The Life of Riley, with William Bendix

William Bendix

William Bendix was an American film, radio, and television actor, best remembered in movies for the title role in the movie The Babe Ruth Story and for portraying clumsily earnest aircraft plant worker Chester A. Riley in radio and television's The Life of Riley...

 in the title role, is a popular American radio

Radio

Radio is the transmission of signals through free space by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light. Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space...

 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 of the 1940s that was adapted into a 1949 feature film

Feature film

In the film industry, a feature film is a film production made for initial distribution in theaters and being the main attraction of the screening, rather than a short film screened before it; a full length movie...

, a long-run 1950s television

Television

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

 series (originally with Jackie Cooper

Jackie Cooper

Jackie Cooper was an American actor, television director, producer and executive. He was a child actor who managed to make the transition to an adult career. Cooper was the first child actor to receive an Academy Award nomination...

 as Riley for 1 truncated season, then with Bendix for 6 seasons), and a 1958 Dell comic book. Cooper even filled in for Bendix on 11/11/49 due to illness.

The show began as a proposed Groucho Marx

Groucho Marx

Julius Henry "Groucho" Marx was an American comedian and film star famed as a master of wit. His rapid-fire delivery of innuendo-laden patter earned him many admirers. He made 13 feature films with his siblings the Marx Brothers, of whom he was the third-born...

 radio series, The Flotsam Family, but the sponsor balked at what would have been essentially a straight head-of-household role for the comedian.