s sitcom All in the Family, as well as Bobbi Jo Loomis, wife of army-airforce buddy "Duke" Loomis in the earlier All in the Family episode "The Threat"...

, Jeannie Linero

Jeannie Linero

Jeannie Linero , is an actress best known for playing Lucy Mancini in The Godfather and The Godfather: Part III...

, and Charlotte Rae

Charlotte Rae

Charlotte Rae is a prolific American character actress of stage, comedienne, singer and dancer, who in her six decades of television is perhaps best known for her portrayal of Edna Garrett in the sitcoms Diff'rent Strokes and The Facts of Life...

.

The series had several controversial elements, including two primary characters who were prostitutes (one of whom was an illegal immigrant) and one of the first gay

Gay

Gay is a word that refers to a homosexual person, especially a homosexual male. For homosexual women the specific term is "lesbian"....

 couples to be depicted on an American television series. Because of the story lines, the show was the first network television show to have a warning at its opening, cautioning viewers about mature themes. The network supported the show and gave it a full publicity campaign, but it failed to win an audience and was canceled after thirteen episodes; its last telecast was June 6, 1975.

Significance for Norman Lear

This series is notable as the first failure for producer Norman Lear after a very successful streak of mega-hit TV series, beginning with All in the Family

All in the Family

All in the Family is an American sitcom that was originally broadcast on the CBS television network from January 12, 1971, to April 8, 1979. In September 1979, a new show, Archie Bunker's Place, picked up where All in the Family had ended...

(1971) and continuing with Sanford and Son

Sanford and Son

Sanford and Son is an American sitcom, based on the BBC's Steptoe and Son, that ran on the NBC television network from January 14, 1972, to March 25, 1977....

, Maude

Maude (TV series)

Maude was an American television sitcom that was originally broadcast on the CBS network from September 12, 1972 until April 22, 1978.Maude starred Beatrice Arthur as Maude Findlay, an outspoken, middle-aged, politically liberal woman living in suburban Tuckahoe, Westchester County, New York with...

, Good Times

Good Times

Good Times is an American sitcom that originally aired from February 8, 1974, until August 1, 1979, on the CBS television network. It was created by Eric Monte and Michael Evans, and developed by Norman Lear, the series' primary executive producer...

and The Jeffersons

The Jeffersons

The Jeffersons is an American sitcom that was broadcast on CBS from January 18, 1975, through June 25, 1985, lasting 11 seasons and a total of 253 episodes. The show was produced by the T.A.T. Communications Company from 1975–1982 and by Embassy Television from 1982-1985...

, among others.

External links

• The Hot l Baltimore at Internet Off-Broadway Database