Stanley is an American 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...

 starring Buddy Hackett

Buddy Hackett

Buddy Hackett was an American comedian and actor.-Early life:Hackett was born in Brooklyn, New York, New York, the son of a Jewish upholsterer. He grew up on 54th and 14th Ave in Borough Park, Brooklyn, across from Public School 103...

, Carol Burnett

Carol Burnett

Carol Creighton Burnett is an American actress, comedian, singer, dancer and writer. Burnett started her career in New York. After becoming a hit on Broadway, she made her television debut...

, and the voice of Paul Lynde

Paul Lynde

Paul Edward Lynde was an American comedian and actor. A noted character actor, Lynde was well known for his roles as Uncle Arthur on Bewitched and Harry MacAfee, the befuddled father in Bye Bye Birdie...

. It aired on NBC during the 1956–57 television

Television

Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...

 season, produced by Max Liebman, who had previously produced Sid Caesar

Sid Caesar

Isaac Sidney "Sid" Caesar is an Emmy award winning American comic actor and writer known as the leading man on the 1950s television series Your Show of Shows and Caesar's Hour, and to younger generations as Coach Calhoun in Grease and Grease 2.- Early life :Caesar was born in Yonkers, New York,...

's Your Show of Shows

Your Show of Shows

Your Show of Shows is a live 90-minute variety show that appeared weekly in the United States on NBC , from February 25, 1950, until June 5, 1954, featuring Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca....

, co-sponsored by American Tobacco (Pall Mall

Pall Mall (cigarette)

Pall Mall cigarettes are a brand of cigarettes produced by R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and internationally by British American Tobacco at multiple sites.- History :...

 cigarettes) and The Toni Company (Bobbi Home Permanent, Pamper Shampoo).

Stanley revolved around the adventures of the namesake character (Hackett) as the operator of a newsstand in a posh New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 hotel

Hotel

A hotel is an establishment that provides paid lodging on a short-term basis. The provision of basic accommodation, in times past, consisting only of a room with a bed, a cupboard, a small table and a washstand has largely been replaced by rooms with modern facilities, including en-suite bathrooms...

. Burnett played his girlfriend, Celia, and Lynde voiced the unseen hotel owner, Mr. Fenton, who never appeared on camera but could frequently be heard giving orders to his staff.

As was the case with several such programs (but a declining number, even at this early stage of network television), Stanley was aired live. Several episodes of the series, preserved on kinescope

Kinescope

Kinescope , shortened to kine , also known as telerecording in Britain, is a recording of a television program made by filming the picture from a video monitor...

film, are known to exist.

In the show's introduction, the following line was recited: "You think you've got troubles. Stanley, he's got troubles!"